I favor a simple progressive tax on capital gains. Tax ordinary capital gains same as now. Tax gains on trades under a day at 50%, under an hour at 75%, under a minute at 85% and under a second at 95%. Preferably on a nice curve instead of by quanta.

Wow, I take it back. Some of this music is pretty awful. A good MIDI performance expert could do better. Oh god, listen to the french horn in the 2nd promenade in Pictures at an Exhibition. Oh, and the violins at the end of that. Shiver. Ouch. Damn.

Possibly the project's initial goals were completed, but that's hardly what springs to mind when one hears the phrase in the context of the classical repertoire.

That said, I'm listening to Eroica, and it actually ain't bad.

WRT the print edition quality, most world-class musicians prefer autograph scores. Heavily edited scores are more suited for amateur performers. An exception is Sussmayer's version of Mozart's Requiem, which has a lot of rough spots, and is usually performed from later fixed up versions.

Received mine (in CS) at 45, 15 years ago. I'm honestly unsure that the PhD was worth it, though it was fun. The Masters was definitely worth it.

The PhD training really only teaches you how to think. Since entering the hi-tech workforce, I've had to learn 3 or 4 new skill sets in order to do a job and have a domain to think about.

I've only seen three of my neighbors often enough to identify them in a lineup, and they all live in the same house.

I've listened to Woz speak. It's pretty clear to me that he is a bright man who did something brilliant at the exact right time. The timing wasn't his fault, but he's been rewarded for it with both money and adulation, and kind of like a Hollywood star he assumes that his success means he is somehow qualified to speak on other areas of life. Woz didn't have much to do with the development of much anything since the Apple II to my knowledge. Lucky for himt he had lots of Apple stock to cash in on no matter what he contributed.

I'll probably get modded as flame for this. Sigh. I actually don't have anything against Steve W., and think he's made a great contribution to the universe. I guess I simply believe that while Steve Wozniak blazed the trail, Steve Jobs paved the road.

BTW, this, and my house burning down, are the two scenarios that freak me out and motivate me. A hard drive failure is almost always addressable by sending your failed hard drive off to a recovery company with a $1000 check; chances are you won't lose any data you care about. But if all your hard drives go missing, you're f___ed.

Very nice point about burglars. Still, you need an offsite copy somewhere, in case they grab every piece of equipment in your house.

I'm glad that works for you, but I'm with the other old-fashioned types. For me, dragging together materials generated by others into a pastiche, no matter how brilliant, does not impart understanding in the same way that having to understand things well enough to write short notes and diagrams does.

When I was in college and grad school, all my notes were pencil and paper. Good notes aren't textbooks, they're pointers into the memory structures you're building around a topic.

My work now doesn't involve much diagramming, so taking notes on an 11" Air works great. But anytime diagramming is required, I go over to the nearest laser printer and grab some paper out of the drawer.

Yeah, I know, sometimes juries forget that. :-) But with all respect to other posters, even a hundred happy campers aren't enough to prove out a product.

You have a problem to solve. The solution will, over time, require more than just technology. Focus on the company at least as much as the technology. Where are they going to be in 3 years? How is their support? What kind of record do they have in the areas of retention and compliance?

I support the suggestion to use a standalone firewall/vpn. Otherwise, it sounds like Windows Server with a RAID 1 configuration will cause you the least grief long term. You could buy a couple of the little NAS boxes for backup and archive.

Does your law office have any ambitions to grow?

If it does, the ability to scale up your system, and compliance issues, are more important than what's been discussed here. You need enterprise-class storage and a solid backup and archive plan to protect the business. A compliance strategy should be put into place, whether you actually do anything right now or not. It's not fun to have to invent one when the subpoena arrives.

I'd strongly suggest a visit to a channel partner of NetApp and/or EMC. They have low-end products suitable for a business like yours. You have an insurance policy on your legal business. Consider this investment an insurance policy on your legal data.

Windows Server is actually an acceptable alternative if you don't have near-term growth ambitions.

I was forcibly made aware of this when we sponsored him to speak at an event. His behavior off the stage was rude, inconsiderate and unfeeling--toward others, not me--to an extreme I don't often see. His views are what they are, and may have some value, but when he starts talking about right and wrong, I turn him off, as he doesn't appear to have good judgment in that area.

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Politics: n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

We can't even directly detect the thing; we have to infer its existence from the decay of other particles. I'd say it will be a while before we use it to blow shit up.

Given that energy is power exerted over time, making something 1000 times faster using the same energy means using 1000 times the power. Making it 1000 times faster using the same power would use 1/1000th of the energy.

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All notions of cause and effect are merely assertions of faith in statistics.

> And sanity is loosing.

So is spelling.