It's kind of like the prisoner's dilemma though. While they may collectively want everyone to have a decent income, they all feel that should come out of someone else's pocket and not theirs. At least they all seem to agree that there needs to be enough food to go around.

If you're comfortable filling out the forms yourself, just use the free fillable forms:
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Free-File:-Do-Your-Federal-Taxes-for-Free

They say it's for over $60k but in reality anyone can use them. Free e-file, or you can print them, or you can save as PDF. Doesn't require using any toner or cost you a stamp if you e-file.

I only wish I could have something similar at the state level. If they want to require that I have to go to a third party and pay up if I want to e-file, they can deal with my dead tree return, which certainly costs them more money anyway.

Well, technically since you have to buy TurboTax again every year, it's not like they took anything away from you. They just repackaged their software and now some features that previously were in the basic package are now extras. Kind of like finding out that the combo meal at the fast food place now doesn't include the drink.

As far as Comcast is concerned, I'm almost convinced they purposely slap random charges they know are illegitimate onto people's bill and hope that people will just pay them. But then again, don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

If you read the EULA on the commercial offerings, you'll find that you can't hold them liable if they do something wrong. Or if they advertise a guarantee, it's only guaranteeing that the program is free of math errors and nothing to do with the tax code.

The real problem with an open source tax program is that it would be horrible drudge work translating the tax code into software code, and the software would only be useful for a relatively short time before it would have to updated requiring more horrible drudge work. It's not something that someone's going to do to "scratch an itch", even if someone attempted it, they'd never get it done in time. For most anyone who's interesting in contributing to open source, there's much more interesting things to work on.

It would be nice if they would back-port the security fixes. I can understand that old hardware may not run future versions of the OS, but they could still fix bugs and security holes for a reasonable amount of time.

The Nintendo World Championship cartridges likely survive in high numbers because it was obvious at the time that they were special, would only be produced in very limited numbers, and therefore likely to be collectible and valuable. On the other hand, the people who were in the right place and the right time to get their hands on a copy of Stadium Events probably had no idea of what they had, and probably just thought it to be another B title from another third party company they've never heard of, and therefore almost worthless on the second-hand market like many of those games were - and still are, even today. So while there may have originally been more copies of Stadium Events, it's very possible fewer survive today.

Though it's likely that there's a few copies of Stadium Events still tucked away in attics and closets, owned by people who still have no idea what they have, that will eventually be unearthed. The publicity this auction may even make a few of these people go "Oh, Stadium Events.... hey I remember that game ... OMG holy crap!"

Goldeneye seems a bit crude by today's standards, but for the time it was a solid game. The graphics were good for 1997, the music was good, it had solid gameplay, multiplayer was fun, replayablitiy was high, the maps and levels were generally well thought out, a n00b could pick up the basics easily, and the single player mode had an engaging story line. In 1997 it's not like many people had 3D cards in their PC, nor did they have an easy way to do multiplayer with three other people as most people were still using dialup and a NIC was still somewhat exotic. But getting together and popping in a game like Goldeneye was quick and easy fun for a small group of friends.

Granted, by today's standards the graphics are crude and low res (especially in split screen mode where you end up with 1/4 of a standard definition screen, yeech), the AI in single player mode is braindead, and the controls were always a bit clumsy and inevitably you would get "Nintendo thumb" after playing for too long. But that doesn't make Goldeneye a bad game because Unreal Tournament that game out almost a couple of years later is so much better.

So how is extending the copyright on already existing works not an ex post facto law? Changing the terms for new copyrighted works would not be an ex post facto law, But a retroactive blanket change of the terms on already copyrighted works, many of which are decades old?

I think it's utterly remarkable that the Opportunity has lasted long enough that something like the flash memory is failing due to old age. I would guess that no one expected that Opportunity would ever run into the write cycle limit when they decided to put flash memory onboard.

All you would need is a laptop similar to one from about 2003 back when they were shoving P4's into laptops. Compared to modern laptops it would be thick, a bit bulky, and loud under load. But it would keep the CPU cool. If we could build a laptop 12 years ago that can handle a P4 at 100% for extended periods of time without throttling, we can do the same with a Core i7 today. Problem is everyone seems to think laptops need to be super thin and super quiet instead.

Those mini-desktops generally use laptop parts, and given that they're generally made as small as possible, my guess is that under load you'll have the exact same problem.

There's still companies out there making "lunchbox" computers. Expensive, but might be worth a look.

Intel's processors will run in their turbo mode until they get too hot, at which time they throttle back. In a well-cooled desktop, they can happily run at their maximum clock rate indefinitely. The thing is, you need a good cooling solution. People think that the newer chips use a lot less power, but that's only true at idle. Under load they'll put as much heat as your old Prescott P4.

Err... what? The ACA, with the insurance mandate, was basically the Republican response to HilaryCare from the 90's. Of course, once the Democrats embraced it, the Republicans immediately disavowed having anything to do with it.

I've seen some benchmarks that put the Haswell Pentium G3xxx series processors (which are dual core chips) at about the same speed as the first Core 2 Quads. So basically Intel's budget processors are about equal to their top end 7 years ago, Considering that the current Pentium chips are more than adequate for most people, most people would also find that Core 2 system to be perfectly usable. Which is kind of amazing, as 15 years ago even the cheapest Coppermine Celeron was worlds faster than Intel's best in 1993.

The Haswell chips idle at an incredibly low power level, but how long can you run that chip at 100% before it starts to throttle back? I appreciate a quiet system too, but I always make sure that it can run 100% indefinitely if need be.