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Comment Re:Because IRS has never heard of exchange servers (Score -1, Flamebait) 372

Lost in this whole discussion is whether the Tea Party deserves tax-exempt status in the first place.

The law says groups granted such status must engage in activities exclusively for the public good.

The IRS guidelines softened that to primarily for the public good.

Arguably, many Tea-Party groups fail both criteria. And probably so do a number of political organizations over the spectrum from left to right.

Comment Re:In the middle of the Tuolumne River (Score 1) 310

At San Jose Family Camp in the middle of the Tuolumne River writing a Perl/CGI script to generate sendmail.cf files.

There's a saying: If you edit a sendmail.cf file once, you're a sysadmin. If you edit a sendmail.cf file twice, you're insane.

Writing Perl/CGI scripts to generate them seems so far down the rabbit hole, there's no way back. And in the middle of a river? Dude, you have my vote.

Comment Re:He also forgot to mention... (Score 2) 343

What's more, his analogy actually supports Comcast NOT charging Netflix, rather than the other way around.
Being a Canadian resident, if I want to send a letter to someone in Canada, I pay Canada Post to deliver it.
If, on the other hand, I want to send a letter to someone in a different country, say, the USA, or England, I pay Canada Post to deliver it. I do not have to pay the United States Postal Service or Royal Mail to deliver my letter sent from Canada.

In this analogy, countries and regional postal services are equivalent to ISPs. If I want to send a network packet (letter) to someone on a different ISP (in a different country), I pay my local ISP (postal service) to deliver it. Any ISP (country) beyond that is not my responsibility.

I made the same point back in March:

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Comment Re:What he's really saying is (Score 3, Insightful) 422

you can send one to anyone and not have to worry about what they have installed

Except that they need to be running Windows or Mac, with Microsoft Office installed.

Actually, LibreOffice/OpenOffice are pretty good at importing and exporting .xls and .xlsx. And considering how incredibly obfuscated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H complicated the MS OOXML standard is, I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.

You can even import .ods in MS Excel, if you have the relevant plugins installed.

That said, I agree with TFA: don't go overboard with fancy spreadsheets. Keep them simple, for the sake of your own mental health and that of your co-workers.

Comment Re:To be fair on that geocentric point of view (Score 2) 129

Mod parent up. Excellent post.

I'd add only one point: Tycho Brahe did not observe with a telescope. (He died before the telescope was invented and used for astronomy.) He used a quadrant, a device with a viewing sight (with no optics) attached to a pair of calibrated circular arcs that allowed him to measure the polar and azimuthal angular direction of the sight. Tycho Brahe was an outstanding observer, but he could not achieve the accuracy required to view the proper motion of the stars due to the motion of the earth around the sun.

Comment Re:Well I am shocked... (Score 1) 522

...that he does his own taxes.

Doesn't this Game of Thrones gig pay enough for him to hire an accountant?

You don't get rich by spending money...

...or by overpaying tax.

For someone in his situation, an accountant is worth hiring, and probably more than pays for herself/himself in tax savings.

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