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Comment All personal income is taxable (Score 1) 783

by PhinMak (#34908850) Attached to: Wikileaks To Name Swiss Bank Tax Evaders

A "cashless" black market is also exempt from taxation. Nice try though!

It is not "exempt". It is tax evasion. Ever heard of Al Capone? Jailed not for bootlegging and murder etc etc, but for not paying taxes on his ill-gotten gains.

Furthermore, estimates are that the black/underground market is as high as 28% (!!!!!) of the US economy. Source1 Source2 Pay your niece to babysit using cash? You're enabling tax evasion. Pay your drywaller in cash? Probably also encouraging illegal immigration. Borrow your brother's truck in exchange for a case of beer? TAX EVASION! Tony Soprano, "legitimate businesses", drug dealers and money laundering? TAX EVASION AND THE 4 HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE!

Two conclusions:
-- Everyone is crossing the line from avoidance to evasion. Rich AND poor.
-- Tax laws (all laws, really) are draconian in their complication, pervasiveness and obscurity.

It's almost enough for me to seriously support the "FairTax"...

Comment Agree (Score 1) 321

by PhinMak (#34331028) Attached to: FCC To Allow Texting To 911
Agree. I had a txt conversation with my father as he was sailing past Bermuda earlier this week. Voice was not available, but we could txt just fine. I believe it had everything to do with the quality of service. If voice911 is not available but I still have a minimal signal, I'd hope there was some method of calling for help beyond txt'ing a friend.

Comment Been there, done that. Made a website. (Score 1) 202

by PhinMak (#34330668) Attached to: The DIY Car Computer vs. the iPad
Been there. Done that. Made a website.

Http://web.archive.org/web/20021203213216/www.portlandcompany.com/z24/

This was in the late 90's and there was no such thing as portable mp3 players. In fact, the Roxio Rio with 32megs of capacity came out just as I was finishing the build.

Issues to consider:

  • I blew 1 head unit ($300) while installing due to miswiring. Ow.
  • MASSIVE PROBLEMS with feedback. Somehow the car-computer-stereo connections caused a constant background hum that I could only minimize. Tried induction isolators, even went to a few car stereo stores and they could only scratch their heads.
  • It took me 3 months to find an ATX power supply that was designed to accept 12v DC rather than 120v AC.
  • Unless you design in a battery back-up, you have to wait a few minutes getting in and out of your car while you wait for the system to start up or shut down.

This project was one of my major geek credentials, but you can see from the site that I quickly realized that I was being left in the dust when it came to my webdeveloping skills. I could talk for hours about how much fun this project was for a highschooler.

Comment Re:Diesels already do this. (Score 1) 576

by PhinMak (#34017148) Attached to: Mazda Claims 70 mpg For New Engine, No Hybrid Needed
I tried driving both the gas and diesel Jetta wagons and noted a significant problem with the 0-60 acceleration time in the diesel. We wanted the diesel, but couldn't deal with unsafe acceleration.

I'm trying to find 0-60 references online but finding NOTHING. Even VW.com has a "TBA" on their website. In my opinion, they are hiding this fact.

Gas 0-60: 8.4 seconds. This is normal for sedans. Corolla: 9 seconds.
Diesel 0-60: TBA. My estimate is above 11 seconds. Those 3-5 seconds can be an eternity as you watch a semi grill rapidly approaching your rear-view mirror.

Trying to get on many US highways with that kind of acceleration is borderline suicidal. Especially in a miniwagon. we're not talking about some bus or 18-wheeler where people will get out of your (slow-to-get-up-to-speed) way.

In the end I had to move up to the Passat wagon (~7 seconds to 60) and give up having a manual transmission. I'd rather be driving a car without a soul (automatic) than a deathdrap.
Government

Congress Mulls Research Into a Vehicle Mileage Tax 792

Posted by kdawson from the just-get-on-the-bike dept.
BJ_Covert_Action writes to let us know that an Oregon congressman has filed legislation to spend $154.5M for a research project into tracking per-vehicle mileage in the US, and asks: "Do we really want the government to track our movement and driving habits on a regular basis?" "US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) introduced H.R. 3311 earlier this year to appropriate $154,500,000 for research and study into the transition to a per-mile vehicle tax system... Oregon has successfully tested a Vehicle Miles Traveled fee... the [Oregon] report urged a mandate for all drivers to install GPS tracking devices that would report driving habits to roadside RFID scanning devices." Here is the bill (PDF). The article notes that the congressman's major corporate donors would likely benefit with contracts if such a program were begun.
Security

DHS To Review Report On US Power Grid Vulnerability 138

Posted by kdawson from the like-dominos dept.
CWmike writes "The US Department of Homeland Security is looking at a report by a research scientist in China that shows how a well-placed attack against a small power subnetwork could trigger a cascading failure of the entire West Coast power grid. Jian-Wei Wang, a network analyst at China's Dalian University of Technology, used publicly available information to model how the West Coast grid and its component subnetworks are connected. Wang and another colleague then investigated how a major outage in one subnetwork would affect adjacent subnetworks. New Scientist magazine reported on this a week or so ago, and the paper has been available since the spring."
Censorship

Australia's Bizarre Classification System For Internet Censorship 208

Posted by timothy from the in-loco-loco-loco-parentis dept.
stavros-59 writes "Australia's internet censorship watchdog, ACMA, uses an internet classification system originally intended for children's PC filters. ACMA has now made what must be the most amazing recent decisions of the whole bizarre censorship debate. The Register today has a story about ACMA's decision to force Apple to withdraw their ITMS gift feature from Australia on the basis that MA+ (over 15 and maybe sex) rated movies could not be given to children using the gift cards. The films are also banned on the internet but not at local video/DVD stores as detailed in this Whirlpool Forum post. At the same time, the photographic work of Robert Mapplethorpe (not for the fainthearted) has been classified as PG (Parental Guidance) by the Classification Board — which is not part of ACMA, but an agency under the Attorney General's Department."
The Media

Murdoch Says, "We'll Charge For All Our Sites" 881

Posted by timothy from the subverting-the-dominant-paradigm dept.
Oracle Goddess writes "In what appears to be a carefully planned suicide, Rupert Murdoch announced that his media giant News Corporation Ltd intends to charge for all its news websites in a bid to lift revenues, as the transition towards online media permanently changes the advertising landscape. 'The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution, but it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites,' Murdoch said."

Comment Additional uses for belt (Score 1) 290

by PhinMak (#28010751) Attached to: Hacking Our Five Senses and Building New Ones
How often have you been about to change lanes and then suddenly realized there was a car there? Your comment above talks about having personal "radar" but I think this could really help in a vehicle... The problem might be the shift from the use outside your vehicle where the belt would be "compass" and your brain would get used to it, to the different inputs you would get when the belt hooks up (bluetooth?) to the additional sensors attached to the exterior of the car (plane?)... Could you somehow make the vibration/pulses different from the "compass" type so you could tell the difference? I drive a Mini and one of the many things I like about it is the 360 degree visability I get. (No blind spots at all!) I looked at a 350z, but like all coupes, those flying butresses of a C-pillar are huge, thick and make me very nervous. Also being in a Mini, I feel like i have to be much more in-tune with my surroundings, since I'm that much smaller than the ginormous Tahoe's I'm always passing... (Current inputs I have while driving beyond typical driving: [1]nav screen [2] Headset w/Trapster speedtrap warnings [3] Valentine1 radar detector. I take "situational awareness" to the next level. I'd be up for hearing additional ideas from other /.ers...)

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