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Comment Re:Common Sense, anyone? (Score 1) 788

by phaunt (#36957232) Attached to: Re: the debt deal reached Sunday night ...

But the point is, when people just repeat their HuffPo talking points, they are really clueless about the actual numbers of who pays taxes, and so forth. Most arguments about "the disproportionate tax burden on the poor" come from SSN/Medicare withholdings, which aren't taxes, precisely, since you get the money back eventually. More like a mandatory retirement program.

(Though if you expect SSN to have totally vanished by the time you retire, then sure, it's a tax.)

Yes, thank you for that insight.
Bitcoin

Amir Taaki Answers Your Questions About Bitcoin 262

Posted by timothy from the conspiracy-theorists-in-three-two-one-go dept.
Last week, you asked questions (many rather pointed!) of Amir Taaki, co-founder of Bitcoin Consultancy, which develops Bitcoin related services, exchanges and Bitcoin itself. (They also own Britcoin.co.uk.) Says Taaki: "When creating video games I spent much time imagining tools to make artists lives easier, and how we could keep funding developers to write free software. One contribution of mine to the community was a site where developers could get funded for developing features and I'd love nothing more than to pay people to write free software." With regard to Bitcoin, similarly, "We need fulltime developers thinking about the problems and solutions needed to keep this system running. We aim to get all the creative thinkers from the community and provide a mechanism for enabling their work." Below find his answers to the questions readers raised.
Earth

Volcano Erupts In Iceland 191

Posted by Soulskill from the end-of-times-underway dept.
Reports are coming in that a volcano in Iceland called Grimsvotn has erupted, sending plumes of smoke 15km into the air. It was accompanied by a series of earthquakes, but all of them have been minor so far, and scientists don't believe the eruption will cause problems for air travel like 2010's Eyjafjallajokull event. Local coverage in Icelandic is available, as well as early pictures of the eruption.
Microsoft

Confirmed: Microsoft Says It Will Open Source VB 6 205

Posted by timothy from the don't-knock-it-yet dept.
msmoriarty writes "Microsoft told a group of MVPs today at Tech-Ed that it plans to take Visual Basic 6 open source and will release the source code on CodePlex. A source at the event said that Microsoft is planning to release only the VB6 language on codeplex – not Visual Studio or related tools." Update: 05/20 02:24 GMT by T : Alas, too good to be true. msmoriarty writes with an apologetic retraction: "We got it wrong — Microsoft denied and went back to our source and they pulled confirmation. Our apologies."

Comment Re:What do you mean 2001? (Score 1) 473

by phaunt (#33531618) Attached to: New Email Worm Squirming Through Windows Users' Inboxes

They all contain links to weird-looking pages which, of course, I never open.

If you never open them, how do you know the pages look weird? Or did you mean to write "They all contain weird-looking links to pages which, of course, I never open"?

Anyway, I believe many of those work on a slightly different principle: not downloading an EXE but simply asking you to enter your MSN/hotmail password to be able to see the embarrassing pics in question... and then mailing /IM'ing themselves on.
The Media

Senate Candidate Sued By Copyright Troll 253

Posted by samzenpus from the lesson-in-the-law dept.
The Iso writes "Las Vegas based company Righthaven found two articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle reprinted on her web site without permission, so it did what it always does: bought the rights to the articles from the Review-Journal and sued the alleged infringer, seeking unspecified damages."
Displays

The iPad As a Shape-Recognition System 100

Posted by timothy from the what-have-we-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes with an interesting use for the iPad: "The guys over at the Volumique blog have a different idea as to how to tackle apps for Apple's devices. They aren't just thinking about a digital activity on such devices, they are experimenting with using physical objects through Apple's multi-touch screens. Imagine being able to buy the playing pieces for a board game, but then loading up an app on your iPad for the actual board. The pieces would be recognized when placed on the iPad's screen, it would even recognize which direction they were facing. This may sound like an impossible feat unless you use a much more expensive device like Microsoft Surface, but Bertrand Duplat and Etienne Mineur at Volumique already have it working."

Comment Re:gone? (Score 1) 3

by phaunt (#33338838) Attached to: Solar System older than previously thought

Thanks for the suggestion.

I already looked for it in the browser history but couldn't find it. Don't have the time to retype at the moment... next time, I'll write up the description in a text editor and copy-paste into the browser window. Frankly, I've had similar stuff happen before in a browser and should've learned this lesson already. Oh well.

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