I'm going to chime in here, as other have.

I'm an S-Corp as well, vs. a LLC for exactly those reasons. Namely I pay myself a standard rate, and bill out at a higher rate. There are several advantages, and caviets.

Let me jump in a say that MOST contract houses run at the 1.8 to 2.1 factor and for good reasons. For example, say I'm at a 2.0 factor. If I want my hourly rate to myself to be $40 I'll charge 2.0 times that to my customer, or $80.

The best reason to stay in that 1.8 to 2.1 range is that it is easy to account for in case of an audit. Most GSA have base * overhead * profit, where profit is supposed to be only 15%. However the overhead side of the equation is big, because it covers all the indirect employees; secretaries, accountants, IT staff, CEO's, etc. So on any given GSA contract, the billing rates will all end up in the 1.8 to 2.1 range.

1) The key here is the IRS knows GSA, so anything in that range is legit, so long story short stay at or ABOVE the 50% mark for your hourly rate vs billing rate if you want to stay off the IRS radar.
2) As much as you'd like to, don't ever write off part of your house on the S-Corp. Yes its legal, but since it is highly abused your more likely to be flagged for an audit.
3) Expense as much as your toys as you can, computers, routers, printers are all valid deductions of the S-Corp income.
4) Use quickbooks and its payroll add-ons. Yes there are other tools, but quickbooks is easy an worth the $300. Wait for a good sale in Feb of almost every year for $100 off.
5) Set everything up hourly, not salary. Set your billing rates, pay rates, vacation rates, even 401K or 408K per hour. This just is much easier to track and bill your clients, and pay yourself and your future employee's!

Another easier way to fix the youtube issue is built into almost every browser, incognito mode. Always browse youtube in incognito and it wont matter if your logged into gmail or not.

The real question in my opinion is what kind of guiding system do the drones use. Flying with visual guidance is considerably harder

We did this back in 2002 with the X-31, although we used a simulated carrier. So while it was the first actual landing of a drone, it wasn't even close to the first to do a full auto carrier landing.

What the most likely primary sensor technology is GPS for the drone, merged with good old rate/accel/intertial sensor suite. What was done with the X-31 was put a suedolite (ground gps) around the target, in this case it would be the carrier. The X-31 would do a first pass through the 'bubble' created by the ground station and refine it's position to within 1 cm (yes that close) in all 3 axis. Then it would circle the target and autoland starting at about 15km out.

So I doubt it is anything fancy like imaging, ladar, radar, but more likely enhanced GPS that the X-31 pioneered.

Oh, and the X-31 could hit that landing without the arresting gear but doing a stale manuever, wicked cool if you ever get to see the videos. Modern Marvels did a show on it and it has some of the ok footage.

Alibre is worth learning if your serious about CAD/CAM. The personal version is only $99 and should do anything you want outside of NURBS. You absolutely don't want to use something like Blender for 2D/3D precision work.

Alibre tries to follow the Solidworks way of doing things, so if you learn Alibre then you can quickly migrate to something more high-end if you ever need too.

It has support for full parametric solids cad, so it isn't the old school Autocad stuff where you have to pretend you know what its going to look like from your 2D sketches.

When your ready to cut metal, or print plastic, Alibre can output a number of solid models (STL) formats, as well as DWG and DXF which are critical for using importing into a good CAM package (whole nother ask slashdot on choosing a good CAM).

Alibre has some pretty easy to follow tutorials to get you started.

I don't work for the company, just a VERY happy camper when I bit the bullet 2 years or so ago and got the $99 version. Used it to design a 3D printer down to every last nut/bolt.

Yes its a challenge, but like everything worth doing...

Last, but not least, get plugged into the forums at cnczone.com. They have categories for every type of machine from mills, lathes, to 3D printers; from every type of CAD package to every type of CAM. Its a great asset, and once your hooked you'll spend more time reading on cnczone than here on Slashdot (sacrilegious i know).

Just a guess that your experience with Win 7 was in a corporate environment?

I've been running Win 7 at home for just over a year now and not ONCE did Windows force an update down my throat.

In fact, it probably has the BEST update system I've used. It'll download in the background (if you so choose) and only install at your next reboot. It NEVER asks me to reboot. If I happen to, the updates install quickly (already downloaded) and the machine is ready next power-up.

Now at WORK... They force the pop-ups, the force in the installs, and the force the reboots at the most asinine times of day, totally wrecking my workflow. Don't blame the OS for something that is totally under the influence of your corporate IT policy.

I would agree that historically that was true. But ever since they start experimenting with the 'Metro' dashboard on the xbox, it has been stuffed with Adverts.

I'd have a hard time believing the xbox team is still in the red.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/ads-up-games-down-the-ugly-profitable-truth-about-xbox-live-advertising

As a followup, and generally high regard for canines, have you ever made a cat-ling gun? If not, why not? If so, how many lives do they have on average?

Whole-heartily agree... Even back during the first space shuttle disasters the jokes were circulating all the local Florida schools the SAME day. I still remember around 10 of them.

The jokes, while tasteless, were still funny. The thing is when I remember one of those jokes, it immediately gives way to pause as I reflect back to that day, looking up and seeing the orange flash on my way to school. That moment wasn't funny to anyone, and it will forever be burned into my history.

Except this is Commerical Access To Space, so shouldn't it be CATS?

I for one am all for exporting CATS into space.