It's all cost-benefit. It would take me at least a full working day to prepare everything on my own (I'm self-employed, with investments and several income streams from a couple of different countries), and my CPA charges less to do my taxes than I can make by spending the same amount of time working. I dunno, if your situation is very simple then doing it all yourself probably makes more sense, but as soon as it starts to get more complicated it's likely easier and more economically feasible to hire someone. (Not a CPA, by the way; no horse in this race.)

I will never understand this attitude. "Things are already shit, so who cares if they get even shittier?" That's precisely the reason they got shitty in the first place -- as things got incrementally shitty the only frame of reference people used was the previous level of shittiness. If that's the way you look at the world, things can only go in one direction: shittier.

Anyway, although I hate the idea of how much personal data of mine is floating around, it makes more sense for, say, my computer to be connected to the Internet so I can carry out online tasks that actually *do* improve my life significantly (online banking, for example). It makes less sense for every little gadget to be connected in order to provide some marginal or -- more likely, in this case -- manufactured "convenience".

...would likely not touch this stuff. Generally I think I can tell the difference between lossless and high bitrate MP3, but I have to be listening on my home system, which is a very nice setup in a quiet listening environment. A Walkman is a portable device, no? As in, you listen to it while you're walking around, likely in environments with background noise? Not exactly an environment for critical listening.

When I want the audiophile experience I throw a minty LP on my turntable, crank the McIntosh, and settle in in front of my B&W Diamonds. When I'm out and about and just want to be able to access my entire collection (or a large chunk of it) at a reasonable level of quality, for which high bitrate MP3 is sufficient.

This isn't an audiophile product. It's a product for people who *think* they're audiophiles and that audiophile = expensive. I expect Sony to sell around a hundred of these, all to pretentious cunts.

But only Fleetwood Mac lets you Go Your Own Way.

Someone mod this shit up.

I don't want a "smart" house. At this point "smart" means "provides even more data for God knows who to use for marketing/tracking/hacking/etc." No thank you.

What I would give for the chance to hit on Andie Macdowell...

And actually interacting with the world around you?

Exactly what I was going to say.

Part of me wonders when the hell will these people get the goddamned message that their business models are completely outdated and have no place in the modern interconnected world.

Another part of me realizes that more likely than not, they won't have to because they can buy enough politicians to legislate the fuck out of the Internet and protect their revenue streams.

Commercial VPN services.

...that VPNs are made illegal or otherwise effectively blocked from operating? I give the golden age of VPNs another three years, tops.

Did the crew acknowledge alternate law? I haven't read the entire CVR transcript but I was under the impression that they didn't. Or, at the very least, the PF (Bonin, the younger guy) didn't seem to know what it meant.

Even if the display shows inputs, it's a lot harder to pay attention to a display with a little dot waggling around on it than a big old yoke pushing into your nutsack, especially when you're on a turbulence roller coaster and trying to figure out twenty-three other issues at the same time. Also, the inputs won't be averaged out as per Airbus's sticks. I don't know. While it's clear that pilot error was the primary factor I'm still not fully convinced that there aren't issues in the Airbus design that exacerbated the situation. (Not affiliated with Boeing or a "U-S-A! U-S-A!" wanker type, either, by the way.)

It's interesting... most of the expert opinions I have heard say that the asynchronous nature of Airbus sidesticks was *not* to blame, and that the crash would not have happened if the pilots were properly communicating as per Cockpit Resource Management protocol. However, when you consider that the crash happened basically because a very junior pilot was pulling the stick back *the entire time* and the senior pilot did not realize this, I can't help but think that synchronous flight controls a la Boeing jets would have at least partially mitigated this problem (the senior pilot would have seen very clearly that the junior pilot was pulling back constantly). IANAP (I am not a pilot), but nevertheless... anyway, back to our regular scheduled programming.

Please report to Apple HQ for reconditioning.

Green screen extravaganzas aimed specifically at the ADHD generation that needs five minutes of action for every three seconds of dialog. LOTR it ain't.

For the life of me I can't understand how this is legal. Do companies really do this?