Say what? Median household income in the US is $51K. The poverty line for a family is about $2K/month, and 15% of the people are below that. There is no support at all for your claim that 'most families' in the US live on $1000/month.
I have no sympathy. In fact, many of you cheered it as a sign of greatness and freedom that America was doing this. Your allies, however, were fucking appalled. Let
Let me finish that sentence for you:
Option 1: "Let me just say that I laugh at your situation, secure in my knowledge that nothing like that can happen where I live."
Option 2: "Let me see this as a warning that despite rule of law, foundational documents, and all the trappings of representative government, this could still happen here. I will be especially on guard against those that try to subvert my country."
I like the UK system - if you're an employee and you're happy with the tax your employer has withheld on your behalf, you don't have to do anything. You get a statement at the end of the year telling you how much you've been paid and how much tax has been withheld - if you think they've got it wrong, or you want to claim deductions, you file a tax return saying so.
We could do this in the US. By could I mean, if we changed tax regulations -- the system is mostly in place already. Wage income is deducted "pay-as-you-go" here, too. All of my interest, dividends and gains were already reported (but not deducted) by the entities that paid them. The IRS could have just sent me a bill for that with what they already know. Most of the data I put on my 1040 is redundant for the IRS. The biggest impediment -- other than changing the law -- would be that not claiming all your deductions could result in paying far more than you really should owe, especially if you have a mortgage, give to charity, or need to report other such deductions.
. . . at some point you're clicking quickly because you just want to get shit done and accidentally upgrade yourself to a $120 tax package. After that, you literally cannot back out or restart.
You can, but it requires human intervention from customer service and takes a few hours. Obviously, this would be a problem if it happened at the last minute
Although I am moving more and more to Linux I am GOING to keep at least one Windows machine around just to run Tax Act if nothing else!
Tax Cut (H&R Block) online works with Linux browsers. Turbo Tax online complains but works anyway. And Tax Act online at least let me start without any warnings. There really seems to be little difference in the online versions of these services vs the installable Windows program, FWIW to you. I replaced my Mom's XP with Ubuntu and switched her over from Turbo Tax for Windows to Turbo Tax Online. Except for the (apparently bogus) warning when first starting, it worked fine, and she didn't really notice a difference in the experience from last year.
The paranoid might be concerned about filling out their taxes online, but the truly paranoid would note that an installable program could just as easily "phone home" with your tax info, anyway.
I used H&R Block online. Unlike Intuit's offering, it doesn't complain that I'm using Linux. (Turbo Tax seems to work anyway after ignoring the warning, though.)
My financial life is pretty simple, though: I didn't buy or sell a house, didn't buy or sell stocks outside of a retirement account mutual fund, and didn't move from one state to another.
Trading stocks and funds in a non-retirement account used to be a huge PITA at tax time. Good news on this year's 1040 is that you can consolidate all your capital gains (or losses) by short and long term and avoid entering a line for every single trade. This quite literally saved hours of work.
Bird deaths are no myth:
CFACT is not a remotely reliable source, nor to they cite any such source. Google Scholar is usually good at finding real research papers on the topic. This is the top hit for 2013, and while it finds some bird mortality due to wind turbines, it estimates the effect to be much lower than that of other anthropogenic risks for birds, even assuming a 10-fold increase in wind turbines.
There is no silver bullet, nor will we ever manage to return the planet to Garden of Eden conditions. But "there is no single perfect solution, therefore let's not do anything" is not a viable approach to life. Perfect solutions to any problem are exceedingly rare, but that does not stop us from improving situations.
There are no push/pull instructions. There have been 'program call' and 'program return' instructions since the 80's, but these are complex instructions used for switching between addressing modes, address spaces, etc. Just the description of how they work takes almost 17 pages in the POP.
Trust me, I know infinitely more about it than you do.
You said 'because of capacity on demand...'. This is, in fact, false. The thing that lets them control the performance and configuration of the machine is not 'capacity on demand', it is 'Licensed Internal Code Controlled Configuration.' The use of LIC CC also allows them to offer 'capacity on demand', but they are not the same thing, and LIC CC does not require COD. Also, notice the name of that facility, it should give you a clue as to what is actually licensed.
Having said that, I already explained why multiple performance levels are offered. Why would you pay (for hardware and software) for more performance than you need?
You have no idea what you are talking about. "Capacity on demand" has nothing to do with why a BC would run at 1/100 it's capacity (and there is no such thing as a 'base' model.)
In the mainframe world software is often priced by the capacity of the machine it is running on. Therefore, a customer who does not require speed can save significant money by ordering a machine that has had it's capacity reduced. That saves money on both the hardware and software.
One of the reasons IBM does not license z/OS to run on Hercules is because it breaks that pricing method. How would IBM and/or ISVs price their software, when the performance of the machine it is running on is completely unknown and changable? The other reason they won't license is z/OS is because Hercules infringes several of it's patents.
What are you talking about? What the heck is 'native mainframe tech'? z/OS? By that logic, x86 is also 'dying' because servers are moving from Windows to Linux. In 2012 IBM sold more mainframes, as measured in units, capacity, and dollars, than at any point in it's history. Over half of the capacity was in the form of 'new workload' engines. In other words, the market grew, not shrank.
And what do you mean by 'taking perfomance seriously again'? There has never been a time when they didn't take performance seriously. Mainframes have been on an 18-24 month release cycle for decades, and every new machine has been significantly faster than the previous generation. The only time this wasn't true was in the mid-90s, when IBM changed the technology from bipolar TTL to CMOS microprocessors. That change wasn't because they didn't care about performance, but because customers no longer wanted machines that cost $40M and took up an entire room and used enough energy to power a small town. CMOS technology finally caught up to the performance of the old bipolar machines around 2000.
What computer do you consider 'more modern' than an IBM EC12? What makes you think the technology in mainframes is 'dying'?
Instead of relying on Wikipedia, why don't you try reading the actual patents (which you obviously have not done)?
The wikipedia entry says nothing about either Mr Nakamura's or Boston University's work in relation to these two patents (Mr Nakamura US 5290393, Boston University US 5686738). The patents are about how to grow the semiconductors, not simply what material they are made of. And those two methods of growing are, wait for it, different. Mr Nakamura grows the layers 'at at temperature of 900 to 1150.' Boston U grows it 'at a temperature of 600 in a nitrogen plasma'. This allows for a purer lattice without nitrogen vacancies.
Well I am sure that all those companies will be very happy that you were able to find such obvious stuff to invalidate the patent when they couldn't. Or maybe you are just talking out your ass. Yeah, I'll go with that one.
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken
