-We can think of all sorts of analogies for intrusive ads (which are perfectly valid) but the truth is is that most people don't block ads on most sites unless someone can cite some statistics suggesting otherwise so I suggest a technologically feasible approach to serve unobtrusive ads to adblockers.

-As such, if website publishers want to get paid more for their content and think they are being shortchanged by ad-blockers, they could insist that the networks they work with provide them with a less interactive/obtrusive (i.e., non-flash, etc.) ad which will display when the user is using adblock (presumably in conjunction with the functionality already embedded in adblock to allow for those unobtrusive ads; presumably in the form of a cookie that an ad server could read then determine what th serve the user?)

(1) Our tax structure isn't going to change meaningfully anytime soon
(2) The IRS won't allow or enforce any sort of efile for everyone in the short-term
(3) The IRS does allow you to file Form 14039 which puts a flag on your account which will make it harder for someone to cheat you out of your refund because your account will go through extra checks (such as making sure that your address and other information hasn't changed from last year since most information breaches don't contain all of the information necessary to file your tax return) and will reject fraudulent looking returns
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf...
(4) The IRS might decide to, upon filing form 14039 or if you have experienced a fraudulent return filed for you, a distinct PIN which is like a PIN for a credit freeze


Morale of the story if you're concerned about not getting your refund
-file form 8822 when you change address and notify your employees and other agencies which file forms on your behalf to have your current address so all filings point to the same physical address
-file form 14039 to have the identify theft flag added to your profile
-always try to arrange so you owe a little money come tax time (but not so much that you owe a penalty) so your refund is not in purgatory in the event of a fraudulent return filed on your behalf
-if you do indeed get a refund, try to file as early as possible to beat out a fraudster

...turn of events is that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler must have moved recently and big telecom didn't know where to send their "support" checks in time.

I emailed the author of the Ars article, this is what he said though I can't opine as to whether or not it is truly applicable (though I'm certain Aereo's attorney's would know for sure though it seems too low to me intuitively...):

The fee is (more or less) 1% of gross revenue if you're a cable system.

See section 111 here:

http://www.copyright.gov/title...


(F) If the actual gross receipts paid by subscribers to a cable system for the period covered by the statement for the basic service of providing secondary transmissions of primary broadcast transmitters are more than $263,800 but less than $527,600, the royalty fee payable under this paragraph to copyright owners pursuant to paragraph (3) shall be—

(i) 0.5 percent of any gross receipts up to $263,800, regardless of the number of distant signal equivalents, if any; and

(ii) 1 percent of any gross receipts in excess of $263,800, but less than $527,600, regardless of the number of distant signal equivalents, if any.

According to Ars:

the royalties are set by the government, not the broadcasters

--> Is the above true, does someone know this for certain?

--> If so, what would the marginal cost be per user?

One other thing to consider is that Aereo has pretty good software developed right now and if they don't need farms of antenna's with local presence anymore, they could theoretically be located anywhere if they are, effectively, a retransmission service and would no longer need to build out local infrastructure (i.e., which I suspect was one of their larger costs) and could just use cloud type services (e.g., amazon/rackspace) to host their DVR/transcoding/etc. services

I, embarrassingly and sadly, live in Excel through my job as a CPA and as a frequent reader and occasional contributor here, unsurprisingly have a little bit of a programming/IT background.

I fully appreciate that the ribbon interface is better for novice users and has a flatter learning curve compared to the 2003 conventional interface but what really got me about the new versions is the slowness (only minimized slightly by being on a well configured new core i7, etc.). The new versions are so poorly engineered that they:
(1) frequently miss keystrokes/combinations that I enter
(2) calculate generally more slowly and/or less intelligently
(3) execute vba substantially more slowly

As such, my preferred setup is that I have Office 2003 and 2010 installed on the same machine (2010 via sandboxie which is tricky but doable to get right except that I use Outlook 2010 directly as opposed to sandboxed instead of Outlook 2003 since the newer Outlook is a real improvement and the ribbon doesn't bother me in that context of lighter usage)

I use Excel 2003 for almost everything and, only when I need to, I open up files in 2010 if they won't open in 2003.

Office 2007 is crap
Office 2013 is crap
Office 2010 is the least bad version of the new Office's

...as someone who has scoured and mined the NYC health department data (not to mention the review / grade pending period making the data even more worthless; i.e., most restaurants receive a hidden "C" at which point they display a "Grade Pending" sign then have a month to get their "A" at their reinspection and then most likely go back to their "C" ways --> to all those statisticians out there, which rating is the real one? the first one when they weren't expecting it or the one where they had a few weeks notice?

My hope and wish is that the letter grades determined by the score would be meaningfully correlated to the risk of food poisoning in the restaurant however there is little relationship between those things and that restaurants wouldn't have a chance to get a reinspection which clearly defeats the purpose of the test in the eyes of anyone with even the most minimal statistical/scientific education.

Instead of using google glass, the health department should reevaluate their methods of inspection and reinspection grading policy where part of their inspection relates to testing actual prepared food instead of seeing if a mouse or roach might have been on the floor (oftentimes they can just scurry in from the sidewalk and have zero impact on the food)

Based on what I get on my TV when I press the Mute button, they really shouldn't be...

Most of the time when you view closed captions, it is typed up, not automatically transcribed by a computer program - link

Further, for live events, it is typically typed live by a stenographer which yields the inherent delay

As for errors, I personally have mostly seen errors when I'm watching over the air and the reception isn't very clear (though I don't often use closed captioning so my sample size is limited)

I would too :)

I pay about $0.27/kWh in NYC for what's that's worth...

I only wish I had that problem

My employer's IT department has misconfigured the VOIP voice system so poorly, I much prefer to use my cell phone for phone calls as the sound quality is vastly superior...Now I just can't wait until my plan upgrades to unlimited minutes

Case in point

AOL Search Data Leak

I do the same thing (re: custom email addresses) though since I use gmail to manage the domain, I also use subdomains as well to sort them (i.e., in order of importance of general class of address)

note that the free gmail version using a "+" both exposes your address and doesn't work with a lot of sites whereas subdomains work just fine (if you host a domain w/gmail)

Can't you apply non-yet received refunds against your liability though?

While I'm a CPA but not a tax accountant, I'd suggest asking a tax accountant about the option of "underwithholding" to the tune of $1500 for this next year and apply this unpaid refund against your balance a method to avoid this issue, at least in part, is to structure your tax payments and withholding to never yield a refund from the IRS in the first place which is not a perfect science but can be pretty close in most cases if you're organized...