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Comment: Tax Administration (Score 1) 548

by BaatZ (#28827603) Attached to: What is your least favorite industry to deal with?
The Dutch will probably vote for the Dutch taxes administration. They mess up big stuff (data loss), random stuff (you don't exist / you have no house / we don't like you), driving-you-insane-stuff (give us back all we ever paid you because of erased checkboxes) and they're not friendly about anything. Their slogan was literally "we can't make it more fun, but we can make it easier" for more than 2 decades, but since the accidents they just shut up and have no slogan at all anymore, offering a mea culpa every year or so and still not solving it. When you're not affected, it's a good laugh with all the clumsiness :)
It's funny. Laugh.

Spammers Say the Darndest Things 115

Posted by timothy
from the missing-the-target-audience dept.
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Bill Sweetman has a tongue-in-cheek post about how a few years ago he started collecting some of the more outlandish and amusing email subject lines from the many thousands of spam emails he received promoting various 'solutions' related to his private parts. Sweetman, a Canadian internet marketeer now working for Tucows gets a guilty pleasure from the copywriting 'skills' of the spammers. 'Sometimes the writing is clever. Sometimes it is accidentally funny. And sometimes it's just plain bizarre.' Sweetman writes that it takes a certain twisted creative genius to make your spam message stand out from the rest. and gives us ten of his favorite spam subject lines as well as his would-be replies to the messages. Favorites spam subject lines include 'Small friend is for hiding, big friend is for showing off' and Sweetman's reply: 'Even if the product they are pitching works as promised, I still don't think I would be walking around the neighborhood showing off the results.'"
Space

This Is the Way the World Ends 394

Posted by kdawson
from the several-bangs-several-whimpers dept.
Dave Knott writes "The CBC's weekly science radio show Quirks and Quarks this week features a countdown of the top ten planetary doomsday scenarios. Nine science professors and one science fiction author are asked to give (mostly) realistic hypotheses of the ways in which the planet Earth and its inhabitants can be destroyed. These possibilities for mankind's extinction include super-volcanoes, massive gamma ray bursts, and everybody's favorite, the killer asteroid. Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue."
Biotech

DNA vaccine may treat multiple sclerosis->

Submitted by
GSASoftware
GSASoftware writes "Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a serious, as-yet incurable neurological disease which causes blindness, paralysis and other serious symptoms. In a new development, a neuroimmunology researcher in Montreal has developed a therapeutic DNA vaccine. The cause of the disease is not fully understood, but it appears to be auto-immune. If a DNA vaccine can be an effective therapy for this auto-immune disease, is it possible that DNA vaccines could treat other auto-immune diseases like Crohn's, eczema, and others?"
Link to Original Source
Media

Online file conversion with Youtube integration

Submitted by
Pascal Beyeler
Pascal Beyeler writes "Have you ever had the need to convert a file but you hadn't the necessary programs? Now you don't need the applications anymore. You can convert the files online for free at mediaconverter.org. Just upload the file and choose the file type to convert to. There's also a Youtube integration. You've just to enter the link and choose the file type. As soon as the file conversion has finished you'll receive a notification email. Converting files made easy."
The Almighty Buck

America in debt

Submitted by
HomelessInLaJolla
HomelessInLaJolla writes "
Create debt. Maintain debt. Keep people in debt. Work them until they die of debt.

Courtesy of the "This day in history" service part of the NYTimes daily e-mail delivery.

In 1941, President Roosevelt chose to saddle the American population with an increased debt that, as a nation, they had not truly acquiesced to. The 14th Amendment (specifically section 4), conveniently for those brokering power and money to the rest of us, stops citizens, or even states, from contesting the validity of that debt.

Some politicians (in particular, then Senator Wheeler of Montana) attempted to point out the ulterior motivation behind the Lend-Lease bill:

"The American taxpayer must make up his mind now that we have given the President power to carry on undeclared wars all over the world. He is probably going to have his taxes doubled and the national debt will be $100,000,000,000 instead of $65,000,000,000 if the war lasts for any length of time.

"This is what the Morgans and the other international bankers asked for and I hope they like it.

"As far as I am concerned I will make no effort to tie the hands of the President regarding the appropriations. It is up to the conservative majority in the Senate to the money. They supported the bill."
And it continues today. Inescapable debt is slavery.
"

Push where it gives and scratch where it itches.