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It shows the difficult part of ideas isn't dreaming them up, it's actually realizing them.

Skapare writes "This weekend, millions of people in the USA will be preparing (or having someone else prepare) their income tax returns at the last minute. Or they will be filing form 4868 so they can procrastinate for another six months. When I did mine, I was reading about the e-file program. It seems nothing has changed at the IRS except maybe the list of e-file partners. They still want people to e-file, but they still only accept e-filing through some business that does the e-filing for you. My state has the same requirements for e-filing.

So I printed my tax returns on paper and mailed them like I have for years. It cost me a couple stamps and I am reasonably confident that my tax return information is being kept confidential by this means. My communications is directly between me and the government, sealed in an envelope. My tiny refund will eventually come back in a sealed envelope as a paper check I can deposit in my bank.

So to the big question. OK, a few questions. What will it take for the IRS to be able to accept communications directly from citizens, in electronic form, without the possibility of some business spying on it? Why can't I just send a copy of my tax return electronically directly?

I can understand there are certain issues the IRS faces with people doing direct e-filing. One is the onslaught of internet connections in the first half of April every year. So they have these companies process the e-filing for them and aggregate them in bulk to ease the crunch. So why can't we encrypt the tax returns using an IRS public key so that only the IRS can decrypt them and these e-filing businesses can't snoop? Or is it the case that certain policitians are actually trying to let business get information about us. If the IRS were to ever start accepting tax filings directly electronically, I'd bet a lot of these e-filing business would complain to our elected politicians that their business model is being destroyed."
http://www.irs.gov/efile/lists/0,,id=101223,00.html

Skapare writes "I've been wondering what all the secrecy is about at their new data centers. It seems Google has finally found a way to put the e-flux capacitor to work. Their new feature Gmail Custom Time now allows users to specify when in the past their email will be delivered (restricted to no further back than April 1, 2004). Now we can send yesterday's prank message, tomorrow, and have it arrive today."
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/index.html

Skapare writes "Government Computer News is reporting that we could see networks operating IPv6-only by 2011. IETF draft author John Curran proposes that migration to IPv6 happen in three stages. Any bets which will be first on board: music sharing, porn, or spammers?"
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/44777-1.html

Skapare writes "Sigbritt Löthberg, 75, of Karlstad, Sweden, has the world's fastest home internet connection at 40 Gbps (that's a G, not an M), according to The Local. At this speed, she could download an HD DVD in 2 seconds, or watch 1500 HD TV shows at the same time. "The most difficult part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt's PC". I just hope it doesn't get infected by a botnet virus."
http://www.thelocal.se/7869/20070712/

According to a ReclaimTheMedia article The Local Community Radio Act of 2007 [PDF] would remove the artificial restrictions imposed on LPFM by a 2000 law passed at the urging of corporate radio giants and NPR, claiming that small community stations would interfere with the signals of larger stations. If passed, this bill will pave the way for educational groups, nonprofits, unions, schools and local governments to launch new local radio stations across the country. More coverage is at Prometheous Radio Project, Free Press, and Expand Low-Power FM. More info via Google.
http://reclaimthemedia.org/radio/low_power_radio_gets_new_push_=5309