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Submission + - 91% of Those Whose Bank Accounts Were Seized By IRS Had Acquired theCash Legally (typepad.com) 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration yesterday released Criminal Investigation Enforced Structuring Laws Primarily Against Legal Source Funds and Compromised the Rights of Some Indiviuals and Businesses:

The Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act of 1970, referred to as the Bank Secrecy Act, requires U.S. financial institutions to file reports of currency transactions exceeding $10,000. ... In October 2014, a new policy was instituted by IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) that it would no longer pursue the seizure and forfeiture of funds related to legal source structuring. In the same month the policy changed, the New York Times reported that CI had been seizing funds in structuring investigations without filing a criminal complaint. Property owners were left to prove their innocence, and many gave up trying. This audit was initiated to evaluate the IRS’s use of seizures against property owners suspected of structuring transactions to avoid Bank Secrecy Act reporting requirements.

Most of the seizures for structuring violations involved legal source funds from businesses. While current law does not require that the funds have an illegal source (e.g., money laundering or criminal activity other than alleged.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT

Submission + - Yahoo Discussing Sale of Internet Business (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Yahoo!'s board of directors is considering the sale of their internet business in a series of meetings starting today. "Growing concerns around Chief Executive Marissa Mayer’s lack of progress turning around Yahoo and an exodus of top executives have increased pressure on the company’s board to consider her future and alternatives to her turnaround attempt, now in its fourth year. ... Much of the value of Yahoo’s $31 billion market capitalization is tied up in two large Asian assets, Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. Its 15% stake in Alibaba is now worth about $32 billion, and its 35% stake in Yahoo Japan is now worth about $8.5 billion. Yahoo’s cash and short-term investments totaled $5.9 billion at the end of the third quarter. That would mean investors are valuing Yahoo’s core business at less than zero if the Asian assets were spun out tax-free."

Submission + - The case against gmail

Submitted by stry_cat
stry_cat writes: Ed Bot makes the case against Gmail

Gmail was a breath of fresh air when it debuted. But this onetime alternative is showing signs that it's past its prime, especially if you want to use the service with a third-party client. That's the way Google wants it, which is why I've given up on Gmail after almost a decade.

Personally, I've always thought it odd that no other email provider ever adopted Gmails "search not sort" mentality. I've been a Gmail user since you needed an invitation to get an account. However Gmail has been steadily moving towards a more traditional email experience. Plus there's the iGoogle disaster that got me looking into alternatives to everything Google. Will this be the wake up call Google needs to get its act together and stop being evil?

Submission + - Ex-Marine detained under Operationn Vigilant Eagle for his political views sues (wtvr.com)

Submitted by stry_cat
stry_cat writes: You may remember the story of Brandon Raub, who was detained withtout due process over some facebook posts he made. Now with the help of the Rutherford Institute, he is suing his captors.

According to his complaint [PDF], his detention was part of a federal government program code-named “Operation Vigilant Eagle,” which monitors military veterans with certain political views.

Comment protopage is another alternative. (Score 1) 329

by stry_cat (#40570883) Attached to: Google Killing Off Mini, Video, and iGoogle
I've seen people mention netvibes as a replacement. However I've discovered protopage.com. I think it is better than netvibes b/c you can click and drag to resize each widget (even across columns). It took me about two hours to move over all my feeds and figure out how to get things like google calendar and gmail to appear correctly. I also added a number of feeds since it was so easy. I'm extremely disapointed that iGoogle is going away. However I've found something better so it has worked out in the end.

Submission + - where are the open source jobs? 2

Submitted by stry_cat
stry_cat writes: My company has bought into the FUD and is going 100% Microsoft. Rather than work in this environment and be continuously at odds with upper management, I have decided to seek employment elsewhere.

Where do I look for an open source job? I've started with the local paper's Sunday classifieds. I've looked on dice.com and monster.com. However almost all are Microsoft related. The few that aren't are some sort of dinky contract or temp job. So is there a place to find a job in an open source environment?

Comment You're asking this on slashdot? (Score 1) 266

by stry_cat (#29756699) Attached to: Should I Publish Or Patent?

You asking if you should get a patent on a site that is notoriously anti-patent? I'd say you're looking for a certain answer.

At the risk of being modded down, I'm not going to give you that answer. Get the patent. It is good legal protection. It will help if someone else tries to steal your idea and sues you for infringing on the patent they just got. It will help if you later decide to actually get paid for your idea and need to keep others from stealing it.

The patent basically says you thought of this first. It doesn't not say you can't publish your idea, in fact with a patent you must publish your idea.

So bottom line get the patent and then work on making your idea a success.

Comment The real problem is not google (Score 1) 517

by stry_cat (#29455319) Attached to: Lawyer Demands Jury Stops Googling

The real problem is that we no longer have a jury of our peers. Back in the day, your peer was someone who knew you well and shared a common status. Now it's 12 random people who have nothing more in common than someone who lives somewhere in the same county as you. No wonder jurors are trying to find out more info, they don't start with the necessary information about the defendant.
The Internet

Submission + - Confessions of a Twitter Reject (richmond.com)

Submitted by stry_cat
stry_cat writes: http://www2.richmond.com/content/2009/sep/03/confessions-twitter-reject/

Karri Peifer who says "I'm pretty sure I held the record for getting broken up with the most times in one year. It was the year I was 26 and I got dumped, on average, once every five weeks." continues her steak of being dumped. This time by Twitter.

"By 5 p.m. I had over 50 followers (and I followed them all right back). I'd tweeted 21 times. And when I logged off the day, I was smiling and contented by my new Twitter relationship. I couldn't wait for day two.

But a second chance with Twitter, it seemed, was not in the cards for me. At 9:58 p.m., less than seven hours after my first Twitter encounter, I was shut out. Suspended, in Twitterverse language. My account was taken offline, my followers removed, and a harsh warning label alerting me to the suspension was stamped over the account that only I could see."

As is often the case with faceless corportations, "Twitter responded with a canned, auto-reply, telling me it was all my fault; that, yes, I did something wrong. They even provided a list of things I likely did wrong. It was up to me to review the list and choose for myself. Then Twitter closed out my request and told me to be on my way. But I persisted. I didn't think I did anything wrong and, if I did, I was sorry. Could I have another chance? Twitter is thinking about it."

So she turned to her friends. They wanted to know if she cussed or used hostile language. Of course she didn't. The final consensus was " is that I talked too much. Or, rather, I talked back too much. For anyone who knows me, it's as likely as my cussing. Maybe even more so. But still, it was an innocent mistake.

When people tweeted me, I tweeted back. I thought I was supposed to. I thought it would be rude to ignore a tweet, especially when it was written expressly to me. But apparently that's wrong. I'm not supposed to @reply (write back) to people. At least not 20 times in two hours. That's what IM is for or DM (direct message). Or is DM like email? But then I thought Twitter was supposed to be a conversation, unlike Facebook, where you just post status updates. So if 20 @replies are too many, how many is just right? I still don't know and now I might never know. Twitter didn't even give me a chance. It just took one look at me, endured two hours of my nervous chatter, and kicked me to the curb."

So can anyone figure out why Karri was banned? Also she's in the market for a new social networking site, anyone have recommendations for her?

Comment Re:Check out twinhan DVB-S cards for an alternativ (Score 2, Interesting) 345

by stry_cat (#29230241) Attached to: An End To Unencrypted Digital Cable TV and the HTPC

It's not that the government is unwilling to regulate it. It's that government grants them the monopoly. Your local government prohibits other companies from competing with the "authorized" cable franchisee. Get rid of this and allow companies to compete and at least you'll have an option to switch when one of them does something stupid.

Comment Power corrupts (Score 2, Insightful) 564

by stry_cat (#29051951) Attached to: Wikipedia Approaches Its Limits

Actually what it really means is that a few editors have amassed all the power (much like a few people amass all the power in the government). This problem has been around for a while. I personally stopped contributing after they kept deleting the the article on the stolen sidekick. Its been reduced down to just a few lines in some other article.

There is of course Deletionpedia, but it looks like their bots aren't always on top of the situation. Several of the articles I've tried to find there weren't saved in time.

It's a shame, since Wikipedia could be so much more that the narrow vision of the deletionists.
The Internet

Journal Journal: Woohoo!

Journal by stry_cat

Woohoo!

After years of trying to get one of my submitted stories on the front page I finally did!

I came close once getting on the front page of one of the sections, but this was on the real front page!

I'm so happy.

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