Front Page::Proposed tax change worries businesses

I am getting so sick and tired of all these assholes taxing everything. If it wasn't bad enough that we are being quadruple-taxed (or whatever, based on location) they go and start redefining words like Property and Theft.. Assholes. Maybe Dino was right - maybe politicians should take a vow of poverty.

Evil Avatar - PC Gamer UK Reveal New Introversion Title

I loved Uplink, and used to play Global ThermoNuclear War... wonder if this will be any good.

CNN.com - Hubble finds new moons, rings around Uranus - Dec 22, 2005

more! more! give me more! heh

Slashdot | New Studies Doubt Mars Water Theory

So when even the opposition to a theory can't agree on what caused something... what stance do you personally take?

Slashdot | Ingredients of Life Found Around Sun-Like Star

This is very interesting... most interesting to me is: hydrogen cyanide combined with water form 1/4 of DNA bases? very odd.

Slashdot | Senate Proposes Patriot Act Extension

How can these people not realize that their own rights are at stake too? Do they think they are immune from secret wiretaps and holding without being charged? Maybe until they vote the wrong way. Maybe that is already the cause.

Slashdot | France to Legalize File Sharing

Interesting... so, the Parliment isn't the government?

Slashdot | Dust Samples Returning to Earth at 28,860 mph

Couldn't these particles be modified by the extreme heat of entering the atmosphere at that speed?

Slashdot | Digital Content Security Act

House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, and Democratic Rep. John Conyers are obviously in the pockets of the MPAA. Wish there was a way to force bribed politicians out of office.

Senators propose taxing Internet shopping | Tech News on ZDNet

How greedy can politicians get....

1) I do not have to pay California taxes right now because I am not under California jurisdiction. California has no legal right to impose ANY law on me.
2) IF I had a store in California, then that store (and thus the business) would be under California jurisdiction. Then, I would be obliged to collect taxes.
3) Just because someone in California decides to place a phone call to me in Oregon (which is what DSL does) does not put me into California jurisdiction.
4) IF I was obliged to follow the tax laws for every state that I am not currently under jurisdiction of, then what is to stop individual communities from imposing their own? For example, if you sell libertarian books to the town of Nowheresville,TX (population 50) you are required to pay 90% sales tax on that item with a $2 million dollar fine for failure to do so -- what? you didn't know Nowheresville,TX had that law? well, that's your fault.
5) What piece of software are they going to force upon all business owners that: a) works on whatever computer/OS the business is running; b) has a solution for small businesses without computers; c) never crashes or fails; d) isn't proprietary; e) can't be hacked; f) is always up-to-date; g) integrates with all POS software currently in use; h) etc etc -- it's friggin stupid
6) Worried about loosing jobs overseas? This kind of law would encourage businesses to transfer their entire business. Since it is all online, it doesn't matter what country they are in.

Self-Aware Robots

When I saw the title of the article, I was awash with inspiration. Yay! Finally!

Reading the article, I had to wonder if all it was doing was determining how much delay the robot saw before the other responded. That would be analytical, but not self-awareness. Maybe a way to test that would be to put something in between itself and the mirror to distort it -- maybe something like time-delayed projection instead of a mirror....

The Digital Universe

PBS of the Web huh?
Could be useful.

But, making the assumption that a PhD knows more than non PhDs it not very accurate. While I agree they have went to more school, it is commonly the students showing the teachers they are wrong -- not other teachers.

Run Linux as a Windows Screensaver

interesting..... i think....

friggin ASP crap

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

friggin ASP crap

Current mood: irritated

I am so friggin tired of windows-based servers, ASP and ColdFusion... why is it every time a website takes forever to load then crashes, it is ASP/ColdFusion. Screw this. I will keep the MySpace account to post to friend's blogs, but I am going back to Blogger. Hopefully, Google will get their act together and create an alternative to MySpace.

Richard Stallman: Hypocrite

Tuesday, December 20, 2005 Richard Stallman: Hypocrite Current mood: irritated So I saw this article on Slashdot and thought I would share a few thoughts... Freedom 2 is the freedom to copy and distribute the software as you wish. And freedom 3 is the freedom to create and distribute modified versions as you wish. Interesting... since GPL specifically prevents me from making a modification and distributing under say, BSD license... doesn't sound like I can modify and distribute as I wish. Perhaps that means GPL doesn't comply with those Freedoms -- thus making GPL non-free software. Non-free software, by contrast, keeps users divided and helpless. It is distributed in a social scheme designed to divide and subjugate. Well, that makes sense. If it wasn't bad enough having OpenSource vs. Non-OpenSource, GPL has divided it between pro-GPL and anti-GPL OpenSource. Not only that, as can easily be seen in many Linux/GPL forums, there is a huge social clique of pro-GPL that look down on those that would rather make their software truly free (and actually follow those Freedoms they CLAIM to follow). The developers of non-free software have power over their users, and they use this power to the detriment of users in various ways. It is common for non-free software to contain malicious features, features that exist not because the users want them, but because the developers want to force them on the users. That is extremely funny, considering that the anti-GPL OpenSource followers don't like GPL because of its 'viral-effect'. If you want to reference any GPL software, you are forced to make your software GPL -- even if the developer didn't want to. JP: What was your history with the free software movement? RMS: I launched the movement in 1983 with a deliberate decision to develop a complete world of free software. The idea is not just to produce a scattering of free programs that were nice to use. Rather, the idea is to systematically build free software so that one can escape completely from non-free software. Non-free software is basically antisocial, it subjugates it users, and it should not exist. So what I wanted was to create a community in which it does not exist. A community where we would escape from non-free software into freedom. You created it? Weird... I was using Public Domain before that -- which I usually got from wintelnet, which was a very large 'community' of sorts... more importantly, some of the operating systems that existed then (BSD?) are STILL more free than Linux is now. In 1983 all operating systems were proprietary. Interesting, since BSD came out in 1977 [source] and OpenVMS in 1978 [source] A problem arises when people who might be sympathetic to our ethical position, but focus on other issues, fall into the habit of helping to pressure others into using non-free software. It becomes an ethical issue when there is a restriction. And yet, that is now the anti-GPL camp feels about the pro-GPL camp. They try to take choice away from us and force us to use a licensing scheme that limits people's freedoms. There are some special circumstances. To develop GNU, I used Unix. But first, I thought about whether it would be ethical to do that. And yet, earlier he said: GNU stands for "GNU is Not Unix", and the most important thing about GNU is that it is not Unix. Unix is a non-free operating system, and you are not allowed to make a free version of Unix. We developed a free system that is like Unix, but not Unix. We wrote all the parts of it from scratch. interesting. seems like those two statements conflict. I'm a Liberal, in US terms (not Canadian terms). I'm against fascism. And yet your whole movement is designed to take choice away from me and force me to always follow your little set of GPL rules. Sounds fascist.

Politics d'jour

Friday, December 16, 2005

Politics d'jour Current mood: disappointed Where to start? The Patriot Act failed reauthorization. While I am sure people will make it out to be a "us vs. them" thing, it should be noted (per the article) that some republicans voted against it and some democrats voted to extend it. The comment about blaming democrats if it fails to go through is complete rubbish though... for those who don't remember why: Benjamin Franklin:They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security The fact is that anyone who believes in liberty and privacy is against the Patriot Act -- it is not party-line specific. Another piece of politics today is that Hillary Clinton is trying to make the ESRB have as much authority as the RIAA or MPAA (which shouldn't have any power anyways). Basically, she introduced a bill that would allow a private company to dictate the behavior of an entire market (thus the RIAA/MPAA comment). Not only is this completely stupid, this is the exact kind of thing that hackers across the world are likely to start breaking even if they didn't before -- just because of the politics involved. Hey Hillary, I have a company -- why not put it in charge of what foods you can eat? No more veggies for you kids, now you HAVE to eat twinkies and drink coke, or we'll sue you. Last but not least, it looks like some NSA officials are blowing the whistle on the illegal survellience done here in the US (because of the Patriot Act)... A lot of good it will do, since everyone knew they were doing it anyways, but what the hell -- worth mentioning.

Diebold CEO Resigns Under Cloud

Tuesday, December 13, 2005


Diebold CEO Resigns Under Cloud
Current mood: ecstatic
Category: News and Politics

woot!

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/13/2053219&tid=158&tid=187&tid=219

Holiday plans

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Holiday plans Current mood: working I have to work on 12/23, so we will either be leaving after work (7ish?) that night or early the next morning to head to Ashland. We both have 12/26 off, so will probably head back to Portland then. Then 12/30 after work (6ish) we will be heading to the cabin. We both have to work Tuesday, so will be coming back sometime on 1/2.

MySpace annoyance

Monday, December 12, 2005


Are we there yet?
Current mood: frustrated

OMFG! So, I noticed that I couldn't post to any of my friends' blogs, so I finally gave in and decided to setup a myspace account. For the last 3 hours, I have been trying to get this thing setup, and it just keeps crashing. I thought it was just me, but Brett said it is crashing on him too...

But what company in their right mind uses M$ ASP pages for ANYTHING that expects a large number of users. I really hope google gets on the ball and makes a competing product so that we can at least expect it to work most of the time.

Until then, I guess I will go ahead and do this... haven't updated Friendster in quite awhile (too slow). My blogger page is fine, but my server won't stay up (since the hardware is too new to install any damn OS), so... I guess I will scatter my thoughts into myspace as well.... we'll see how long that last.

Hocken and Canyon

A while back, Dino got a ticket for getting into the shared-left turn lane 1 car length early to turn left. She did so because Canyon-West was backed up to that point. At no point did she cross a double-yellow line or a white line.

A cop pulled her over and gave her a $330 ticket for 'passing in a no passing zone'. We talked to 5 different cops (Beaverton Police and Washington County Sheriff) and they all said that wasn't valid. They said that they would not have ticketed for 1 car length, but even if they would it would have to be 'misuse of a special left turn lane'.

Now, here's the kicker. The cop said the reason was that the shared left turn lane was there for oncoming traffic to go into the driveways. We went and checked, and took photos. She spent 14.5 feet in that lane. Oncoming traffic would have to go 500 feet to get to a legal left turn.

Will let you know.