Posts by Richard

Freelancers might be taxed as employees after High Court ruling

But we DO have something like this in the US

When I was an independent contractor, I paid my social security tax,

and then I paid it again as a "self employer", not to mention the other

taxes. Now maybe if I had set up a corportation I could have paid some

lesser income taxes, but there are many other taxes and paperwork that

did not make sense to someone earning what I was earning at the time.

(Good rate per hour, but not a whole bunch of hours during the month.)

Oh, I also got stiffed three times. Twice by companies where the lawyer

fees would far exceed what I could recover, plus once by a company that

went belly up, and since I was not an employee, my "invoice" went to the

bottom of the stack and I ended up with nothing.

eBay changes anger smaller sellers

Google will not make an EBay alternative.

Why?

Because EBay is one of their biggest advertisers. You notice that

Google does not push their payment system all that hard because

EBay felt threatened and also forbid its usage in the auctions.

Since I don't sell, I don't mind using paypal most of the time, though

you have to ask the seller questions as sometimes Paypal gets stupid.

"Well, the seller did not say the card WASN'T ripped".

True story that cost me $40. Soon as I use up the paypal bonus returns

I'm going to Visa and see what happens there.

Might get me to not use Paypal at all or even EBay, which means I will

save lots of money and Ebay will lose lots. Not that I necessarily win

tons, but my bidding certainly has made the overall price go up quite a

bit in some cases.

Boffins invent 42GB DVD

Yes, you need new hardware but...

You can make a DVD player for a bit more than what it costs now, but

less than what it cost for the blue-ray player and have close to parity

capacity wise. A good chunk of the price for the blanks use by blue-ray

is for paying of licensing, not materials.

So what you do is make a competing standard (shudder) but make it

open source or close to it. Think of if it as a chance for Toshiba to get

revenge. You make DVD's with one side using traditional and the other

using the newer higher density version. People with old DVD's get to

play normally, people with the advanced get HD. Blue-ray is still priced

high enough that if someone came out with a player at around $150

that did the upscaling for the regular DVD plus the HD, I think it would

sell reasonably well. The two sided DVD would likely have to charge

a small premium at first given you are recording on both sides, but

since they can sell DVD's for $1 and still make money, I imagine it

would not be THAT much more expensive.

But the most important thing is, no LAME DRM. :-)

NBC unveils self-destructing, ad-addled anti-iTunes service

Not that bad when you think about it.

I've watched a number of shows online.

Noteably "Day Break" which while it went off the air, did manage to have the remaining shows up online.

(Thanks ABC). I was unhappy it was canceled, but at least I was able to go online and see the full show.

I'll get the DVD when it comes out since I want to see it full screen.

The thing is, they have non-skippable ads, but they are short in duration and not as annoying. A free download which self

destructs or simply streams is not a bad thing. It's only if

you have to pay that it becomes a real issue, assuming that

you can go back and see stuff you've seen without having to

endure the ad twice.

They have a good model of that on ABC. You have to stream

the ad one time, but then the bar along the bottom extends

backwards and you can view it w/o the ad. So, you can

either jump ahead to the ads, then turn off the sound or look

away, or you can wade through them. They were short

enough it was not a problem at all. I think all of the breaks

were less than a minute long, much better than the 5+ on the

TV.

Israel deploys robo-snipers on Gaza border

Borders and other thoughts.

How many nations in the past have surrendered territory to the losers once

the conflict is over? If you look at history, you will see in the past this was

a fairly rare event. After all, the purpose of war WAS to gain something,

or to protect something. It comes down to power and who has power over

who.

After Isreal was created ,what happened?

Well, a few things.

1) Jews were expelled from most of the arab nations and their property seized

on the basis that they now had a place to go, so they were no longer

"welcome" there.

2) After exporting their jews, they then decided to push them into the sea.

3) Since the Arabs really don't trust each other, and did not fight as a single

force, the Isrealies were able to exploit weaknesses in the arab attack to

destroy them, push them back, and create more defensable borders.

Isreal has given back more territory than their entire nation now consists of.

The Arab nations tend to remind me of the way school boys often act.

When you are at the top, they praise you, when you are at the bottom,

they spit on you. Whatever the crowd is doing, they do. Or, as I once read,

"They are either at your feet or at your throat."

The United States has given more money ot the Palestinians than all of the

Arab nations combined. The Arab nations could easily absorb their "brothers",

but then they would have to deal with situations like the 1970 attempt to

over throw Jordan. Isreal is used as scape goat as to why the common

people of the Arab nations have so little, despite the Trillions of dollars that

have flowed over the years for the oil extracted from their deserts.

It really doesn't matter whether or not you support Isreal, they will still hate you.

Under Islamic Law.

1) Convert from Islam, they kill you.

2) Attempt to convert someone from Islam, they kill you.

3) Marry an Islamic woman when you are not, they kill you.

4) Say something bad about Mohammed or his wives, they kill you.

5) Kill someone defending Islam, but it was a "mistake", pay a fine of $40,000.

Not a follower of Islam, but live among them?

You can stay, provided you live as a 3rd class citizen and pay additional

taxes.

I do believe the way Isreal was formed was a mistake. Have you ever seen

the maps for the original territory? Looks like swiss cheese.

They should have made Jerusalem an international "world" city that was

neutral with everyone have the right to visit their holy places in peace.

Of course you still have to deal with the fact that some holy places have

been built on top of different religions holy places, but still it would be one

less rallyng point. This was in fact the orginal plan, but the Arabs fought

it. It just shows the UN as being toothless to begin with.