Ease of Use

Pogue Of the 10 most pirated 2011 movies, guess how many you can rent legally? NONE! Hollywood is creating it own problem! j.mp/MG0kcZSat, Jun 16 14:45:39 from Echofon

Feelings

You can use this chart of median net worth by age to a) feel good about where you fall, b) feel bad about where you fall, or c) feel bad about the overall state of things.

Technology, Ethics, and Music

Hippies are evil. Big business is evil. And I'm stuck in the middle. Makes me glad I don't buy a lot of music... a few iTunes downloads and whatever is on the radio meets my needs.

"I've only bought 15 CDs in my lifetime. Yet, my entire iTunes library exceeds 11,000 songs."

And the response:

"I applaud your courage in admitting you do not pay for music, and that you do not want to but you are grappling with the moral implications. I just think that you have been presented with some false choices by what sounds a lot like what we hear from the 'Free Culture' adherents."

Quote of the Day

Tam in the comments on Les's post about giving up cable and almost giving up internet access, too:

"Okay, yeah, see, that's just crazy talk right there. :p

Keep your priorities straight, man: I can order bottled water from the internet, but I can't get books out of my faucet."

How To Make Money Blogging

An interesting read that says monetizing your site isn't the hard part any more. There are plenty of off-the-shelf solutions. All you need is 100 million active users. I'm no Uncle, so I'm a little short of that number.

Really Worth

I think this applies to ham radios, too.

If I die, someone please...

The Math Must Work

Verizon won't waive a $30 fee, so they lose the long term revenue stream worth much more than that. On the face of it, this makes no sense. I can only assume for every person that leaves Verizon there are more than enough people that will just pay the $30 to offset the other lose. It is tough being one of the few that want to fight against silly policies that are not logical, but may make financial sense to Gigantic Corps.

107 Days

I missed it by a little, but good news anyway... you have now worked enough days (107) to pay your taxes for the year. You can now use the rest to buy frivolous things like food and shelter.

Bookstore Lists

25 Things I Learned from Opening a Bookstore and the 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World.

I actually stopped by Barnes and Noble the other day with my daughter. We "had" to pick up another Elephant and Piggie book (Should I Share My Ice Cream?). I didn't really get to browse, but it did remind me how much I like bookstores. I don't do many impulse buys, but books are what tempt me the most. The fact that I have a dozen books at the house already in the queue kept me from picking up anymore.

If I Write a Book...

...I want NPR to review it.

Via Business Insider

That makes cents

Hallerin It costs 2.4 cents to make a penny. 11.2 cents to make a nickel. Any wonder we have a near 2T deficit. No wonder we can't make a dime!Thu, Feb 16 06:22:07 from web

Latte Factor

msuster Yowza! RT @Bill_Gross: Amount the average US worker spends on coffee each year: $1,092! According to Time Magazine 2/6/12 Page 7.Sat, Feb 11 01:08:14 from UberSocial for BlackBerry

Taxes 101

Info from an accountant (okay, he's a writer, too):

"So, income gets taxed higher. Investments get taxed lower. That’s why rich guys who now live off of their investments pay a lower overall rate. That’s why Buffet’s secretary gets taxed at a higher rate than her megalomaniacal attention whore of a boss."

Larry mentions that most of his income hits as a 1099, so he has to send in his payments without assistance from an employer. I think Uncle was that one that suggested if we all had to actually write the big check every year to the government instead of the money being taken out every paycheck, we'd be a lot more upset. W-2's are hitting mailboxes. Now is a good time to think about that number.

SOPA and Ham Radio

I knew that Reddit and Wikipedia among others were going to protest SOPA by doing a blackout, but I just read that APRS.FI will be off-line on Wednesday.

"Although the law is being made in the U.S., it will break the Internet on a global scale by making sites such as aprs.fi liable for links and content posted by the users of the site. Sites like aprs.fi are commonly run by individual developers or small volunteer teams. Due to the huge volume of automatically published user-generated content (50 packets per second currently!) it would be impossible for me to go through it all before publishing. If some APRS user would post links to copyright-infringing material, even when that material would reside somewhere else than aprs.fi itself, aprs.fi could be shut down in the U.S. and there would not be much that I could do about it."

The Comfort Principle

A good idea - spend your money where you spend your time.

The US Government Family Budget

Attributed to Dave Ramsey:

"If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand."

Why is this so hard to understand? No wonder the S&P downgraded the US long term debt.

Via SaysUncle

What does it mean to be rich?

Trent from the Simple Dollar talks about it in terms of abundance and scarcity, but I like Oleg's take better:

"Sometimes, I am rich. Not always, but I was rich yesterday. I had more of what I wanted than I actually needed — my sole constraint being the 24/7 limit of available time shared by all. I had more storage capacity in the camera and props than I could photograph in a day, more ammunition than I could shoot in the range time I have, more perfectly ripe watermelon and fancy chocolate than I could eat, more good friends than I could see all at once or in turn."

Leaky Bucket

Larry Correia (Monster Hunter) speaks the truth on the economy and left:

To say that this is because we failed to raise taxes is stupid. Think of it this way. The government is like a bucket with a leaky hole in it. Throwing extra water in the bucket doesn’t fix the problem. You need to plug the hole.

A Tax on People that are bad at Math?

I thought the lottery was supposed to be a tax on people who were bad at math - not a way to guarantee a profit for those that can count.

Via Slashdot

Silicon Valley and Knoxville

I was looking at the infograph about salaries in Silicon Valley and what appeared before my eyes... Knoxville used as a comparison. So you could make $38K in Knoxville and have the same standard of living as someone making $92 in Silicon Valley.

Via Business Insider