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3239 discussions

RE: Free Online Taxes
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 02 Apr '07

02 Apr '07

Part of the deal is that once you make over that amount, your tax filing can get quite a bit more complex. The tax software people have agreed with the gov't to provide free simplified software to lower income people to increase the number of e-filers. This should lower the number of errors, number of paper forms they receive as opposed to digital and the overall cost of the IRS budget. Should. >-----Original Message----- >From: D. Hageman > >My biggest complaint is why this service is not open to >everyone. I am sure people's taxes who make over $52,000 a >year was used to help create it. > > D. Hageman

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Re: Kclug Digest, Vol 33, Issue 2
by gary hildebrand 02 Apr '07

02 Apr '07

Paper recycling is great for newspapers, periodicals, and other stuff, but books . . . well, we should be finding a way and a place to preserve them. I was trying to find information on an Apple IIc+ and found that most libraries had pitched books on the Apple II's long ago. Or try to find information on cp/m . . . . ???? I have an extensive library on my Commodore VIC-20/C=64/C128 and Amiga computers, information not readily available to Joe Sixpack computer user. To simply give them away for recycling purposes is to throw away an excellent source of information for kids who are into learning the do's and don'ts of computers. What better way is there to learn machine language then on an 8 bit processor like the 6502, and let them develop their own video games instead of spending megabucks on Xbox360, Nintendo's and Wii's. Mayber a project such as scanning some of these gems to CD, for archival purposes would be a much better idea. I'd give anything to have my COMPLETE collection of Compute's Gazette, Run, and even a few of the old Compute! magazines at hand so I could sit and hack to my own delight. Linux has a similar "hackers' paradise", but is a much much larger subject to master with any degree of proficiency. So go out to garage sales, pick up- a commie 64 and start hacking. Gary Hildebrand St. Joseph, MO > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 16:42:19 -0700 (PDT) > From: Leo Mauler <webgiant(a)yahoo.com> > Subject: OT: Old Computer Book Recycling? > To: kclug(a)kclug.org > > > Does anyone know of a paper recycler which will handle > the plastic-like paper of computer books? I'm looking > at a trunk full of these books and I'd like to be able > to take them somewhere where the contents or the paper > will do some good.

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RE: Free Online Taxes
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 02 Apr '07

02 Apr '07

I've used Tax Act in Firefox on both Windows and Linux successfully. I believe you need javascript and cookies enabled. I've started in Windows and then finished in Linux. There were some problems in Firefox last year or the year before and so I submitted bug reports so their Firefox support could improve. I think I've used them for the last 3 years. www.taxact.com Federal e-filing is free to all, but you can upgrade to get more online help and hints to save money. To file state costs money. So I went to the MO Dept. of Revenue and they had a PDF that let you put in info and print the result for free. I then printed that and mailed it off. I did that under Windows with Acrobat so YMMV under Linux. It was not the greatest, but will perhaps improve in future years. Always print hardcopies for your own records and save 5 years worth of tax filing. Brian Kelsay _____ From: Billy Crook Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:28 PM There's some IRS program called Freefile. If you make less than $52k a year, you can choose any of these companies (http://www.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp ) and do your federal return for free online. I used HR block online the last two years, so I was going to again, and I got THIS: We've detected that you're using an operating system that is currently not supported by TaxCut Standard Software. TaxCut Standard Software has been optimized for the following operating systems. Win2000, WINXP, Win Vista, MAC OS 10.2.8, MAC OS 10.3.9 and MAC OS 10.4.8 WTF, Why do they care what OS I run? It's a damn web application. All they need to do is optimize for the only real browser platform, Mozilla, and It'll work anywhere someone has a web browser. Their inflammatory remarks have angered me, and I want to choose some other company now. Any suggestions?

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RE: Old Computer Book Recycling?
by Jared 02 Apr '07

02 Apr '07

> > Here I am with a load of books which are no longer > > useful to anyone except very tiny niche collectors, so > > by handing them off to a library I'm essentially > > saying to a bunch of dedicated librarians "destroy > > these books for me so I don't have to destroy them > > myself." I don't want that kind of guilt, so I was > > thinking of recycling instead. Don't do their thinking for them. Libraries are in contact with many more niche collectors than you. Be wise and take them to a library, where there is a possibility that some scholar who is researching the "Social Trends in Early 1990s Computer Instruction Manuals" can find them. He can't find it in the already-shredded bin of your local recycling outlet. Leave guilt behind and take up simple wisdom. Give your books to the library. They might see a diamond where you see a pile of coal. I knew a man who was director of a university library system for years. He gained a degree by walking around the English countryside studying old chimneys, insightful remnants of a previous era where everyone else saw a pile of rocks where a house had burned down. He got a degree out of it, and is to this day an amiable chap with fine stories of the English countryside. I personally am always looking for 1960s-era computer books which most other people consider to be worthless. Get them to a library. -Jared

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Re: Old Computer Book Recycling?
by cragos＠gmail.com 02 Apr '07

02 Apr '07

>> If you go down to the Mid-Continent library administrative offices on 24 >> hwy in Independence you can donate them to the library and they will >> give you a receipt to use as a charitable donation on your taxes. >Pretty much any library will accept donations. Most are simply landfilled, >but some are sold at annual book sales or on carts in the library. It costs >too much for the library to process a donated book to make it worth taking >them into the collection; purchased books come with a lot of the necessary >pre-processing already done. Hopefully they do recycle them. To answer the initial question, it is possible to recycle the paper in these books. I believe they can take such material at the city drop off points: http://www.kcmo.org/pubworks.nsf/web/recycledropoff?opendocument There's one at Metro North Mall that I use that I'm all but certain could take it. Hope this helps, Sean Crago/MrZaius

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OT: Old Computer Book Recycling?
by Leo Mauler 02 Apr '07

02 Apr '07

I've come to the realization that I should be clearing out quite a lot of older books off my shelves. While I could just haul the lot off to a thrift store and be done with it, I'm sitting here looking at the books and thinking "how are they going to sell these?" I don't want to just shift the problem onto someone else, and certainly not a charitable organization I already think has way too much work. Of course, stuffing them into a landfill isn't much better. Books like "Teach Yourself Macintosh in 24 Hours: Covers System 8!", "Adobe Photoshop 2.5 - Classroom in a Book", and "Quick Guide To CorelDraw 5!", will not fly off the shelves, not even off the shelves of thrift stores. Does anyone know of a paper recycler which will handle the plastic-like paper of computer books? I'm looking at a trunk full of these books and I'd like to be able to take them somewhere where the contents or the paper will do some good. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/

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Framing web pages
by Jonathan Hutchins 02 Apr '07

02 Apr '07

I have a client who is concerned that there are other web sites that are taking his content and placing it within frames on their web site as if it were their own. I know I've seen this happen, and I think I've seen "click here if someone has this site framed" buttons or some such. Does anyone know of a way to prevent the pages from being grabbed in a frame to begin with?

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Example
by Jonathan Hutchins 29 Mar '07

29 Mar '07

Ok, I can't guarantee that this actually works for everybody, it seems to be an assembly of broken things, but: http://movies.glozy.com/portal.htm Click on "Horror" on the right, use the internal scroll bar to scroll down to Little Shop of Horrors. Clicking on the 68k link gives me the page for "Fire Over England from emol.org - you can see our links at the bottom of the page. It's actually pulling the pages from the internet archives ( http://ia300032.us.archive.org/ ), so we're not even loosing bandwidth. We might be loosing add revenue if we're getting paid by referrer tracking, but if we have our own tag included in the link we would get credit for it.

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DVD Authoring
by Billy Crook 28 Mar '07

28 Mar '07

OK, so now that we know the list isn't broken, just quiet, I thought I'd throw a topic out there to get some input. What's the best DVD authoring software for linux? Preferably, I'd want something GUI-based that you can make menus and add video clips or directories of pictures as slide shows and outputs to an ISO file I can burn with my program of choice. Below, are the programs I've tried. Avidemux: I can't figure out what exactly it's even supposed to do. Re-sampling/re-encoding video maybe, but not dvd-authoring. Cinnelera: This app feels REALLY clunky, and while it got much kudos from TLLTS, I can't get it to do anything useful. When I start it, it says to run "echo "0x7fffffff" > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax". So I do that, and try to restart it, and it doesn't even come up! I see a window titled "[x]" on the taskbar, but until I kill off that window, i can't even launch the applications menu to find another program. QDVDAuthor: Depends on QTDevel, any one of xine, vlc, or mplayer, and dvd-slideshow. Looks like they put as much work into the compiler/installer as they did into the app itself. It's kind of touchy, and I still haven't gotten it to do what I want, but haven't given up yet. DVDBaker: Haven't tried it yet DVD-Slideshow: CLI, which I would normally prefer, but it doesn't make sense in my head to create a graphical work through a text interface. I only downloaded and installed this because it was a dependency of QDVDAuthor DVDStyler: I can't figure out how to import a directory of pictures. It looks like a nice clean program, and outputs to an ISO like I want. However, when I try to make a disk of a video, I get "**ERROR: [mplex] Too many frame drops -exiting. Error executing of command: mplex -f 8 -S 0 -o "/home/BCrook/Desktop/dvdstyler/title0- 0-0.vob" "/home/BCrook/Desktop/dvdstyler/title0-0-0-0.m1v" "/home/BCrook/Desktop/dvdstyler/title0-0-0-0.mp2"" ExFalso: WTF. I don't even get what it's supposed to do. Kino: I like it. It's probably the best yet for editing video sequences. However, I don't know about picture galleries, and I can't figure out to get an ISO out of it. AND, the AUDIO IS OUT OF SYNC! So I can't use it. It also had to convert the mpg files into dv files, which I'm OK with, but maybe that conversion caused the audio to be out of sync. Also on a humorous side-note, when you're on a plane with 80% battery remaining, don't start up all these tools at once in their own workspace. Even with 4 gigs of ram, when they're all trying to load up or inport 500 megs of media, it ties up the system for some time. -Billy

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Re: OK, if it is too quiet
by James R. Sissel 27 Mar '07

27 Mar '07

Sorry, just got home to check my email. Interesting ideas and I'll have to check them out. I do know once I boot the "bad" OSes the partitions are hosed. Even the "good" OSes can't see them afterwards. So the OSes seem to do something to the drive. It happens in the booting of the kernel, whatever it is. If I reinstall a "good" OS and re-partition the hard drive the OS boots just fine. I put in the "bad" OS boot disk and it seems to find the hard drive and the partitions OK. But once the install is done and the OS boots it complains and the partitions are lost. Really irritating. If I can get this 300G IDE HD to work OK on a different system I'm going to forget the whole thing. Don't have time to play too much.

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