FW: New flight sim coming out 2007:The Mighty Eighth

A  new 8th AF flight sim will be coming out in 2007.

 

I've gotten the two that came out concerning the 8th when flying B-17s in historical missions along with a few board games that dealt with the aerial combat of the Eighth Air Force against the Luftwaffe during WW II.

 

Online and offline game play is planned.

 

  http://www.totalsims.com/ is the company. 

Local Portland Gun Show Schedule for Early 2006

Dec 16-17-18 2005 Expo Center (Admission 8)

 

Jan 7-8 Hillsboro (Admission $5)

 

Jan 27-28 Expo Center

 

Feb 18-19 Canby (Admission $5)

 

March 17-19 Expo Center

 

April 1-2 Hillsboro

 

Rose City Gun Collectors www.collectorswest.com

RSS and the White House

Seems that the White House finally picked up on another internet staple of a few years RSS feeds.

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/rss/

 

I see they have it also in Spanish - that's discrimination against other languages. We really should make them live by the rules which promote of "diversity" and require them to have 4,075 different RSS feeds to allow each person to read it in their own language / dialect of choice - just like California requires multiple language ballots when voting (437 I think at last count).

 

They need it also to be RSS in brail (now their I see a great government project to allow it to be RSS'd in brail!).

 

We really need to mandate English as official language of the US and make everyone learn it as a requirement. Else we will become like the Balkans who tried to be unified and other nations that tried to be a single nation and just ended up splitting up since their neighbors do not have a common language to unify themselves with after a few hundred years.

 

If all the Spanish people in California (they consider themselves SPANISH, no AMERICANS) put onto a ballot to secede from the US and become part of Mexico (they have no US history knowledge, they only know Spanish and it is not taught) it would pass and then what? Invade California from Nevada? The closest US Army Base is Washington - the California Environmental impact statement to allow the army to fire its weapons to take back the state would take decades to be approved.

Senator Hagal, President Bush on Illegal Aliens

It seems that Senator Hagel, along with President Bush, want to allow law-breakers into the USA be pardoned. Since they broke the law and the US Government refuses to deport them, or even enforce the borders to prevent it, they are saying if enough people break the law we will just ignore it. This is not new, President Clinton did it also in the name of "reform" and the Republicans then shouted out against it. Now they are doing it saying it is "good" for everyone. Seems like they have no ability to lead but have to follow the Democrats - but 10 to 15 years afterwards.

 

This way of thinking they should also pardon all World War II NAZI criminals or those accused of it, of illegally coming to the USA. A criminal is a criminal and if you pardon people who illegally came to the United States from Mexico they should do the same for ANYONE FROM ANYWHERE and while at it backdate it so that all those who have been deported re-gain their citizenship - hey if Mexicans can break the law,  remain here, and gain US citizenship by illegal means why not NAZIS?

Word Phrase Worthy of a Quote

"Unless I continuously advertise it in multiple areas and make a compelling reason for people to visit it, it will remain but an unknown assemblage of words in a forest of sentences."

 

And I wrote this about my own blog in the Highrankings.com forum!

So true . . .

What Managers Don't Understand

Friendly + Pretty + All encompasing = Work + Time

DRM and Sony Rookit

What if DHS mandated that all vehicles have GPS systems embedded in them that was in front of the ignition system which allowed all vehicles to notify DHS where they are at without the owners ability or say in it and with a single command could shut down by blocking the ignition system  - for all vehicles built in the USA, shipped to or out of the USA, or any car company in the world that used a car part made or created by a company that is US based or a has ownership and or stockholders in the USA (that should pretty well cover every company in the world)? Everyone would complain.

 

What if the car companies did it on their own? The companies can and do - and if every car company did it in the world who could you complain to? Just not buy their car in protest - else you agree to that "feature."

 

That is what software companies are doing - legally.

 

Every time you boot up a program they almost always "phone home" as a DRM requirement - or registration check (Adobe / Macromedia does this) and woe be anyone that cannot get to the Internet - after so many days - the program stops till it can "phone home" to ensure that it is valid under the DRM rules.

 

Some rental cars already have GPS transceivers in them to record where the cards go - and how fast. Some cars have computers in them that record 60 seconds of data of the car that can be used for - and against - you in an accident.

 

This has been going on a long time by private firms. Privacy rules in the US only really concerns Government keeping of data - a private firm can pretty well do anything they want and if you want to use their product you either agree to all their terms or not purchase it.

 

What is getting worse is that Government is mandating rules but lets private firms create the methods to enforce rules any way they want without the end user having a say - or knowing - how it is enforced.

 

Sony played by the "rules" in that it can have any DRM it wants - and there is no restriction on what the enforcement methods are or data it can collect from people to enforce the rules.

GPS Coordinates in Your Digital JPGS

One way to track your photos is to embed their GPS coordinates into them either as your take them or afterwards. There are add-ons for cameras that feed the GPS into the camera and embed that data into the EXIF file as you take them. Other programs allow you to lookup the coordinates then manually add them into the images.

 

Microsoft® has a free tool called Location Stamper http://www.wwmx.org that does it. This info then ties into the online MapPoint.Net system and displays on there where the pictures are from.

 

Google, via Google Maps, also allows them to be pinpointed within their map system.

 

This feature is called Geocoding / Geotagging. Very useful for surveyors, hikers, travelers, wildlife photographers, newspaper reporters, and so on where knowing where you took the picture is just as important as having the picture.

Good Quote

"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

 

Scottie's current tagline at www.HighRankings.com

Adobe PhotoShop CS2 - Not for Photographers anymore

Adobe held a PhotoShop CS2 all day seminar at the Oregon Convention Center on Nov 16, 2005. B&H Photo was there along with the Lensbaby people.

 

 Most of the CS2 demos were on how to create things from scratch, maybe 4 dealt with photos out of the whole 6 hours of instruction / demos.

 

I think maybe they should take the "Photo" out of PhotoShop and call is ArtistShop instead since what it does not is not really geared toward photographers anymore. A show of hands of the roughly 1000 in attendance showed maybe 10% considered themselves photographers (including me), and the rest were graphic artists.

 

 

More Complicated than the IRS Tax Code - Drug Benefits

The new Federal Medicaid Prescription drug benefits are now taking effect.

It seems that tax accountants have a hard time understanding it so even THEY have to hire experts to decipher the benefit packages into a 3D decision matrix load into an Oracle database using Cubes to try and make a rational decision.

This means it will only cost each person around $15,000 to hire someone to figure out their unique needs accounting for all the possible benefit package and drug usage variations in order to get the best plan.

You can tell that the Republicans came up with this plan -- only the rich can afford it.

 

Veterans Day - Korean War

The Korean War is often called "The Forgotten War" for many reasons. The latest round of TV shows documented some which were: hard for reporters to get to; delay from the report filed to report delivered; inarticulate goals of the UN Mission (nothing changed there); and the first set of Government "spin" really organized to control what gets back to the states.

At the Wilsonville Korean War Memorial, every year, there is a gathering on the Sunday weekend before Veterans day for speeches and a salmon feed sponsored by Native American veterans.

This year veterans from WWII (one from the 101st Airborne Division) through the current Iraqi war were there.

Windmill Power

All those states who claim be so "progressive" and complain about building generation plants in their states or using dams to create electricity - but want the power - should just enact a building code that any building over 4 stories must install a windmill power generator on top (1 generator per 10,000 Sq Ft rooftop, with a minimum of 1) in order to limit all that "Global Warming."

All existing buildings that meet that criteria must install one within 15 years.

US Power problem solved.

Thought for the Moment, no, Wait!

Procrastinate now! Don't put it off!

Nikon EN-EL3 battery recall - Affects D100, D70, D50 Digital Cameras

En-EL3 used on the D100, D70 and D50 models. Sold separately as part number 26265.

Recall only affects those produced since May of 2004.

Chart on Nikon Web site explains how to find out if your battery is affected.

http://www.nikonusa.com/email_images/nikonusa/service_advisory/battery.html

Replacement batteries are free.

Randi Rhodes and Iraq Intelligence Failure

Listening to Randi Rhodes on  Air America Radio you can hear her rant about the intelligence failure of President Bush concerning Iraq.

 

At the end of WW II it did not take 12 YEARS to find everything that the NAZI government tried to hide. It just shows that a piece of paper saying to do something means NOTHING unless you are willing to put your own people on the ground to enforce what the paper says.

 

Imagine if we ran local law enforcement the way the UN ran the Iraq enforcement? A search warrant for every room and hallway in a house, unless listed cannot go there and you must tell the person before coming what you are going to look for giving them time to move it to a room not listed or into a neighbor’s yard which you can NEVER go in even if you see items there.

 

However, you must step back and ask WHY and HOW could there be such a failure? If ex President Saddam Hussein has truly de-armed, allowed weapon inspectors over the prior 12 YEARS truly unfettered access to everything everywhere without question and without advance notice (to prevent them from being moved) – then within a year all would have been found, destroyed, documented, stored, and know about, and all sanctions lifted, and everyone would have been out of Iraq.

 

Since that was NOT allowed, there was NO WAY to know what was going. Which means people had to guess based on what the policy was like in Iraq in the past, what he had done. Perfectly valid.

 

In Randi’s rant about the war intelligence failure she conveniently ignores the underlying cause.

 

 

President Bush's (in pocket) Tax Commission Report

Taxes. Necessary. Like my article on  Contracting Out on my web site, paying taxes is contracting out services to others for items that you want to be accomplished for you when you do not  have the ability or time to do it yourself.

 

The President’s Commission on changing the Taxes paid to the US Government is a poor attempt to alter the tax code – while being revenue neutral – by shifting who pays more for services that they do not use and who have no ability to complain about it after the shift.

 

Mainly, it is the middle class and below who will get the “short shift.”

 

If the Federal Government really wanted to reform tax collection into a more equitable way based on the “ability to pay” rather than all must pay mode it is easy to do than they make it out to be.

 

Social Security systems has a method whereas if you make over a certain dollar threshold it triggers a rule that results in every two dollars you make above it they take away a dollar in benefits.

 

For individuals sole proprietorships they should have make it for every dollar made above $1,000,000 the tax rate is 50%. If it is good enough for Social Security at the low end then it must also be good for the high end.

 

All incorporated companies who have NET profits over $10,000,000 – money which is NOT going to be distributed to shareholders – then pay 65% on all profits above $10 million dollars. They are not giving it back to the investors, just holding it, so they obviously DO NOT NEED IT. Money distributed to shareholders is taxed at the shareholder level – not at the corporate level.

 

They always tout that investors need profits – but if a corporation NEVER distributes money to investors then that argument is blatantly false. If the corporation keeps it then TAX IT.

 

To avoid the skew by the top 10,000 corporations (and Limited Liability ones) take data for all those not in the top 10,000 and divide it into 4 brackets of taxes on profits. Have always a minimum tax on each bracket of 5, 7, 10, 15%. Every corporation MUST pay Federal taxes. Have the max be 5% above the minimum based on net profits. That would determine the “Top out” gross profits level where the max bracket would be.

 

All corporations above that level then have a sliding minimum of 4, 8, 12, 18% of gross income with max again 5% above that. Same exclusion that money distributed to shareholders is NOT taxed. The shareholders pay tax on the income distributed to them – as it should be.

 

Is this hard to do? Not at all. Does it seem fair to have corporations pay like individuals do? (by law they are an “individual.”) Logical? Yes. Will enough people write to congress to get them to do something that is logical, reasonable, simple? No.

Rioting in Paris! Unrest in Rennes! Battles in Bayeaux! Bastille Stormed! - oops wrong century same story

Seems that the French have not learned much in the past few centuries about appeasing the masses of people. This time, instead of their "own" people revolting, it are those who emigrated en masse to France but do not want to assimilate into the French Culture and become "French" but want to just get the economic and political benefits without BEING the economic and political culture that allows it.

 

Classic case of too many people coming too fast and UNWILLING to let go of the culture they came from (and ran away from) and embrace and become part of where they went to.

 

Every nation who allows unfretted immigration will have this problem - and has.

 

Yes cultures change - but moving to a new country MEANS you have to let go of the past. Else you should have never left. If you liked your culture so so much WHY did you leave?

 

Immigrants to the US in the past LEFT the rules and language behind, embraced the new nation, and remembered the past as where they came from but converted to the rules and traditions of new nation - and where possible adapting theirs to what was practiced in the new.

 

People immigrating who are unwilling to do that - "I want my ->insert values here <- and I want you to change your ways to allow it or else -- should never leave their country in that case.

 

That's the way it is.

 

 

Paying for your own Paperwork

 

The Federal (as well as state, city, county, local) wants to track what is going on. Some is required by the US Constitution (like the US Census), but the vast majority is "make work" paperwork due to some law or requirement passed from 1 to 100 years ago and dutifully carried out each year no matter if it makes sense to do so or not.

 

A USA web site of the Small Business Administration states that it costs US businesses $7,647 per employee to comply with all the paperwork requirements put onto them – just for the FEDERAL regulations. Add in the other paperwork requirements and you can see that the cost to have an employee is even more.

The complete report is within the Office of Advocacy website.  

 

Imagine if just 50% of the paperwork cost could be eliminated. The business could give 50% of the savings to the employee (in cash or in benefits) and keep the rest itself to boost profits for them. Both would win. This wiping out of paperwork would also shrink the government since there would be no need to have people there to read (or more likely just file) all these items away or compile them into reports that no one ever acts upon.

 

Just because a report is created does not mean that anything is done BECAUSE of it.

 

History is replete with examples of thousands of weekly / monthly / yearly reports that are just created because they have to be but NO ONE ever takes action over what they contain. Its not their job to make decisions they only exist to create the report.

 

The levee system around New Orleans is a good example. Everyone knew about the reported problems, but no one was willing to make a decision to DO SOMETHING about it. Funding studies about the problem was more important than doing something about it. In the Pacific NW the same is true of salmon recovery. Studying the problem for 20 to 50 more years is more important than trying something that may or may not work. They worry more about trying something that does not (and hurts the fish) than trying something and it helps them. Thus by studying for 20 to 50 years that it will take to find out what could help them nothing is done.

 

Paralysis by Analysis.

 

Required paperwork is another example where mostly nothing is accomplished since no one is willing to act upon data. If that is the case, then the required paperwork should just be eliminated.

 

 

 

Lack of MPH and Car Weights - History shows the reason

The environmentalists, consumer activists, and all the other people who have railed against auto makers as to why MPG (miles per gallon) have not gone up in 10 years all have forgotten to look at one place: GVW (Gross Vehicle Weight) sticker on every car.

 

The same people who complained about lack of MPH going up have also called for more safety features and at the same time want more room in the cars.

 

It is a known fact that for every 100 lbs (44 kg or so) that is added to a car you lose 1 MPG. Back in 1975 the average compact car weighed 2,800 to 3,400 lbs (1272 to 1400 kg). If you look at a compact car weight now you see 3,800 to 4,400 lbs (1,724 to 2,000). 1000 extra pounds you lose 10 MPH - if you built the cars like they did back in the late 1970s changing only the engines then the cars would be getting 38 MPH+.

 

Question is, are these people who complain willing to live (or die) with the lowered built in safety features which have been forced into the cars now?

Paying Multiple Taxmen Every Year

Most people forget that New York state along with California also leads the nation is some of the most onerous ideas and laws - including taxing people more than what is reasonable to provide services to many who don't pay anything.

In a CNET news article http://news.com.com/Telecommuters+Beware+the+tax+man/2100-1028_3-5927124.html?tag=nl the lead was "The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the appeal of a Tennessee computer programmer who claimed that New York was violating his constitutional rights by forcing him to pay taxes on income he earned in his home state while telecommuting."

 

What this means that soon any state can pass income taxes laws to tax those that do not live in their state, set foot in their state, as long as a company has a presence (nexus) in that state. What this also means is that they can ALSO tax foreigners who do not even live in the US. I do not know of (nor heard of any) law that prohibits a state from taxing a foreign company - so that means people too can be taxed since a company is NOTHING MORE than a "legal person" in the eyes of a state. If you can tax a company you can tax a person.

 

So that means soon people may have to file 30 to 51 tax returns - one for every state and the District of Columbia) every years since if ANY work that is done for any company that has a presence in that state can tax the person's whole income.

 

I can see it now, you get taxed 150+% of your income each year (except for the few (4?) that have no income taxes). 47 taxing authorities at (a low) 3% of your income each year and you get at least a 141 % tax rate.

Should solve each states income deficit from now on.

Upsizing Computer Screen Size

I've noticed that the big high end technology oriented sites like

Oracle, CNET, SUN, and even Microsoft® have converted their default page sizes to 1024x768 pixels. This must mean that developers have gone to higher res screens and that the masses of people have also left 800x600 screen resolution behind.

Time to buy stock in reading glasses.

Photoshop CS2 Creativity Tour- All Day Seminar Nov 16,2005 in Portland Oregon

Adobe is having an all day PhotoShop seminar at the Oregon Convention Center http://www.oregoncc.org/ on November 16,2005.

 

See http://www.photoshopseminars.com/class/23 for info on registering. Cost is $99.00.

New Free XP ICC Color Space Control Panel Application Released

Microsoft® put out a new free Color Control Panel Applet (download at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/colorcontrol.mspx ) for XP users to manage ICC color profiles for all devices. A nice item that I saw was that now it provides you with a visual reference to the color space that you have to work with for that device as you change profiles. 

 

If you do anything in photography or print in anything color, get it - even if you have a $250+ color profile devices and workflow in place - it helps a lot.

 

This app is just a part of what went into Windows Vista® OS when it comes out. Some parts that will be in Vista® could not be put into XP® due to technical limitations of the OS, but it helps.