Category Archives: Internet

Bar Stool Economics

Financial, Internet, Politics


Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group s till wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone woul d get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then 
the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”

“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia

This obviously pokes fun at our tax system. Though not 100% accurate, I feel it is a good reminder about our tax system, during this election cycle. For even more on the fact that the rich pay all the taxes, thus the rich need the tax breaks, go here. What do you think?

To post comments and more, visit TobyLaura.com

The new MacBook

Computing, Fun, Internet


The new MacBook laptops from Apple have arrived and they are awesome. Built from a single piece of aluminum, they are seamless, have no screws or drill points, are blazing fast, have great features like backlit keys updated touch pad, and maybe best of all, a new LED screen that is much brighter and sharper than the traditional LCD screens of today.

There is even an option for a solid state hard drive (only 128 gig though). Solid state is lights years ahead of the hard drive in the computer you have as you read this, (2008) because it has no moving parts. It is basically a huge flash drive. What kills hard drives and makes them lose data, is the spinning and spinning. After a while, a spinning hard drive will fail. Solid state will probably out live us all!

When you want to combine computing power and style, Apple is the only way to go. These laptops also run Windows operating systems (who’d want to?) so that if there are any programs that are considered a must have, but only run under Bill Gate’s tyranny, then that issue is solved. Honestly, being able to run both systems together leads me to wonder why everyone doesn’t have a Mac. They are more user friendly, don’t require virus protection, don’t shutdown due to programs running an “illegal operation” and just simply work.

After all the heartache of updating my virus software, losing my work from a program shutting down, and being hassled with endless error messages when trying to add a printer or unplug a flash drive, I made the switch to Mac and haven’t looked back. Actually, because so many people use Windows, and because of Microsoft’s notorious attitude for hostile domination, many hackers and virus authors target Windows. That’s fine with me! Apple viruses hardly exist because people who want to cause large devastation with a virus pick on the software maker with the largest market share. With Apple, that’s less than 10%.

So all you Windows sufferers out there, please continue to buy that terrible junk sold by Microsoft, because it is keeping the viruses aimed elsewhere, instead of at my solid Mac! For everyone else who is tired of the endless troubles and updates that has plagued Windows for decades, come into the light. Afterward, you’ll wonder why it took so long. Just remember, with Mac, it’s “plug and play” but with Windows, it’s “plug and pray.”

To post comments and more, visit TobyLaura.com

Staying Updated

Internet

UPDATE: This is an out of date post. To subscribe, simply visit our blog homepage at: tobylaura.com/blog and click on the yellow subscribe button to add our blog feed.
Did you know that you can stay up-to-date with our blog without needing me to e-mail you, check our blog all the time, or even think about it? RSS, or “really simple syndication” is a common way to check on any website that has updates on it all the time. It’s like an auto-notifier for you that something has been updated. Any blog with Google or WordPress, or a news site that has a blog or updates, has RSS. You can watch for multiple blog updates all the time. When you see there is an update, head to the blog and see what’s new!

It’s really easy to set up and I’ll walk you through it, if you don’t already know how to watch RSS feeds.

When you are looking at our main blog page, with the picture of Laura and I parasailing, there is a button called RSS Subscribe. Clicking that will take you to the “feed” that gets updated whenever a blog entry is made. Once you click on the subscribe button, if you have a Mac and use Safari, on the left side of the screen, you can click on the link: Add to my mail. Automatically, you will then receive an e-mail every time a new blog entry is posted. Cool! You can also have Safari notify you every time there is a new update within the Safari browser.

If you use Windows, sell your computer and get a Mac. Just kidding. Just like in Safari, Internet Explorer, at the top right of the address bar for our blog page, will have a symbol like at the top of this blog entry. It may also be next to your Home button. Click on it while you are at our blog page. Select the feed you want (in this case, it will be our blog) and then, it will update when a new post is made. I don’t have IE 7, but updates should show up under a button called FEED, in your favorites bar. Let me know if you find out otherwise.

If you have Outlook 2007 and want the updates to show up in that e-mail program like a new e-mail, then follow these steps:

On the Tools menu, click Account Settings.

On the RSS Feeds tab, click New.

In the New RSS Feed dialogue box, type in the URL of the RSS Feed. In our case, it would be:
feed://tobylaura.com/blog/feed/

Click Add.

Click Yes.

*** This paragraph is out of date and is here for historical reference only.*** If for some reason, you have any troubles subscribing to our TobyLaura blog, did you know that I mirror our TobyLaura blog with a Google blog? It’s called New Mercies and it’s address is: googleblog.tobylaura.com. It is a Google hosted blog, and when you visit it there, it has the same entries as this blog does. Once there, you can go all the way to the bottom of the blog and click Subscribe, or again, click on the symbol in your browser that appears like the one at the top of this blog entry. To set up the Google blog RSS in Outlook, just follow the same directions above, but instead, use the feed address:
feed://googleblog.tobylaura.com/feeds/posts/default

This may seem a little daunting or confusing. It really isn’t, and the best way to set up a feed (auto-notifier) is to use the help function of whatever computer system you are using. I watch several blogs, and when they are updated, they show up in my e-mail inbox as new updates. If your Outlook won’t do that, but you have Google e-mail, check out: Google Reader.  It will also notify you of new postings and is really easy to set up.

Good luck!

To post comments and more, visit TobyLaura.com

Add a favicon to your iWeb, Google blog, or web page.

Internet

*** UPDATE: This post is extremely old and out of date and requires revision. ***

Depending on your browser, its settings, and how often you visit our site, you may have noticed a change. The picture of two hearts in the upper left corner of the web site address appears when at TobyLaura.com. It is a small version of the one at the top of this blog. On this page, it’s a picture of yours truly. We added these bookmark pictures to make our site more personal and stand out. Also, if our homepage is bookmarked, it should also show up in your list of bookmarks.

It is called a Favicon and its file extension is .ico and here are some examples (just look at the image next to the ‘http’ part of the address in the address window.)

TobyLaura.com
Scattershooting
GreenExamPrep

They are fun to add and if you have a personal page or Google blog, they add a nice touch. You’ll notice that most companies have one, and large websites use them to attract attention, so why not add one yourself? Read on to learn how to do it. It can seem a little daunting at first, but take a deep breath, you can do it! If you need to, keep this window up, as well as the window you are using to make your adjustments, so you can easily get back to this page if you need help. Let’s get going.

First of all, you need a picture or drawing. If you know an animator, they can draw you a logo or some simple file like a flower, that will look good in such a small size. You’ll notice that the Favicons are very small, so a detailed logo or family group photo will not work. Something with just a few colors or a cropped photo of a face work well, like in my example links above.

Once you choose a picture, logo, or drawing, then upload it to this site here. It will format the image into an .ico file for you automatically, and then let you preview what it will look like in someone’s browser. Then, simply click the download button to put the .ico file on your hard drive.

Adding the favicon to your website or blog depends on how you host your site or blog. Google blogs and pages, iWeb for Mac, and standard sites where pages are published to a host via FTP are the most common ways to have something on the web.

If you publish to a host via FTP, you have it made in the shade. Just upload the picture saved in .ico format into your public directory and it will show up on each page of your website. It knows that a favicon file is the file for the address image, and you are finished.

Below, I’ll talk about how to add it to a Google page/blog and iWeb.

Google Blogs

Your favicon picture (formated into the .ico format as explained above) needs to be hosted, or viewable on the internet somewhere. Google can host an image through Pages, which comes with Google Apps. There are lots of image hosting options on the internet, but the image needs to have a unique web address that points directly to the picture. For example, you may put photos up on Google’s Picasaweb, but the picture won’t have a unique web url address. Google Pages will allow a unique web address for the image, like: http://www.tobycline.com/favicon.ico This picture loads in a page all by itself and is what you will need for this to work. Another quick and easy way to “host” a picture with its own direct web address is to post a picture into a blog entry.


Click on the picture of Elliot falling off the bicycle (funny!) and you’ll have a picture on its own web page and it’s web address in the url window, ready for you to copy.

Once your picture is online, where it can be seen on the internet, it is time to get it to appear where you want it. If you put your picture on the internet through the free Picasa option, click on the picture, and note its web address, or link. Then log into your Google blog and select: Customize>Layout>Edit HTML. You will see a window with all the html garble-di-gook that is your blog, in raw form. Find the code right at the top, that should look like this:

Make sure not to simply copy this exactly, but actually put your picture’s URL in, instead of the words ‘URL of your icon.’

The whole thing will look like this:

Click to save your new template and you should see the new icon (favicon) next to your address!

For Google Pages

Java script is used if you use Google to make your website with Google Pages. Open your Google Pages editor and on each page you want your favicon to show up in, click on either the header or footer, and click “edit html.”

Then paste this code into the html page:

Obviously, change the “URL of your image” to the actual url where your image is. For example, my url is: http://www.tobylaura.com/myicon.ico

Each page you create, simply paste this into the header or footer and you are all set.

Add a favicon to iWeb

Using iWeb can be a blessing and a curse. It is easy because all the html is hidden behind the scenes. However, when you want to knowingly manipulate the html code, it can be tricky. You kind of have to trick Apple’s iWeb to get it to do what you want it to — and Apple won’t tell you how to do this kind of stuff. Bummer.

Upload your picture to this web site here. It will convert it to a favicon format. Now, download it to your desktop. Then, save the favicon.ico file in your iDisk folder. It needs to be saved in your root directory. So make sure you select: iDisk>Web>Sites. Drop it in that folder, where you will also see a folder with your website’s name. (Hint: anything you put in this folder will show up as: YourURL/file So my icon in that folder would have an address of: http://www.tobylaura.com/myicon.ico. It is your root directory.)

Now, for every page you want your favicon to show up in, you need to paste some code into your page’s html code. How do you do that? Open TextEdit or some other simple text processor like Notepad. DO NOT use a word processor as it can add extra spaces and characters that may mess up your code.

For this example, we’ll assume you are going to change the home page: Home.html. In your files, you could have named this something else. So, in general, open any page that you have created by finding the page name followed by the .html extension.

In TextEdit open: iDisk>Web>Sites>yourwebsite folder>home.html. Important: Check the option to ‘ignore rich text commands’ because if you don’t, this won’t work. Ignoring rich text commands allows you to see the html code of the page. This check box is near the Open and Cancel buttons on the dialogue box that appeared when you selected Open. If you forgot to check the “ignore rich text commands” button, you’ll see your page like it looks on the web. If you correctly selected the button, you’ll see a bunch of html code; how your computer sees your webpage. Now you are looking at the html code like you would in the EditHTML page in Blogger.

Find the top of the page where the code starts out with the head and meta name, near the top of the page:

Then, paste this code into your page in the space above the meta name code:

Here is a text selectable version so that you can copy and paste it easily and properly. Just remember to change your URL inside the quotation marks to your specific web address.

So all together, it looks like this:

Click ‘Save.’ Do this on every page you want your favicon to appear, and also every time you publish a new page. Each time you publish a page because of changes you made to it, this code you’ve entered will be deleted by iWeb. So, after each publish, reopen your iDisk and put this code back into the pages that you made changes to. This code will remain on all of your pages where no edits were made, but all the pages iWeb “Publishes” also deletes any code you’ve placed on those pages. If it gets to be a pain, I recommend just putting it on your home page, and then not making any changes to your home page, but do as much as you feel like you want to.

Good luck — and let me know if you have any questions.

TobyLaura.com

Green Exam Prep

Family, Internet

I want to give a shout out to the website, GreenExamPrep.

I know the group involved and the company that started it and am proud of their efforts, as it has helped many people pass their LEED test.  GreenExamPrep is a test prep website that prepares people for the LEED test. LEED stands for: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a green building certification offered by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). LEED is a building certification process that looks at various aspects of “green building” and awards recognition to buildings that meet certain standards.

To be certified, one must pass various LEED tests.  It is a very hard test to pass, and most who venture to pass on their first try, don’t.  The website helps people study for and pass the tests by offering very helpful study material, with sample questions (320 of them), flash cards, and even a video tutorial that replaces sitting in an 8 hour class: for half the price and allows you to study at your own pace.  How good is the test prep?  Should people take a risk and pay the money to use this website?  The proof is in the results, and those results are amazing.  GreenExam is doing very well, and if you don’t believe me, read some of the testimonials here. So if you know someone who is going to be taking a LEED test, point them to the Green Exam website, I know it will help.

For more, visit TobyLaura.com!

More Gmail options

Internet

Still not convinced that Gmail is the way to go? Some of the reasons I love a free Gmail account are the wonderful options and flexibility it provides. I’ve already talked about how to get your own custom e-mail address and more, but I’m always learning new great things about Gmail.

Two quick things that I’m excited about are email import and extra email addresses. These two functions are also available at places like Yahoo! and Hotmail, but usually not for free.

We as people get comfortable and the thought of change is usually never fun. Changing e-mail address sounds like a chore, so I can certainly understand the resistance to change. However, with Gmail, its easy! If you have thousands of email messages that you don’t want to lose access to, import them into your Google email and don’t miss or skip a beat. Google does it all for free, behind the scenes.

Also, people get a lot of spam (when they don’t have Gmail) often times because they must use an email address to sign up for something online. Once that happens, their address gets sold to a spam list. Yikes! Well, with Gmail, you can create as many “throw away” email address as you want, by adding a plus sign ( + ) and another word to your address. For example, lets say I want to sign up for a free software download and the website wants me to register my email address. If my Gmail address is [email protected], I could give the website my email address as: [email protected]. Or, if I had to give Target my address, I could give them [email protected] Google sees this address and still sends it to me, because Google ignores the ( + ) sign and anything that follows it. They become a tag for me to see later in my inbox. That way, if I start getting spam in my inbox, and it is sent to the address: [email protected], I can create a filter within Gmail to filter out all email sent to [email protected] and have it sent immediately to the trash. Cool, huh?

If you get online bank statements or notes from your credit card, give them the address: [email protected] Then, you can create a filter to catch anything with +banking to be sent to a folder you have created called Finances, or whatever you want. That way, you never miss an important message from your bank, and they are all stored and organized into one, or as many convenient folders as you wish.

To find out more, read the official Gmail blog.

For more, visit TobyLaura.com!