Blog moving...

Just in case I still have any readers after my half-year hiatus - please note that I'm moving all future blog posts over to http://galactic-patrol.spaces.live.com - please reset your links!

Powering Your Gadgets With ActiveX

I recently had the opportunity to help some folks write an ActiveX control for use in a sidebar gadget; and while the experience was fresh in my mind, I thought I'd write down what I told them.

If you know how to code to Win32, and would like to use that knowledge in a sidebar gadget – but you haven’t worked with ActiveX controls before – then you will find this useful.

Powering Your Gadgets With ActiveX (part 1)
Powering Your Gadgets With ActiveX (part 2)
Powering Your Gadgets With ActiveX (part 3)

Where does wealth come from?

Just an idle thought I had recently - where does wealth come from, in the modern economy?

If money was all gold coins, wealth would come from the mines - they control the total amount of coin in circulation.

If money was all dollar bills, wealth would come from the mint.

But nowadays, its all on paper, or in computers. Where does new wealth come from?

We could calculate 'available wealth' by taking the net worth of all people and asset-owning entities. But that seems like a zero-sum game; just money shifting around. Where does the new stuff come from?

We could say that wealth in the world today isn't something that's really interesting to total up - maybe the really interesting thing is to measure how much money moves around. I think this is pretty much how GDP is calculated. But that seems kind of hokey, too - because two people could just trade money back and forth, a lot - and under that measurement, there would be a lot of wealth created, but really there's no change.

Maybe this is just an inherently complicated issue - but I'm really hoping that one of you folks will be able to give me a simple answer that will illuminate some core issue that I'm missing.

Privacy Rights

Ben Bateman is a very good friend of mine, for almost twenty years. I went to his wedding, and he went to mine. Nowadays, I'm a "Washington Independent", and he's a staunch "Texas Conservative" - but I think that just adds some extra spice to the friendship. I'm currently having a vigorous exchange of views with him on the issue of "Privacy Rights" over on his blog - check out the comments:

http://weshouldlive.com/blog/archives/101

(Yes, I did forge his name on that last comment - I hope he's not too offended! *grin*)

sudoku assistant

If you like sudoku puzzles, but need a little assistance with them - I've written a tool to help you out. You can get it here:

http://www.aeroxp.org/board/index.php?showtopic=3520

Here's a screenshot:

The black numbers are the ones I entered. The small grey squares indicate numbers that are not allowed in the associated cell. The red numbers are deduced by the program when a cell has eight grey squares filled in.

What would make me *want* to pay taxes

Over on the Randomize blog, there is a great answer to my post yesterday about proposed improvements to our tax system. It made me think in greater depth about what I'd really like to accomplish in any changes to our tax system:

I wouldn't complain so much about the federal taxes if (a) there was more transparency into exactly where *my* money is going, and (b) I had more direct control over where *my* money gets spent.

My suggestion above is just one possible way of implementing these ideas - they let me move to the state that meets my expectations the best. I'm open to other ideas, though, even if they keep the current federal tax system intact - as long as they meet my requirements above.

For example, one item that I've often asked for is an itemized receipt from the government in return for my taxes. Everyone else that I give money to is willing to do this; I don't see why the government can't.

Note that I personally do have a sense of social responsibility, and am quite willing to pay taxes - perhaps even more than I do now - if I had some confidence that it was money well-spent.

My wife billed me...

Gina went to mom.salary.com and sent me a bill for $69,362 as her yearly wage for the parenting and household tasks that she does.

I told her I couldn't afford it, and would have to let her go.

*grin*

Let the states do all the taxing

We should do all taxation on the state level, and the federal government should collect their needed revenues directly from the states - just a straight $10,000 per resident, or something like that. Let each state decide the most effective way of collecting the money it needs to pay for its local services and for the federal tax.

I would love to see how each state decides to solve that problem, and see some competition between different tax systems to determine which ones *really* work best.