The charm of Twitter

I have been meaning to write about this; but I will content myself with linking to Todd Mundt's excellent summary. Jim Horton also has a terrific summary of micro-blogging.

Why standards matter

Rob Wier

It should have been obvious at the time that vesting exclusive control of an interoperability interface in a single company was a bad idea. But I guess the world didn't realize what dealing with Microsoft meant. But we know better now. So why are we making the same mistakes in 2007?

Those who control the exchange format, can control interoperability and turn it on or off like a water faucet to meet their business objectives.

He left out leverage

Words that Need to Die in 2008

Throw back that phish!

How to recognize a phish:

-- "Annual calculations of fiscal activity" does not sound like IRS-speak.

-- "6-9 days to process" does not sound like IRS timing.

-- redacted link does not go to an IRS URL.

-- "Regards, Internal Revenue Service" the least credible sign-off since the old email fake from "your friend, Bill Gates."

-- "Copyright 2007, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A."?

-- No contact phone number -- getting put on hold is an essential part of communicating with the IRS.

The IRS urges people to avoid these common schemes:

1. Zero Wages. In this scam, new to the Dirty Dozen, a taxpayer attaches to his or her return either a Form 4852 (Substitute Form W-2) or a “corrected” Form 1099 that shows zero or little wages or other income. The taxpayer may include a statement indicating the taxpayer is rebutting information submitted to the IRS by the payer.
An explanation on the Form 4852 may cite "statutory language behind IRC 3401 and 3121" or may include some reference to the paying company refusing to issue a corrected Form W-2 for fear of IRS retaliation. The Form 4852 or 1099 is usually attached to a “Zero Return.” (See number four below.)

2. Form 843 Tax Abatement. This scam, also new to the Dirty Dozen, rests on faulty interpretation of the Internal Revenue Code. It involves the filer requesting abatement of previously assessed tax using Form 843. Many using this scam have not previously filed tax returns and the tax they are trying to have abated has been assessed by the IRS through the Substitute for Return Program. The filer uses the Form 843 to list reasons for the request. Often, one of the reasons is: "Failed to properly compute and/or calculate IRC Sec 83––Property Transferred in Connection with Performance of Service."

3. Phishing. Phishing is a technique used by identity thieves to acquire personal financial data in order to gain access to the financial accounts of unsuspecting consumers, run up charges on their credit cards or apply for new loans in their names. These Internet-based criminals pose as representatives of a financial institution and send out fictitious e-mail correspondence in an attempt to trick consumers into disclosing private information. Sometimes scammers pose as the IRS itself. In recent months, some taxpayers have received e-mails that appear to come from the IRS. A typical e-mail notifies a taxpayer of an outstanding refund and urges the taxpayer to click on a hyperlink and visit an official-looking Web site. The Web site then solicits a social security and credit card number. In a variation of this scheme, criminals have used e-mail to announce to unsuspecting taxpayers they are “under audit” and could make things right by divulging selected private financial information. Taxpayers should take note: The IRS does not use e-mail to initiate contact with taxpayers about issues related to their accounts. If a taxpayer has any doubt whether a contact from the IRS is authentic, the taxpayer should call 1-800-829-1040 to confirm it.

4. Zero Return. Promoters instruct taxpayers to enter all zeros on their federal income tax filings. In a twist on this scheme, filers enter zero income, report their withholding and then write “nunc pro tunc”–– Latin for “now for then”––on the return. They often also do this with amended returns in the hope the IRS will disregard the original return in which they reported wages and other income.

5. Trust Misuse. For years unscrupulous promoters have urged taxpayers to transfer assets into trusts. They promise reduction of income subject to tax, deductions for personal expenses and reduced estate or gift taxes. However, some trusts do not deliver the promised tax benefits, and the IRS is actively examining these arrangements. There are currently more than 200 active investigations underway and three dozen injunctions have been obtained against promoters since 2001. As with other arrangements, taxpayers should seek the advice of a trusted professional before entering into a trust.

6. Frivolous Arguments. Promoters have been known to make the following outlandish claims: the Sixteenth Amendment concerning congressional power to lay and collect income taxes was never ratified; wages are not income; filing a return and paying taxes are merely voluntary; and being required to file Form 1040 violates the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. Don’t believe these or other similar claims. These arguments are false and have been thrown out of court. While taxpayers have the right to contest their tax liabilities in court, no one has the right to disobey the law.

7. Return Preparer Fraud. Dishonest return preparers can cause many headaches for taxpayers who fall victim to their schemes. Such preparers derive financial gain by skimming a portion of their clients’ refunds and charging inflated fees for return preparation services. They attract new clients by promising large refunds. Taxpayers should choose carefully when hiring a tax preparer. As the old saying goes, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” And remember, no matter who prepares the return, the taxpayer is ultimately responsible for its accuracy. Since 2002, the courts have issued injunctions ordering dozens of individuals to cease preparing returns, and the Department of Justice has filed complaints against dozens of others. During fiscal year 2005, more than 110 tax return preparers were convicted of tax crimes.

8. Credit Counseling Agencies. Taxpayers should be careful with credit counseling organizations that claim they can fix credit ratings, push debt payment plans or impose high set-up fees or monthly service charges that may add to existing debt. The IRS Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division is in the process of revoking the tax-exempt status of numerous credit counseling organizations that operated under the guise of educating financially distressed consumers with debt problems while charging debtors large fees and providing little or no counseling.

9. Abuse of Charitable Organizations and Deductions. The IRS has observed increased use of tax-exempt organizations to improperly shield income or assets from taxation. This can occur, for example, when a taxpayer moves assets or income to a tax-exempt supporting organization or donor-advised fund but maintains control over the assets or income, thereby obtaining a tax deduction without transferring a commensurate benefit to charity. A “contribution” of a historic facade easement to a tax-exempt conservation organization is another example. In many cases, local historic preservation laws already prohibit alteration of the home’s facade, making the contributed easement superfluous. Even if the facade could be altered, the deduction claimed for the easement contribution may far exceed the easement’s impact on the value of the property.

10. Offshore Transactions. Despite a crackdown by the IRS and state tax agencies, individuals continue to try to avoid U.S. taxes by illegally hiding income in offshore bank and brokerage accounts or using offshore credit cards, wire transfers, foreign trusts, employee leasing schemes, private annuities or life insurance to do so. The IRS and the tax agencies of U.S. states and possessions continue to aggressively pursue taxpayers and promoters involved in such abusive transactions. During fiscal 2005, 68 individuals were convicted on charges of promotion and use of abusive tax schemes designed to evade taxes.

11. Employment Tax Evasion. The IRS has seen a number of illegal schemes that instruct employers not to withhold federal income tax or other employment taxes from wages paid to their employees. Such advice is based on an incorrect interpretation of Section 861 and other parts of the tax law and has been refuted in court. Lately, the IRS has seen an increase in activity in the area of “double-dip” parking and medical reimbursement issues. In recent years, the courts have issued injunctions against more than a dozen persons ordering them to stop promoting the scheme. During fiscal 2005, more than 50 individuals were sentenced to an average of 30 months in prison for employment tax evasion. Employer participants can also be held responsible for back payments of employment taxes, plus penalties and interest. It is worth noting that employees who have nothing withheld from their wages are still responsible for payment of their personal taxes.

12. “No Gain” Deduction. Filers attempt to eliminate their entire adjusted gross income (AGI) by deducting it on Schedule A. The filer lists his or her AGI under the Schedule A section labeled “Other Miscellaneous Deductions” and attaches a statement to the return that refers to court documents and includes the words “No Gain Realized.”

The Radetzky March

New to me local tech blogs

From the DC Technology Group:


Web Consulting Washington DC, It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.
Remarkup
Dr. DigiPol
Nick Whitmoyer
Diplays Awesome Dot Com
DeerReader
Blue Screen Joy - A Software Tester's Journey; The first step to making something better is to point out what is wrong with it. Blue Screen Joy is Andy Roth's blog about the pursuit of quality in software, technology, and life.
3 Dog TV
BluChipz!
Will Brown is Online
Marketing Conversation
Escapetochengdu
East Coast Blogging
The Adventures of Andrew Lee; Entrepreneurship, Encounters, Exhortation
Just Pixels.com - ideas and development for the life of your website
Paul's Web Space 2.0; Politics, Culture, Technology
James Marantan Software Architecture Blog; A blog about Software Architecture, ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, SQL Server, Oracle, GIS, CAD, Security, Policies, Workflows, Project Management, and Business.
Forum One Tech Blog
Red Bloguera
The Commute from Hell; A personal blog by Michael Tolosa
bobbyworld
Dito’s SEO Strategies, SEO, Search Marketing, Google, and more…
Leslie Bradshaw, a blog about life in DC
product four
Kristen Taylor
rayvinly.com blog
The Montoya Herald; coming soon to a blogroll near you
Challenges; Challenges is the personal weblog of Marc Benton. Marc is an IT guy with over 15 years of professional experience in government and private business in the Northern Virginia region.
LitheBlog: Exploring Lean and Agile
My Adams Morgan
centricle: home of the internet's Kevin Smith
The Reinvented Blog; about the digital world and how it impacts design, communication, and thought
Ryan J Powell
Software Craftsmanship
Makembecom
The Officially Official Blog of Searchles
O’DonnellWeb
EliteFrontier; Rodney Degracia’s technical and paste blog
MattTopper.com
dambalah; thoughts of a haitian hacker…
Web Consulting Washington DC; It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.
The Lack Thereof
John F Croston III; “It’s only words and photos on the internet”
Eric Austin Litman’s Weblog; Internet entrepreneur and evangelist.
MPL's blog
TheLetterTwo.com, Evangalist making marketing & the Internet work together
The Qloud Blog
gregword
corey brown’s blog
Manifest Density
Grafiks.org
With The Band, Notes on Tech, Social Media, and Entrepreneurship … Are you with the Band?
LiveGadgets
dready blog v2.0
onelittlewindow
Incessant Rantings
ryan moede :: social media, Emeging thoughts on social media
Walking Along My Path
Andy Rankin, Nobody is Listening
Software Sports
matthewvb
Conrad's Blog, A blog about the Science of Knowledge Representation
Alex Eagle's weblog, Thoughts on software development, Java, life, work, smart programmers, and things I think are awesome.
Brian Wynne Williams, thoughts, observations, and commentary from an entrepreneur / CEO / husband / dad / consumer / producer / fan / advisor / participant
Rockcreek Software
Inflexion Point
modulus, Matt Bowen's periodically published comments on content, communications, and code.
15 Meanings, Finding the Meaningful in the Meaningless
David Russell
Bad Ass Ideas
carbauja.com, We built this blog on rock and roll
g9g
kgiff
AllFacebook.com - The Unofficial facebook blog
Technotheory.com
Jess3
Nerd Meridian, Or the evening geekiness in the East
Clearspring Community Blog
JOBMATCHBOX, Jobs, Job Hunting, Hiring and Social Networking
nathanherald.com, My writing is gold!
siliconsoul, The simple ramblings of a geek
Maryland Media
Doug March, design, development and music intelligence

Theocratic terror

Benazir Bhutto did not like the term Islamic terrorism because it confused terrorism with her religion. She preferred the term theocratic terror. I also prefer this term because it focuses the mind on the problem, the idea that religion is the basis for political power and that terror is a legitimate tool, rather than a particular religion.

It is little known in this country that it was the Hindu Tamil Tigers who were the originators of the suicide bomb. Sadly it spread across South Asia and the Middle East.

Today Bhutto fell to terror. Pakistan has been plagued by theocratic terror for decades. Most of those whose lives were stolen from us by terror are unknown, but no less precious to their families. There are many broken hearts, and after today, even more.

Pakistan is a very important technology power and could be even greater if they can resolve their political problems. Let us hope they can reach a just resolution of their problems soon.

Edit -
Bhutto asserted to David Frost less than two months ago that bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Sheikh

Merry Christmas

Norad tracks Santa

Congratulations Financial Times

FT named ‘Newspaper of the Year’

Recording Amtower Off Center

This morning was spent recording tomorrow’s edition of Amtower Off Center, which will be about blogs, wikis, and how government contractors can integrate these tools into their communications effort. Listen for it tomorrow at 2pm on WFED 1050 AM in Washington - simulcast on www.FederalNewsRadio.com.

Below are links to some of the sites mentioned in tomorrow’s show:

Mark Amtower
Mark Amtower Federal Direct
Government Express
Government Marketing Best Practices
GovFacility
Epiphany Book

Debbie Weil (my fellow guest)

Tech on the Potomac RSS reader

Government Blogs:
CDC Chatter
Library of Congress Blog
Blogs by Government, collection of links
Peer to Patent Community Patent Review in Cooperation with the USPTO
Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice Wiki
NIEM

The New PR Wiki
Anti-Astroturfing Project

AIIM’s eDoc Magazine, What are some of the Records Management implications of blogs?

LinkedIn
Alice Marshall On LinkedIn
Mark Amtower on LinkedIn
Debbie Weil on LinkledIn
FaceBook

Dept. of very bad ideas

Businesses Generally Ignoring E-Discovery Rules

Anti-net neutrality fear mongering in progress

Arts Technica has a fabulous take down of Brett Swanson’s Wall Street Journal article alleging that the Internet is facing a coming “exaflood” unless we get rid of this pesky net neutrality. Swanson is a scholar at the Discovery Institute.

This is just one of many articles we will see alleging all manner of ills unless we let the telecoms have their way in charging us more for the same service.

It is important that small businesses understand the stakes in this. Do you want to pay more for Internet service just so your customers are able to access your website with the same ease of your much larger competitor? Because those are the stakes in this fight. And it is not just a Washington fight, what the telecoms were unable to win at the national level they will try to gain at the local level unless they are stopped. So it is critical that small businesses stay active and continue to monitor developments.

New to me local tech policy blog

CTIA blog

Added to Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

One Laptop Per Child, Washington, DC

OLPC LC-DC Holiday Meetup

December 18, 7 PM
Mayorga Cafe & Lounge
3301 14th. St. NW (map)

We will have three special guests with us from other OLPC organizing groups:

* Bryan Berry, External Relations Manager, OLE Nepal
* Christoph Derndorfer and Aaron Kaplan from OLPC Austria

Bryan, Christoph, and Aaron will be giving us an overview of their progress in organizing local OLPC groups in their countries, and ideas on how to expand OLPC LC/DC.

Then we’ll have an in-depth geek-fest and discussion around XO laptop usage right here in Washington DC. Be sure to bring your enthusiasm, your commitment, and of course, you shiny green G1G1 XO laptop!

Compliance opera

Microsoft Sued Over (Lack of) Standards Compliance

Opera is asking the European Commission for two remedial actions. First, it asks the EC to require Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows, and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Secondly, it asks the Commission to make Microsoft agree to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities.

Regrettably, Opera isn't specifying which "open Web standards" are not being followed, but one can reasonably suppose that a major point of contention is XHTML 1.1, which IE7 still doesn't support properly.

Opera tells EU that Microsoft's IE hurts the Web

In a complaint, Opera claimed Microsoft continues to abuse its dominant position on the desktop by tying its Internet Explorer (IE) browser to Windows, and hinders interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. It asked the EU's Competition Commission to force Microsoft into separating IE from Windows, and to demand that IE support several standards.

In a statement, the commission said Opera should "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers preinstalled on the desktop.

"Second, it asks the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities," Opera said. "Microsoft's unilateral control over standards in some markets creates a de facto standard that is more costly to support, harder to maintain and technologically inferior, and that can even expose users to security risks."

Standards selection can equal vendor selection, that is what this fight is about and why the public should be given sufficient facts to understand the debate.

Seisint

Talking Points Memo

Last week over at TPMmuckraker, Paul Kiel told you about Hank Asher, the confessed drug smuggler turned multimillionaire database guru who hooked up with Rudy Giuliani on a couple of different business ventures. Very mucky looking stuff, especially after Asher's name popped up in the public corruption indictment of the Orange County sheriff.

Now Time has a big new story out on the deal Rudy's firm had with one of Asher's database companies, Seisint. Turns out Giuliani Partners pulled down $30 million in one year on the Seisint contract.

A confessed drug smuggler with a database company? Does anyone not get why privacy protection is important? Does anyone not get why enterprise software stories matter?

Blogs and media relations

The Daily Dog quotes Catherine Saillant of the LA Times on how to pitch reporters:

Open the door with kudos or comments about past coverage—nobody likes a cold pitch. "Being friendly is a big part of building relationships with us," Saillant says. "Not every call or email has to be a pitch. For example, just let us know that you’ve read a story recently. If I did a piece (which I did) on mobile home park conversion, then a good call would include your referencing the piece and saying, for example, that you represent an expert on law around that issue. If it’s a continuing story—which stories about legislations usually are—then I might be able to come back to an expert later."

One of the things a flack can do with a blog is link to the reporters who cover their practice area. There is no reporter in the world who has so many readers they would enjoy getting a few more, and reporters who work for less known trade journals really appreciate a link. Blogging gives flacks a chance to recognize good reporting in their practice area. It is a time efficient way to build a relationship with a reporter and much more meaningful for them then the PR knick knacks we mail to them.

Please tell Olga that hurricane season is over

Subtropical Storm Olga regional imagery, 2007.12.11 at 1445Z. Centerpoint Latitude: 19:05:18N Longitude: 66:50:48W.

Tracking Map

New to me Sarbanes-Oxely blog

Sox First

Department of what are you talking about?

Public Knowledge has a post about a proposed law that will increase penalties for copyright violations ('cause suing their customers is working so well for industry). What is the name of the law? Which committee is considering the law? What is the current status? The post does not say, nor does it provide links.

It is called the "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (“PRO IP”) Act of 2007", and Slashdot has a vigorous discussion about the act.

When you are an expert and talk about an issue all the time it is easy to forget that most people do not have the basic information. One of the strengths of blogging as a medium is that you can write for your fellow expert and provide links for those who need additional information.