Will Obama raise my taxes? I don’t know, and neither do you. Believe me, I’ve tried to figure it out. I’ve read his plan, as well as McCain’s. I’ve read the analysis of both campaigns. I’ve watched all 4 debates. I’ve even read the neutral analysis of the Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. Any objective analysis points to the fact that taxes will be lower under McCain than Obama, but how much and for whom is an unknowable. Both campaigns have proposed so many convoluted strategies that it is next to impossible to determine the net effect for an individual taxpayer.

Here’s what I do know:

1) Obama plans to raise the top 2 marginal tax rates. This is his personal version of Robin Hoodness, or in his words, an attempt to “spread the wealth around.” High marginal tax rates are a staple of Liberal/Socialist policy, and Obama is no exception.
2) Obama plans to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends. He intends to make these rates graduated, like ordinary income taxes, so high income individuals would pay a higher marginal capital gains rate of 20%.
3) Obama plans to raise tax rates and reduce tax loopholes on “large” (think public) businesses.
4) Obama plans to raise death tax rates to 45% on estates larger than $3.5 million.
5) Obama plans to freeze income tax rates for other income levels, and cut taxes through targeted tax credits for various activities.
6) Obama supports changing the FICA tax limits (currently capped at $102,000), so higher income individuals would pay higher FICA as well as higher income, cap gains, and dividends. (read more…)

I love California for many reasons. One of the best (and worst) is that the Proposition system allows for a modicum of true democracy to occur. Every election the people get to vote directly for measures the legislature is either unwilling or unable to address on its own. Unfortunately, this means the citizens need to wade through the language of many bills to get educated on what they will really do. Since most people, unlike me, have a life, they rely on voter guides. Well here is mine:

1A Bond Measure for High Speed Rail — NO
2 Cage standards for livestock — NO
3 Bond Measure for Children’s Hospital — NO
4 Notification for Underage Abortions — YES
5 Lighter Sentences for Drug Criminals — NO
6 Minimum Funding for Police — NO
7 Renewable Energy Requirements — NO
8 Define Marriage as 1 Man 1 Women — YES
9 Victims’ Rights — YES
10 Bond Measure to Subsidize Hybrids — NO
11 Bi-Partisan Redistricting Commission — YES
12 Bond Measure to Provide Loans to Vets — YES (read more…)

After 2 years of focusing exclusively on technology, I’ve decided to add politics to the menu of this blog. The reasons are simple. This country is headed down a dangerous path. The likely victory of Obama is a hard turn to the left. The next 4 years will be rocky, and there will be much that outrages me. I feel the need to rant, and this is my place to do it. As usual, all posts here will be my personal opinions. Feel free to disagree.

Not all gadgets are created equal. Some are cool for a while, and then end up at the back of the drawer. Others stand the test of time. In 1976, my dad gave me a PROTO key ring screw driver. 20 years later, it is still on my key ring, and I use it daily. It is the best gadget I’ve ever had.

The simplicity of the PROTO is its brilliance. This is no cheap piece of metal. This is solid steel. Designed to do one thing, and do it well. Back when tools were built to last, PROTO was the king. The screwdriver key ring was, I think, a give-away as advertising. But I would gladly trade a whole box full of normal tools for my PROTO.

Over 20 years, this simple tool has been pushed to the limits. As a box cutter, it is second to none. I’ve opened thousands of boxes with it, without cutting myself or the goods inside. As a computer tech, the PROTO is the 1st tool I grab when I need to get inside a case quickly. Other uses for the PROTO include paint can opener, beer opener, lock pick, hole punch, ice scraper, staple remover, paper shredder unclogger, and oh yeah, screwdriver.

Unfortunately, they don’t make em like they used to. PROTO was bought at somepoint by Stanley tools. They still make good industrial tools, but the replacement for the screwdriver key ring is a cheap knock-off. Compared to the original, it is crap. If you are lucky, you can still find the old ones for sale on E-Bay. I stole the photo for this article from a current auction. Go get your own, and stay away from mine!

Editor’s Note: This article originally published on GadgetWorkshop.com.

It was the shot heard round the hosting world. Last month, my good friends at RagingWire announced their latest offering, IronScale, which has the potential to fundamentally change the hosting business. At least, that’s what the press release and the voice mail I received from Doug Adams, their head of sales claimed. Now, I’ve been doing business with RagingWire for almost 8 years, and I often tell people they have the best designed/built/run data center in Northern California, so I know they offer great services. I’m one of their only three-peat customers (I’ve put three different companies into their facility) and I’ve never been disappointed. Still, I tend to discount terms like “game-changing” as marketing fluff. I’m a “show-me” kind of guy. So they did.

Today I had the pleasure of an on-site demonstration and walk through of the IronScale service. I am impressed. On the surface, it is a typical managed server hosting offering. You rent one or more dedicated servers in their data center and they provide the operating system, network, internet bandwidth, security, etc. Pretty common stuff, and pretty boring. Why did I drive to Sacramento on one of the hottest days of the year for this (110F)? Well, you have to look beneath the surface, which I did, to see what they are really offering. At what I saw was awesome. (read more…)

In a previous article, I extolled the virtues of DNS on Windows. In particular, I love the scripting interface that DNSCMD provides. In that article, I claimed: “Need to create 500 host records, both forward and reverse, in different domains and subnets? DNSCMD can do it with a 1-line script… there is no *nix alternative that is this simple or powerful.” Well, enough people have been bugging me to provide it so here is is:

REM### Copyright 2008 William L. Dougherty
REM### Script for bulk uploading DNS records into Windows DNS
REM### Script requires hosts.txt file in format: FQDN,IPADDR 1 host per line
REM### Example:
REM######host1.domain.com,192.168.1.1
REM######host2.domain.com,192.168.1.2
for /F “tokens=1-7 delims=,. ” %%a in (hosts.txt) do dnscmd /recordadd %%b.%%c %%a a %%d.%%e.%%f.%%g && dnscmd /recordadd %%f.%%e.%%d.in-addr.arpa %%g ptr %%a.%%b.%%c

Just put it into a batch file and you are good to go. Simple, right? Well, maybe I should explain. (read more…)

Samsung finally released the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the AT&T BlackJack yesterday. Having spent a whopping 6 hours playing with it, I can say this is upgrade is well worth the trouble. If you have a BlackJack, upgrade immediately!

Upgrading your phone is a smooth process, if follow the steps Samsung lists here, with a few caveats. First, backup all your data. This upgrade will wipe your phone, so you will lose all data and installed programs. Second, make sure you have links and license keys for any software you have added to your phone. You will need these to reload your software. Third, remove your SIM card before starting the process. You risk losing data on the card if you do not. After that, the upgrade is incredibly straight forward.

There are many differences between Windows Mobile 5 & Mobile 6. The Microsoft Mobile 6 Comparison Guide highlights the main differences. The upgrade will install Mobile 6 Standard edition on your phone. This is still not as feature rich as the OS you’ll find on Windows Mobile touchscreen devices, because it is optimized for 1-handed operation. Even so, I’ve found many improvements that make the upgrade worthwhile.

Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to WM6: (read more…)

Windows Mobile 6 is finally available for the AT&T/Samsung Blackjack. You can get it here: http://ars.samsung.com

Don’t forget to backup your data first and remove your sim card!!!

Well, I agreed with Bill’s last article, until I read the part that said “Windows is better than Unix/Linux.”

Oh wait, that was the first sentence.

Now, if Bill had said “Windows is better than Unix/Linux, sometimes.” or perhaps if he had stretched and written “Windows is better than Unix/Linux — most of the time,” I may have agreed entirely.

Look, I’ve been a fairly OS neutral IT Manager for many years. If you’ve ever used CP/M, Xenix, DOS (any flavor), Novell, Windows (old school pre 3.11), OS/2, Windows, Linux, Solaris (SunOS), HP-UX, AIX, OS/400, Windows 9x/NT/2k (etc.) and now Vista (bleh), and so on, you’ll understand that every OS has features where it will excel. Every OTHER OS will have features that leave the other OS in the dust.

The key to success here is to identify where the use of one OS will benefit you more than the use of another OS. (read more…)

Windows is better than Unix/Linux. Now that I’ve incited volumes of hatred from my Unix/Linux brethren, let me clarify my stance. I work with massively heterogeneous environments. For the past 10 years, every company I’ve supported has utilized at least 3 different operating system platforms including multiple versions and flavors of Linux, Unix, Windows, with some mid-frame (As/400) and Novell thrown in for good measure. The experience has taught me to choose the best tool for the job, rather than get religious about a platform. There are many functions that Windows performs better than *nix, and the *nix community should embrace them.

I hire a lot of Unix/Linux sys admins. One of my favorite interview questions for them is: “Name 5 ways Windows is better than Unix/Linux.” This is a great stress question, because most *nix guys think Microsoft is the devil. But Microsoft remains the most successful software company in the world. If you cannot recognize the areas where Microsoft excels, you are artificially narrowing your view of the world, which means you aren’t making the best technology decisions for your company, which means you can’t work for me (To be fair, I also ask Windows guys to name ways Unix/Linux is better than Windows). As a public service to *nix admins everywhere, I offer this list of 5 ways Windows is better than *nix. There are many others, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much info at once. It might overload your system, and cause a kernel panic.

1. Windows XP is the best productivity desktop
2. Windows 2003 Active Directory Service is the best directory service
3. Windows DNS is the best internal DNS server
4. Exchange 2007 is the best groupware application platform
5. Windows has better hardware support with vendor-supported drivers

Let the flame wars begin! Seriously though, I stand by each of those pronouncements. For those of you who haven’t run screaming from the room, my reasoning is below: (read more…)