Greeting Cards - Java Lake effect greeting cards from Lake Cards Java Lake Effects Greeting Cards. Send these beautiful Java Lake effect greeting cards to your friends and loved ones for free!

My Daughter, Megan, sent me one of these with hot air balloons over a lake. It's sooooooo cool! Note: Greeting cards require that Java be enabled.

Dave Winer, Scripting News -- Reminder, it's Tuesday and that means only one thing. Take a programmer to lunch. Give your friend the programmer a hug, a meal, some fresh air, and listen. Ask how it's going. What do you think of this or that. How could it all work better. Listen. There's a mind in there. Don't be afraid. Programmers can be friendly if you just give them a chance.

BTW, all programmers want to tell you How It Works. In excruciating detail. As if you cared. Try to be patient.

The WIZ Project -- It starts with the creation of a new race of creatures, little guys called WIZes. And it follows through with how they will change the way the Human race relates to the material universe and to each other. Physically, a WIZ is a small piece of electronics, perhaps the size of a pea. It is self-powered, and in radio communication with all other WIZes. Electrically, a WIZ is a general purpose electronic circuit which will replace just about every other electronic circuit on the planet. Look at anything that has electronics in it today. A single pea-sized WIZ replaces it. And functionally, a WIZ is a bit of a "mind". A WIZ-mind is a communication and control system between a human and a WIZ-object. A WIZ-mind is able to sense its environment, make recordings of its environment, compare the current environment to previously recorded environments, and make decisions which produce the best chance of success. I see the WIZ as operating mainly in two spheres of existence. One, as a mind in all material, electrical, or mechanical objects. And secondly, as the pure beingness of a "communicator".

DaveNet : The Web is a Writing Environment -- Just as typewriters fell by the wayside as word processors and inexpensive printers came online, the big brand names of journalism are relatively slow and dilutive, and don't deliver enough flow. Amazingly the print publishers are pulling back from the Web, as if to say "Whew glad that's over." Fundamental mistake. When their point of view is no longer on the Web, there will be no more barrier to entry. What follows? Explosive deconstruction of the brand names of journalism. What's said outside the barriers is already more interesting. Eventually we will shed our need for approval from the brand names of journalism. Today they look for teddy bears and warm-fuzzies, the cute stories that mask the real one -- writers who work for others have less integrity to offer than those who do it for love. Dave Winer

Tech Workers' Stock Options Turn Into Tax Nightmares - By LIZ PULLIAM WESTON, P.J. HUFFSTUTTER, JON HEALEY, Times Staff Writers

Thousands of technology workers are facing huge tax bills by Monday's income tax filing deadline because of company stock they purchased last year that has since plummeted in value. Accountants and politicians from Silicon Valley to Boston say they have been inundated with horror stories about shares purchased with employee options that workers once had hoped would make them rich. Instead, the shares saddled them with big tax bills on profit they never saw. Many of these workers now owe far more in taxes than their stock is worth. Former Cisco engineer Jeffrey Chou, 32, owes $2.5 million in taxes on company stock he purchased last year that has since withered in value. Chou figures that if he were to sell everything he owns, including the three-bedroom townhouse that he shares with his wife and 8-month-old daughter, the family still could not pay the bill. Chou used incentive options to buy, in one transaction, about 100,000 Cisco shares in March 2000, paying 5 cents to 10 cents a share. At the time, Cisco shares were trading for $62 to $63 each. The difference between the price he paid and what the shares were worth--a total of about $7 million--is taxable to him as profit. Chou could sell his shares now, but it wouldn't solve his problem. Cisco closed Thursday at $17.98, which means that his entire stake is worth about $1.8 million. To pay his state and federal tax bills, he needs $700,000 more.

Firms underestimate power of 'blogging' - There's an Internet application that few people have heard about, although it is gaining popularity and will likely become a regular part of our working lives. It's called a Web log, or "blog." And yet, for a technology that is so useful, Web logs are surprisingly absent from corporate intranets. That's because, as with e-mail 10 years ago, few in the corporate sector understand their power -- until they begin using them regularly.

Java-enabled air conditioners - Carrier, in Farmington, Conn., is one of the leading consumer and commercial providers of heating, ventilating, and refrigeration systems. The company inked a deal this week with IBM that will put Java-enabled microchips inside carrier air conditioners to allow air conditioner owners to remotely set the temperature or to switch on or off their air conditioners. The system will also send fault code and diagnostic alerts in real time to a service technician's cell phones or PDAs. Alerts can also be sent via e-mail or fax.