Computer Info – January 15, 2003

Computer Info – February 5, 2003

This Week’s Meeting

We will try to create and explain about the photoalbum applet. This is how they make a frame that has pictures that change in various ways. Also, we have been receiving a large number of viruses lately – mostly the klez and the bugbear – so maybe we should discuss about having your virus program up-to-date.

PhotoAlbum Applet in HTML

A good web site to learn a little about what the photoalbum applet is all about – visit this page.

http://pages.prodigy.net/larzman/applets/phalbum.html

In order to create and use this photoalbum applet, you must: Create a folder to place your information in – maybe a folder named PHOTOALBUM. Visit the web site above and click on DOWNLOAD THE APPLET CLASS FILES and save it to this folder. This is a zipped file – so you must unzip it. This will give you the photoalbum.class file, sample HTML code (album.html), seven different effect files (these are class files), and sample pictures so that you can actually run the photoalbum applet to see it work.

The parts to this photoalbum applet are – and they must all be in the same folder

1. The photoalbum.class file

2. The html code for this applet

3. All of the class files for the effects that you are going to use

4. All of the pictures that you are going to place in your album (jpg or gif)

Below is the HTML code for the Photo Album applet. You can make changes to any of the bold items.

The images are not resized in the album. Images that are smaller than the album interface are centered in the screen. Images that are larger are centered in the screen and are cropped so the excess is not shown. It is best to resize your photos in a photo editing program so that they will fit in your frame. The album default interface size is WIDTH=440 HEIGHT=360

Image files can be quite large, especially photographs saved as GIFs or JPEGs with low compression. You should consider this when you choose image files for display in your album. While the applet itself is less than 30k, image files greater than 50k will slow the applet's performance down considerably due to the longer downloads required for larger files.

Notice that in Java, you do not use the "#" symbol prior to the color code as you would for an HTML page. To change to any other color simply change the code in bold to match your page’s look and feel. If you are unfamiliar with "hexadecimal" color codes, then check out this web site

http://www.december.com/html/spec/color.html

How Taxes Work

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. 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 $7, the eighth $12, the ninth $18, and the tenth man -- the richest -- would pay $59.

That's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement -- until one day, the owner threw them a curve (in tax language a tax cut).

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." So now dinner for the ten only cost $80.00.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six -- the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"

The six men 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 end up being PAID to eat their meal. So the restaurant 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 paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of his earlier $59. Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat 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 who pointed to the tenth. "But he got $7!". "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man, "I only saved a dollar, too . . . It's unfair that he got seven times more than me!".

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man, "why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? 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 he didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered, a little late what was very important. They were FIFTY-TWO DOLLARS short of paying the bill! Imagine that!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college instructors, is how the 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 at the table anymore.

Where would that leave the rest? Unfortunately, most taxing authorities anywhere cannot seem to grasp this rather straightforward logic!

--Author unknown (though often erroneously attributed to Prof. T. Davies, University of South Dakota School of Business)