I just made my first torrents, and made a few mistakes. The torrents were split up archives of all the video files from LA Indymedia, which we host.

One of the fastest spreading ideas in the past decades has been the idea of "free open source software" and the related idea of the Creative Commons.

This is a mini site about taxes. If you're not familiar with taxes, there's some basic information here. The articles at the top are essays, and the articles toward the bottom are a glossary of sorts. For the most part, this site is for residents of California.

I'm not a tax professional or an accountant, or even a bookkeeper. I just like to do my own taxes.

A tax-exempt savings account is just like a savings account at a bank, except that any money put into it isn't taxed, and the money can be spent only for specific, eligible expenses.

The progressive income tax divides your income into ranges, called brackets.

The terms progressive tax and regressive tax describe taxes that affect different levels of income differently. They don't refer to political ideology.

When someone works as an independent contractor or on odd jobs, they have to pay self-employment tax in addition to regular income tax.

Form 1099 is an information form, submitted to the IRS, telling them that a company paid a contractor some money for services.

Tax form W-2 is a statement of earnings. Your employer will send you one in January, and you use it to fill out your taxes.

The earned income tax credit (EITC) is a great deal for low-to-moderate income workers. For single workers, the credit is below $500, but for dual or single parent families with children, the EITC can help eliminate up to $5,600 of your taxes.

People get tax credits and tax deductions mixed up.

A tax credit is money the government gives to you.

A tax deduction is money that the government won't tax.

Tax deductions fall into two broad categories: the ones taken before calculating your adjusted gross income (AGI), and those taken

A tax credit is money that's given to you for spending your money in a specific way, or belonging to a specific category of taxpayer.

Your "gross income" is all the money you've earned in wages or salary, received as interest, gifts and prizes. Basically, anything you got in some form of cash.