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I posted this exact same question a couple of days ago. As JW says, if your contribution came out of a joint account, you don't need to file form 709.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=110037&newpost=1600480

I still read differently. If you and your spouse agree, all gifts (including gifts of property held with your spouse as joint tenants or tenants by the entirety) either of you make to third parties during the calendar year will be considered as made one-half by each of you I make a gift of $15k to ...

You are ASSUMED to have split gifts when coming from a married couples joint account - for "better" or "worse". You don't need to elect the fact that you split gifts. In your example of $20k it's for "better" in that you don't need to worry about tracking that you each...

Thanks for your response, sscritic. I looked at the instructions for Form 709 ( http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i709.pdf ), and saw this under "Who Must File" on Page 1. IRS said: "If a gift is of community property, it is considered made one-half by each spouse. For example, a gift of...

Here's the situation. My wife and I had twin babies late last year. As soon as the dust settled, we opened two 529 accounts, one for each child. I am listed as the custodian/owner of both accounts. My wife is listed as successor owner. We then contributed $20,000 to each 529 account (total $40,000 <...

Since the Coverdell ESA benefits have been made permanent, I've decided to fund them for my kids in addition to 529 plans. I'm in the process of opening them at TDAmeritrade, which appears to have several no-transaction-fee Vanguard ETFs available. Unfortunately it looks like most custodians don't a...

Yes, you can purchase I-bonds -- I bought paper I-bonds when on H-1B visa. As long as you have a SSN and are a "resident alien for tax purposes" (meaning you file taxes as a U.S. resident and pass either the green card test or the substantial presence test). Since you won't pass the green ...

At age 22, when I started receiving a stipend from my graduate program. Saved over 50% of my ~20k yearly salary and ended up with over 60k saved by the time I graduated at 28. Since then, the wife and I have been making significantly higher incomes and we still save over 60% of gross (taxes eat up a...

Our average "grocery" bill is about $315/month (3 year average) for two adults. This includes toiletries and other miscellania. Some detailed analysis reproduced from my previous posting on another thread: http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=90402&start=50 ThinkingR...

TFB has a comprehensive overview of RSU tax treatment. Your basis equals the stock price on the vesting date and this amount is taxable to you at ordinary income rates. If you sell immediately upon vesting, RSUs can be thought of as a cash bonus. If you hold on, you will be in capital gain/loss (ST ...

I track my expenses pretty closely, so I can share actual data. This is for a family of two lacto-ovo-vegetarian adults (spouse and me). In the 3-year period between 01/01/2009 and 12/31/2011, our "Groceries" expense category is at $11,364.31. This includes *all* spending at grocery stores...

Remember the original purpose of the Medallion Signature Guarantee program; the safe transfer of stocks and other assets. That's been going on for a long time, well before there was treasurydirect. If you hold securities in physical certificate form and want to transfer or sell them, you will need ...

Thank you for your responses. I've had a BofA account for nearly 10 years, so I'll try walking into my local branch to see what they can do about this. I've got documents notarized for no cost at my branch earlier, but it looks like corporate seals and medallion signatures are a different beast. I'l...

I just tried signing up for a TreasuryDirect account for the first time. For some reason, they could "not verify" my information and sent me the following e-mail: Thanks again for opening a TreasuryDirect account. We are having difficulty verifying the information you provided when opening...

I am in the market for a laptop and would love a recommendation. I am eyeing the Toshiba Portege R835 series for about $750, but the HP Pavilion G6X caught my eye below for that same price with incredible specs (found it on CNET with a coupon). I need it for the web/documents/e-mail, no gaming, and...

I'd get Obihai's Obi100/110 voice bridges. What confuses me is that you still need the land line, don't you? Otherwise, what do you hook your router up to? The landline is virtually the cost of the telco's phone service, isn't it? If so, why not just have the minimal phone service? No, you don't ne...

I was wondering if anyone has setup magicjack plus or called someone using it and determined that it was a suitable replacement for their land line. I was reading that the plus fixes some of the annoying things of the original mjack such as better sound, no pc hookup needed and ability to port your...

Running Windows in a VM may require significantly more memory and CPU horsepower than your native OS. I tried running Windows XP under VirtualBox on Ubuntu on a 3 year old Pentium dual core with 2GB RAM. It was a dog so I just deleted it. On the other hand, I have the same copy of Windows running li...

I also like to drink Kool-Aid before breakfast. But good for the uneducated population is that I don't come up with some unproven theory and then claim that it is correct until proven otherwise. The researchers involved hope that data from two US space agency (Nasa) lunar missions will substantiate...

I get 2 MPS up and 1 MPS down, consistently, ever since I started the cable service. That is the bandwidth I pay for and should be plenty. I think a more important measure would be the ping, which is 15 ms. I have VoiP through my cable provider. That could be interfering with Ooma. But if that is t...

Thanks. Soon, I'll disconnect the old phone line and go just Ooma. My cable company (which has my phone as well) got me mad at them, and I am trying to reduce my relationship with them as much as possible. Have had ooma since October 2009, paid 169.99 for a refurbished unit. Got in on the old deal ...

I am a sometimes Appalachian Trail (AT) hiker. The AT in NC is beautiful. Weather in NC is good. If I ever moved again, I would move to NC. My opinion is NC is the best state; N AL where I live, is the number 2. One of the things I like about NC you do not have to adjust to cultural differences, th...

I am a sometimes Appalachian Trail (AT) hiker. The AT in NC is beautiful. Weather in NC is good. If I ever moved again, I would move to NC. My opinion is NC is the best state; N AL where I live, is the number 2. One of the things I like about NC you do not have to adjust to cultural differences, th...

I use T-Mobile and like their gold rewards status. I bought my phone for less than $30 and I bought a $100 card which gave me gold status. The minutes on the $100 card last for 1 yr but unused minutes will be renewed if I buy another refill card at any dollar value. If I have 900 minutes after 11 m...

I don't run barefoot per se (other than occasional strides on a grassy infield) because the terrain doesn't permit it, but I am a strong proponent and practitioner of minimalism. I have been running in the range of 1200-1500 miles a year in shoes with nearly zero "padding" (Puma H-streets...

I don't run barefoot per se (other than occasional strides on a grassy infield) because the terrain doesn't permit it, but I am a strong proponent and practitioner of minimalism. I have been running in the range of 1200-1500 miles a year in shoes with nearly zero "padding" (Puma H-streets)...

I have a prepay GoPhone with AT&T. I just refilled my account. My plan was .25c per minute no additional fees. When I called them, they told me I could get .10c per minute no additional fees. So now I get 1000 minutes for a $100.00 refill instead of 400 minutes and that last for one year. I thi...

I'll chalk it down to a failure in my ability to explain scientific concepts to the layman. This is exactly what I am talking about... its an insulting tone. So now I and those who agree with me don't understand scientific concepts? I am pretty sure Alex Frakt has a lot of experience when it comes ...

For some, faith in their own beliefs is so strong that no evidence you present will convince them otherwise. Oh please... the negative comments about posters has come from one side in this argument and it needs to stop. Disagree if you like, but stop calling us ignorant in so many words because you...

I am not sure what the point of all your completely off-base analogies are but you keep coming back to 'free will = intelligence' which is utterly false for two reasons: 1) There is nothing remotely regarding free will in the definition of intelligence. 2) We ourselves cannot even verify if we have...

. Those arguing Watson is just a prop have refused to accept this definition, likely for the reason that if they were to describe some behavior, it's quite likely a computer will be able to demonstrate it. Maybe not today, but probably not too far in the future. Seems pretty unlikely to me that a c...

(the most effort it would take is to understand what Alex is asking in the question). - Porcupine If this were a solved problem, computers would have replaced humans in call centers a long time ago. The point of Watson is not its large database, but that meanings and associations can be automatical...

2) trainable rules-based systems - Watson, Google Translate, modern search engines - inputs and outputs are processed according to fixed rules, but outputs will vary depending on the number and quality of inputs. 3) self-refining systems - ??? - the processing rules for inputs and outputs can be mo...

OK, I think I can now categorize the different classes of computer program which different classes of people feel meet the minimum requirement to be called AI. 1) fixed rules-based systems - from pocket calculator to most chess programs to spreadsheets - a given set of inputs will always result in ...

No, because your spreadsheet cannot learn, which is a requirement according to the definition of the word "intelligence". Again, if you insist on using your own definitions of words, then I have no argument. If I tried to teach Watson about music or how to solve a quadratic equation (assu...

No, because your spreadsheet cannot learn, which is a requirement according to the definition of the word "intelligence". Again, if you insist on using your own definitions of words, then I have no argument. If I tried to teach Watson about music or how to solve a quadratic equation (assu...

I would also argue that it really doesn't have the ability to learn in the sense that a human does. Yes you can design it to make new correllations with new datasets, but in reality it is just doing the same thing with a different dataset. It is following explicitly the code that was written for it...

To your last question... the computer program has no awareness of self. I don't agree the computer can reason. Can it apply an algorithm to data? Sure thing... but it cannot do whatever it wants. If it has no will, it cannot reason IMO. My dog can disobey, but a computer program can only do what it...

From some of the responses here, it seems to me that people are grudging Watson's phenomenal performance thus far - it has kicked major butt. Being able to decipher and respond to complex queries in natural language is no mean feat. As someone who works on machine learning problems, it is insulting ...

Watson has a fixed method for evaluating a problem. The theoretical limits of Watson's ability are the limits of that method. Adding data points might bring you closer to that limit for a while, but at some point it will hit the limit and adding additional data will do nothing to improve its result...

Try typing this into your windows 7 X11 window: ls -lrt * report back what you get. I still use Win XP. I've got: -r-xr-x---+ 1 Administrators SYSTEM 47564 2004-08-03 23:38 NTDETECT.COM -rwxrwx---+ 1 Administrators SYSTEM 843 2007-11-07 07:00 install.ini .... And then hundrends of other files.... S...

You are incorrect in this assumption. Machine learning systems do in fact learn by discovering patterns automatically from data. They don't need humans to tell them that "dairy" and "milk" are related entities - the learning algorithm gauges these associations from data *without...

In fact, it is possible to imagine that if you 'created' several identical Watson-clones and then exposed them to different data sets over different time periods that they would be perform very differently at game shows. This is not intelligence, it's still completely deterministic. Now if you take...

Eh, just because Watson does not understand the meaning of _all_ the 'answers' and gets things wrong does not mean that it does not 'understand' some of it. The difference between a dumb computer program that just runs a simple memory-less algorithm and something like Watson is its ability to learn...

I noted that Watson did really well on some categories (for which presumably rich training resources were available, narrowing the solution space) and not so well on others. The questions it missed were interesting. I thought they clearly showed that the machine was producing correct responses with...

During the second half, I was also puzzled because the human contestants were winning rounds in which the screen overlay showed that Watson apparently had the right answer. Apparently Watson was just slightly too slow each time. Behind the scenes, was the director saying to the technicians, "O...

Natural language processing (NLP) and speech recognition are my areas of expertise, and I can attest to the fact that these are incredibly hard problems. State-of-the-art systems are not rule-based (the latter are brittle and don't generalize well at all), but are statistically driven. In other word...

Location, location, location. $2400 for a 600sqft 1br in Manhattan. Don't gasp - I have friends paying the same for a studio :) I have a 600 square foot garage. Fits a boat, two SUVs, all my outdoor equipment, a workshop and a home gym. (Although I confess I have to back one car out to do any serio...

Nikko is a great place to visit - couple of hours from Tokyo by train. It's up in the mountains, has some really good shrines dating from the Tokugawa Shogunate. A bus takes you further into the Nikko National Park, up to Lake Chuzen-ji (a volcanic crater lake), and on to Yumoto Onsen, which houses ...

http://www.runningahead.com <= Great site for runners So far, I've participated in 5km, 4 mile, 8km, 5 mile, 10km, 15km, half marathon, 25k, 20 mile, marathon, and long distance relays (>200 miles). Majority of the time, I run a leisurely 9-10 min/mile. I need to look into training plans and work a...