Monday, February 23, 2009

The American Recovery and Investment Act and You President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law last Tuesday and shortly after he signed it the National Contact Center had people calling and emailing about getting a check because of the new law. The law the President signed last week doesn't give anyone a stimulus payment or tax rebate check and it probably won't affect your 2008 income tax return. Even before the law was passed some people were already eligible for more 2008 stimulus payment money, specifically those who made less income in 2008 than in 2007. If this is your circumstance, you should check to see if you are eligible for the Recovery Rebate Credit. About $288 billion of the $787 billion from the new law will be for tax relief. According to the Internal Revenue Service, there are two tax provisions in the law that could bring you some extra cash this year. The "Making Work Pay" tax credit will give a refundable tax credit to individuals with an adjusted gross income up to $75,000 or $150,000 for married couples filing jointly. The credit will be applied to paychecks with tax withholdings, and you can calculate the amount for you here. Some people who receive benefits from the Social Security Administration, Veteran's Affairs and Railroad Retirement Board will receive an Economic Recovery Payment from the agency that grants their benefits. Recovery.gov is where you can find out about where the other $499 billion will go. The White House has created a website to get your feedback on the law. What do you think of it? - Jake [Gov Gab: Your U.S. Government Blog] 2:47:49 PM     Freeraser Securely Deletes Your Files on the Go [Downloads] . Windows only: Freeraser takes a novel and portable approach to secure file deletion by placing a virtual bio-hazard barrel on your desktop. All files dropped in the barrel are sentenced to random, secure overwriting. Many secure deletion programs integrate into the system shell, but Freeraser is free from the entanglements of installation and administrative privilege. After running the stand alone application, a temporary trash can is placed on your desktop. You can adjust its size and transparency in the options menu—I have it set to one of the larger sizes in the screenshot. Files dragged into it are deleted, and their location on the disk securely erased. You can specify three levels of secure deletion: fast will do one overwrite of random data, forced will do three rounds of DoD approved overwrites, and Ultimate will do a 35 round Gutmann Pass—which if you read our guide to secure file deletion you know is some serious, if reassuring, overkill. Freeraser is freeware, Windows only. Freeraser [via The Portable Freeware Collection] [Lifehacker] 2:44:28 PM

© Copyright 2009 Jocelyn Shaw. Last update: 3/2/2009; 11:02:12 AM. Photo curtesy of Marjorie O'Brien