"Makes sense, but you can only tax someone in your jurisdiction so this would be a receipts/excise tax on the seller rather than a sales tax on the buyer."
That's the whole problem here. No, it wouldn't be a receipts/excise tax, it would be a sales tax. And the Supreme Court, in their BS prior decision on this, failed to explain how a state can charge a tax on a transaction that happens in another state.
It's been against the law for over 200 years. The Constitution gives the Federal government no power to collect State taxes, nor does it give any state the power to tax something going on in another state.
I don't know how the hell they think they will do this, but personally I think their heads are so far up their asses that they can't even see that nice copy of the Constitution they have under glass.
"Sorry, but this "it is going to be an effen nightmare" is pure crap!"
Not only is it not crap, it's 100% true. Nightmare doesn't describe it, because it isn't even possible.
Every state has different taxation rules. Every municipality (county, parish, city, township, whatever) withing those states has its own rules beneath the state rules.
You want to show me some software that will track all the elections and levies and bonds, and the resulting tax rates, in every town in America? And how about those states that have sales tax on some kinds of items but not others? And how often would it be updated? Because the tax rates are changing somewhere every day!
"As an Oregon online retailer, I can say that this will be big pain in the ass, because I'll go from collecting tax for zero states to collecting tax for 46 states, and having to calculate all the various kinds of taxes levied by cities and municipalities. It's going to be a fucking nightmare, which is why the supreme court stopped it in the first place."
I would go further, and ask where the Constitution gives Congress any authority to allow one state to tax a transaction that takes place in another state.
Please don't cite me the Supreme Court... I know about their prior decision. But that doesn't make it Constitutional. Hell, SCOTUS had done A LOT that's unconstitutional.
Even the widest interpretation of "regulating interstate trade" does not cover taxation. It simply isn't legal for one state to tax a transaction in another state this way. And a sale that takes place over the internet -- just like mail-order, for way over 100 years now -- is deemed to have taken place at the company's location, not the customer's.
The Supreme Court ruled against this more times than just this last one. This exact same issue went through the courts over mail-order businesses. The same arguments were used on all sides. And the laws were the way they were because one state simply can't tax a sale in another state.
(I know about the physical presence rule, too. I'm saying when there isn't a physical presence in the customer's state.)
With Truecrypt, I have >>1GB/s possible throughput, so even saturated SATA-6 from an SSD will not be limited by CPU power - hell, 1 or 2 cores are not in use anyway, nearly all of the time."
I will remind you of the situation that started this whole thread. If anything DOES go wrong, good luck getting it back.
Whereas if you encrypt your data, but not your OS, you may not be getting the highest security it is possible to get but it's still pretty damned good and far more fault-tolerant.
It also means all you have to do for backup is copy your files. No backing up of empty drive space, and no losing the time it takes to do so. Heck, you can double or even quadruple or more the number of backups you could get per volume of storage media, depending on how much free space you have on your drive.
"Even at that, with automatic bad block reallocation, fixing it after the fact isn't good enough for the highest level security."
True. But the cost of the "highest" level, in convenience and reliability, is pretty high as well. Most people would do fine simply encrypting their data, and clearing their logs and unused drive space once in a while.
"Why aren't you backing up your files from one encrypted volume to another, at the file level?"
That's probably a better suggesting than mine, if you want full-disk encryption. Just enable both disks, and copy your files over.
My suggestion (to keep from backing up the whole disk, that is) was to make several large encrypted volumes (files) using something like TrueCrypt, and then copying them... but you still end up backing up blank space.
I agree, it would be better to use two or more fully encrypted disks and just copy your files.
I cringe at the mere thought of encrypting my whole main drive, OS and all. Bleaaggghhh! But if you don't, you have to clear your logs once in a while.
(1) Make sure you are using an OS that doesn't make surreptitious copies of stuff without your knowledge. (That eliminates Windows, and for that matter most Microsoft software.) Just about all OSes keep logs, but be aware of how to clear your logs.
(2) Install a SECOND hard drive for your private data. Just data.
(3) Use full-drive encryption on that drive. You will have to enter a (preferably long) password when you log in, but that's the biggest hassle.
(4) Back up your encrypted drive. There should be little if any need to back up your OS and software.
(5) Regularly clear your logs and caches.
Alternatively, you could create large encrypted volumes on an unencrypted hard disk, and just back those up as needed. That helps eliminate backing up empty (but encrypted) space. You don't even need backup software to do this: periodically just copy your encrypted volumes to another drive.
That may seem like a hassle, but it's nowhere near the kind of hassle you are describing. I don't believe in locking myself into software that is picky about how to handle backups. These methods are robust, and really not very much trouble.
The point is that someone mentioned it. Granted, GP was apparently replying to the wrong person. But it was the correct answer to what he/she was actually answering.
"That wasn't viable until the Check21 act was passed in October of 2003. Paypal was already 3 years old by that point. And really, it wasn't until the past 2 or 3 years that banks have been accepting customer-side deposits by scanning."
That's not even remotely true.
A check is nothing more than an order for a bank to pay somebody money. While banks prefer that they take the particular form that the bank issues, they don't have to. Checks have been written and accepted on underwear, and even on the side of a pig.
A check has never had to be scanned. It can be handwritten, printed, or anything else. Ever since the 90s, you have been able to get check printing software (and even the legit kind of machine-readable magnetic ink) that let you print your own checks with any bank and account numbers on them. And they are legally LEGITIMATE checks, as long as they are authorized by the account holder.
I had somebody pass a printed check on my account once, without my permission. It didn't look anything at all like a normal check from that bank. But the bank didn't bat an eyelash. They just paid it.
"I've always wanted the ability to painlessly send someone money, directly, and it's idiotic that paypaI (and other 3rd party wallet services) are the only way to do it. Completely redundant."
"Have you heard of popmoney? They have a tab inside my online banking page. https://www.popmoney.com/"
You're BOTH missing the point. PayPal is a way to pay people and take payments, online, without having to go through a bank or credit card company.
"If anyone ever said "Sexism is anything that makes me uncomfortable." in my hearing I would calmly request that they sign an affidavit to that effect. Such an affidavit might just save my ass later as long as the jury had any sane people on it."
I like that. I didn't think of it at the time, though.
"There are good reasons to master audio in high res, but for listening 16 bit 44.1khz audio is as good as anything."
The reasons for having "extra" fidelity in master recordings is the same reason for having high-resolution photos in "raw" format: there is lots more wiggle room for editing while still maintaining good enough fidelity that the end user can't tell the difference.
For example: take a large (say 16M pixel) 8 x 10 photo, and reduce it to 4 x 5 at 600 dpi. Then take the same photo, edit it (for example, change some colors, remove a cloud from the sky, etc.) and reduce that to the same size and resolution. Even though the resulting photos are higher resolution (at arm's length) than the eye can perceive, they look different.
"The fact that there are stupid women in the world does not mean that sexism doesn't exist."
Apparently you missed my point. I don't think your stories are not very germane to this thread.
My point was that there do exist lots of women who think that ANYTHING that offends them is "sexism". And it appears that this Adria person is one of them.
No, it does NOT mean that everybody is like that. So what's your point?
"Can I read from this that in the USA any county or city can apply separate rates of sales tax?"
Correct. At least in the states where sales taxes are legal.
It's "fragmented" for legitimate reasons, though: states collect taxes to pay for state concerns, counties and cities collect taxes for their respective concerns. This helps ensure that the taxes are used for appropriate purposes.
"And I sincerely have to disagree with your disagreement. You're ignoring the cost of handling payment problems, refunds, tech support due to problems beyond your own control, the hassle for the customer to go to your site instead of the app store (I never do these days; not worth the effort, no matter how promising the app) and the cost of obtaining and maintaining your own certificates."
No, I am not ignoring those. You have to deal with them no matter which way you go about it. You're talking about a difference that doesn't exist.
The cost of a certificate -- if you mean from Apple -- is $100 a year. You also have to pay those regardless of which way you go (unless you want to sell an unsigned app, which lots of people do). Again, the difference doesn't exist.
"You definitely need infrastructure and maintenance, even if someone else hosts it. You need to build a web site, which is a complete waste of time you could instead use for development. You need to push this site, which requires further time and money spent."
Any developer worth his/her salt has a website for the product ANYWAY. Go to the goddamned Mac App Store, and try to find an app that DOESN'T have a link to the company's or developer's website. And good luck with that. Yet again, you're talking about a nonexistent "difference".
"And payment processing is a huge time and money sink. Every return processed takes effort, again better spent doing value add."
Payment processing is NOT a "huge time and money sink". If you think it is, you're looney. I do it (using a service) and it's ridiculously simple. And while it's true that for physical products returns are a pain in the ass, they're NOT for software. You just go to your PayPal (or whatever service) website, and click "refund". It takes about 1 minute per if you have to visit the site specifically just to do the occasional return. And you'd better do them only occasionally. if you doing lots of returns, you're doing something wrong.
"I haven't purchased a program outside of an app store in over a year for my personal use, and I don't foresee doing so again."
Wonderful. I am glad you found a method that works for you, as a customer. But this conversation was about the developer's end, not the customer's end. And I know many, many developers who don't like Apple's walled garden. You have not come even close to convincing me. In fact, you have mainly made arguments that don't even exist.
I should amend that comment. By law, he certainly CAN, if he wants. But then he does become legally liable. If I owned a site I wouldn't let moderators do it.
Um, no. Repeat: it was public. It might have been addressed to somebody in particular, but it's like leaving a note to somebody on a public bulletin board. Anybody can see it.
It has now been seen by thousands and thousands of people. But only a few actually heard the jokes.
There is a difference. And if anything, she was more in the wrong than they were.
Plus, it drives me crazy when women (I have known many of them) try to call anything that makes them personally uncomfortable with "sexism".
Believe it or not, one time another woman at work said it to my face, in so many words: "Sexism is anything that makes me uncomfortable." [emphasis mine] She really did. My jaw hit the floor. Because anybody can be "uncomfortable" about anything. That is not a social standard. It's the sort of thing said by someone who is either terminally insecure, or a power monger. Take your pick.
In the case of Adria, I vote for power monger. Look at this tweet. Joan of Arc, my lily white ass. At least Joan actually had the guts to go to war. She didn't just have people assassinated.
I have news for you guys... but maybe it isn't news after all: in the locker room, women are just as crude and lewd as men are. They just try to pretend otherwise in public.
In this case... well, I'll just say she needs to grow up. Maybe getting fired will wise her up a little.
"IRC, her twitter post was semi-private, being automatically visible to the intended recipient (and potentially mutual followers) but nobody else."
Um, no. It depends entirely on how you are viewing Twitter. Since it wasn't a Direct Message, literally anybody could go to her Twitter page, for example, and see the tweet. So it was public as hell. In fact, if you think about it, her tweet was a hell of a lot more public than some stupid jokes at a conference, because only a few people heard that. But by now, thousands upon thousands of people have SEEN her tweet, not just heard about it third-hand.
Slashdot Mirror
"Makes sense, but you can only tax someone in your jurisdiction so this would be a receipts/excise tax on the seller rather than a sales tax on the buyer."
That's the whole problem here. No, it wouldn't be a receipts/excise tax, it would be a sales tax. And the Supreme Court, in their BS prior decision on this, failed to explain how a state can charge a tax on a transaction that happens in another state.
It's been against the law for over 200 years. The Constitution gives the Federal government no power to collect State taxes, nor does it give any state the power to tax something going on in another state.
I don't know how the hell they think they will do this, but personally I think their heads are so far up their asses that they can't even see that nice copy of the Constitution they have under glass.
"Sorry, but this "it is going to be an effen nightmare" is pure crap!"
Not only is it not crap, it's 100% true. Nightmare doesn't describe it, because it isn't even possible.
Every state has different taxation rules. Every municipality (county, parish, city, township, whatever) withing those states has its own rules beneath the state rules.
You want to show me some software that will track all the elections and levies and bonds, and the resulting tax rates, in every town in America? And how about those states that have sales tax on some kinds of items but not others? And how often would it be updated? Because the tax rates are changing somewhere every day!
It's not just a nightmare. It's unworkable.
"As an Oregon online retailer, I can say that this will be big pain in the ass, because I'll go from collecting tax for zero states to collecting tax for 46 states, and having to calculate all the various kinds of taxes levied by cities and municipalities. It's going to be a fucking nightmare, which is why the supreme court stopped it in the first place."
I would go further, and ask where the Constitution gives Congress any authority to allow one state to tax a transaction that takes place in another state.
Please don't cite me the Supreme Court... I know about their prior decision. But that doesn't make it Constitutional. Hell, SCOTUS had done A LOT that's unconstitutional.
Even the widest interpretation of "regulating interstate trade" does not cover taxation. It simply isn't legal for one state to tax a transaction in another state this way. And a sale that takes place over the internet -- just like mail-order, for way over 100 years now -- is deemed to have taken place at the company's location, not the customer's.
The Supreme Court ruled against this more times than just this last one. This exact same issue went through the courts over mail-order businesses. The same arguments were used on all sides. And the laws were the way they were because one state simply can't tax a sale in another state.
(I know about the physical presence rule, too. I'm saying when there isn't a physical presence in the customer's state.)
"Why exactly?
With Truecrypt, I have >>1GB/s possible throughput, so even saturated SATA-6 from an SSD will not be limited by CPU power - hell, 1 or 2 cores are not in use anyway, nearly all of the time."
I will remind you of the situation that started this whole thread. If anything DOES go wrong, good luck getting it back.
Whereas if you encrypt your data, but not your OS, you may not be getting the highest security it is possible to get but it's still pretty damned good and far more fault-tolerant.
It also means all you have to do for backup is copy your files. No backing up of empty drive space, and no losing the time it takes to do so. Heck, you can double or even quadruple or more the number of backups you could get per volume of storage media, depending on how much free space you have on your drive.
"Even at that, with automatic bad block reallocation, fixing it after the fact isn't good enough for the highest level security."
True. But the cost of the "highest" level, in convenience and reliability, is pretty high as well. Most people would do fine simply encrypting their data, and clearing their logs and unused drive space once in a while.
"Sheesh, paypal is a bank, not that they want to be regulated like one but still the clocks ticking on that one."
Unless and until they are, then they are not.
And this really helps anything?
That's an interesting idea.
"Why aren't you backing up your files from one encrypted volume to another, at the file level?"
That's probably a better suggesting than mine, if you want full-disk encryption. Just enable both disks, and copy your files over.
My suggestion (to keep from backing up the whole disk, that is) was to make several large encrypted volumes (files) using something like TrueCrypt, and then copying them... but you still end up backing up blank space.
I agree, it would be better to use two or more fully encrypted disks and just copy your files.
I cringe at the mere thought of encrypting my whole main drive, OS and all. Bleaaggghhh! But if you don't, you have to clear your logs once in a while.
(1) Make sure you are using an OS that doesn't make surreptitious copies of stuff without your knowledge. (That eliminates Windows, and for that matter most Microsoft software.) Just about all OSes keep logs, but be aware of how to clear your logs.
(2) Install a SECOND hard drive for your private data. Just data.
(3) Use full-drive encryption on that drive. You will have to enter a (preferably long) password when you log in, but that's the biggest hassle.
(4) Back up your encrypted drive. There should be little if any need to back up your OS and software.
(5) Regularly clear your logs and caches.
Alternatively, you could create large encrypted volumes on an unencrypted hard disk, and just back those up as needed. That helps eliminate backing up empty (but encrypted) space. You don't even need backup software to do this: periodically just copy your encrypted volumes to another drive.
That may seem like a hassle, but it's nowhere near the kind of hassle you are describing. I don't believe in locking myself into software that is picky about how to handle backups. These methods are robust, and really not very much trouble.
The point is that someone mentioned it. Granted, GP was apparently replying to the wrong person. But it was the correct answer to what he/she was actually answering.
I didn't make it clear how I was connecting this to what you were saying.
Any bank could accept any scan, at any time. Or a fax. Most of them just didn't. But that was a matter of bank policy, not law.
"That wasn't viable until the Check21 act was passed in October of 2003. Paypal was already 3 years old by that point. And really, it wasn't until the past 2 or 3 years that banks have been accepting customer-side deposits by scanning."
That's not even remotely true.
A check is nothing more than an order for a bank to pay somebody money. While banks prefer that they take the particular form that the bank issues, they don't have to. Checks have been written and accepted on underwear, and even on the side of a pig.
A check has never had to be scanned. It can be handwritten, printed, or anything else. Ever since the 90s, you have been able to get check printing software (and even the legit kind of machine-readable magnetic ink) that let you print your own checks with any bank and account numbers on them. And they are legally LEGITIMATE checks, as long as they are authorized by the account holder.
I had somebody pass a printed check on my account once, without my permission. It didn't look anything at all like a normal check from that bank. But the bank didn't bat an eyelash. They just paid it.
"I've always wanted the ability to painlessly send someone money, directly, and it's idiotic that paypaI (and other 3rd party wallet services) are the only way to do it. Completely redundant."
"Have you heard of popmoney? They have a tab inside my online banking page. https://www.popmoney.com/"
You're BOTH missing the point. PayPal is a way to pay people and take payments, online, without having to go through a bank or credit card company.
Sheesh. Get a clue.
"If anyone ever said "Sexism is anything that makes me uncomfortable." in my hearing I would calmly request that they sign an affidavit to that effect. Such an affidavit might just save my ass later as long as the jury had any sane people on it."
I like that. I didn't think of it at the time, though.
This.
When I wrote "take the same photo", I meant the original, not the reduced copy.
"There are good reasons to master audio in high res, but for listening 16 bit 44.1khz audio is as good as anything."
The reasons for having "extra" fidelity in master recordings is the same reason for having high-resolution photos in "raw" format: there is lots more wiggle room for editing while still maintaining good enough fidelity that the end user can't tell the difference.
For example: take a large (say 16M pixel) 8 x 10 photo, and reduce it to 4 x 5 at 600 dpi. Then take the same photo, edit it (for example, change some colors, remove a cloud from the sky, etc.) and reduce that to the same size and resolution. Even though the resulting photos are higher resolution (at arm's length) than the eye can perceive, they look different.
"The fact that there are stupid women in the world does not mean that sexism doesn't exist."
Apparently you missed my point. I don't think your stories are not very germane to this thread.
My point was that there do exist lots of women who think that ANYTHING that offends them is "sexism". And it appears that this Adria person is one of them.
No, it does NOT mean that everybody is like that. So what's your point?
"Can I read from this that in the USA any county or city can apply separate rates of sales tax?"
Correct. At least in the states where sales taxes are legal.
It's "fragmented" for legitimate reasons, though: states collect taxes to pay for state concerns, counties and cities collect taxes for their respective concerns. This helps ensure that the taxes are used for appropriate purposes.
Um, WHOOSH!
You have completely missed my point. I don't give a damn WHY people saw it. My point was that people can see it.
"And I sincerely have to disagree with your disagreement. You're ignoring the cost of handling payment problems, refunds, tech support due to problems beyond your own control, the hassle for the customer to go to your site instead of the app store (I never do these days; not worth the effort, no matter how promising the app) and the cost of obtaining and maintaining your own certificates."
No, I am not ignoring those. You have to deal with them no matter which way you go about it. You're talking about a difference that doesn't exist.
The cost of a certificate -- if you mean from Apple -- is $100 a year. You also have to pay those regardless of which way you go (unless you want to sell an unsigned app, which lots of people do). Again, the difference doesn't exist.
"You definitely need infrastructure and maintenance, even if someone else hosts it. You need to build a web site, which is a complete waste of time you could instead use for development. You need to push this site, which requires further time and money spent."
Any developer worth his/her salt has a website for the product ANYWAY. Go to the goddamned Mac App Store, and try to find an app that DOESN'T have a link to the company's or developer's website. And good luck with that. Yet again, you're talking about a nonexistent "difference".
"And payment processing is a huge time and money sink. Every return processed takes effort, again better spent doing value add."
Payment processing is NOT a "huge time and money sink". If you think it is, you're looney. I do it (using a service) and it's ridiculously simple. And while it's true that for physical products returns are a pain in the ass, they're NOT for software. You just go to your PayPal (or whatever service) website, and click "refund". It takes about 1 minute per if you have to visit the site specifically just to do the occasional return. And you'd better do them only occasionally. if you doing lots of returns, you're doing something wrong.
"I haven't purchased a program outside of an app store in over a year for my personal use, and I don't foresee doing so again."
Wonderful. I am glad you found a method that works for you, as a customer. But this conversation was about the developer's end, not the customer's end. And I know many, many developers who don't like Apple's walled garden. You have not come even close to convincing me. In fact, you have mainly made arguments that don't even exist.
I should amend that comment. By law, he certainly CAN, if he wants. But then he does become legally liable. If I owned a site I wouldn't let moderators do it.
Um, no. Repeat: it was public. It might have been addressed to somebody in particular, but it's like leaving a note to somebody on a public bulletin board. Anybody can see it.
It has now been seen by thousands and thousands of people. But only a few actually heard the jokes.
There is a difference. And if anything, she was more in the wrong than they were.
This. Thank you.
Plus, it drives me crazy when women (I have known many of them) try to call anything that makes them personally uncomfortable with "sexism".
Believe it or not, one time another woman at work said it to my face, in so many words: "Sexism is anything that makes me uncomfortable." [emphasis mine] She really did. My jaw hit the floor. Because anybody can be "uncomfortable" about anything. That is not a social standard. It's the sort of thing said by someone who is either terminally insecure, or a power monger. Take your pick.
In the case of Adria, I vote for power monger. Look at this tweet. Joan of Arc, my lily white ass. At least Joan actually had the guts to go to war. She didn't just have people assassinated.
I have news for you guys... but maybe it isn't news after all: in the locker room, women are just as crude and lewd as men are. They just try to pretend otherwise in public.
In this case... well, I'll just say she needs to grow up. Maybe getting fired will wise her up a little.
"IRC, her twitter post was semi-private, being automatically visible to the intended recipient (and potentially mutual followers) but nobody else."
Um, no. It depends entirely on how you are viewing Twitter. Since it wasn't a Direct Message, literally anybody could go to her Twitter page, for example, and see the tweet. So it was public as hell. In fact, if you think about it, her tweet was a hell of a lot more public than some stupid jokes at a conference, because only a few people heard that. But by now, thousands upon thousands of people have SEEN her tweet, not just heard about it third-hand.