I read throught the patent, and reading through the legalese, I'd say that there's absolutely nothing in this patent for which there isn't prior art. Basically, it claims a system in which there are multiple "theme engines", at least one of which has a hard-coded theme, and at least one of which has themes user-configurable through data files, and that themes customize either or both appearance and behavior. Now, the key is in the definitions, which aren't adequately given.
The "theme engine", as I see it, would be an X window manager. Obviously, there's more than one of these, so that requirement is met. FVWM has a hard-coded theme, so that requirement is met. AfterSTEP has data-driven themes controlling both appearance and behavior. Thus, most Linux distributions prior to 1998 are valid prior art. This patent doesn't have a chance of holding up in court. ------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
No videocards indeed,
but the Playstation 2 videochip
set uses Direct RDRAM though.
Sony's web page was painful to navigate and lacking on specs, but a Google search came up with this and this, both of which confirm that the video subsystem of the PS2 use DRAM, while the main memory is RDRAM. ------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
"However, when the memory system is under higher load the answer can be quite different. When one or more additional transactions are being serviced, factors such as bank conflicts and address bandwidth become important issues. The higher bank count of RIMMs versus DIMMs means that the probability of bank conflicts occurring is much lower. Therefore, the high latency and bandwidth penalties associated with bank conflicts occur far less often in RDRAM-based systems than in SDRAM-based systems. Furthermore, as illustrated in the previous timing diagrams, the need for 2-cycle addressing on an address bus used to specify both Row and Column addresses means that the address bus may not be available to start a subsequent transaction in SDRAM-based memory. During periods of higher memory utilization, when more than one request is sent to the memory controller, some memory requests may be delayed waiting for the address bus. For these reasons, under higher loads RDRAM-based memory can be much more efficient, achieving lower latency and higher bandwidth than SDRAM. " --Tom's Hardware, quoted by sn0wdude
Remember, that paragraph is a theoretical evaluation, based on the benchmarks and on the author's personal opinions. Looking at the benchmarks, I noticed that the SDRAM used was CAS3 (low-grade), which will perform more poorly that CAS2. It compared this against PC800 ECC RDRAM, which is top-grade and extremely rare. A search on Pricewatch came up with $41 for 128MB CAS2 PC133 SDRAM, $154 for the same amount of PC800 RDRAM.
This significantly hurts the credibility of the benchmarks. In the one benchmark where RDRAM took a significant advantage, the author says that "the benchmark isn't designed to make efficient use of memory architecture, and the scores don't fairly represent it, this is still a good measure of raw memory throughput", seemingly contradicting is own results while affirming them. On the Q3A benchmarks PC133 SDRAM out-performed the PC800 RDRAM, and on SYSmark RDRAM won only by 6%. ------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
RDRAM is certainly the way to go, although the high price is not a factor when using RDRAM in servers. I think the desktop market will be still using cheap SDRAM for the next couple of years. RDRAM is nice for servers, but for normal pc-usage it's just too expensive. (Look at the videocard prices for the GeForce cards, mostly because of the expensive memory used....) I'll stick with SDRAM for awhile because it's very cheap.
RDRAM is not the way to go, and not just because of price. DDR SDRAM is faster (benchmarks vary, but usually favor DDRSDRAM), cheaper (pricewatch $65 vs $129), more reliable (not because of RDRAM itself, but because of controller difficulties on motherboard), less power consuming, and cooler (RDRAM needs a fan). DDR SDRAM is also, by open source philosophy, ethically superior, because it is an open standard while RDRAM is closed. DDR SDRAM is superior to RDRAM in nearly every way.
Presently, no video card exists which uses RDRAM, and given the thermal and latency issues with RDRAM, it's probably going to remain that way indefinitely. The high-end GeForce cards use high-grade DDR SDRAM at very high clock frequencies, which is much faster but generally even more expensive than RDRAM.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Re:no wonder flashcom is bankrupt...
on
DSL Woes
·
· Score: 1
Did I fall through a crack or what? How many others aren't paying a dime for flashcom's service?
It seems that Flashcom managed to seriously screw up their billing software, so many (most?) of their customers were never being billed. I had Flashcom's service for a year and never payed for any of it, and was switched to a different provider when Flashcom went under. Considering that they weren't billing their customers, it's no surprise they went under. ------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
You're confused--there's no such thing as copyright registration. You must be thinking of trademark registration. Everything is copyrighted by default, with no effort necessary, and even if you did make the effort it wouldn't do any good.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
The general recommendation with using material copyrighted by others in mods is, don't use any. It is always better to make original characters for use in mods. Not only does it create risk that the creators might object (as in this case), it makes the mod seem unoriginal and unprofessional. ------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
While 3Dfx has definitely lost this product cycle, I think that most people (and reviewers) have been completely unfair to them with the cards after the Voodoo 2.
Reviewers have a tendency to ignore the prices of cards and compare completely different price ranges against eachother, simply because they don't have to buy the cards themselves. This is why the Voodoo3 looked so bad in comparison to the TNT2Ultra, as well as most of the other cards in that cycle as well. Despite being drastically cheaper the 3Dfx held up in performance, so the NVZealots instead criticized it for lack of 32-bit color support (which was much less important than than it is now). ------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
But we're seeing very, very little from indie game groups.
Actually, this isn't true. While very few amateur games being built from scratch, given a bit more to start from, ameteur game developers have done just as much as the "pro" game developers. Look at the Half-Life modification scene, and in particular Counter-Strike. While Gooseman wrote only a small portion of the code (most of the code is in the engine or starts in the SDK), the artwork and maps in Counter-Strike are fanstastic, and have made it by far the most popular first-person shooter written.
I think that for something like the Indrema to succeed, they need something similar to Half-Life or Quake: good as a game, but better as a base from which to write other games, with a powerful SDK. ------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Pentium 4 1.5 GHz: $1099 (Pricewatch)
AMD T-Bird 1.2 GHz: $488 (Pricewatch)
Marketing to convince consumers that Pentium 4 is faster: $4 million
Look on Intel managers' face after seeing sales statistics: Priceless
I've heard of this before, and there's one fundamental problem with it. It's trying to replace the keyboard where the keyboard is the best device, and everyone is happy with the keyboard. Having to do multi-movement sequences for single keypresses is impractical in an RTS, where the speed at which you input is a major component of 'skill'.
I see a number of major problems with this device.
1) "Ergonomic" design: never fits anyone with an unusual hand shape/size
2) Right-handed only: being lefty, this is a major factor for me
3) Not enough buttons: I have more keys in my Half-Life configuration than on the keyboard, and use systems with meta-keys and multi-key sequences. Playing with 9 buttons would mean dropping 100+ communication macros.
Searching for GPL'ed code in MS's software, even with the source code, could be an interesting project. The best approach would probably be first to write a program that compares only commented sections and looks for complete comments which A)match exactly, B)are over a certain length, and C)do not pass a spellcheck (nothing is more damning than comment typos which match up). Then, get together all the GPL'ed source code you can find (this is difficult, there's a massive amount of it and it'd take a long time to download and be difficult to store). Then, systematically compare all of MS's code to GPL'ed code. This would be a very slow task, and would have to be run over several nights. Then a human looks over the results, throws out the (probably numerous) false matches, and mails what's left to the EFF.
I notice that in the Peacefire comparison, the only number they consider is (# of non-pornographic sites blocked)/(total # of sites blocked), i.e. the number of false positives
They use this statistic because it is the only one which is possible to obtain. To get the number of sites which should be blocked but aren't would require knowing where every single pr0n site on the internet is, which is completely unfeasible.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
The problem with click-wrap license agreements is that they are written as contracts yet ignore the entire purpose of contracts. The purpose of a contract is so that two groups can prove an agreement was made, in the event a dispute arises and/or one side broke their side of the agreement. However, with click-wrap licenses, it's impossible to prove that the person didn't extract the files and install manually without clicking "agree", and even if they did click "agree" they are usually unaware of what they are agreeing to, and therefore not really agreeing to anything. Clauses which enable the developers/distributors to modify the agreements without notice make consumers even less aware of what they are agreeing to, since they can't even see the contract they are supposedly signing. Also, while the consumers may not hold up their side of the agreement (license agreements often include rediculous restrictions that could never be envorced), the developers/distributors rarely hold up their side either (such as the statement that software can be returned if you don't agree to the license).
I don't remember who said it, but a quote I particularly remember is "realism is a tool, not a goal." Realism can greatly enhance the fun of a game, but it must be used properly and selectively. In current games, the place of realism is as the target for the graphics. If the storyline, gameplay, and physics are based too closely on real life, the game won't be any fun.
In response to the question of whether good graphics alone make a game more fun, I would definitely say that they do, but that the coolness of the graphics wears off after a few hours. Balanced gameplay and quality design should always be the focus of any game. Graphics are secondary.
Too many companies these days are installing clients that allow them to see your screen.
This software is generally used by support staff to avoid having to move on-site to diagnose and fix problems. Tools such as these degrade performance on the watched machine quite noticeably, so there is no way it could be done without being noticed, and the network bandwidth usage is too high to monitor more than a few people at once. So, this is not really an issue, yet.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Big greedy corporations use their hordes of lawyers to pass unconstitutional legistlation and attack consumer rights. That's news.
Big greedy corporations use their hordes of lawyers to find tax loopholes and save money. That's not news.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
I think it's rather funny that you linked to that issue. I have that exact problem. On a Pentium 3/450 with 440BX motherboard. The problem is that a lot of older motherboards were made with off-spec AGP power, which causes GeForce-series cards to corrupt sections of memory and crash. ------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
iD has made the same mistake as Valve did with their patch. It breaks compatibility with mods, changes the physics/feel of the game, and was done without notice. I called the HL 1.1 patch the "disaster patch", and it sounds like iD made the same mistake.
The problem was, when Valve "seeded the new netcode and other details to the bigger mod authors prior to the patch release," they did a very sloppy job of it. After the HL 1.1.0.0 patch, there were exactly two mods which had new versions available immediately. Many mod authors were extremely angry at Valve for not even notifying them that their mods would no longer work. Many mods were never ported at all. In fact, my favorite mod (Half-Life Jailbreak) had already been abandoned, and I had to get the source code (no easy task, the only person who had it uploaded a corrupt copy before going idle, I ended up with a corrupt copy) to port and clean up the whole thing as open-source (GPL is incompatible with Valve's disclaimer, so it's a custom license, OSML).
A good percentage of the people who didn't even play any of the broken mods were mad at Valve for the patch, because of the new net code. Basically, it was a blessing to people with badly-optimized dial-up connections, and a curse to anyone with anything better. The net code change might as well have been a physics change, because the messed-up netcode totally changed the feel of the game. For those modemmers who benefitted from the netcode and didn't play any broken mods, there was a load of controversial changes to boot.
Having done some development with HL mods, I agree with your statement that a very small percentage of the source code consists of 3D-API related things (probably even less than 2-5%). However, while the percentage of the source code is small, the percentage of the processor load is very high. The geometry transform and lighting (handled by the API, in systems without coprocessors for that) make up about half the CPU load, all of it doing simple and redundant geometry transformations.
Brick-and-mortar stores are shipping large quantities all to the same site, so the per-unit shipping is a tiny fraction of what it is with an online store, and in many cases, the shipping is done through a government-owned agency, so part of the shipping charge IS artificial and going to the same destination as the brick-and-mortar stores' sales taxes. While this is obviously not the case with other shipping methods, it's still significant.
---------------------
The two new character classes were discovered and leaked well in advance by Infoceptor. Apparently, the names of all the classes and skills were lying around in plain text inside the MPQ archive, so it was discovered and announced that there would be an expansion featuring these classes.
---------------------
And the independant booksellers do have a point about tax free interstate book sales undercutting them - I mean, the book business (and many others) is hard enough already without the addition of what ammounts to state sanctioned incentives to buy from out of state.
The shipping costs are far greater than sales tax, so no, this is not true.
Perhaps someone more conversant in interstate commerce than I can enlighten us as to how this works with mailorder catalogs right now? That would seem to be the closest guidline that I can think of.
Mail-order catalogs are tax free. Again, the cost of shipping is greater than that of any tax.
As for taxation on the internet, my bet for a final tax scheme is this: some sort of federal tax, with the same rate everywhere, on all purchasesmade from domestic merchants.
This gives online stores a disadvantage in pricing--they're forced to have HIGHER prices than brick-and-mortar stores, because they have to pay both taxes and shipping expenses.
A state tax on internet transactions, such as this one, would be a disaster to implement. If it is based on the location of the seller, all the sellers would leave that state. If it is based on the location of the buyer, it creates the problem of having to deal with different taxes in different states, which is bad for the little guys having to hire extra lawyers to keep track of what the tax laws are. If it is based on both the buyer and seller's location, then it has both problems.
A federal tax would be more reasonable, but it would discourage the online economy and stifle its growth, which is why a moratorium was passed a while ago.
---------------------------
Slashdot Mirror
I read throught the patent, and reading through the legalese, I'd say that there's absolutely nothing in this patent for which there isn't prior art. Basically, it claims a system in which there are multiple "theme engines", at least one of which has a hard-coded theme, and at least one of which has themes user-configurable through data files, and that themes customize either or both appearance and behavior. Now, the key is in the definitions, which aren't adequately given.
The "theme engine", as I see it, would be an X window manager. Obviously, there's more than one of these, so that requirement is met. FVWM has a hard-coded theme, so that requirement is met. AfterSTEP has data-driven themes controlling both appearance and behavior. Thus, most Linux distributions prior to 1998 are valid prior art. This patent doesn't have a chance of holding up in court.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Remember, that paragraph is a theoretical evaluation, based on the benchmarks and on the author's personal opinions. Looking at the benchmarks, I noticed that the SDRAM used was CAS3 (low-grade), which will perform more poorly that CAS2. It compared this against PC800 ECC RDRAM, which is top-grade and extremely rare. A search on Pricewatch came up with $41 for 128MB CAS2 PC133 SDRAM, $154 for the same amount of PC800 RDRAM.
This significantly hurts the credibility of the benchmarks. In the one benchmark where RDRAM took a significant advantage, the author says that "the benchmark isn't designed to make efficient use of memory architecture, and the scores don't fairly represent it, this is still a good measure of raw memory throughput", seemingly contradicting is own results while affirming them. On the Q3A benchmarks PC133 SDRAM out-performed the PC800 RDRAM, and on SYSmark RDRAM won only by 6%.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
RDRAM is not the way to go, and not just because of price. DDR SDRAM is faster (benchmarks vary, but usually favor DDRSDRAM), cheaper (pricewatch $65 vs $129), more reliable (not because of RDRAM itself, but because of controller difficulties on motherboard), less power consuming, and cooler (RDRAM needs a fan). DDR SDRAM is also, by open source philosophy, ethically superior, because it is an open standard while RDRAM is closed. DDR SDRAM is superior to RDRAM in nearly every way.
Presently, no video card exists which uses RDRAM, and given the thermal and latency issues with RDRAM, it's probably going to remain that way indefinitely. The high-end GeForce cards use high-grade DDR SDRAM at very high clock frequencies, which is much faster but generally even more expensive than RDRAM.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Did I fall through a crack or what? How many others aren't paying a dime for flashcom's service?
It seems that Flashcom managed to seriously screw up their billing software, so many (most?) of their customers were never being billed. I had Flashcom's service for a year and never payed for any of it, and was switched to a different provider when Flashcom went under. Considering that they weren't billing their customers, it's no surprise they went under.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
You're confused--there's no such thing as copyright registration. You must be thinking of trademark registration. Everything is copyrighted by default, with no effort necessary, and even if you did make the effort it wouldn't do any good.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
The general recommendation with using material copyrighted by others in mods is, don't use any. It is always better to make original characters for use in mods. Not only does it create risk that the creators might object (as in this case), it makes the mod seem unoriginal and unprofessional.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
While 3Dfx has definitely lost this product cycle, I think that most people (and reviewers) have been completely unfair to them with the cards after the Voodoo 2.
Reviewers have a tendency to ignore the prices of cards and compare completely different price ranges against eachother, simply because they don't have to buy the cards themselves. This is why the Voodoo3 looked so bad in comparison to the TNT2Ultra, as well as most of the other cards in that cycle as well. Despite being drastically cheaper the 3Dfx held up in performance, so the NVZealots instead criticized it for lack of 32-bit color support (which was much less important than than it is now).
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
But we're seeing very, very little from indie game groups.
Actually, this isn't true. While very few amateur games being built from scratch, given a bit more to start from, ameteur game developers have done just as much as the "pro" game developers. Look at the Half-Life modification scene, and in particular Counter-Strike. While Gooseman wrote only a small portion of the code (most of the code is in the engine or starts in the SDK), the artwork and maps in Counter-Strike are fanstastic, and have made it by far the most popular first-person shooter written.
I think that for something like the Indrema to succeed, they need something similar to Half-Life or Quake: good as a game, but better as a base from which to write other games, with a powerful SDK.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Pentium 4 1.5 GHz: $1099 (Pricewatch)
AMD T-Bird 1.2 GHz: $488 (Pricewatch)
Marketing to convince consumers that Pentium 4 is faster: $4 million
Look on Intel managers' face after seeing sales statistics: Priceless
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
I've heard of this before, and there's one fundamental problem with it. It's trying to replace the keyboard where the keyboard is the best device, and everyone is happy with the keyboard. Having to do multi-movement sequences for single keypresses is impractical in an RTS, where the speed at which you input is a major component of 'skill'.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
I see a number of major problems with this device.
1) "Ergonomic" design: never fits anyone with an unusual hand shape/size
2) Right-handed only: being lefty, this is a major factor for me
3) Not enough buttons: I have more keys in my Half-Life configuration than on the keyboard, and use systems with meta-keys and multi-key sequences. Playing with 9 buttons would mean dropping 100+ communication macros.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Searching for GPL'ed code in MS's software, even with the source code, could be an interesting project. The best approach would probably be first to write a program that compares only commented sections and looks for complete comments which A)match exactly, B)are over a certain length, and C)do not pass a spellcheck (nothing is more damning than comment typos which match up). Then, get together all the GPL'ed source code you can find (this is difficult, there's a massive amount of it and it'd take a long time to download and be difficult to store). Then, systematically compare all of MS's code to GPL'ed code. This would be a very slow task, and would have to be run over several nights. Then a human looks over the results, throws out the (probably numerous) false matches, and mails what's left to the EFF.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
I notice that in the Peacefire comparison, the only number they consider is (# of non-pornographic sites blocked)/(total # of sites blocked), i.e. the number of false positives
They use this statistic because it is the only one which is possible to obtain. To get the number of sites which should be blocked but aren't would require knowing where every single pr0n site on the internet is, which is completely unfeasible.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
The problem with click-wrap license agreements is that they are written as contracts yet ignore the entire purpose of contracts. The purpose of a contract is so that two groups can prove an agreement was made, in the event a dispute arises and/or one side broke their side of the agreement. However, with click-wrap licenses, it's impossible to prove that the person didn't extract the files and install manually without clicking "agree", and even if they did click "agree" they are usually unaware of what they are agreeing to, and therefore not really agreeing to anything. Clauses which enable the developers/distributors to modify the agreements without notice make consumers even less aware of what they are agreeing to, since they can't even see the contract they are supposedly signing. Also, while the consumers may not hold up their side of the agreement (license agreements often include rediculous restrictions that could never be envorced), the developers/distributors rarely hold up their side either (such as the statement that software can be returned if you don't agree to the license).
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
I don't remember who said it, but a quote I particularly remember is "realism is a tool, not a goal." Realism can greatly enhance the fun of a game, but it must be used properly and selectively. In current games, the place of realism is as the target for the graphics. If the storyline, gameplay, and physics are based too closely on real life, the game won't be any fun.
In response to the question of whether good graphics alone make a game more fun, I would definitely say that they do, but that the coolness of the graphics wears off after a few hours. Balanced gameplay and quality design should always be the focus of any game. Graphics are secondary.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Too many companies these days are installing clients that allow them to see your screen.
This software is generally used by support staff to avoid having to move on-site to diagnose and fix problems. Tools such as these degrade performance on the watched machine quite noticeably, so there is no way it could be done without being noticed, and the network bandwidth usage is too high to monitor more than a few people at once. So, this is not really an issue, yet.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Big greedy corporations use their hordes of lawyers to pass unconstitutional legistlation and attack consumer rights. That's news. Big greedy corporations use their hordes of lawyers to find tax loopholes and save money. That's not news.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
I think it's rather funny that you linked to that issue. I have that exact problem. On a Pentium 3/450 with 440BX motherboard. The problem is that a lot of older motherboards were made with off-spec AGP power, which causes GeForce-series cards to corrupt sections of memory and crash.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
Actually, the medium-quality jpegs make the graphics look BETTER, because they eliminate the jaggy edges that go with low-res console rendering.
------------------
iD has made the same mistake as Valve did with their patch. It breaks compatibility with mods, changes the physics/feel of the game, and was done without notice. I called the HL 1.1 patch the "disaster patch", and it sounds like iD made the same mistake.
The problem was, when Valve "seeded the new netcode and other details to the bigger mod authors prior to the patch release," they did a very sloppy job of it. After the HL 1.1.0.0 patch, there were exactly two mods which had new versions available immediately. Many mod authors were extremely angry at Valve for not even notifying them that their mods would no longer work. Many mods were never ported at all. In fact, my favorite mod (Half-Life Jailbreak) had already been abandoned, and I had to get the source code (no easy task, the only person who had it uploaded a corrupt copy before going idle, I ended up with a corrupt copy) to port and clean up the whole thing as open-source (GPL is incompatible with Valve's disclaimer, so it's a custom license, OSML).
A good percentage of the people who didn't even play any of the broken mods were mad at Valve for the patch, because of the new net code. Basically, it was a blessing to people with badly-optimized dial-up connections, and a curse to anyone with anything better. The net code change might as well have been a physics change, because the messed-up netcode totally changed the feel of the game. For those modemmers who benefitted from the netcode and didn't play any broken mods, there was a load of controversial changes to boot.
------------------
Having done some development with HL mods, I agree with your statement that a very small percentage of the source code consists of 3D-API related things (probably even less than 2-5%). However, while the percentage of the source code is small, the percentage of the processor load is very high. The geometry transform and lighting (handled by the API, in systems without coprocessors for that) make up about half the CPU load, all of it doing simple and redundant geometry transformations.
------------------
Brick-and-mortar stores are shipping large quantities all to the same site, so the per-unit shipping is a tiny fraction of what it is with an online store, and in many cases, the shipping is done through a government-owned agency, so part of the shipping charge IS artificial and going to the same destination as the brick-and-mortar stores' sales taxes. While this is obviously not the case with other shipping methods, it's still significant.
---------------------
The two new character classes were discovered and leaked well in advance by Infoceptor. Apparently, the names of all the classes and skills were lying around in plain text inside the MPQ archive, so it was discovered and announced that there would be an expansion featuring these classes.
---------------------
The shipping costs are far greater than sales tax, so no, this is not true.
Mail-order catalogs are tax free. Again, the cost of shipping is greater than that of any tax.
This gives online stores a disadvantage in pricing--they're forced to have HIGHER prices than brick-and-mortar stores, because they have to pay both taxes and shipping expenses.
A state tax on internet transactions, such as this one, would be a disaster to implement. If it is based on the location of the seller, all the sellers would leave that state. If it is based on the location of the buyer, it creates the problem of having to deal with different taxes in different states, which is bad for the little guys having to hire extra lawyers to keep track of what the tax laws are. If it is based on both the buyer and seller's location, then it has both problems.
A federal tax would be more reasonable, but it would discourage the online economy and stifle its growth, which is why a moratorium was passed a while ago.
---------------------------