My father still listens to a 40's era (huge) radio. It's a conversation piece for sure, but it does also sound quite nice. Lots of vacuum tubes in the back.
Plus, vacuum tubes are fairly expensive to buy now. I know they aren't really making them too much any more, but old technology that isn't useful doesn't get expensive, so someone must be using them. I doubt there are too many collectors that just like to have vacuum tubes without an application for them.
Running a deficit and running an unsustainable deficit are two different things.
Not really. This is where basic math and basic economics comes into play.
Economists will come up with ways to make it sound different, but it's simple. Running a deficit is bad. Running a surplus is good. It's better to spend less than you have. Period.
The only time it can be good is a short-term deficit to cover a cause/project. For example, you can cover a war, cover a mission to reach the moon, cover a massive infrastructure investment, etc. This is called borrowing.
Borrowing is okay because you don't have the cash today to cover the full cost, but you will in the future - and in the end will benefit from it, resulting in a net gain.
Deficit spending is when you don't care about math or the future. Running a deficit is when you suck at your job
Were these workers outside of their two year contracts? 450 workers x $300 = $135,000. Seems this might be nothing more than nice bonus for a Verizon exec.
This will pass through like every other piece of BS they like to shove through instead of working on anything that actually matters.
If you protest, they call you fringe protestors, and the rest of the country won't care because they think the real issue right now is the debt ceiling.
Congress knows it can do anything it wants in times of great turmoil over something else
Anyway, this just makes it easier for the real child pornographers. I mean sure, it'll catch the newbies or casual deviants, but the real bad people just use this for cover.
Like copy protections and DRM, it only stops the ones that don't know how to get around it.
Now it will be easier than ever for someone to frame someone else and hide the real trail.
"making a bachelor's no longer an adequate screening measure of achievement for employers"
It's just like grade inflation.
Recently going through school, I can tell you that today's "C" is basically the same as yesterday's "D" or "F". If you care about your academics you get an "A" for "good" and a "B" for "passing".
It's the same with advanced degrees. I found myself in an internship that led into a job where I could start working instead of getting a masters - but for me, and practically everyone I went to school with, a masters degree was just as expected as college was after high school.
Graduating high school in the middle-class suburban world just means you're life isn't screwed up to the point where you couldn't make it. Getting a bachelors just means, again, that you aren't a screw up. There's very little pride or sense of accomplishment in a bachelor's anymore.
First of all they're dirt poor and not going to pay for broadband or own a computer. The critical part is the ratio of income to house price. Somewhere around 1:2 is OK but not ideal, 1:4 means extreme poverty, like 99% of your legally declared income must be going toward the house and you never eat anything but ramen, at least until the inevitable foreclosure and bankruptcy. Even commissioned cheerleaders for the home sales/building industry don't have the guts to ask for more than a ratio of 1:3.
Umm. That's wrong. 1:2 is great, 1:4 is still good. It is certainly not extreme poverty. I don't know if you realize this, but those in extreme poverty generally don't own homes at all.
I own a home and my income:home price ratio is 1:3.2 I comfortably pay for expanded cable and a 20/3 fiber-to-the-home internet connection, and I live in a rural community. Most of the community has access to 3 broadband choices -including fiber from an independent/non-big-telco - which are not payed for through subsidy or tax credits.
I'm not sure where you are from, but $40-50k / year is certainly a livable, comfortable, not-anywhere-near poverty condition for most of the country.
I have to deal with engineering licenses in 10 states, all with different CEU requirements, ethics exams, codes of conduct, and codes of practice. Business licenses in about 20 cities and four states, property taxes, gross receipts taxes, payroll taxes, and various other filing requirements.
That's nothing compared to sales taxes. You know how difficult it is to report taxes in some states? You have to keep track of taxes by municipality in some areas. We have to call customers many times to ask whether or not they are actually within the city lines, because their address might be for one city but their physical location is outside of the municipality lines, and the taxes are different.
Even more than that, every time a city or county council votes to increase, decrease, suspend, or change the requirements of those taxes - you have to know about it.
I have to keep track of the customers we have in LA, just as much as the sales to companies located on the land allocated to the Indian tribe of Catabwa County, NC.
Every month I have to report to each state the sales that I made in each locality, and pay those taxes I collected, but the method for doing so is different in every state. They all have a username/password to maintain, change regularly, and overall create a big mess. South Carolina won't even provide my forms online, but require you to request them by CD. CA and IA only collect every 3 months, but require you to prepay each month. GA rolled out their online system for out of state people this year, but it was messed up for 3 months.
It is a real nightmare, and Amazon would have to keep track of every municipality that it had an associate in.
Amazon is only the target though. It would suck for them, but it would actually make them stronger. Tax departments would like it because they only have one place to audit instead of everyone, but Amazon would comply. "Mom and Pop" websites would suffer, because they would be required to collect taxes over the whole country, and have the same reporting requirements as Amazon.
It would, in effect, consolidate all retail spaces online to the big sites that can afford to deal with such a regulatory nightmare.
Because many states don't provide the citizens with any way of paying the taxes even if we wanted to. Even ignoring the onerous requirements for keeping track of the money owed, I still have no idea how I would go about paying the taxes because the state doesn't exactly provide me with forms to do so.
I've heard that states that have an income tax are different, but around here, most citizens don't know how to pay the tax, assuming they even realize that they have to.
It's not exactly onerous. If you don't pay taxes on something, you owe tax on it. The retailers don't pay tax on the sale, they just collect it. All you do is add up all the total dollars you paid for stuff that wasn't taxed, but which should have, and put that number on your state sales tax return. I haven't seen all state returns, but I have seen several and I think they all had this section on the standard and EZ forms. X dollars * Y rate = Amount you owe.
Ignorance has never been an excuse for not paying taxes, especially something as universal as sales taxes. Any tax professional, online tax return company, and the basic tax return forms should all ask for this number. I would think that not reporting anything now-a-days would be a flag for an audit.
Not being from the US, my idea of a duty is an EXTRA tax on imports, over and above what would be paid if the goods originated in the state. Duty is a method of favouring local goods by imposing extra tax on imported goods. So charging regular sales tax on out of state goods isn't a duty, it's effectively cancelling an anti-duty, and thus doesn't violate the article you cited.
Taxes in California are different and are over and above what one would pay for goods in another state, generally speaking.
My company sells goods in about 30 states, and sales taxes are a real pain. We don't sell online, but we collect sales taxes - and every state is different. Some states can be quite difficult because each municipality might have it's own tax rates, and they change constantly.
Besides, buying from Amazon doesn't negate that taxes need to be paid on goods sold. Amazon is just arguing that they shouldn't be required to collect them.
Every citizen in every state that has a sales tax is supposed to report all goods purchased that did not have sales tax collected. When I enter my invoices for goods at work, I have to make sure tax was collected on all goods purchased that require tax. I report that number I owe every month to the state, and every three years - like clockwork - I get audited to make sure I'm paying those taxes.
Every year at tax time I report on my tax return all the purchases I've personally made online, plus magazines, and pay the required tax
.
It's not rocket science, it's just people taking the time to do what is required by tax law.
"I'm rich, so I can buy my morality. See, when you have enough money, you don't need to reduce usage. You just pay others to clean up for you."
I think a jet for the rich is like a car for the middle class.
You can't really suggest they are killing the planet without being a hypocrite unless you use public transportation for everything.
Yeah, public transportation doesn't work well for everyone's schedules, but neither does commercial aviation for corporations. If a CEO wants to be in Tahiti, Korea, D.C., or NYC in a matter of hours - commercial might not work.
Hello support? I think my lightbulb has a problem?
Have you tried turning it off, unscrewing it, waiting 30 seconds, screwing it back in and turning it on again?
Yes, but it won't turn on
Bypass the router and plug your lighting system directly into the cable modem
Surely you don't think it's the router?
If it's not the router I cannot verify it is a hardware problem. There must be a virus or some other software problem, which are not covered under your support warranty. Would you like me to transfer you to software support?
No thanks, I always take my lightbulbs to a local kid. He's a real wiz at this kind of stuff, and much cheaper
What is more disturbing is the lack of public and news outlet reaction. Of course, most news outlets now being owned by extremely large corporate interests is in this case, no help at all...
The FCC clearly studied and pointed out that corporate mergers of content and distribution is best for consumers. So much so that key members of the FCC believed they should merge themselves with these same corporations.
I can't see how merging the interests of the RIAA, the MPAA, Congress, the FCC, Content, and Distribution companies all together would be a bad thing. Around here we call that "synergy".
Why would anyone need to look up anything from an illegal domain anyway? Shouldn't everyone be happy with what Congress and Big Content believes is in our best interest? That is why we elect them...right?
for its use. It's the theory of selling guns, while immoral by some people's standards, doesn't pull the trigger-- purchasers pull the trigger.
If CNet is liable, then so are computer makers as they're a huge source of computers, which then download that pirated stuff.
This guy is merely enriching the lawyers that talked him into it..... and this too, will soon pass.
I don't think it's the computer makers that are ultimately liable. I would think it would be either people that make sound recording equipment, or even the recording people themselves, for making audio in a format that is so easy to share.
Seems like if they had a simple authentication system that authorized every piece of hardware for each and every song individually, and had some way to authenticate who was listening to it - this wouldn't be a problem for them.
From my experience, the 3G barely ran iOS 4. I don't blame them for stopping support of it or the "classic". Those users should stay on 3.2.2 and jailbreak it.
My understanding was that what was being logged was not the users' locations but rather that of the nearest cell tower or hotspot. But whatever, hurf durf, Steve wuz spying on us.
OK, so you're justifying Apple tracking their users to within a few hundred yards.
What CAN'T you justify, fanboi?
I might be called a fanboi, but they were caching location data in what seemed like a logical manner to speed up location services. Many users, myself included, enjoy speedier access.
Sure, they should have encrypted it by default, but it's not like their users had any expectation that they weren't being tracked. They were surprised by an unencrypted cache of location data, but ATT, Verizon, Sprint, ???, are already readily tracking user locations of all phones on the network. I would think someone silly if they expected the location services apps they are using aren't tracking them as well.
People that get upset and say "OMG! APPLE IS BIG BROTHER!" are the same people who get upset when very private information on facebook is seen by people they didn't realize could see it.
Why not just pony up about $69/mo...and get a business connection for your home.
That would be nice. However, there is only one provider here with a business class connection available (TWC) and it costs $125 for 10/1, and that is the fastest plan
If the US government and Isreal did callude with Seimens to make the stuxnet virus, taking great pains to hide its source, introduction, and its operation in the Iranian systems... Then why would they have it sending data directly back to a site in Texas? The would have also been careful enough to redirect the data through relays in other parts of the world to conceal their identity...
Well, depending on what part of Texas, they might have been sending it there as some sort of copyright claim. You don't want "virtual copies" to exist on other computers that aren't licensed. Probably depends on what sort of EULA Siemens and Uncle Sam worked out...
I agree with you that banning gambling is ridiculous moralizing that serves no purpose but to arbitrarily restrict the freedom of citizens. Especially in this case because the gamblers aren't even all U.S. residents. However, if these gambling establishments aren't regulated somehow, they tend to become, essentially, fraud engines. Either by the owners or enterprising players. And that level of laisez faire shouldn't really be allowed either. It's a false dilemma, but if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.
I agree. A bunch of people here where I work had most of their life savings in an essentially unregulated gambling fund. A couple of years ago they lost about 40% and had to put off retirement. It really screwed a lot of people up because they thought the gambling house was pretty reputable and said it was low risk.
Only the paranoid that kept their money in cash made it through as planned. The people that lost a bunch of money were a little upset, but the gambling houses got paid even though the people didn't get their money back - some gambling houses even did so well after that they gave huge bonuses! I guess it worked out okay in the end.
As far as I can tell from TFA the "other things they were pulling" were workarounds to the fact that online gambling is illegal. ie, they lied to banks about the nature of their business, thus the charge of "fraud".
Yeah, you don't want to lie to banks. Otherwise they'll lose money and we'll have to bail them out.
Domain seizures though? When is the US going to figure out that domain seizures are a) ineffective and b) pissing off the rest of the world to the point that they will want to take it out of US control to do that?
I mean, you can take US property, seize accounts in the US, etc - but the domain seizures shouldn't happen when the business isn't physically located in the US.
Weren't credit card processors already banned from dealing with them? How much do you want to pursue people that just want to play online poker?
Why buy a Commodore PC when you have a working PC? Possibly because you have more than one person in the household.
No, why would I buy a new Commodore 64 when my old Commodore 64 still works? It only ever really gets used to play Lode Runner, and I think we get by fine with just one.
And you can still replace cable TV and get all the sports you want with the internet and and Apple TV, except for the NFL.
Slashdot Mirror
My father still listens to a 40's era (huge) radio. It's a conversation piece for sure, but it does also sound quite nice. Lots of vacuum tubes in the back.
Plus, vacuum tubes are fairly expensive to buy now. I know they aren't really making them too much any more, but old technology that isn't useful doesn't get expensive, so someone must be using them. I doubt there are too many collectors that just like to have vacuum tubes without an application for them.
This would be a fun prank.
Friend One: Here plug in this flash drive and I'll show you a cool video
Friend 2: Cool! (plugs it in, waits for Windows to recognize it as a flash drive - and computer shuts off because the battery is dead) Hey!
Friend One: Haha! It wasn't a flash drive! It was an ACME Drain-O Super-Capacitor (r) It's guaranteed to drain your battery in 30 seconds over USB!"
Running a deficit and running an unsustainable deficit are two different things.
Not really. This is where basic math and basic economics comes into play.
Economists will come up with ways to make it sound different, but it's simple. Running a deficit is bad. Running a surplus is good. It's better to spend less than you have. Period.
The only time it can be good is a short-term deficit to cover a cause/project. For example, you can cover a war, cover a mission to reach the moon, cover a massive infrastructure investment, etc. This is called borrowing.
Borrowing is okay because you don't have the cash today to cover the full cost, but you will in the future - and in the end will benefit from it, resulting in a net gain.
Deficit spending is when you don't care about math or the future. Running a deficit is when you suck at your job
Were these workers outside of their two year contracts? 450 workers x $300 = $135,000. Seems this might be nothing more than nice bonus for a Verizon exec.
This will pass through like every other piece of BS they like to shove through instead of working on anything that actually matters.
If you protest, they call you fringe protestors, and the rest of the country won't care because they think the real issue right now is the debt ceiling.
Congress knows it can do anything it wants in times of great turmoil over something else
Anyway, this just makes it easier for the real child pornographers. I mean sure, it'll catch the newbies or casual deviants, but the real bad people just use this for cover.
Like copy protections and DRM, it only stops the ones that don't know how to get around it.
Now it will be easier than ever for someone to frame someone else and hide the real trail.
"making a bachelor's no longer an adequate screening measure of achievement for employers"
It's just like grade inflation.
Recently going through school, I can tell you that today's "C" is basically the same as yesterday's "D" or "F". If you care about your academics you get an "A" for "good" and a "B" for "passing".
It's the same with advanced degrees. I found myself in an internship that led into a job where I could start working instead of getting a masters - but for me, and practically everyone I went to school with, a masters degree was just as expected as college was after high school.
Graduating high school in the middle-class suburban world just means you're life isn't screwed up to the point where you couldn't make it. Getting a bachelors just means, again, that you aren't a screw up. There's very little pride or sense of accomplishment in a bachelor's anymore.
This would be great for any company that has a "cloud" presence. Overnight businesses would reside in almost every state.
First of all they're dirt poor and not going to pay for broadband or own a computer. The critical part is the ratio of income to house price. Somewhere around 1:2 is OK but not ideal, 1:4 means extreme poverty, like 99% of your legally declared income must be going toward the house and you never eat anything but ramen, at least until the inevitable foreclosure and bankruptcy. Even commissioned cheerleaders for the home sales/building industry don't have the guts to ask for more than a ratio of 1:3.
Umm. That's wrong. 1:2 is great, 1:4 is still good. It is certainly not extreme poverty. I don't know if you realize this, but those in extreme poverty generally don't own homes at all.
A good explanation of ratios based on interest rate
I own a home and my income:home price ratio is 1:3.2 I comfortably pay for expanded cable and a 20/3 fiber-to-the-home internet connection, and I live in a rural community. Most of the community has access to 3 broadband choices -including fiber from an independent/non-big-telco - which are not payed for through subsidy or tax credits.
I'm not sure where you are from, but $40-50k / year is certainly a livable, comfortable, not-anywhere-near poverty condition for most of the country.
Cry me a fucking river.
I have to deal with engineering licenses in 10 states, all with different CEU requirements, ethics exams, codes of conduct, and codes of practice. Business licenses in about 20 cities and four states, property taxes, gross receipts taxes, payroll taxes, and various other filing requirements.
That's nothing compared to sales taxes. You know how difficult it is to report taxes in some states? You have to keep track of taxes by municipality in some areas. We have to call customers many times to ask whether or not they are actually within the city lines, because their address might be for one city but their physical location is outside of the municipality lines, and the taxes are different.
Even more than that, every time a city or county council votes to increase, decrease, suspend, or change the requirements of those taxes - you have to know about it.
I have to keep track of the customers we have in LA, just as much as the sales to companies located on the land allocated to the Indian tribe of Catabwa County, NC.
Every month I have to report to each state the sales that I made in each locality, and pay those taxes I collected, but the method for doing so is different in every state. They all have a username/password to maintain, change regularly, and overall create a big mess. South Carolina won't even provide my forms online, but require you to request them by CD. CA and IA only collect every 3 months, but require you to prepay each month. GA rolled out their online system for out of state people this year, but it was messed up for 3 months.
It is a real nightmare, and Amazon would have to keep track of every municipality that it had an associate in.
Amazon is only the target though. It would suck for them, but it would actually make them stronger. Tax departments would like it because they only have one place to audit instead of everyone, but Amazon would comply. "Mom and Pop" websites would suffer, because they would be required to collect taxes over the whole country, and have the same reporting requirements as Amazon.
It would, in effect, consolidate all retail spaces online to the big sites that can afford to deal with such a regulatory nightmare.
Because many states don't provide the citizens with any way of paying the taxes even if we wanted to. Even ignoring the onerous requirements for keeping track of the money owed, I still have no idea how I would go about paying the taxes because the state doesn't exactly provide me with forms to do so.
I've heard that states that have an income tax are different, but around here, most citizens don't know how to pay the tax, assuming they even realize that they have to.
It's not exactly onerous. If you don't pay taxes on something, you owe tax on it. The retailers don't pay tax on the sale, they just collect it. All you do is add up all the total dollars you paid for stuff that wasn't taxed, but which should have, and put that number on your state sales tax return. I haven't seen all state returns, but I have seen several and I think they all had this section on the standard and EZ forms. X dollars * Y rate = Amount you owe.
Ignorance has never been an excuse for not paying taxes, especially something as universal as sales taxes. Any tax professional, online tax return company, and the basic tax return forms should all ask for this number. I would think that not reporting anything now-a-days would be a flag for an audit.
Not being from the US, my idea of a duty is an EXTRA tax on imports, over and above what would be paid if the goods originated in the state. Duty is a method of favouring local goods by imposing extra tax on imported goods. So charging regular sales tax on out of state goods isn't a duty, it's effectively cancelling an anti-duty, and thus doesn't violate the article you cited.
Taxes in California are different and are over and above what one would pay for goods in another state, generally speaking.
My company sells goods in about 30 states, and sales taxes are a real pain. We don't sell online, but we collect sales taxes - and every state is different. Some states can be quite difficult because each municipality might have it's own tax rates, and they change constantly.
Besides, buying from Amazon doesn't negate that taxes need to be paid on goods sold. Amazon is just arguing that they shouldn't be required to collect them.
Every citizen in every state that has a sales tax is supposed to report all goods purchased that did not have sales tax collected. When I enter my invoices for goods at work, I have to make sure tax was collected on all goods purchased that require tax. I report that number I owe every month to the state, and every three years - like clockwork - I get audited to make sure I'm paying those taxes.
Every year at tax time I report on my tax return all the purchases I've personally made online, plus magazines, and pay the required tax
.
It's not rocket science, it's just people taking the time to do what is required by tax law.
"I'm rich, so I can buy my morality. See, when you have enough money, you don't need to reduce usage. You just pay others to clean up for you."
I think a jet for the rich is like a car for the middle class.
You can't really suggest they are killing the planet without being a hypocrite unless you use public transportation for everything.
Yeah, public transportation doesn't work well for everyone's schedules, but neither does commercial aviation for corporations. If a CEO wants to be in Tahiti, Korea, D.C., or NYC in a matter of hours - commercial might not work.
Hello support? I think my lightbulb has a problem?
Have you tried turning it off, unscrewing it, waiting 30 seconds, screwing it back in and turning it on again?
Yes, but it won't turn on
Bypass the router and plug your lighting system directly into the cable modem
Surely you don't think it's the router?
If it's not the router I cannot verify it is a hardware problem. There must be a virus or some other software problem, which are not covered under your support warranty. Would you like me to transfer you to software support?
No thanks, I always take my lightbulbs to a local kid. He's a real wiz at this kind of stuff, and much cheaper
What is more disturbing is the lack of public and news outlet reaction. Of course, most news outlets now being owned by extremely large corporate interests is in this case, no help at all...
The FCC clearly studied and pointed out that corporate mergers of content and distribution is best for consumers. So much so that key members of the FCC believed they should merge themselves with these same corporations.
I can't see how merging the interests of the RIAA, the MPAA, Congress, the FCC, Content, and Distribution companies all together would be a bad thing. Around here we call that "synergy".
Why would anyone need to look up anything from an illegal domain anyway? Shouldn't everyone be happy with what Congress and Big Content believes is in our best interest? That is why we elect them...right?
This is quite sad, and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of either the technical or jurisdictional issues of the internet.
Al Gore invented the internet when he was in congress. I think they would know what is best for the tubes. Those tubes aren't free, you know.
for its use. It's the theory of selling guns, while immoral by some people's standards, doesn't pull the trigger-- purchasers pull the trigger.
If CNet is liable, then so are computer makers as they're a huge source of computers, which then download that pirated stuff.
This guy is merely enriching the lawyers that talked him into it..... and this too, will soon pass.
I don't think it's the computer makers that are ultimately liable. I would think it would be either people that make sound recording equipment, or even the recording people themselves, for making audio in a format that is so easy to share.
Seems like if they had a simple authentication system that authorized every piece of hardware for each and every song individually, and had some way to authenticate who was listening to it - this wouldn't be a problem for them.
From my experience, the 3G barely ran iOS 4. I don't blame them for stopping support of it or the "classic". Those users should stay on 3.2.2 and jailbreak it.
My understanding was that what was being logged was not the users' locations but rather that of the nearest cell tower or hotspot. But whatever, hurf durf, Steve wuz spying on us.
OK, so you're justifying Apple tracking their users to within a few hundred yards.
What CAN'T you justify, fanboi?
I might be called a fanboi, but they were caching location data in what seemed like a logical manner to speed up location services. Many users, myself included, enjoy speedier access.
Sure, they should have encrypted it by default, but it's not like their users had any expectation that they weren't being tracked. They were surprised by an unencrypted cache of location data, but ATT, Verizon, Sprint, ???, are already readily tracking user locations of all phones on the network. I would think someone silly if they expected the location services apps they are using aren't tracking them as well.
People that get upset and say "OMG! APPLE IS BIG BROTHER!" are the same people who get upset when very private information on facebook is seen by people they didn't realize could see it.
Why not just pony up about $69/mo...and get a business connection for your home.
That would be nice. However, there is only one provider here with a business class connection available (TWC) and it costs $125 for 10/1, and that is the fastest plan
If the US government and Isreal did callude with Seimens to make the stuxnet virus, taking great pains to hide its source, introduction, and its operation in the Iranian systems... Then why would they have it sending data directly back to a site in Texas? The would have also been careful enough to redirect the data through relays in other parts of the world to conceal their identity...
Well, depending on what part of Texas, they might have been sending it there as some sort of copyright claim. You don't want "virtual copies" to exist on other computers that aren't licensed. Probably depends on what sort of EULA Siemens and Uncle Sam worked out...
I agree with you that banning gambling is ridiculous moralizing that serves no purpose but to arbitrarily restrict the freedom of citizens. Especially in this case because the gamblers aren't even all U.S. residents. However, if these gambling establishments aren't regulated somehow, they tend to become, essentially, fraud engines. Either by the owners or enterprising players. And that level of laisez faire shouldn't really be allowed either. It's a false dilemma, but if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.
I agree. A bunch of people here where I work had most of their life savings in an essentially unregulated gambling fund. A couple of years ago they lost about 40% and had to put off retirement. It really screwed a lot of people up because they thought the gambling house was pretty reputable and said it was low risk.
Only the paranoid that kept their money in cash made it through as planned. The people that lost a bunch of money were a little upset, but the gambling houses got paid even though the people didn't get their money back - some gambling houses even did so well after that they gave huge bonuses! I guess it worked out okay in the end.
As far as I can tell from TFA the "other things they were pulling" were workarounds to the fact that online gambling is illegal. ie, they lied to banks about the nature of their business, thus the charge of "fraud".
Yeah, you don't want to lie to banks. Otherwise they'll lose money and we'll have to bail them out.
Domain seizures though? When is the US going to figure out that domain seizures are a) ineffective and b) pissing off the rest of the world to the point that they will want to take it out of US control to do that?
I mean, you can take US property, seize accounts in the US, etc - but the domain seizures shouldn't happen when the business isn't physically located in the US.
Weren't credit card processors already banned from dealing with them? How much do you want to pursue people that just want to play online poker?
...is, of course, a necessity of life (in addition to cable television).
For some, who are required to have ready access to email 24/7 for their jobs, it does become a necessity of (employment) life.
Why buy a Commodore PC when you have a working PC? Possibly because you have more than one person in the household.
No, why would I buy a new Commodore 64 when my old Commodore 64 still works? It only ever really gets used to play Lode Runner, and I think we get by fine with just one.
And you can still replace cable TV and get all the sports you want with the internet and and Apple TV, except for the NFL.
Why would I buy a new one when my old one still works?