Virginia has a State Sales Tax of 4%. Local municipalities charge varying rates, but it appears to average around 1%. Except on a list of specific food items, where the State tax may be 1.5% if it's sold by someone who is authorized to take food stamps, or if you are one of the following: bakeries, cafes, cafeterias, convenience stores, delicatessens, department stores, diners, doughnut and pastry shops, drug and sundry stores, farmer's markets, grocery stores, ice cream shops, lunch counters, mail order companies, supermarkets, sandwich shops, snack bars, specialty meat and produce stores, video stores, or a weight reduction establishments. But only if you derive less than 80% of your gross sales from prepared foods. Except when you're a cafe or bakery of course. ???
Then let's look at drugstore products: Prescription drugs and the like are exempt. Nonprescription drugs are exempt as long as they aren't supplements or based on herbs, except when they are on a specific list of approved supplements or herbs. Shaving products are tax exempt as long as they are medicated, otherwise they are subject to tax. Talcum powder is nontaxable if sold as baby powder, but taxable if sold as talcum powder. Wart removal pads are nontaxable, while bunion pads are not.
Except in some local municipalities where they've overridden the state lists of the above for the purposes of their own additional taxes.
It's WAY, WAY more than "where you actually live", and your example itself is a perfect demonstration of why this is hard. Virginia has a zip code that means two things. They had to ask YOU where you lived, because they couldn't figure that out. Well, technically they probably could by having a database of street names in each zip code, but that's a lot of complexity to handle an exception case.
Sales taxes, on the other hand, are almost completely an exception case...
Now imagine similarly complex tax regulations for most of the 50 states, and for a good-sized chunk of states all the counties, and for a handful towns within the county, and for a few economic development zones within those towns, that can be found within each state. Add in taxes based on the total purchases you make in a given order, taxes based on your intended use of the product, taxes based on services as opposed to goods (and what kinds of services), and whether the State, City, or local municipality is having a sales tax holiday on specific items that day, and what limits may be placed on those holidays.
Each municipality can potentially define each individual SKU Amazon sells differently. Is that bag of potato chips a snack food (full tax), or a food item (reduced or eliminated tax) when you buy it? Well, it depends. Is it a 16 ounce bag? Is it sold as an individual unit or in a case? Is it less than 20% of an order that included other items that are considered exempt food items? Were they fried in peanut oil or canola? Are they corn chips or potato chips? What brand are they (some municipalities give tax exemptions for products made by brands that have headquarters or manufacturing facilities nearby)?
Obviously not all items are this complex, and not all municipalities have complex rules, but enough do to make the managing of taxes for one municipality a convoluted mess even if you live there. Keeping up with all of them is really, really hard.
Maine, for example, is going to start taxing "Handling" but not "Shipping" in "Shipping and Handling", so you have to calculate the tax on "Handling" based on the difference between what you charged for "Shipping" and what you paid to ship the product. Which a company generally doesn't know for sure until after it's shipped. But tax must be disclosed to the customer at the time of ordering.
Then remember that most municipalities require monthly or quarterly remittance of sales tax, often on different schedules and using their own unique and lovely forms.
Who is "they"? It would be almost impossible to set a tax rate here in the US that would be uniform across all states, much less involving other sovereign nations. Sales/use tax rates vary considerably and in a lot of cases don't exist at all. Setting a percent would be a complete and utter no-starter. What do we use as a model? New Hampshire USA (no taxes), or Sweden (very high tax rate)?
Then, who gets the proceeds?
States are clamoring for this because their own citizens are skirting their obligations by purchasing stuff from companies that don't collect and remit the taxes they owe, then not paying sales/use taxes themselves like they are legally required to do. If you set an "Internet tax", individual states, counties, cities, and municipalities that currently collect sales and use taxes would still want their money. How do you determine how much goes where?
And why single out Internet companies? Does that mean that anything I order from Wal-Mart's Internet site is subject, but if I call their sales line I'm not subject to it? Or would you include phone/catalog sales as well?
How about businesses in tax-free states that intentionally place themselves directly on the border with a neighboring state that charges sales or use tax? They aren't breaking the laws of their own state, but they are setting themselves up to encourage the citizens of neighboring states to violate their own laws by avoiding their tax obligations.
At the moment, if a Federal law is to be passed in the US, I'd say it should be the elimination of corporate liability for collecting and remitting sales tax. That way, the citizens who incur sales tax obligations in their own states are personally and directly liable for paying them. If a business chooses to offer this as a service to their customers, they may, but ultimately sales tax is the responsibility of the consumer, and falls under laws local to that consumer. Then the local citizenry can determine for themselves what their taxes should be, and not subject companies in the rest of the country to their ridiculously complex tax laws.
I think you'd find that most states would rapidly simplify their tax laws so their citizens could actually UNDERSTAND them. In many states, it might result in the outright elimination of "sales and use" taxes entirely.
I suppose this is possible, but the "legislative bodies" would have to be Federal. If a business has no presence in a state, then laws passed in that state have no bearing on them. There would have to be a federal law to compel businesses to disclose this information.
And, if this were the case, offline retailers should be FAR more concerned about this than online ones. Online retailers are used to getting customer name and address information from all of their customers, and though it would be a huge pain in the ass they could install GeoTax or some other commercial-grade tax calculation software and manage this. Offline retailers, by and large, aren't.
After all, if I (a resident of Maine) crossed over into tax-free New Hampshire to buy some stuff, I'm technically as liable for that sales/use tax as I would be had I ordered it from Amazon or Newegg. Sure, you could exempt "cash and carry" sales and say that it's only for purchases shipped to a consumer's home (for example), but companies also ship a lot of product that is purchased in-person (particularly tourist shops, etc).
If the purpose of this law is to get assistance from businesses in extracting every penny of legally-owed sales/use taxes by states (and counties, and other tax zones) from their own citizens, then offline businesses have a lot more to be concerned about than online.
Most states already do. Many of their citizens choose to ignore it, but many states that charge a sales tax require that you tally up all out-of-state purchases that you consumed or used within your home state and pay taxes on it. Maine (my home state) mentions it on their tax forms, and provides an alternative system where you can pay a small percentage of your income as an alternative method of calculating what you owe.
Actually, the consumer is ALWAYS liable for sales/use taxes. Businesses never technically "charge" sales tax, they collect it on your behalf and remit it to the tax authority it should be paid to. That collection is a service they are required by law to offer, but only if they fall under the laws where the sales tax is due. Requiring a business to collect/remit sales tax in a state where they don't have a presence is a violation of interstate commerce laws. A business can only be subject to state and municipal laws if they have a division that falls under those laws.
This concept is generally called the "Nexus Rule", and the concept protects ALL businesses from the tax laws of states they don't operate in.
If this gets approved at the federal level, it's a very short step to say that all citizens should be taxed based on their residence, and all collected taxes remitted back to the tax authority governing that residence, no matter where the person happens to be at the time. That would mean that ALL business would have to actively verify where their customers lived, and charge sales/use taxes appropriate with their state/municipality of residence.
1. Open web browser of your choice. 2. Go to noradsanta.com 3. (if you have NoScript, turn it off or at least unblock everything but googleanalytics). 4. On the right hand side, there's a diagonal arrow. Click it. 5. Hit whatever button makes your browser go fullscreen.
There. Full-screen Santa-y goodness.
Admittedly not QUITE as good as Google Earth, but you can at least get a full-screen Google Maps experience which is pretty darned close.
Tested in Linux (Mint 8, Firefox 3.5) and Windows XP, Firefox 3.5.
I think you're confusing "applying technology" with "developing technology". This is a first step toward cutting through the fog that is the neural pathways and starting to recognize thought patterns. No one is suggesting that you'll be able to buy this at Best Buy next month.
They started with numbers and letters because it gives them a small, controlled and discrete set of thought patterns to look for and recognize. As the detection gets better, I'd guess they'll probably increase its detection capabilities to start with simple words, then more complex ones. Eventually, maybe, it'll be able to not only recognize thoughts in a stream if you focus, but it might reach the level where it can reconstruct images from your memories of them.
Who knows what potential something like this might have? It may be able to insert electrical patterns into the brain someday, replacing your eyes and ears as the primary way to feed data to you.
But at the moment, they're just trying to understand simple stuff in a sea of noise. Letters are an easy start, because the data set they are looking for is small and controlled, and they can measure success easily.
Re:Why bother to type a document using a keyboard?
on
Typing With Your Brain
·
· Score: 1
Ah, but you have arms and legs.
A technology that allows you to type at a blistering eight characters per minute after getting invasive brain surgery isn't for you. A quadriplegic might decide it is worth the effort to them. Especially one that has other issues that prevent mouth-typing or other adaptations. And doubly so if they could control a wheelchair and home assistance systems by thinking specific patterns.
I can think of some other applications for something like this.. communication with someone in an apparent vegetative state? Control of certain key systems where thinking of a specific symbol could be used as a failsafe? A direct and accurate cranial interface might be slow, but it might also be a hell of a lot faster than the alternatives in some cases.
And maybe one day this technology will refine to the point where you simply think the words and they are entered into the device of your choice. Personally, I'm not sure I'd be digging that too much, but imagine the concept of talking to someone across the planet in realtime from little boxes you carry around on your belt if someone mentioned it 100 years ago. "If I really wanted to talk to them, I'd go do it in person. Who wants to talk in real time to someone half a world away anyway?"
If you want publicity in any way you can get it, feel free to skip testing. Data breaches make good news. It may not be the kind of publicity you want.
Seriously, it depends on your level of trust and you level of need for security. Though, if you are using a supposedly secure transport, I imagine your need for security is relatively high. Besides, you are putting your trust in an external company, which means if that company gets breached your data is right there. If you don't encrypt it with a second layer, anyone who gains access to your VPN provider also owns you. You have just extended your circle of trust to include all of the employees of your vendor, a whole bunch of people you will never meet. If they have cleartext access to your data, you have a problem.
Security is done in layers. If someone breaches one layer, it's best if they get stopped by another. The more layers (within practical limits) the better.
To put it another way, as wed128 so succinctly put it above, "Yes." Though I'd add "HELL, YES!" about 100 times after it.
The lawyers working this have no interest in paying you the $16. They have no interest in stopping Comcast from doing this. Their interest in both ended when their bribe check to the judge cleared and they got granted "class action" status. From that point forward it was all about maximizing the settlement and minimizing effort.
Comcast knew this, of course, and pulled some money out of petty cash so the lawyers could make $6 million in cash today and move on to the next righteous-looking yet profitable cause.
They saw an opportunity to look righteous and good and just and make $6+ million for filing a suit and settling quickly. Skip the "righteous and good and just" bit, come to think of it. They saw a bunch of people angry and upset about something, and bought off a judge to form a class so they could claim to represent people who had been wronged. Now that they've won, they'll dole out the money they need to and pocket the difference plus their 40%.
As a bonus, it saves them from all those exhaust fumes from chasing ambulances.
They SHOULD be ashamed, but they've learned to live with it. A few million a year in settlements will buy a LOT of shiny toys to distract people from their shame.
As far as the politicos voting on it, politicos are lawyers who have taken class-action and ambulance chasing to a high art. Sharks don't bite sharks. Professional courtesy.
I don't think Comcast will necessarily have access to the names and addresses. Usually Comcast pays their money to the lawyers who initiated the class action suit, and the lawyers then divvy it up by the approximate number of people in the class, minus their traditional 40% that they keep. Then, any unclaimed amounts, they keep. Plus they have the names and addresses which they keep.
It won't be Comcast handing the names and addresses over to MPAA/RIAA. I'd actually trust Comcast with that information more than I would the people who WILL be getting them.
Let me know how that works out for you, assuming they allow you access to slashdot from prison. If you send me an address, I'll see if I can find a non-ferrous file and bake it in a cake for you.
Say "Hi" to Bubba. He goes easier on people who are nice to him.:)
I'm a Comcast customer, I was throttled, I've never used my connection to download music or movies (TV shows and OSS only), and I still don't think I want to apply for my $16 pittance.
Prediction: The sharks who ran this class-action suit aren't going to be satisfied with $6.4 million (the usual 40% of $16 million), and they're going to make a few more bucks sell the names and details to RIAA/MPAA so everyone who receives their $16 will be slapped with a $999999 gazillion lawsuit for illegal file sharing. Most of the P2P users end up disconnected and eventually homeless after the spate of ruinous P2P lawsuits, Comcast gets to dump their heaviest-bandwidth users, everyone wins except the granny whose next door neighbor mooched off her WiFi and got a copy of Avatar.
"A strange game. The only way to win is not to play."
It all depends on how far you take "being good". Many football coaches here want to raise a star player, and in order to do so they'll drill the living snot out of the players they have who look good. Your average teenager needs 10-12 hours of sleep a day, has a homework load that runs 2-3 hours minimum after a 7-hour school day. That leaves 4 hours for eating dinner and any other activities. When the coach wants daily 3-hour practices and twice on Saturday and Sunday, something's gotta give. Maybe one in 1000 of those kids is actually going to go on to a football career, if that, but in the meantime there is a pull to specialize in a sport at a cost to academia because, well, you want the school team to win, right?
When I was growing up, many of the most talented football players were pretty much guaranteed at least a minimum passing grade regardless of actual academic merit or effort, simply because a good football team was a form of PR to the community and garnered support for the school. The coaches were directed to drill the kids hard, and the teachers were expected to ease off on the homework and academic load for the best football players so they could focus on the game. Some of the players reacted by working really hard academically, but some just took advantage of the opportunity to coast their way through, putting in just enough effort to keep from being held back, and in some cases intentionally being held back so they could have an extra year or two in the high school athletics program.
Just in terms of hours in the day, there is at least partly a dichotomy between being good at sports and being good academically. Players who genuinely want to succeed academically find themselves constantly torn between practice, homework/study, sleep, and downtime/personal time/social time. Their major influence (second to their parents) is probably going to be their coach, and his priority is to build good players and a good team, so he's going to want them to put in a LOT of practice.
If "x is wrong, but isn't as wrong as y" doesn't qualify as moral relativism, I'm not sure what would, precisely.
Still, overall, stealing food for your family is wrong, but I agree that it is not as wrong as letting them starve.
But, of course, Father Jones might want to consider taking his example from Bishop Myriel, if he's going to tell his flock to take their example from Jean Valjean.
They could try buying out i4i, but I think i4i would set the price to be very unprofitable, and instead just set an ongoing licensing fee that allows Microsoft to continue operations but that would be very sweet indeed for i4i.
On the one hand, it's bad for Microsoft, so slashbot=happy. But it's a Patent win, so slashbot=angry. But it's a win for a small company, so slashbot=happy. But the small company appears to be a patent troll, so slashbot=indignant. But it's band for Microsoft anyway, so slashbot=[error: Stack overflow. Exiting.]
Umm, I think the phrase would have done better had it simply gone through English->Chinese->Engrish. I suspect a couple of other languages were involved, probably one or two that Google doesn't even support so it threw random words in there.
The original sentence was probably something like "I like a bagel with my coffee."
Slashdot Mirror
You know, interestingly enough, I've seen that behavior before on Slashdot, just never thought to narrow it down to a number of pixels before.
This is in Firefox (on Windows XP) but it's EXACTLY the same problem.
Odd, that.
OK, so let's take Virginia as an example.
Virginia has a State Sales Tax of 4%. Local municipalities charge varying rates, but it appears to average around 1%. Except on a list of specific food items, where the State tax may be 1.5% if it's sold by someone who is authorized to take food stamps, or if you are one of the following: bakeries, cafes, cafeterias, convenience stores, delicatessens, department stores, diners, doughnut and pastry shops, drug and sundry stores, farmer's markets, grocery stores, ice cream shops, lunch counters, mail order companies, supermarkets, sandwich shops, snack bars, specialty meat and produce stores, video stores, or a weight reduction establishments. But only if you derive less than 80% of your gross sales from prepared foods. Except when you're a cafe or bakery of course. ???
Then let's look at drugstore products: Prescription drugs and the like are exempt. Nonprescription drugs are exempt as long as they aren't supplements or based on herbs, except when they are on a specific list of approved supplements or herbs. Shaving products are tax exempt as long as they are medicated, otherwise they are subject to tax. Talcum powder is nontaxable if sold as baby powder, but taxable if sold as talcum powder. Wart removal pads are nontaxable, while bunion pads are not.
Except in some local municipalities where they've overridden the state lists of the above for the purposes of their own additional taxes.
It's WAY, WAY more than "where you actually live", and your example itself is a perfect demonstration of why this is hard. Virginia has a zip code that means two things. They had to ask YOU where you lived, because they couldn't figure that out. Well, technically they probably could by having a database of street names in each zip code, but that's a lot of complexity to handle an exception case.
Sales taxes, on the other hand, are almost completely an exception case...
Now imagine similarly complex tax regulations for most of the 50 states, and for a good-sized chunk of states all the counties, and for a handful towns within the county, and for a few economic development zones within those towns, that can be found within each state. Add in taxes based on the total purchases you make in a given order, taxes based on your intended use of the product, taxes based on services as opposed to goods (and what kinds of services), and whether the State, City, or local municipality is having a sales tax holiday on specific items that day, and what limits may be placed on those holidays.
Each municipality can potentially define each individual SKU Amazon sells differently. Is that bag of potato chips a snack food (full tax), or a food item (reduced or eliminated tax) when you buy it? Well, it depends. Is it a 16 ounce bag? Is it sold as an individual unit or in a case? Is it less than 20% of an order that included other items that are considered exempt food items? Were they fried in peanut oil or canola? Are they corn chips or potato chips? What brand are they (some municipalities give tax exemptions for products made by brands that have headquarters or manufacturing facilities nearby)?
Obviously not all items are this complex, and not all municipalities have complex rules, but enough do to make the managing of taxes for one municipality a convoluted mess even if you live there. Keeping up with all of them is really, really hard.
Maine, for example, is going to start taxing "Handling" but not "Shipping" in "Shipping and Handling", so you have to calculate the tax on "Handling" based on the difference between what you charged for "Shipping" and what you paid to ship the product. Which a company generally doesn't know for sure until after it's shipped. But tax must be disclosed to the customer at the time of ordering.
Then remember that most municipalities require monthly or quarterly remittance of sales tax, often on different schedules and using their own unique and lovely forms.
Sure there are companies that do thi
Who is "they"? It would be almost impossible to set a tax rate here in the US that would be uniform across all states, much less involving other sovereign nations. Sales/use tax rates vary considerably and in a lot of cases don't exist at all. Setting a percent would be a complete and utter no-starter. What do we use as a model? New Hampshire USA (no taxes), or Sweden (very high tax rate)?
Then, who gets the proceeds?
States are clamoring for this because their own citizens are skirting their obligations by purchasing stuff from companies that don't collect and remit the taxes they owe, then not paying sales/use taxes themselves like they are legally required to do. If you set an "Internet tax", individual states, counties, cities, and municipalities that currently collect sales and use taxes would still want their money. How do you determine how much goes where?
And why single out Internet companies? Does that mean that anything I order from Wal-Mart's Internet site is subject, but if I call their sales line I'm not subject to it? Or would you include phone/catalog sales as well?
How about businesses in tax-free states that intentionally place themselves directly on the border with a neighboring state that charges sales or use tax? They aren't breaking the laws of their own state, but they are setting themselves up to encourage the citizens of neighboring states to violate their own laws by avoiding their tax obligations.
At the moment, if a Federal law is to be passed in the US, I'd say it should be the elimination of corporate liability for collecting and remitting sales tax. That way, the citizens who incur sales tax obligations in their own states are personally and directly liable for paying them. If a business chooses to offer this as a service to their customers, they may, but ultimately sales tax is the responsibility of the consumer, and falls under laws local to that consumer. Then the local citizenry can determine for themselves what their taxes should be, and not subject companies in the rest of the country to their ridiculously complex tax laws.
I think you'd find that most states would rapidly simplify their tax laws so their citizens could actually UNDERSTAND them. In many states, it might result in the outright elimination of "sales and use" taxes entirely.
I suppose this is possible, but the "legislative bodies" would have to be Federal. If a business has no presence in a state, then laws passed in that state have no bearing on them. There would have to be a federal law to compel businesses to disclose this information.
And, if this were the case, offline retailers should be FAR more concerned about this than online ones. Online retailers are used to getting customer name and address information from all of their customers, and though it would be a huge pain in the ass they could install GeoTax or some other commercial-grade tax calculation software and manage this. Offline retailers, by and large, aren't.
After all, if I (a resident of Maine) crossed over into tax-free New Hampshire to buy some stuff, I'm technically as liable for that sales/use tax as I would be had I ordered it from Amazon or Newegg. Sure, you could exempt "cash and carry" sales and say that it's only for purchases shipped to a consumer's home (for example), but companies also ship a lot of product that is purchased in-person (particularly tourist shops, etc).
If the purpose of this law is to get assistance from businesses in extracting every penny of legally-owed sales/use taxes by states (and counties, and other tax zones) from their own citizens, then offline businesses have a lot more to be concerned about than online.
Most states already do. Many of their citizens choose to ignore it, but many states that charge a sales tax require that you tally up all out-of-state purchases that you consumed or used within your home state and pay taxes on it. Maine (my home state) mentions it on their tax forms, and provides an alternative system where you can pay a small percentage of your income as an alternative method of calculating what you owe.
Actually, the consumer is ALWAYS liable for sales/use taxes. Businesses never technically "charge" sales tax, they collect it on your behalf and remit it to the tax authority it should be paid to. That collection is a service they are required by law to offer, but only if they fall under the laws where the sales tax is due. Requiring a business to collect/remit sales tax in a state where they don't have a presence is a violation of interstate commerce laws. A business can only be subject to state and municipal laws if they have a division that falls under those laws.
This concept is generally called the "Nexus Rule", and the concept protects ALL businesses from the tax laws of states they don't operate in.
If this gets approved at the federal level, it's a very short step to say that all citizens should be taxed based on their residence, and all collected taxes remitted back to the tax authority governing that residence, no matter where the person happens to be at the time. That would mean that ALL business would have to actively verify where their customers lived, and charge sales/use taxes appropriate with their state/municipality of residence.
The Gore Giveth, and the Gore taketh away... :)
1. Open web browser of your choice.
2. Go to noradsanta.com
3. (if you have NoScript, turn it off or at least unblock everything but googleanalytics).
4. On the right hand side, there's a diagonal arrow. Click it.
5. Hit whatever button makes your browser go fullscreen.
There. Full-screen Santa-y goodness.
Admittedly not QUITE as good as Google Earth, but you can at least get a full-screen Google Maps experience which is pretty darned close.
Tested in Linux (Mint 8, Firefox 3.5) and Windows XP, Firefox 3.5.
PS: Direct link to the fullscreen map: http://www.noradsanta.org/map.html#fullscreen
I think you're confusing "applying technology" with "developing technology". This is a first step toward cutting through the fog that is the neural pathways and starting to recognize thought patterns. No one is suggesting that you'll be able to buy this at Best Buy next month.
They started with numbers and letters because it gives them a small, controlled and discrete set of thought patterns to look for and recognize. As the detection gets better, I'd guess they'll probably increase its detection capabilities to start with simple words, then more complex ones. Eventually, maybe, it'll be able to not only recognize thoughts in a stream if you focus, but it might reach the level where it can reconstruct images from your memories of them.
Who knows what potential something like this might have? It may be able to insert electrical patterns into the brain someday, replacing your eyes and ears as the primary way to feed data to you.
But at the moment, they're just trying to understand simple stuff in a sea of noise. Letters are an easy start, because the data set they are looking for is small and controlled, and they can measure success easily.
Ah, but you have arms and legs.
A technology that allows you to type at a blistering eight characters per minute after getting invasive brain surgery isn't for you. A quadriplegic might decide it is worth the effort to them. Especially one that has other issues that prevent mouth-typing or other adaptations. And doubly so if they could control a wheelchair and home assistance systems by thinking specific patterns.
I can think of some other applications for something like this.. communication with someone in an apparent vegetative state? Control of certain key systems where thinking of a specific symbol could be used as a failsafe? A direct and accurate cranial interface might be slow, but it might also be a hell of a lot faster than the alternatives in some cases.
And maybe one day this technology will refine to the point where you simply think the words and they are entered into the device of your choice. Personally, I'm not sure I'd be digging that too much, but imagine the concept of talking to someone across the planet in realtime from little boxes you carry around on your belt if someone mentioned it 100 years ago. "If I really wanted to talk to them, I'd go do it in person. Who wants to talk in real time to someone half a world away anyway?"
How vein.
If you want publicity in any way you can get it, feel free to skip testing. Data breaches make good news. It may not be the kind of publicity you want.
Seriously, it depends on your level of trust and you level of need for security. Though, if you are using a supposedly secure transport, I imagine your need for security is relatively high. Besides, you are putting your trust in an external company, which means if that company gets breached your data is right there. If you don't encrypt it with a second layer, anyone who gains access to your VPN provider also owns you. You have just extended your circle of trust to include all of the employees of your vendor, a whole bunch of people you will never meet. If they have cleartext access to your data, you have a problem.
Security is done in layers. If someone breaches one layer, it's best if they get stopped by another. The more layers (within practical limits) the better.
To put it another way, as wed128 so succinctly put it above, "Yes." Though I'd add "HELL, YES!" about 100 times after it.
The lawyers working this have no interest in paying you the $16. They have no interest in stopping Comcast from doing this. Their interest in both ended when their bribe check to the judge cleared and they got granted "class action" status. From that point forward it was all about maximizing the settlement and minimizing effort.
Comcast knew this, of course, and pulled some money out of petty cash so the lawyers could make $6 million in cash today and move on to the next righteous-looking yet profitable cause.
They saw an opportunity to look righteous and good and just and make $6+ million for filing a suit and settling quickly. Skip the "righteous and good and just" bit, come to think of it. They saw a bunch of people angry and upset about something, and bought off a judge to form a class so they could claim to represent people who had been wronged. Now that they've won, they'll dole out the money they need to and pocket the difference plus their 40%.
As a bonus, it saves them from all those exhaust fumes from chasing ambulances.
They SHOULD be ashamed, but they've learned to live with it. A few million a year in settlements will buy a LOT of shiny toys to distract people from their shame.
As far as the politicos voting on it, politicos are lawyers who have taken class-action and ambulance chasing to a high art. Sharks don't bite sharks. Professional courtesy.
Ore what?
You're right. It's not ferrous.
"I used Lotus Notes!"
"No, I used Lotus Notes!"
"Ni, **I** used Lotus Notes!"
(with apologies to "Spartacus") :)
I don't think Comcast will necessarily have access to the names and addresses. Usually Comcast pays their money to the lawyers who initiated the class action suit, and the lawyers then divvy it up by the approximate number of people in the class, minus their traditional 40% that they keep. Then, any unclaimed amounts, they keep. Plus they have the names and addresses which they keep.
It won't be Comcast handing the names and addresses over to MPAA/RIAA. I'd actually trust Comcast with that information more than I would the people who WILL be getting them.
Let me know how that works out for you, assuming they allow you access to slashdot from prison. If you send me an address, I'll see if I can find a non-ferrous file and bake it in a cake for you.
Say "Hi" to Bubba. He goes easier on people who are nice to him. :)
I'm a Comcast customer, I was throttled, I've never used my connection to download music or movies (TV shows and OSS only), and I still don't think I want to apply for my $16 pittance.
Prediction: The sharks who ran this class-action suit aren't going to be satisfied with $6.4 million (the usual 40% of $16 million), and they're going to make a few more bucks sell the names and details to RIAA/MPAA so everyone who receives their $16 will be slapped with a $999999 gazillion lawsuit for illegal file sharing. Most of the P2P users end up disconnected and eventually homeless after the spate of ruinous P2P lawsuits, Comcast gets to dump their heaviest-bandwidth users, everyone wins except the granny whose next door neighbor mooched off her WiFi and got a copy of Avatar.
"A strange game. The only way to win is not to play."
But I'm sure he misses his corner cubicle where he could look out the window, and watch the squirrels, and they were married...
It all depends on how far you take "being good". Many football coaches here want to raise a star player, and in order to do so they'll drill the living snot out of the players they have who look good. Your average teenager needs 10-12 hours of sleep a day, has a homework load that runs 2-3 hours minimum after a 7-hour school day. That leaves 4 hours for eating dinner and any other activities. When the coach wants daily 3-hour practices and twice on Saturday and Sunday, something's gotta give. Maybe one in 1000 of those kids is actually going to go on to a football career, if that, but in the meantime there is a pull to specialize in a sport at a cost to academia because, well, you want the school team to win, right?
When I was growing up, many of the most talented football players were pretty much guaranteed at least a minimum passing grade regardless of actual academic merit or effort, simply because a good football team was a form of PR to the community and garnered support for the school. The coaches were directed to drill the kids hard, and the teachers were expected to ease off on the homework and academic load for the best football players so they could focus on the game. Some of the players reacted by working really hard academically, but some just took advantage of the opportunity to coast their way through, putting in just enough effort to keep from being held back, and in some cases intentionally being held back so they could have an extra year or two in the high school athletics program.
Just in terms of hours in the day, there is at least partly a dichotomy between being good at sports and being good academically. Players who genuinely want to succeed academically find themselves constantly torn between practice, homework/study, sleep, and downtime/personal time/social time. Their major influence (second to their parents) is probably going to be their coach, and his priority is to build good players and a good team, so he's going to want them to put in a LOT of practice.
If "x is wrong, but isn't as wrong as y" doesn't qualify as moral relativism, I'm not sure what would, precisely.
Still, overall, stealing food for your family is wrong, but I agree that it is not as wrong as letting them starve.
But, of course, Father Jones might want to consider taking his example from Bishop Myriel, if he's going to tell his flock to take their example from Jean Valjean.
They could try buying out i4i, but I think i4i would set the price to be very unprofitable, and instead just set an ongoing licensing fee that allows Microsoft to continue operations but that would be very sweet indeed for i4i.
Then slashbot happy.
On the one hand, it's bad for Microsoft, so slashbot=happy. But it's a Patent win, so slashbot=angry. But it's a win for a small company, so slashbot=happy. But the small company appears to be a patent troll, so slashbot=indignant. But it's band for Microsoft anyway, so slashbot=[error: Stack overflow. Exiting.]
Umm, I think the phrase would have done better had it simply gone through English->Chinese->Engrish. I suspect a couple of other languages were involved, probably one or two that Google doesn't even support so it threw random words in there.
The original sentence was probably something like "I like a bagel with my coffee."