>> Frankly, I think this is a better argument to forget sales tax, but it is a revenue generator, and perhaps even more fair than an income tax.
Sales tax is quite regressive because lower income families spend most, if not all, of thier earnings. Some states exempt some items such as food and clothing, but for the most part sales taxes hit the lower-income folks pretty hard.
Consider the sales taxes on gasoline, something like $.50 a gallon. If you buy 40 gallons a month, that's $240 in taxes a year. If you're earning 30K, that's around 1% of your income.
While I'm at it: all taxes are paid by the consumer. A "business tax" is a cost like any other that's passed along in the form of higher prices.
Now that everyone has at least one cellphone, the trick is to get you ditch was you have for a new model with "must have" features that you probably won't use anyway. Sound like software marketing?
You can tell the digital camera market is still in it's early stages, because this thing isn't being marketed as a camera with a cellphone.
Once a company has enough deployed copies of an application in place, doing a "compliance audit" and collecting can be viewed as a the brute-force way to close the deal. I can think of a few types of companies,/cough/ start-ups, that would consider the pirate-now-pay-later as a way of financing software purchases.
For creating demoware as a college student, I used software called Dan Bricklin's Demo System. The software ran on DOS, you can tell this was a while ago, and you could write code using a menu system like Visicalc to enter code such that you could not make a syntax error. Logic errors, of course, were your problem. The interface was well done, so using the menus wasn't that annoying.
The auto-complete/macro/quick fix features in newer IDE's come close to providing code via menus for those who want it, but lets those users who prefer to do the typing themselves alone.
Some bright person made MCI a bundle of money by getting the number 1 800 OPERATER when ATT introduced 1 800 OPERATOR collect call number.
The "wrong" number brought in 6 figures and forced ATT to re-brand it's service 1 800 CALL ATT.
The $$ effects of this "typosquatting" case on the holder of the "correct" number pale in comparison to getting divered to a p0rn or parody site when you mis-type a URL -- yet I don't recall any action in court against MCI. Someone was asleep at the wheel at ATT, as this problem should have appeared when the service was tested, if it was tested.
I worked making software by contract for various PA gov't agencies, our contract stipulated that our software was public domain and we even had to send on our source for archive.
What's missing: a centralized store of gov't software to reduce duplication of efforts -- an interesting project, if nothing else.
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>> Frankly, I think this is a better argument to forget sales tax, but it is a revenue generator, and perhaps even more fair than an income tax.
Sales tax is quite regressive because lower income families spend most, if not all, of thier earnings. Some states exempt some items such as food and clothing, but for the most part sales taxes hit the lower-income folks pretty hard.
Consider the sales taxes on gasoline, something like $.50 a gallon. If you buy 40 gallons a month, that's $240 in taxes a year. If you're earning 30K, that's around 1% of your income.
While I'm at it: all taxes are paid by the consumer. A "business tax" is a cost like any other that's passed along in the form of higher prices.
Now that everyone has at least one cellphone, the trick is to get you ditch was you have for a new model with "must have" features that you probably won't use anyway. Sound like software marketing?
You can tell the digital camera market is still in it's early stages, because this thing isn't being marketed as a camera with a cellphone.
Now you're on to something!
/cough/ start-ups, that would consider the pirate-now-pay-later as a way of financing software purchases.
Once a company has enough deployed copies of an application in place, doing a "compliance audit" and collecting can be viewed as a the brute-force way to close the deal. I can think of a few types of companies,
For creating demoware as a college student, I used software called Dan Bricklin's Demo System. The software ran on DOS, you can tell this was a while ago, and you could write code using a menu system like Visicalc to enter code such that you could not make a syntax error. Logic errors, of course, were your problem. The interface was well done, so using the menus wasn't that annoying.
The auto-complete/macro/quick fix features in newer IDE's come close to providing code via menus for those who want it, but lets those users who prefer to do the typing themselves alone.
Go to Monticello. They use two dollar bills for small change at the gift shop. Somebody there has a sense of humor.
Or you can get them from the teller at the bank.
Most real companies get the sucks.com domain if some disgruntled party didn't beat them to the punch.
Someone with time on their hands could make a decently funny parody site.
...it's the entire "computer" to some people. I wonder how many people have machines that just run AOL?
...AOL software could be configured to override Windows and launch a version of Red Hat's Linux operating system...
I dunno about you, wouldn't you notice if after installing some software, your OS was different?
Sounds like a money maker to me.
The "wrong" number brought in 6 figures and forced ATT to re-brand it's service 1 800 CALL ATT.
The $$ effects of this "typosquatting" case on the holder of the "correct" number pale in comparison to getting divered to a p0rn or parody site when you mis-type a URL -- yet I don't recall any action in court against MCI. Someone was asleep at the wheel at ATT, as this problem should have appeared when the service was tested, if it was tested.
Check out this for more detail.
I worked making software by contract for various PA gov't agencies, our contract stipulated that our software was public domain and we even had to send on our source for archive. What's missing: a centralized store of gov't software to reduce duplication of efforts -- an interesting project, if nothing else.