Anybody know what H.R.4176 Section 101 blah, blah, blah actually says? Or if it even exists? For all I know, it could a rule that says spotted owl habitats must not be disturbed by commercial ventures, in which case that message probably is in compliance. Or it could just be something they pulled out of their asses to make recepients think it has the federal seal of approval, sort of like the junk snail-mail that comes with the official-looking notice to the local postmaster telling him how to do his job.
Of course, it very likely could be an actual Congressionally-passed, Presidentially-signed law of the United States of America governing electronic communications. Paragraph (e)(1)(a) might require companies to spam the hell out of Norway. --
Does any software anywhere come with a warranty? I'd guess not, what with the halting problem and all. Those license "agreements" basically have two parts:
Your responsibilities in the license agreement, including promising not to make copies, say bad things about the software, and anything else they might think of later.
The anti-warranty that says that the software is not guranteed to:
not puree the (often unrelated) information and programs that you need so you'll be able to pay the rent and eat this month,
not spontaneously launch the world's nuclear arsenals, or
Let's start by not calling what Microsoft did kerberos. Since it doesn't work with established conforming kerberos servers and clients, it's obviously something else.
I particularly like cannot be answered from the article because they chose to focus on the computer angle, as if it added anything new to the story because I'm constantly asking myself why computers being involved seem to make so much difference. On one level, it's just another search warrant (which may or may not be too easily authorized).
But there are some interesting differences. I think (IANAL) that search warrants have a much better chance of being approved and withstanding later challenges if they are specific. But there's going to be a lot of stuff on a computer that is not at all related to any given investigation. So you can get a search warrant that specifically identifies computer, but gives an investigator access to a broad range of personal information. So what happens if they come for your computer because they think you've been saying mean things about your boss and they instead discover of a vast conspiracy to overthrow the government or evidence of a kiddie porn ring? (Not that/.ers are into kiddie porn or anarch--er not that we're into kiddie porn.)
Secondly, is a judge (or whoever) more likely to issue a search warrant for a computer than, say, a personal diary? Do authorities value our privacy regardless of where we choose to record our lives?
You aren't being hypocritical [STANDARD DISCLAIMER: as far as I can tell -- you are probably a complex person with many personal contradictions like the rest of us, but there's nothing hypocritical in your post]. You and I and a lot of other people would probably very much like to be able to watch the X-files. The hypocrites are those who are selling the DVDs but don't seem to want us to have any choice about how we watch them.
Does 'Windows 2005' really make less sense than, say, 'Mandrake 7.0'?
Well, let's apply some basic algebra to the question and "simplify" it to:
Does 'Windows' really make less sense than, say, 'Mandrake'?
Now, I think the answer is obvious: Yes. Let's try with some substitutions. Let's substitute "poking your eye with a sharp stick" for "Mandrake":
Does 'Windows' really make less sense than, say, 'poking your eye with a sharp stick'?
Well, that seem to still work out to a resounding "Yes," doesn't it?
On the other hand, if I wanted to know if Mandrake 7.0 was newer or older or just different from Mandrake 7.1 or Mandrake 7.2, I would have to resort to the difficult task of parsing the version numbers, whereas if I wanted to discover if two Windows 2005 CDs were different from each other, I'd only have to resort to augury.
I won't care so much about this in a few days, but I've been helping people not worry about Y2K affecting their Win95 systems, and it sure would have been nice to have some definite assurance which version of Win95 everybody had. It all worked out, but would it have been so hard to have Win95, Win95 release 2, Win95 release 3, or some similar nomenclature be more consistently and prominently displayed? Anybody know where I can find uname -a for Windows?
7. Bill Gates (Flame me all you want he did change the face of modern comuting) Fortunately for me I've been able to enforce my opinion that if it's important enough to run NT, it's important enough to wait until I get around to it, so he hasn't changed com[m]uting for me much. I'm trying to think of an interesting thing I know Bill Gates has actually done. I seem to remember there was some BASIC interpreter, so maybe he has something in common with Larry Wall. I mean, BASIC[A] used to come with DOS just like perl comes with linux, and you can easily write horrible code with both. Of course there are some differences, like how Wall is the developer/creator of perl and graciously acknowledges the contributions of the countless others who contribute. And the fact that I don't feel the need to hide my face in abject humilation whenever I admit that I've dabbled in perl. The only other thing I can think of was taking advantage of IBM's late 70s/early 80s view of personal computing to make a deal to provide then non-existent software -- ooh! there's a theme I didn't think of. OK, No problems with Gates on the list then. He gets credit for hacking VaporWare. As as Adolf Hitler being on the list: I think maybe Bill Gates is an asshole, but I really don't know. For all I know he's a really nice guy in person. I think Adolf Hitler was a paranoid murderous megalomaniac. I'm sure that many more German engineers and scientists could have made even greater contributions without his help.
I just checked my wallet and my credit card has failed to disintegrate last night. I'm taking this as a bad sign that I still have to pay off my balance.
I'm wondering how the wacko cults are handling this...the world hasn't ended. Armageddon hasn't happened.
Well, happily for those of use who thrive on the entertainment provided by the prognosticators, there is always the real start of the millennium and centry in 36[56] days. Plus, we shouldn't forget that the placement of January 1 is rather arbitrary. We have two perfectly good equinoxi (equinoxes? Drat! You never can find a ancient Latin-speaking Roman around anymore. Not like the old days when they were all over the place.) and solstices coming up, not to mention a bunch of notorious dates that were set in the past 100 years alone.
And I still can't believe that my apartment managers decided do shut down the elevator before midnight "To show that management is prepared for Y2K".
I'm trying to follow the logic here, but I keep getting distracted by the lunatic giggling -- wait, that's me. In the off chance that the elevator might stop working, they elected to make sure it wasn't working? Did they think that it was going to plunge to the basement or launch itself through the roof, because, as we all know, that was perfectly acceptable elevator behavior in 1900 (or 1960 or 1970 or 1980 or whenever you'd like your elevator to roll over to today). So, did they turn it back on this morning? Unless we undergo a tremendous calendar shift, it's not going to be 19xx for a very, very, very long time, so I don't understand the concept of avoiding the first second of the 20xx era if you're just going to be turning it back on a few thousand or even million seconds later.
I also seem to remember that some measurable difference between the calculated position of some planet or moon (in this solar system) and it's observed position fit was evidence of the theory. I can't remember why or when or where -- some vague memory in a physics classroom, so I may be completely wrong. I remember thinking it was spooky cool but now I can't think how in the world relativity would come into play in the observation.
Well, before the patent is overturned, let's all calculate how much it has cost us to address our Y2K concerns and send this patent holder a bill. After all, isn't the Y2K bug just an application of the windowing technique with the pivot year being 00? Sure feels that way to me: everything from 00 to 99 is in the 1900s. If you're going to take credit for something, you ought to be ready to take the heat for it too, I say.
Between this and the $25 million "invested" in hyrdrinos, it's pretty clear that construction on the B-Ark is way behind schedule. The giant space goat is very close.
I must say that I find this a frightfully closed-minded statement, especially today at the close of a century that's revealed the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, atomic energy, manned flight and space travel. Certainly, after all we've learned, we can agree that it's possible that he's both a fraud and an idiot?
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 5 of the US Constitution does not seem to be a problem regarding, for example, state sales taxes on cars produced in Michigan and sold in North Carolina or Wyoming.
The snippet of the Internet Tax Freedom Act seems to answer the argument you try to make. The 6 percent sales tax is "generally imposed and legally collectible [...] on transactions [...] accomplished through other means" including local retail stores. And the people being taxed are still the North Carolina residents who would have to pay the same tax in local stores, so it doesn't "impose an obligation to collect or pay the tax on a different person or entity than in the case of transactions [...] accomplished through other means."
As for the other problems, if I buy something I intend to give as a gift, I still have to pay taxes on it. I bought something this weekend that I need to get wrapped soon. I got a 20 percent discount, but I paid $1 in sales tax (OK, I'm cheap). I could have ordered this on line, and if I had, then by this law I would be obligated to pay the 6 percent sales tax. Of course, I probably wouldn't have qualified for a 20 percent discount (it was a special situation I lucked into), but generally I probably would have found a lower list price.
I do wonder about people paying on items that are not subject to state sales taxes. I bet a lot of the people who pay any tax on their internet transactions will pay the tax on exempt stuff.
Because it's not a tax on the internet. It's a tax on me (a North Carlina resident) puchasing something, just as if I purchased it at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh. I don't like it, but it's no different from having to pay taxes on a car I might buy at a dealership down the road.
The very real question of whether this collection method has any chance of working aside, the application of this just means that if I decide to buy something on line because:
I have a wider selection to choose from.
What I want is actually in stock.
I don't have to put up with mind boggling ignorant salesdroids.
I will have to pay 106% of the list price just like I would if I chose to buy something that was almost, but not quite, what I was looking for because the local store carries it and it was in stock and I restrained myself from a lethal improvement to my state's aggragate IQ.
E-retailers might be hurt by this because the effective cost to me would be a little bit higher, but if your price was already with 6 percent of what I could get the same thing for locally, why in the world would I pay the shipping and handling? And why would I order from Alaska? Nothing wrong with Alaska, but I find that I can usually get quicker delivery (and lower delivery prices?) if I limit my shopping to places east of the Mississippi.
As for why does the state feel that it has a right to this money, well, why does it feel it has a right to any money it collects? Don't forget, at least this method (which I have a hard time imagining will be effective) doesn't impose event the hardship of collecting the tax on any non North Carolina company. The expense is on the North Carolina buyer and the justification is that the money collected will be used by the state of North Carlina for the good of North Carolinians. And to be honest, I do feel that some of the tax collected by this state is used wisely. A lot isn't, but some is.
I can't say whether the brick and mortar businesses here (like Redhat?) supported this law. I don't know. But I suspect that having been hamstrung by the requirement that they collect sales taxes on things NC residents buy, they're happy to see the playing field leveled on that axis. And arguments that shipping charges balance no taxes on internet transactions just don't wash. The retailers in the malls and on main street here had to pay to have the stuff they stock shipped here, and the only way they can pay that cost is to pass it on to me in the price of the merchandise. And that's even if it's a huge company that has its own shipping service rather than relying on UPS or some other handler.
So will this tax (and let's pretend that this is 100% enforceable and they'll chop off fingers or something similar if I don't keep accurate records and pay up) change my on-line buying habits? Will I stop buying from retailers in other states? Other than keeping my receipts (to avoid the digit-removal process), I'd have to say no.
A more interesting question is why does North Carolina have both a sales tax and an income tax? Why do we get it coming and going? If there is a set of essential public services that should be supported by taxes, what is the fairest way to impose those taxes? Income tax so everybody pays regardless of what they do with rest of their money? Or sales tax that favors thrift? Does it matter if your poor so that you lose a chunk before you get your paycheck, or lose 6 percent of your paycheck because there isn't enough to save any of it?
So, how do I as a citizen of Ohio get NC to cough up the portion of that tax that reduces my company's marketability?
Hmm. A tough question, if we take it seriously. How do Ohio companies that for years have been selling their products in North Carolina stores get this NC to cough the state taxes that we're already paying on Ohio (and everybody else's) products? I don't believe they do. But don't worry about it, because, assuming that I keep all my receipts and everything, as a North Carolina resident, I'm expected to pay the sales tax on everything I buy no matter where I buy it. So Ohio merchandise is now 106% of the list price. So is Michigan and New York and California merchandise.
Now that (except in the many localities that have additional sales taxes) in-state and out-of-state purchases have similar sales tax penalties, does this mean I would buy more stuff locally? Probably not. I buy stuff on-line that I might not be able to get here. Such as when I have a hankering for a book with, say line drawing of an animal on the cover and the only remotely related literature around here are a couple of shelves of Idiot's guides to Z. I imagine the real bookstores in this state are all located in areas that have additional local sales taxes anyway, and for me the convenience of placing a quickly shipped order at any non-Amazon on-line bookstore even if I'm assessed the NC state sales tax definitely wins out over having to spend a day on the highway myself. So if you're in Ohio and would like me to buy your stuff, don't worry. Life for me sucks a little bit more because of this, but the suckiness is evenly distributed.
If there is EVER going to be an internet sales tax it will have to be at the federal level and,revenue raised will have to be dispursed to specific projects with a wide support base.
The practical (the moral/ethical/philosophical ones somebody else is dealing with, I'm sure) problem of sales taxes on the internet is collection. From the state's perspective (any state that employs sales taxes to generate income), it's just about getting a piece of each transaction. This is easy when the seller and the buyer are in the same place. I'm so conditioned to paying a sales tax that I think it's just something that the store does because the cash register automatically adds the tax. Tax-exempt sales are a pain because you have to fill out a piece of paper and/or tell the register to no calculate the tax (I forget exactly what the procedure is). But that thing is that it's a tax I pay. The store just collects it, which i s an administrative burden imposed on the store by the state, but I'm the one paying it. This is more apparent on mail-order forms that have that note at the bottom directing us to calculate our local sales tax -- the amount I pay in taxes has nothing to do with the state where the company I'm dealing with is located, even if it's in the same state.
The glaring inconsistency is, of course, that whether or not the tax is collected at all (but not how much is collected) depends on whether stores are operated in this state. But inconsistency is the hobgoblin in collecting state sales tax (which, in North Carolina, at least, is more a tax on buying rather than a tax on selling) in an international market. And a federal tax on buying would have the same types of problems, and we wouldn't really need the internet to see them. Internet or no internet, domestic purchases could be taxed by having the sellers automatically tack on the federal sales tax, but how does Uncle Sam get his cut on stuff that we buy in Canada? Canada's got enough to do without collecting sales taxes for us.
But let's pretend that there's a federal sales tax that includes internet commerce. Would the legislators in North Carolina look at it any differently? Probably not. They don't mean to penalize internet commerce, they just want all of us North Carolinians to be taxed on all the transactions we make, because they really do view every non-taxed purchase as loss to the general fund. So now I'd have to pay the federal sales tax on top of the state sales tax. It sucks to be us. And guess what: the revenue raised by either state or federal sales taxes would get dispersed to whatever projects the respective legistlatures feel like. Sure, they'd campaign for the federal sales tax to raise money for schools or more cops on the street or whatever looks best in the polls that year, but after the tax is established it won't be long before it just goes into general funds.
I've rambled and nobody reads this far down, but on the assumption that a state sales tax is a fair thing to do (it seems it could reward saving, especially if there is no state income tax (which there is here), but penalize the poor, so I'm not going to suggest that it is a fair thing to do), I have to say that the North Carolina plan tries to implement it fairly:
It's a tax to collect money supposedly to be used for the good of the citizens of the collecting state. It wouldn't make sense, for example, to charge the North Carolina sales tax on every copy of RedHat that Bob Young sells to people in Ohio because the people in Ohio don't benefit from North Carolina services.
It doesn't impose collection burdens on out-of-state retailers. Which would be truly nightmarish if those retailers (and for that matter, retailers here) were required to keep up with collections for every state that imposes sales taxes.
Of course, the sales tax has some pretty major problems, too.
Why are the many wonderful visitors from Ohio forced to pay North Carlina sales taxes? Of course there are some state expenditures that they benefit from while they are here, such as law enforcement and street maintenance and fire protection, but they don't attend our schools and I doubt that Ohioans who can afford out-of-state vacations are going to be much of a burden on our welfare system.
If the state needs this money so badly, why hasn't it been collecting from mail-order and telephone-order companies that don't operate stores in North Carolina? If my friend in Chicago hooks me up with a really talented yet unknown artist and after a couple of telephone conversations and a couple of polaroids sent through the mail, I end up investing $1,000 in a sculpture, why should I not be paying sales tax on that but pay %6 on some paperback book I get from Barnes&Noble?
There is apparently a provision in the law for those of us who fail to keep up with our on-line purchases. From the article:
The state suggests that a resident with $46,000 of taxable income pay $28 in use tax on items costing less than $1000. A resident with only $10,000 taxable income would be expected to pay only $6.
Calculated this way, it's more of an income tax than a sales tax. How long before it just becomes an internet sales tax that you pay based on your income regardless of whether you have a computer, or have internet access, or use that access to make purchases?
And finally, compare and contrast:
If I were a North Carolinian you could bet the outer banks that I would deny any internet purchases I may have made. "I made those purchases over the phone to a toll-free number and, that company does not have facilities in NC so you can't touch me."
But if they lie and they're audited, Collins said, the proof will be in their credit card statements because, for the most part, Internet and catalog purchases are made with plastic. And they're easy to track.
So, it seems there is a (probably small) non-zero chance that avoiding the tax will fail. But I hear Vegas is fun, too.
I have had Mail, File and Web servers that have seen uptimes around 1 year. I dont see this as an unstable operating system. The big thing with Linux and NT is that Linux is more stable RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. NT needs to be tweaked. BUT, they are BOTH Stable OS's when properly configured.
Naturally, of course, these Mail, File and Web (dynamic?) servers are all running on the same NT machine, right? Or are they high-demand services running on more than one machine? This isn't a flame -- I'm not suggesting that your NT system(s) aren't doing some hard work, I just wish we had some references. This applies to all the other systems, too -- my linux system has been really stable, and it's running mail, file and web services, but it ain't got no serious load on it, so I think the stability of my system is irrelevant here.
How much does NT cost these days? I really don't know, which is why I'm asking. But I imagine it's enough where I should expect the default configuration (read: OUT OF THE BOX) to be stable. No OS tweaking. This isn't a flame either, because I'm not suggesting that it is impossible for NT to be stable -- OK I am flaming Microsoft a little for setting up their flagship product as if stability were an option. The really big thing is that a $2 copy of Linux is [more] stable out of the little paper sleeve.
I also agree that NT is unstable when you are adding and removing alot of programs.... However, it is the same as with Linux, that you have to know how to configure the machine in order for the programs to run properly and not crash.
It just seems like there are many, many more examples of a poorly configured program on NT bringing down the whole system. I'm sure there are others, but the only application I can think of that has caused any kind of collateral damage for me has been Netscape occassionally locking up XFree86. I hear NT has made great improvements and is much more able to slap down misbehaving apps, but I can't understand why Microsoft has taken so long to address such a fundamental stability and security issue. This isn't an "innovative" new concept. Unixen and VMS and other OSes have been abruptly killing badly-written programs since before WindowsNT was first announced.
Yep, spring for some stamps and tell your representatives what you think, but don't forget that there are lots of people who have no idea this is going on. Find ways to get this issue to people who aren't aware of the UCITA and how it will affect their businesses if it is enacted. Recent posts here on this subject prompted me to inform the person who handles computer issues (editorially) at my community newspaper, and here's the payoff: First Byte.
Write letters to the editor as well as letters to your state legislators.
The difficult decision to turn off the radio really only comes if there's somebody alive to talk to on the radio. You really don't need a contingency plan if a malfunction causes a catstrophic crash that kills everybody instantly. And if the accident doesn't kill everybody instantly, but wipes out the oxygen system so that they're going to die in a few minutes, you don't have enough time to worry about the decision.
But if you have a crew who has several hours of oxygen and no way to get back, that's a different matter. And it really doesn't matter if the crew is stranded because of a bad landing or because of a system malfunction.
I suppose the contingeny plan for a re-entry/splashdown accident would be to try to rescue survivors because, well, they'd be on this planet, so that would be an option. They rescued Grissom before his capsule sank. And if there were no survivors -- but wait, Challenger seems to demonstrate this contingency plan.
Were there contingency plans for other stranding scenerios? Probably. The thrusters on the command/service module could malfunction leaving the astronauts orbiting the moon. But this really isn't any different from being stranded on the surface of the moon, is it? You're going to run out of oxygen and die and nobody can do anything to change that if you can't fix the problem yourself.
Is there something inherent to the design of the lander that raised some uncertainty about its abiliy to lift off from the moon? It would be the first time human beings would actually depend on the lunar module to return them from the surface of the moon. This was the real alpha test. If there was something wrong, despite all of the previous testing, this was the mission that would find out. Preceding Apollo missions had already tested the rest of the system. And I seem to recall that the lunar module was a particularly delicate piece of engineering with thin margins (which is why Armstrong came within a minute of aborting the landing or stranding the lander).
I'm always wondering what security tweak I missed when I set up a system. I'd rather try to use a service and get an authorization, authentication or permissions error that tells me I need to slightly relax paranoid security than have my permissive system compromised because I didn't know to edit/etc/inetd.conf.
In the short run I'm sure this would result in FUD about functionality, but I bet it would be a strategic win for the reliability and security reputation.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a lot of artists not making any money now. And there are a lot that do make money, but aren't exactly artists.
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Of course, it very likely could be an actual Congressionally-passed, Presidentially-signed law of the United States of America governing electronic communications. Paragraph (e)(1)(a) might require companies to spam the hell out of Norway.
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And the 3D acceleration sucks. How am I suppose to play Quake on this thing?
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It's not really a standard if nobody else is doing it. It's just another protocol.
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Anybody got a good idea for a suitable name?
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Levying a royalty for boycotting may be the only way Amazon ever makes a profit.
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But there are some interesting differences. I think (IANAL) that search warrants have a much better chance of being approved and withstanding later challenges if they are specific. But there's going to be a lot of stuff on a computer that is not at all related to any given investigation. So you can get a search warrant that specifically identifies computer, but gives an investigator access to a broad range of personal information. So what happens if they come for your computer because they think you've been saying mean things about your boss and they instead discover of a vast conspiracy to overthrow the government or evidence of a kiddie porn ring? (Not that /.ers are into kiddie porn or anarch--er not that we're into kiddie porn.)
Secondly, is a judge (or whoever) more likely to issue a search warrant for a computer than, say, a personal diary? Do authorities value our privacy regardless of where we choose to record our lives?
You aren't being hypocritical [STANDARD DISCLAIMER: as far as I can tell -- you are probably a complex person with many personal contradictions like the rest of us, but there's nothing hypocritical in your post]. You and I and a lot of other people would probably very much like to be able to watch the X-files. The hypocrites are those who are selling the DVDs but don't seem to want us to have any choice about how we watch them.
On the other hand, if I wanted to know if Mandrake 7.0 was newer or older or just different from Mandrake 7.1 or Mandrake 7.2, I would have to resort to the difficult task of parsing the version numbers, whereas if I wanted to discover if two Windows 2005 CDs were different from each other, I'd only have to resort to augury.
I won't care so much about this in a few days, but I've been helping people not worry about Y2K affecting their Win95 systems, and it sure would have been nice to have some definite assurance which version of Win95 everybody had. It all worked out, but would it have been so hard to have Win95, Win95 release 2, Win95 release 3, or some similar nomenclature be more consistently and prominently displayed? Anybody know where I can find uname -a for Windows?
7. Bill Gates (Flame me all you want he did change the face of modern comuting) Fortunately for me I've been able to enforce my opinion that if it's important enough to run NT, it's important enough to wait until I get around to it, so he hasn't changed com[m]uting for me much. I'm trying to think of an interesting thing I know Bill Gates has actually done. I seem to remember there was some BASIC interpreter, so maybe he has something in common with Larry Wall. I mean, BASIC[A] used to come with DOS just like perl comes with linux, and you can easily write horrible code with both. Of course there are some differences, like how Wall is the developer/creator of perl and graciously acknowledges the contributions of the countless others who contribute. And the fact that I don't feel the need to hide my face in abject humilation whenever I admit that I've dabbled in perl. The only other thing I can think of was taking advantage of IBM's late 70s/early 80s view of personal computing to make a deal to provide then non-existent software -- ooh! there's a theme I didn't think of. OK, No problems with Gates on the list then. He gets credit for hacking VaporWare. As as Adolf Hitler being on the list: I think maybe Bill Gates is an asshole, but I really don't know. For all I know he's a really nice guy in person. I think Adolf Hitler was a paranoid murderous megalomaniac. I'm sure that many more German engineers and scientists could have made even greater contributions without his help.
I just checked my wallet and my credit card has failed to disintegrate last night. I'm taking this as a bad sign that I still have to pay off my balance.
I also seem to remember that some measurable difference between the calculated position of some planet or moon (in this solar system) and it's observed position fit was evidence of the theory. I can't remember why or when or where -- some vague memory in a physics classroom, so I may be completely wrong. I remember thinking it was spooky cool but now I can't think how in the world relativity would come into play in the observation.
Well, before the patent is overturned, let's all calculate how much it has cost us to address our Y2K concerns and send this patent holder a bill. After all, isn't the Y2K bug just an application of the windowing technique with the pivot year being 00? Sure feels that way to me: everything from 00 to 99 is in the 1900s. If you're going to take credit for something, you ought to be ready to take the heat for it too, I say.
Between this and the $25 million "invested" in hyrdrinos, it's pretty clear that construction on the B-Ark is way behind schedule. The giant space goat is very close.
The snippet of the Internet Tax Freedom Act seems to answer the argument you try to make. The 6 percent sales tax is "generally imposed and legally collectible [...] on transactions [...] accomplished through other means" including local retail stores. And the people being taxed are still the North Carolina residents who would have to pay the same tax in local stores, so it doesn't "impose an obligation to collect or pay the tax on a different person or entity than in the case of transactions [...] accomplished through other means."
As for the other problems, if I buy something I intend to give as a gift, I still have to pay taxes on it. I bought something this weekend that I need to get wrapped soon. I got a 20 percent discount, but I paid $1 in sales tax (OK, I'm cheap). I could have ordered this on line, and if I had, then by this law I would be obligated to pay the 6 percent sales tax. Of course, I probably wouldn't have qualified for a 20 percent discount (it was a special situation I lucked into), but generally I probably would have found a lower list price.
I do wonder about people paying on items that are not subject to state sales taxes. I bet a lot of the people who pay any tax on their internet transactions will pay the tax on exempt stuff.
The very real question of whether this collection method has any chance of working aside, the application of this just means that if I decide to buy something on line because:
- I have a wider selection to choose from.
- What I want is actually in stock.
- I don't have to put up with mind boggling ignorant salesdroids.
I will have to pay 106% of the list price just like I would if I chose to buy something that was almost, but not quite, what I was looking for because the local store carries it and it was in stock and I restrained myself from a lethal improvement to my state's aggragate IQ.E-retailers might be hurt by this because the effective cost to me would be a little bit higher, but if your price was already with 6 percent of what I could get the same thing for locally, why in the world would I pay the shipping and handling? And why would I order from Alaska? Nothing wrong with Alaska, but I find that I can usually get quicker delivery (and lower delivery prices?) if I limit my shopping to places east of the Mississippi.
As for why does the state feel that it has a right to this money, well, why does it feel it has a right to any money it collects? Don't forget, at least this method (which I have a hard time imagining will be effective) doesn't impose event the hardship of collecting the tax on any non North Carolina company. The expense is on the North Carolina buyer and the justification is that the money collected will be used by the state of North Carlina for the good of North Carolinians. And to be honest, I do feel that some of the tax collected by this state is used wisely. A lot isn't, but some is.
I can't say whether the brick and mortar businesses here (like Redhat?) supported this law. I don't know. But I suspect that having been hamstrung by the requirement that they collect sales taxes on things NC residents buy, they're happy to see the playing field leveled on that axis. And arguments that shipping charges balance no taxes on internet transactions just don't wash. The retailers in the malls and on main street here had to pay to have the stuff they stock shipped here, and the only way they can pay that cost is to pass it on to me in the price of the merchandise. And that's even if it's a huge company that has its own shipping service rather than relying on UPS or some other handler.
So will this tax (and let's pretend that this is 100% enforceable and they'll chop off fingers or something similar if I don't keep accurate records and pay up) change my on-line buying habits? Will I stop buying from retailers in other states? Other than keeping my receipts (to avoid the digit-removal process), I'd have to say no.
A more interesting question is why does North Carolina have both a sales tax and an income tax? Why do we get it coming and going? If there is a set of essential public services that should be supported by taxes, what is the fairest way to impose those taxes? Income tax so everybody pays regardless of what they do with rest of their money? Or sales tax that favors thrift? Does it matter if your poor so that you lose a chunk before you get your paycheck, or lose 6 percent of your paycheck because there isn't enough to save any of it?
Now that (except in the many localities that have additional sales taxes) in-state and out-of-state purchases have similar sales tax penalties, does this mean I would buy more stuff locally? Probably not. I buy stuff on-line that I might not be able to get here. Such as when I have a hankering for a book with, say line drawing of an animal on the cover and the only remotely related literature around here are a couple of shelves of Idiot's guides to Z. I imagine the real bookstores in this state are all located in areas that have additional local sales taxes anyway, and for me the convenience of placing a quickly shipped order at any non-Amazon on-line bookstore even if I'm assessed the NC state sales tax definitely wins out over having to spend a day on the highway myself. So if you're in Ohio and would like me to buy your stuff, don't worry. Life for me sucks a little bit more because of this, but the suckiness is evenly distributed.
The practical (the moral/ethical/philosophical ones somebody else is dealing with, I'm sure) problem of sales taxes on the internet is collection. From the state's perspective (any state that employs sales taxes to generate income), it's just about getting a piece of each transaction. This is easy when the seller and the buyer are in the same place. I'm so conditioned to paying a sales tax that I think it's just something that the store does because the cash register automatically adds the tax. Tax-exempt sales are a pain because you have to fill out a piece of paper and/or tell the register to no calculate the tax (I forget exactly what the procedure is). But that thing is that it's a tax I pay. The store just collects it, which i s an administrative burden imposed on the store by the state, but I'm the one paying it. This is more apparent on mail-order forms that have that note at the bottom directing us to calculate our local sales tax -- the amount I pay in taxes has nothing to do with the state where the company I'm dealing with is located, even if it's in the same state.
The glaring inconsistency is, of course, that whether or not the tax is collected at all (but not how much is collected) depends on whether stores are operated in this state. But inconsistency is the hobgoblin in collecting state sales tax (which, in North Carolina, at least, is more a tax on buying rather than a tax on selling) in an international market. And a federal tax on buying would have the same types of problems, and we wouldn't really need the internet to see them. Internet or no internet, domestic purchases could be taxed by having the sellers automatically tack on the federal sales tax, but how does Uncle Sam get his cut on stuff that we buy in Canada? Canada's got enough to do without collecting sales taxes for us.
But let's pretend that there's a federal sales tax that includes internet commerce. Would the legislators in North Carolina look at it any differently? Probably not. They don't mean to penalize internet commerce, they just want all of us North Carolinians to be taxed on all the transactions we make, because they really do view every non-taxed purchase as loss to the general fund. So now I'd have to pay the federal sales tax on top of the state sales tax. It sucks to be us. And guess what: the revenue raised by either state or federal sales taxes would get dispersed to whatever projects the respective legistlatures feel like. Sure, they'd campaign for the federal sales tax to raise money for schools or more cops on the street or whatever looks best in the polls that year, but after the tax is established it won't be long before it just goes into general funds.
I've rambled and nobody reads this far down, but on the assumption that a state sales tax is a fair thing to do (it seems it could reward saving, especially if there is no state income tax (which there is here), but penalize the poor, so I'm not going to suggest that it is a fair thing to do), I have to say that the North Carolina plan tries to implement it fairly:
- It's a tax to collect money supposedly to be used for the good of the citizens of the collecting state. It wouldn't make sense, for example, to charge the North Carolina sales tax on every copy of RedHat that Bob Young sells to people in Ohio because the people in Ohio don't benefit from North Carolina services.
- It doesn't impose collection burdens on out-of-state retailers. Which would be truly nightmarish if those retailers (and for that matter, retailers here) were required to keep up with collections for every state that imposes sales taxes.
Of course, the sales tax has some pretty major problems, too.- Why are the many wonderful visitors from Ohio forced to pay North Carlina sales taxes? Of course there are some state expenditures that they benefit from while they are here, such as law enforcement and street maintenance and fire protection, but they don't attend our schools and I doubt that Ohioans who can afford out-of-state vacations are going to be much of a burden on our welfare system.
- If the state needs this money so badly, why hasn't it been collecting from mail-order and telephone-order companies that don't operate stores in North Carolina? If my friend in Chicago hooks me up with a really talented yet unknown artist and after a couple of telephone conversations and a couple of polaroids sent through the mail, I end up investing $1,000 in a sculpture, why should I not be paying sales tax on that but pay %6 on some paperback book I get from Barnes&Noble?
There is apparently a provision in the law for those of us who fail to keep up with our on-line purchases. From the article: Calculated this way, it's more of an income tax than a sales tax. How long before it just becomes an internet sales tax that you pay based on your income regardless of whether you have a computer, or have internet access, or use that access to make purchases?And finally, compare and contrast:
So, it seems there is a (probably small) non-zero chance that avoiding the tax will fail. But I hear Vegas is fun, too.Naturally, of course, these Mail, File and Web (dynamic?) servers are all running on the same NT machine, right? Or are they high-demand services running on more than one machine? This isn't a flame -- I'm not suggesting that your NT system(s) aren't doing some hard work, I just wish we had some references. This applies to all the other systems, too -- my linux system has been really stable, and it's running mail, file and web services, but it ain't got no serious load on it, so I think the stability of my system is irrelevant here.
How much does NT cost these days? I really don't know, which is why I'm asking. But I imagine it's enough where I should expect the default configuration (read: OUT OF THE BOX) to be stable. No OS tweaking. This isn't a flame either, because I'm not suggesting that it is impossible for NT to be stable -- OK I am flaming Microsoft a little for setting up their flagship product as if stability were an option. The really big thing is that a $2 copy of Linux is [more] stable out of the little paper sleeve.
It just seems like there are many, many more examples of a poorly configured program on NT bringing down the whole system. I'm sure there are others, but the only application I can think of that has caused any kind of collateral damage for me has been Netscape occassionally locking up XFree86. I hear NT has made great improvements and is much more able to slap down misbehaving apps, but I can't understand why Microsoft has taken so long to address such a fundamental stability and security issue. This isn't an "innovative" new concept. Unixen and VMS and other OSes have been abruptly killing badly-written programs since before WindowsNT was first announced.
Write letters to the editor as well as letters to your state legislators.
But if you have a crew who has several hours of oxygen and no way to get back, that's a different matter. And it really doesn't matter if the crew is stranded because of a bad landing or because of a system malfunction.
I suppose the contingeny plan for a re-entry/splashdown accident would be to try to rescue survivors because, well, they'd be on this planet, so that would be an option. They rescued Grissom before his capsule sank. And if there were no survivors -- but wait, Challenger seems to demonstrate this contingency plan.
Were there contingency plans for other stranding scenerios? Probably. The thrusters on the command/service module could malfunction leaving the astronauts orbiting the moon. But this really isn't any different from being stranded on the surface of the moon, is it? You're going to run out of oxygen and die and nobody can do anything to change that if you can't fix the problem yourself.
Is there something inherent to the design of the lander that raised some uncertainty about its abiliy to lift off from the moon? It would be the first time human beings would actually depend on the lunar module to return them from the surface of the moon. This was the real alpha test. If there was something wrong, despite all of the previous testing, this was the mission that would find out. Preceding Apollo missions had already tested the rest of the system. And I seem to recall that the lunar module was a particularly delicate piece of engineering with thin margins (which is why Armstrong came within a minute of aborting the landing or stranding the lander).
In the short run I'm sure this would result in FUD about functionality, but I bet it would be a strategic win for the reliability and security reputation.