I live in NC, sell software all over the world using a credit card processing company located in Georgia.
List the taxes that must be paid, who pays and whop recevies, for each of the following purchasers :
A Texan buys something from me
A Texan buys something from me using a PC in NM
A Korean national buys something from me
A Korean national buys something from me using a PC in Texas
Remember, when these people get their credit card bills, it doesn't say "Smaller Animals Software, Inc.", the name of my business. It says "RegSoft" the name of my credit card processor.
?? My accountant didn't know either.
Re:Benchmark Print Supply in Atlanta?
on
Suing the Spammers
·
· Score: 1
[rant on] Holy shit. These guys are relentless.
All of my accounts have received multiple emails from them this week.
I called their number to bitch, but got no answer. So, i started replying to the emails. Amazingly, the replies have not bounced yet. If they really are accepting email at the reply-to addr, they must be swamped with complaints this week.
an even bigger problem is that with the Windows OSes, users are rarely even told that such a thing as 'privileges' exist. you can install NT, 98, 95, etc. and never once run across anything about security. yes, you will be prompted to log into NT, but it's never resented to the user that you can actually create new users, or what the benefits of having different users would be, etc..
that's bull. why should difficult and arcane == real?
i've spent the last week trying to get a stupid ethernet card to work. i've read all of the how-to's, all of the newsgroups, all of everything else i can find. and, i still can't get the friggin thing to work. yes, the card is supported. i know there is some little bit of script out there somewhere that will make it all fall into place. but, damned if i can find it..
and here's the kicker. i put an identical card in my NT box and it took one, two, three, four mouse clicks and five seconds of floppy drive time to install to the point where i knew the card and OS were alive and well and happy with each other.
a real OS should not have any excruciatingly difficult setup procedures. instead, it should allow them to get onto actual productive use.
or, is a "real" OS only for people who just want to configure stuff?
Why not pirate software? I'm tired of people defending buiness (well, big business).
you are a fucking idiot.
do you really think all software comes from "big business" ?
go down the list of serial/cracks on your favorite serial number site. i will guarantee that 80% of what you find comes from small to very small software companies.
Besides, i know if people couldn't pirate the software, they wouldn't have it anyway. So where's the loss for the business?
bullshit.
if you need something that costs money, pay for it. i you don't want to pay for it, you don't get to use it - just like everything else in life.
I really do not see what all the fuss is about in the first place. If the DVD consortium had bothered to create open source drivers for LINUX and *BSD then the crack would not have been necessary.
uh, yeah, right. do you really think that's all there was to it? you don't think there's any chance maybe the people who did this (or the people who would do this) weren't thinking "This is gonna be cool! Free Movies!" ?
yeah! down with computer manufacturers (build your own, from sand, wood, and copper ore!), telephone companies (make your own wires and string them to all of your friend's houses), cable TV, movie studios (fuckin greedy theives, making movies that cost tens of millions of dollars... you can make your own for ten dollars and a CamCorder), electronic companies (oops, no CamCorders), record companies, package delivery services (won't be anything left to deliver anyway), airlines (no reason to go anywhere), hospitals, any drug company who ever invested R&D money to create the pill that might, someday, save your life.
there is nothing wrong with "Big Business" that isn't already wrong with people in general.
as an independent s.w. developer, i get two or three customers a month who tell me that the only reason they're buying my product is because they can't find a crack that works.
i know there are lots of cracks available, for different versions of my stuff. but, i release so often, that any given patch has a useful life of only a week or so.
even so, i have to assume that people are finding the right crack for the right version and... viola, lost sales.
i can't declare it as a loss on my financial reports (yes, i am a corporation) because there's no way to know how many sales were actually lost due to cracks.
all i can do is accept the fact that people will try, and succeed, in breaking my 'license enforcement'. so i get on with the real stuff - making the products better. a big corporation, on the other hand, may have the resources available to quantify these lost sales. and, the quantity may really run into some serious money.
you're trying to justify what is at best disrespect for the terms of the license of the particular product being pirated - it progresses from there to total disregard for the fact that people earn their livings from producing this stuff (not all the money Sony makes goes to the CEO... real, normal people do the real work) - to, at worst, the idiotic idea that you are fighting a corrupt and evil system.
here's a clue : there is no system. there are just people trying to make money to buy the crap they want. trying to get a free ride by breaking this or that protection scheme is stealing. a theif is a theif. accept it and do something useful.
The lawyer my little company uses is constantly asking us if we have anything 'patentable'. I tell her every time she asks: "No, we don't have anything patentable. And even if we did, we wouldn't patent it anyway."
How many people were shocked at themselves when they started prefering VH1 to MTV!?
VH1 actually showed a Tool video one Saturday night not long ago. VH1 used to be the Lite Rock and R&B channel. Now I get to see Alice Cooper and Tool and Stone Temple Pilots. Not that I thin kany of them are all that great... but, it's great to see that bands who aren't simply the latest New Kids on the Block or some Whitney Wannabe can get on TV.
I don't think we're going to have too much to worry about in the future anyway, if we're expecting future Man to do anything to continue what's already been started. Future Man is a joke. Evolution, for humanity, is a dead end. We no longer have selective evolution for we no longer need to adapt in small groups to overcome obstacles.
You are leaving out something big : nature. To assume Man can conquer everything Nature can come with is pure folly.
Things like climate change and falling heaps of space-rock would do a lot to force some evolution upon us. Or, if the AIDS virus gained the ability to spread via casual contact (hand shaking, not body fluid exchange), we would find ourselves (as a species) with some serious evolutionary pressure.
Current evolutionary theory speaks of "punctuated equillibrium". Everthing is OK for a few million years, then Bam!, something comes along to wreck everything. Only the critters that make it through the "punctuation" get to spread their genes - presto - evolution.
The answer to the almost limitless problems of DLLs is obvious: Don't use them. Wherever possible, use static linking.
This doesn't help in the case of ComCtl32. There's no way to statically link the code in ComCtl32, like there is with the MSVC DLLs - unless you want to write your own versions of the basic windows controls... yuck.
The essay is so heavily slanted towards the opinion that "mappers" are good and "packers" are bad that you can't help but put yourself on the side of the mappers, simply to avoid putting yourself into the PHB, packer mold.
But to say that people are either one or the other, mapper or packer, is ludicrous. Everyone has pattern matching skills, everyone tries to fit problems into domains they know, and everyone knows that stepping back from a problem to see it in new light is often helpful.
That some people are better at seeing patterns than others is not shocking news. Nor is it news that some people doggedly try stupid things until one of them works. But, a person who tries all fifteen keys on his key ring before finally opening his own front door might just be a fantastic improvisational musician (improvisation being much more ephemeral, non-analytical and dependent on "mapping" than programming).
There were some good and interesting points in the essay. But the distinction between mappers and packers just doesn't hold up.
i was trying to find a tour schedule for one of my recent discoveries, an amazing band called "Blonde Redhead". imagine the kinds of crap AltaVista gave me... i never did find any mention of the band.
I say that communities do NOT have the right to "enforce" their own standards, because I refuse to allow some hypocritial idiot to remove my freedom to view what I want to so he can make a big political issue out of it (See Simon Leis).
If you don't like the standards of the community you're in you can always change the standards or simply leave. Furthermore, if a community can't set its own standards and expect people to abide by them there can be no such thing as government, law, or/.
As for politicians making an issue out of non-issues... well, it takes two to make an issue : the person who speaks and the person who reacts. And I'd place the greater blame on the person who reacts without learning the facts.
I don't understand how distributing source code can be in violation of their patent. I got my GIF code from a book that I bought at Borders (Graphics File Formats, John Levine). There were no patent lawyers standing around making sure I didn't read the book without a license. That was a few years ago (1994?) but the book is still available. I don't use that code any more, for fear of being sued, but I still have the book, and I probably have the source ZIPped somewhere in some directory. And nowdays GIF r/w code is easy to find on the web.
Isn't providing source code basically the same as providing the algorithm? Doesn't one describe the other? Can they prevent people from knowing how LZW works? It should only be an issue when someone chooses to use the compiled source.
But, I will not fault gd here, I have too much riding on their GIF/RLE code...
We aren't saying that it isn't "stealing". What we are saying is that if you call it a "loss" then you are wrong.
That is easily contradicted by the letters I get which say, in effect, "The real reason I'm registering your program is because I couldn't find a crack for it, and I need it."
And I really do get these letters: probably one a month. The fact that I get them at all means that there are people out there who have the balls to admit they were trying to steal a sale from me, but couldn't and decided they needed that app more than they needed their $20.
This means that there are probably many more people who didn't bother writing to tell me they couldn't find a crack for my stuff.
It really is a loss. Maybe not all of the pirated copies, but a percentage.
If I didn't protect my apps, I am confident I would get no registrations at all.
That's not my point though. The point is (again) a lot of commercial software isn't worth money to some people anymore, therefore they won't pay for it because it's overpriced.
My point is that price has very little to do with it.
I have a couple of programs that I only charge $10 for. Even these are pirated. I don't know if there are free alternatives or not; and it doesn't matter.
My license agreement is clear : if you use my software, you must pay me. Not honoring that agreement because you don't feel like it shows a total disrespect for me, the law, the way society works, etc..
If people don't want to use it because there are free alternatives, fine. It does not give them the right to pirate my software.
Speaking of Economics, you should read Matt Ridley's The Origin of Virtue.
Slashdot Mirror
List the taxes that must be paid, who pays and whop recevies, for each of the following purchasers :
Remember, when these people get their credit card bills, it doesn't say "Smaller Animals Software, Inc.", the name of my business. It says "RegSoft" the name of my credit card processor.
?? My accountant didn't know either.
[rant on]
Holy shit. These guys are relentless.
All of my accounts have received multiple emails from them this week.
I called their number to bitch, but got no answer. So, i started replying to the emails. Amazingly, the replies have not bounced yet. If they really are accepting email at the reply-to addr, they must be swamped with complaints this week.
Bastards...
[rant off]
an even bigger problem is that with the Windows OSes, users are rarely even told that such a thing as 'privileges' exist. you can install NT, 98, 95, etc. and never once run across anything about security. yes, you will be prompted to log into NT, but it's never resented to the user that you can actually create new users, or what the benefits of having different users would be, etc..
crap
Billy West killed when he was a regular on the Howard Stern show. Absolutely the funniest guy I've ever heard. damn... i wish he was still doing that.
And I am the only person upset that it's one year before the actual election and our choices have been narrowed down to Bush and Gore
No, you certainly are not. I for one (more), am totally disgusted by this.
-c
that's bull. why should difficult and arcane == real?
i've spent the last week trying to get a stupid ethernet card to work. i've read all of the how-to's, all of the newsgroups, all of everything else i can find. and, i still can't get the friggin thing to work. yes, the card is supported. i know there is some little bit of script out there somewhere that will make it all fall into place. but, damned if i can find it..
and here's the kicker. i put an identical card in my NT box and it took one, two, three, four mouse clicks and five seconds of floppy drive time to install to the point where i knew the card and OS were alive and well and happy with each other.
a real OS should not have any excruciatingly difficult setup procedures. instead, it should allow them to get onto actual productive use.
or, is a "real" OS only for people who just want to configure stuff?
Why not pirate software? I'm tired of people defending buiness (well, big business).
you are a fucking idiot.
do you really think all software comes from "big business" ?
go down the list of serial/cracks on your favorite serial number site. i will guarantee that 80% of what you find comes from small to very small software companies.
Besides, i know if people couldn't pirate the software, they wouldn't have it anyway. So where's the loss for the business?
bullshit.
if you need something that costs money, pay for it. i you don't want to pay for it, you don't get to use it - just like everything else in life.
-c
i thought it was Wooster, in ohio. just 2nd hand info, though
I really do not see what all the fuss is about in the first place. If the DVD consortium had bothered to create open source drivers for LINUX and *BSD then the crack would not have been necessary.
uh, yeah, right.
do you really think that's all there was to it? you don't think there's any chance maybe the people who did this (or the people who would do this) weren't thinking "This is gonna be cool! Free Movies!" ?
get real
yeah! down with computer manufacturers (build your own, from sand, wood, and copper ore!), telephone companies (make your own wires and string them to all of your friend's houses), cable TV, movie studios (fuckin greedy theives, making movies that cost tens of millions of dollars... you can make your own for ten dollars and a CamCorder), electronic companies (oops, no CamCorders), record companies, package delivery services (won't be anything left to deliver anyway), airlines (no reason to go anywhere), hospitals, any drug company who ever invested R&D money to create the pill that might, someday, save your life.
there is nothing wrong with "Big Business" that isn't already wrong with people in general.
Prove me wrong.
as an independent s.w. developer, i get two or three customers a month who tell me that the only reason they're buying my product is because they can't find a crack that works.
i know there are lots of cracks available, for different versions of my stuff. but, i release so often, that any given patch has a useful life of only a week or so.
even so, i have to assume that people are finding the right crack for the right version and... viola, lost sales.
i can't declare it as a loss on my financial reports (yes, i am a corporation) because there's no way to know how many sales were actually lost due to cracks.
all i can do is accept the fact that people will try, and succeed, in breaking my 'license enforcement'. so i get on with the real stuff - making the products better. a big corporation, on the other hand, may have the resources available to quantify these lost sales. and, the quantity may really run into some serious money.
you're trying to justify what is at best disrespect for the terms of the license of the particular product being pirated - it progresses from there to total disregard for the fact that people earn their livings from producing this stuff (not all the money Sony makes goes to the CEO... real, normal people do the real work) - to, at worst, the idiotic idea that you are fighting a corrupt and evil system.
here's a clue : there is no system. there are just people trying to make money to buy the crap they want. trying to get a free ride by breaking this or that protection scheme is stealing. a theif is a theif. accept it and do something useful.
It is likely that the program will be able to successfully identify people who will act violently. And this is a very good thing.
Try this phrase : "Innocent until proven guilty".
The lawyer my little company uses is constantly asking us if we have anything 'patentable'. I tell her every time she asks: "No, we don't have anything patentable. And even if we did, we wouldn't patent it anyway."
... this blows her mind.
How many people were shocked at themselves when they started prefering VH1 to MTV!?
VH1 actually showed a Tool video one Saturday night not long ago. VH1 used to be the Lite Rock and R&B channel. Now I get to see Alice Cooper and Tool and Stone Temple Pilots. Not that I thin kany of them are all that great... but, it's great to see that bands who aren't simply the latest New Kids on the Block or some Whitney Wannabe can get on TV.
Still waiting for them to show a Polvo video...
-c
I don't think we're going to have too much to worry about in the future anyway, if we're expecting future Man to do anything to continue what's already been started. Future Man is a joke. Evolution, for humanity, is a dead end. We no longer have selective evolution for we no longer need to adapt in small groups to overcome obstacles.
You are leaving out something big : nature. To assume Man can conquer everything Nature can come with is pure folly.
Things like climate change and falling heaps of space-rock would do a lot to force some evolution upon us. Or, if the AIDS virus gained the ability to spread via casual contact (hand shaking, not body fluid exchange), we would find ourselves (as a species) with some serious evolutionary pressure.
Current evolutionary theory speaks of "punctuated equillibrium". Everthing is OK for a few million years, then Bam!, something comes along to wreck everything. Only the critters that make it through the "punctuation" get to spread their genes - presto - evolution.
The answer to the almost limitless problems of DLLs is obvious: Don't use them. Wherever possible, use static linking.
This doesn't help in the case of ComCtl32. There's no way to statically link the code in
ComCtl32, like there is with the MSVC DLLs - unless you want to write your own versions of the basic windows controls... yuck.
The essay is so heavily slanted towards the opinion that "mappers" are good and "packers" are bad that you can't help but put yourself on the side of the mappers, simply to avoid putting yourself into the PHB, packer mold.
But to say that people are either one or the other, mapper or packer, is ludicrous. Everyone has pattern matching skills, everyone tries to fit problems into domains they know, and everyone knows that stepping back from a problem to see it in new light is often helpful.
That some people are better at seeing patterns than others is not shocking news. Nor is it news that some people doggedly try stupid things until one of them works. But, a person who tries all fifteen keys on his key ring before finally opening his own front door might just be a fantastic improvisational musician (improvisation being much more ephemeral, non-analytical and dependent on "mapping" than programming).
There were some good and interesting points in the essay. But the distinction between mappers and packers just doesn't hold up.
i was trying to find a tour schedule for one of my recent discoveries, an amazing band called "Blonde Redhead". imagine the kinds of crap AltaVista gave me... i never did find any mention of the band.
not to put down the terrific job the PNG people did, but...
the LZW patent will probably have expired before PNG can eclipse GIF in the minds of Joe Web-developer...
I say that communities do NOT have the right to "enforce" their own standards, because I refuse to allow some hypocritial idiot to remove my freedom to view what I want to so he can make a big political issue out of it (See Simon Leis).
/.
If you don't like the standards of the community you're in you can always change the standards or simply leave. Furthermore, if a community can't set its own standards and expect people to abide by them there can be no such thing as government, law, or
As for politicians making an issue out of non-issues... well, it takes two to make an issue : the person who speaks and the person who reacts. And I'd place the greater blame on the person who reacts without learning the facts.
-c
I don't understand how distributing source code can be in violation of their patent. I got my GIF code from a book that I bought at Borders (Graphics File Formats, John Levine). There were no patent lawyers standing around making sure I didn't read the book without a license. That was a few years ago (1994?) but the book is still available. I don't use that code any more, for fear of being sued, but I still have the book, and I probably have the source ZIPped somewhere in some directory. And nowdays GIF r/w code is easy to find on the web.
Isn't providing source code basically the same as providing the algorithm? Doesn't one describe the other? Can they prevent people from knowing how LZW works? It should only be an issue when someone chooses to use the compiled source.
But, I will not fault gd here, I have too much riding on their GIF/RLE code...
Every flashing banner ad you see is a GIF....
this is the exact reason every chain restaurant now has their own (lame) happy birthday song.
We aren't saying that it isn't "stealing". What we are saying is that if you call it a "loss" then you are wrong.
That is easily contradicted by the letters I get which say, in effect, "The real reason I'm registering your program is because I couldn't find a crack for it, and I need it."
And I really do get these letters: probably one a month. The fact that I get them at all means that there are people out there who have the balls to admit they were trying to steal a sale from me, but couldn't and decided they needed that app more than they needed their $20.
This means that there are probably many more people who didn't bother writing to tell me they couldn't find a crack for my stuff.
It really is a loss. Maybe not all of the pirated copies, but a percentage.
If I didn't protect my apps, I am confident I would get no registrations at all.
That's not my point though. The point is (again) a lot of commercial software isn't worth money to some people anymore, therefore they won't pay for it because it's overpriced.
My point is that price has very little to do with it.
I have a couple of programs that I only charge $10 for. Even these are pirated. I don't know if there are free alternatives or not; and it doesn't matter.
My license agreement is clear : if you use my software, you must pay me. Not honoring that agreement because you don't feel like it shows a total disrespect for me, the law, the way society works, etc..
If people don't want to use it because there are free alternatives, fine. It does not give them the right to pirate my software.
Speaking of Economics, you should read Matt Ridley's The Origin of Virtue.