The best way to make this choice has nothing to do with money. Do what you really enjoy. If that's leading people, then management. If its solving problems and building solutions, then it's tech. Don't get caught up in the money because your new career will be short if you don't like it.
Let's stop the Apple love fest for a moment and let's give props where they belong. There would be no Safari, Chrome, iPhone or Android browsers without the work done by these guys who wrote KHTML which was then updated with Apple's help into WebKit.
Ok, let's go back to the Apple love fest and all agree that MS can't keep up your favorite open source browser.
These numbers are faked. If your stats were accurate exactly 11.7% would be showing Emacs/w3m. Of course, you cold just be a jealous vi user who has no web browser or Rogue client built in to your text editor.
I suspect that any politician caught raising taxes or creating new ones now will lose their seats later. The last election cycle was much, much closer than the seat changes and change of party in the White House. The economy is affecting voters, and taking more money from voters isn't going to help people pay their rent and mortgages. When you hit voters in the pocketbook, it's very, very bad for your political survival.
The reason for the tax increase goes away, but the voter is reminded the tax increase still exists every time they pay it. The GPS tax? Every time someone looks at the thing they will be reminded that they are going to be billed by the government. This is a really bad idea, and one that is a political career ender.
There are places for both strategies, and it really depends on if you are going to have multi-application access or allow third party apps into your database.
No, Amazon should act as a tax collection agent in the stat they are located in (employees or property). No other state should have the power to force them to act as tax collection agents for their state, too.
Not true at all. First, every order comes with a billing and ship to address. so much for not knowing where orders come from. Second, sales tax rates have increased in some jurisdictions, but mostly about 1%. The last one sounds good, but has little basis in fact because eCommerce businesses were mail order and were protected by the commerce clause.
This isn't about fair share. It's about preventing tariffs between the states.
Because you can sell your product at $price+tax-tax in the 49 states you are not physically located in, just like the out of state biz can sell in yours.
It's about interstate commerce and preventing SC from outlawing people in NC from doing mail order business in SC. Our entire domestic economy is totally dependent on the having a level playing field between the states. The minute you break this it allows states to enact legislation that unfairly affects out of state competitors.
People are short sighted and selfish. If this continues, we will have very little retail anywhere in the country in a few years, because everybody will be trying to avoid the sales tax.
Mail order has *always been there* and always presented the option of letting people purchase out of state and duck paying sales tax. If your state has a confiscatory sales tax rate that makes mail order 7-10% less expensive, then move your business somewhere else or let your legislators know that sales tax is ruining your business.
Oh, and it's not a loop hole. It's called the commerce clause of the US Constitution. It protects your business from being subject to the laws of all 50 US states as well as preventing states from creating tarriffs and anti-competitive laws to keep out of state competitors like you out of the market.
There are over 14,000 taxing authorities in the US that do not align based on postal codes and that change with every township, city and county level anexation. It is a very complex problem and one that is very expensive to solve. It also requires constant updates. You have to use very expensive third party data providers and often very expensive services to pay all the sales taxes.
This creates a barrier to entry that will keep many small businesses from ever growing.
Amazon is trying their best to avoid having to collect sales tax (and compete on a level playing field).
Wrong. RI and NC are trying to expand the definition of nexus to force mail order companies not located in their state to collect sales tax from citizens in RI and NC.
At present the playing field is level. Businesses outside RI and NC don't have to collect RI and NC sales tax, and business inside RI and NC don't have to collect tax for the rest of the country. That's pretty fair.
No. Amazon is simply not collecting sales tax for states they are not located in. Why should Amazon (an out of state company) have to pay to do the job of the RI Department of Revenue? Since when did they delete the commerce clause from the constitution?
If they have to pay taxes, and if we have to pay sales tax on such things, it increases the costs for everyone. Amazon does pay taxes in the places they have physical facilities. They do not want the expense of having to collect and pay sales tax in every jurisdiction in America. There's more to this than just state tax, there's county, city, township and even school district level sales taxation in different states in the US.
No, this is no more than another reach where states are trying to end run the commerce clause which has prevented them from successfully taxing out of state mail order purchases. This one is especially stupid because they are saying "because Amazon does business with contractors in our state, they have to act as a tax collection agent for us." This is a change in two ways:
* The state is extending the definition of "nexus" to include the use of contractors. Historically, a nexus includes employees and/or property. * The state is basically telling mail order merchants to not spend a dime in the state or you have to become a tax collection agent for the state.
Basically, N. Carolina and Rhode Island are shooting themselves in the head and preventing mail order operations from using any in-state contractors to do things like print catalogs, mail catalogs, provide call center services, freight forwarding, delivery services and so on. In other words, no jobs for your state from any mail order company.
This is why there is a commerce clause in the constitution - to prevent one state from taking actions that unfairly burden a business or citizen in another state. Why should I care what sales tax is in California? My business is in Indiana. Eventually this will go to the supreme court and get tossed just like every other attempt by one state to make businesses in another state collect taxes for them. This has been building up for a while and we're due for another 8-1 decision in favor of the Federal Government having EXCLUSIVE jurisdiction over interstate commerce.
In my lifetime three things have driven technology's march:
* Space exploration. * People wanting to kill each other more efficiently. * Making a quick buck.
Of these, only space exploration is an example of Man aspiring to greatness. It's about time we shifted our space program out of neutral and brought back the creativity and blue sky thinking that went on in the 1950s and 1960s. What NASA has been doing the past 10 years or so has been minor league and simply lacking ambition. Setting big goals and developing the ideas and technology to reach those goals is what our people are investing in.
To the robot mafia: YOU DON'T GET IT. Space exploration is not just about getting data. Sure, collecting data is important. But so is forcing man to grow and adapt to new challenges. The scientific advancements driven by the space program in the past are in large part due to making it possible for a person to travel and explore a hostile environment over impossible differences. Sending humans is expensive, complex and risky, but is rewarding thousandfold beyond it's cost. Exploring space with robots is easy and cheap but does not drive the kind of thinking that changes the world as the space programs of the 50s, 60s and 70s did.
Another note to the robot mafia: Robots killing people is a bad idea. Actually, so is people killing people.
As long as big content is simply trying to play shave-the-penny toll booth, and content creators are content to cede control of sales to others, others will find a way to make all the money.
I like Linux just fine when it has all been installed and is working, and why wouldn't I? Gnome and K-win basically copied the Windows UI...
Actualy, both Gnome and KDE have innovated and pushed GUI design quite a bit over time. They've each added their own unique features and concepts (tear off menus, panels, etc) to the basic CDE concepts that emerged in the early 90s. CDE (Common Desktop Environment) was a psudo standard that was created by IBM, Digital, and many others where mainframe, mini and desktop would use very similar menus, visual cues and keystrokes. This was used to sell graphical computing to large corporations in the late 80s and early 90s (why else upgrade your terminals?). Windows 3.11 and newer, Motif and OS/2 Presentation Manager all were CDE conforming GUIs. We can all thank the CDE spec for little up and down arrows, for paste, alt-underlined letter, and for menu came from.
The situation on netbooks has very little to do with Linux being good or bad. It has to do with the economics of the retail market space. Here's the story:
* MS had announced EOA (end of availability) for XP prior to the netbook explosion. Early netbooks did ship with Linux because Vista um, sucked on lightweight hardware. MS suddenly dusted off XP and offered it to netbook OEMs for extra super dirt cheap compared to Vista.
* MS did offer a netbook version of Vista that capped the number of applications running at four. This was terrible and went away in a hurry. XP worked better, and MS caved to the market as the alternative was to miss out on selling licenses with netbooks.
* Retailers did experience high return rates on Linux based Netbooks, but not enough to give up on them.
* Consumers purchased more XP based netbooks than Linux. Add to that that Linux users will buy and reimage machines anyway, and there is little reason to stock anything other than XP based systems.
* Consumers chose hard drives over SSDs for one and only one reason: at the time hard drives stored more and cost less than SSDs. SSD also has a reputation of having a limited lifespan.
* Because prices on netbooks have inflated to near notebook levels (some of this is MS tax), many manufacturers are building new designs on non IA32 architecture. So Linux will be back.
* An additional change in landscape that is coming on netbooks: application distribution. Google Android based netbooks will sell applications via an online marketplace and pay the carrier 15%. This puts the incentive on the retailer (cell phone company) to carry Android based devices (netbooks and pdas).
As always with MS, it's not about good or bad product, it's about good or bad business. MS does business in a way many feel is too good.
My question is, "Was this case set up for an appeal?" It seems interesting that the defense made a very simple case at trial,did not oppose bad evidence with vigor and then didn't strenuously go after the jury instructions, which seemed to be missing quite a bit of important details. Almost was like the battle was forfeit to win the war at a later date.
Would be interesting to get a few attorneys to comment...
Evan - My first impression was the same as Antirush, and suddenly the GV app has been fantastic for the last four or five updates. Great work.
On the confusion - it would be nice to be able to set GV to set rules like use carrier for domestic calls and GV for overseas as GV voice rates are expensive for domestic calls if you have long distance included on your cell plan.
GV is great and T-Mobile doesn't have 3G where I live. Thanks for filling in the gap on the G-1. Your app is going to be huge as the new phones start hitting the market this fall.
the main problem with the DS as well is the overpresence of kids games
Considering that adult gamers are vastly outnumbered by children, why is this a surprise? Nintendo did not fall for the BS concept of the "adult gamer" which has translated to big losses for MS and Sony's loss of it's lock on the #1 position in new console sales.
Slashdot Mirror
The best way to make this choice has nothing to do with money. Do what you really enjoy. If that's leading people, then management. If its solving problems and building solutions, then it's tech. Don't get caught up in the money because your new career will be short if you don't like it.
Let's stop the Apple love fest for a moment and let's give props where they belong. There would be no Safari, Chrome, iPhone or Android browsers without the work done by these guys who wrote KHTML which was then updated with Apple's help into WebKit.
Ok, let's go back to the Apple love fest and all agree that MS can't keep up your favorite open source browser.
These numbers are faked. If your stats were accurate exactly 11.7% would be showing Emacs/w3m. Of course, you cold just be a jealous vi user who has no web browser or Rogue client built in to your text editor.
You are brave to admit that, but 20,000 SpongeBob fans can't be wrong.
I suspect that any politician caught raising taxes or creating new ones now will lose their seats later. The last election cycle was much, much closer than the seat changes and change of party in the White House. The economy is affecting voters, and taking more money from voters isn't going to help people pay their rent and mortgages. When you hit voters in the pocketbook, it's very, very bad for your political survival.
The reason for the tax increase goes away, but the voter is reminded the tax increase still exists every time they pay it. The GPS tax? Every time someone looks at the thing they will be reminded that they are going to be billed by the government. This is a really bad idea, and one that is a political career ender.
There are places for both strategies, and it really depends on if you are going to have multi-application access or allow third party apps into your database.
Actually, sales tax does not have to be paid on out of state purchase. Use tax does have to be paid.
What's your point?
No, Amazon should act as a tax collection agent in the stat they are located in (employees or property). No other state should have the power to force them to act as tax collection agents for their state, too.
Not true at all. First, every order comes with a billing and ship to address. so much for not knowing where orders come from. Second, sales tax rates have increased in some jurisdictions, but mostly about 1%. The last one sounds good, but has little basis in fact because eCommerce businesses were mail order and were protected by the commerce clause.
This isn't about fair share. It's about preventing tariffs between the states.
I totally forgot what you were saying. Where's the scandal, again?
Because you can sell your product at $price+tax-tax in the 49 states you are not physically located in, just like the out of state biz can sell in yours.
It's about interstate commerce and preventing SC from outlawing people in NC from doing mail order business in SC. Our entire domestic economy is totally dependent on the having a level playing field between the states. The minute you break this it allows states to enact legislation that unfairly affects out of state competitors.
People are short sighted and selfish. If this continues, we will have very little retail anywhere in the country in a few years, because everybody will be trying to avoid the sales tax.
Mail order has *always been there* and always presented the option of letting people purchase out of state and duck paying sales tax. If your state has a confiscatory sales tax rate that makes mail order 7-10% less expensive, then move your business somewhere else or let your legislators know that sales tax is ruining your business.
Oh, and it's not a loop hole. It's called the commerce clause of the US Constitution. It protects your business from being subject to the laws of all 50 US states as well as preventing states from creating tarriffs and anti-competitive laws to keep out of state competitors like you out of the market.
WRONG.
There are over 14,000 taxing authorities in the US that do not align based on postal codes and that change with every township, city and county level anexation. It is a very complex problem and one that is very expensive to solve. It also requires constant updates. You have to use very expensive third party data providers and often very expensive services to pay all the sales taxes.
This creates a barrier to entry that will keep many small businesses from ever growing.
Amazon is trying their best to avoid having to collect sales tax (and compete on a level playing field).
Wrong. RI and NC are trying to expand the definition of nexus to force mail order companies not located in their state to collect sales tax from citizens in RI and NC.
At present the playing field is level. Businesses outside RI and NC don't have to collect RI and NC sales tax, and business inside RI and NC don't have to collect tax for the rest of the country. That's pretty fair.
No. Amazon is simply not collecting sales tax for states they are not located in. Why should Amazon (an out of state company) have to pay to do the job of the RI Department of Revenue? Since when did they delete the commerce clause from the constitution?
If they have to pay taxes, and if we have to pay sales tax on such things, it increases the costs for everyone.
Amazon does pay taxes in the places they have physical facilities. They do not want the expense of having to collect and pay sales tax in every jurisdiction in America. There's more to this than just state tax, there's county, city, township and even school district level sales taxation in different states in the US.
No, this is no more than another reach where states are trying to end run the commerce clause which has prevented them from successfully taxing out of state mail order purchases. This one is especially stupid because they are saying "because Amazon does business with contractors in our state, they have to act as a tax collection agent for us." This is a change in two ways:
* The state is extending the definition of "nexus" to include the use of contractors. Historically, a nexus includes employees and/or property.
* The state is basically telling mail order merchants to not spend a dime in the state or you have to become a tax collection agent for the state.
Basically, N. Carolina and Rhode Island are shooting themselves in the head and preventing mail order operations from using any in-state contractors to do things like print catalogs, mail catalogs, provide call center services, freight forwarding, delivery services and so on. In other words, no jobs for your state from any mail order company.
This is why there is a commerce clause in the constitution - to prevent one state from taking actions that unfairly burden a business or citizen in another state. Why should I care what sales tax is in California? My business is in Indiana. Eventually this will go to the supreme court and get tossed just like every other attempt by one state to make businesses in another state collect taxes for them. This has been building up for a while and we're due for another 8-1 decision in favor of the Federal Government having EXCLUSIVE jurisdiction over interstate commerce.
In my lifetime three things have driven technology's march:
* Space exploration.
* People wanting to kill each other more efficiently.
* Making a quick buck.
Of these, only space exploration is an example of Man aspiring to greatness. It's about time we shifted our space program out of neutral and brought back the creativity and blue sky thinking that went on in the 1950s and 1960s. What NASA has been doing the past 10 years or so has been minor league and simply lacking ambition. Setting big goals and developing the ideas and technology to reach those goals is what our people are investing in.
To the robot mafia: YOU DON'T GET IT. Space exploration is not just about getting data. Sure, collecting data is important. But so is forcing man to grow and adapt to new challenges. The scientific advancements driven by the space program in the past are in large part due to making it possible for a person to travel and explore a hostile environment over impossible differences. Sending humans is expensive, complex and risky, but is rewarding thousandfold beyond it's cost. Exploring space with robots is easy and cheap but does not drive the kind of thinking that changes the world as the space programs of the 50s, 60s and 70s did.
Another note to the robot mafia: Robots killing people is a bad idea. Actually, so is people killing people.
As long as big content is simply trying to play shave-the-penny toll booth, and content creators are content to cede control of sales to others, others will find a way to make all the money.
I like Linux just fine when it has all been installed and is working, and why wouldn't I? Gnome and K-win basically copied the Windows UI...
Actualy, both Gnome and KDE have innovated and pushed GUI design quite a bit over time. They've each added their own unique features and concepts (tear off menus, panels, etc) to the basic CDE concepts that emerged in the early 90s. CDE (Common Desktop Environment) was a psudo standard that was created by IBM, Digital, and many others where mainframe, mini and desktop would use very similar menus, visual cues and keystrokes. This was used to sell graphical computing to large corporations in the late 80s and early 90s (why else upgrade your terminals?). Windows 3.11 and newer, Motif and OS/2 Presentation Manager all were CDE conforming GUIs. We can all thank the CDE spec for little up and down arrows, for paste, alt-underlined letter, and for menu came from.
The situation on netbooks has very little to do with Linux being good or bad. It has to do with the economics of the retail market space. Here's the story:
* MS had announced EOA (end of availability) for XP prior to the netbook explosion. Early netbooks did ship with Linux because Vista um, sucked on lightweight hardware. MS suddenly dusted off XP and offered it to netbook OEMs for extra super dirt cheap compared to Vista.
* MS did offer a netbook version of Vista that capped the number of applications running at four. This was terrible and went away in a hurry. XP worked better, and MS caved to the market as the alternative was to miss out on selling licenses with netbooks.
* Retailers did experience high return rates on Linux based Netbooks, but not enough to give up on them.
* Consumers purchased more XP based netbooks than Linux. Add to that that Linux users will buy and reimage machines anyway, and there is little reason to stock anything other than XP based systems.
* Consumers chose hard drives over SSDs for one and only one reason: at the time hard drives stored more and cost less than SSDs. SSD also has a reputation of having a limited lifespan.
* Because prices on netbooks have inflated to near notebook levels (some of this is MS tax), many manufacturers are building new designs on non IA32 architecture. So Linux will be back.
* An additional change in landscape that is coming on netbooks: application distribution. Google Android based netbooks will sell applications via an online marketplace and pay the carrier 15%. This puts the incentive on the retailer (cell phone company) to carry Android based devices (netbooks and pdas).
As always with MS, it's not about good or bad product, it's about good or bad business. MS does business in a way many feel is too good.
My question is, "Was this case set up for an appeal?" It seems interesting that the defense made a very simple case at trial,did not oppose bad evidence with vigor and then didn't strenuously go after the jury instructions, which seemed to be missing quite a bit of important details. Almost was like the battle was forfeit to win the war at a later date.
Would be interesting to get a few attorneys to comment...
Evan - My first impression was the same as Antirush, and suddenly the GV app has been fantastic for the last four or five updates. Great work.
On the confusion - it would be nice to be able to set GV to set rules like use carrier for domestic calls and GV for overseas as GV voice rates are expensive for domestic calls if you have long distance included on your cell plan.
GV is great and T-Mobile doesn't have 3G where I live. Thanks for filling in the gap on the G-1. Your app is going to be huge as the new phones start hitting the market this fall.
the main problem with the DS as well is the overpresence of kids games
Considering that adult gamers are vastly outnumbered by children, why is this a surprise? Nintendo did not fall for the BS concept of the "adult gamer" which has translated to big losses for MS and Sony's loss of it's lock on the #1 position in new console sales.
Ah ha, but it also has built-in remote desktop. And you can invite other people to have access to your remotely shared files.
So... it's syncing cloud storage, and a remote control system thrown in.
I'm waiting for "No one expects Live Mesh... our chief weapons being 5 gigs and syncing... and remote desktop with syncing...