I'm trying to avoid the whole fanboy thing, but it's hard to not like it. I mean, the pricing of the hardware is certainly high, but once you dive it it's quite nice.
"It hurts...at first. But after a while, the pain goes away, just as they promise. There's a moment...when you can almost see it through his eyes. He makes it sound perfect, a place where anyone can start over."
Riddick would kill you with a Leopard Install disc for joining the necro-Mac-ers (sorry, the whole scene popped into my head as I read your post).
Actually, I'm looking forward to agreeing with you. If the rumors about the new Mac Mini/Nano are true, I might be getting my first Mac soon.
Hard to justify when a nice desktop linux install is up & humming, but a Core2Duo Mac the size of paperback, with Mac OSX 10.5, for several hundred dollars? Too neat to pass up.
I agree with your point that the patent system has gotten a bit absurd.
However, it is not true to say that any subsequent damages don't go, at least indirectly, to "the original inventors and holders of this patent." Quite the contrary - it is these very (potential) enforced royalties that caused the first purchaser to buy the patent rights from the original inventor.
What supposedly encourages the innovation is the ability to monetize the patent rights. An inventor can do this by (a) manufacturing the product themselves for the next 20+ years, or (b) licensing the patent to someone else for the next 20+ years and collecting royalties, or (c) selling the patent to someone else.
The poster seems to think that only (a) is acceptable. But what the financial difference to the inventor between (a), (b) and (c)? And wouldn't (c) also stimulate R&D? If you know there's a market for your research (in the form of a patent), wouldn't that encourage you to develop patentable ideas? In economic theory, there would be an increase in R&D at the margins, as the value of patent rights in the market increased.
Now, I agree that 'patentable ideas' has gotten out of control. But the theory behind a market for selling & buying patent rights isn't, in and of itself, a corrupt idea. It's just that the current implementation of that idea isn't optimum.
[Codec patents] Since when is this a problem for linux?...Maybe it's not entirely legal, but since when does the end user care?
Well, it's not a problem for Linux, but it IS a problems if the end user is a U.S. company that wants to deploy Linux on the desktop.
How is Linspire going to make legit codecs a selling point when the average user doesn't even know what a codec is, and why they need to be licensed?
I don't think the lack of legit codecs would be a deal-breaker for lots of corporate desktop linux - after all, a company could just not install media apps on corporate desktops - if there are no codecs, then it doesn't matter if those codecs would have needed licensing.
If, on the other hand, a U.S. company is looking to deploy desktop Linux with working media apps (sound, video - useful for training, video conferencing, media development), then that company might think that licensed versions of U.S. patent-restricted codecs IS a selling point.
Why do you think that RedHat doesn't ship patent-restricted codecs (or at least MP3)? My guess - lots of their enterprise desktop customers wouldn't get Linux from RedHat if RH was knowingly including unlicensed-but-patent-encumbered software.
---
PATENT LAW QUESTION: I'm not sure about U.S. law re: USERS of patent-protected software (as opposed to the developer/distributor, i.e. RH). What could happen to a company that knowingly USES software that infringes on a third-party's patent? A Cease n Desist? Infringement damages - is there such thing as contributory infringement by users in the patent arena?
Then they would have made billions...Manipulation of financial assets beats manipulation of physical assets every time./b>
So true....At times, it feels like if you have $100mm of capital, you can find numerous ways to make seemingly easy money by financial re-structuring. Form over substance, and someone walks away with tons of cash.
I'll be the first to defend it all, and I'm sure there is ultimately a re-allocation and re-pricing of different risk components associated with the total transaction that makes sense. But then it would appear that there is a lot of latent value in these financial structures (aka businesses) that professional managers don't recognize.
Or maybe the only way these financial transactions make fundamental sense is with very cheap cost of money. Or, as we've seen, when purchasers don't get what they thought they were getting (AAA-rated paper), which means they overpaid for the assets. In other situations this is often known as fraud - it's easy to make the deal look good is one of the parties is getting screwed.
...they'd be bailed out by Ben Bernanke, the Fed, and every European central bank.
I'm not sure that is what happened. Now, it is true that the central banks:
1. Lowered the governed rate which they force large banks to charge each other for loans,
2. Lowered the rate that the Central Banks charge large banks for loans.
3. Provided additional amounts to banks by PURCHASING assets from banks with a round-trip provision to sell the assets back to the banks in the short-term future.
All of this had the effect of pumping liquidity into the system. From what I know, it wasn't a "bail out" in the sense that the Central Banks bought crappy securities from banks at 100 cents on the dollar and rescued banks from their bad loans.
The holders of all of this paper (CDOs, securitized debt, asset-backed commercial paper) have seen the value of their assets vanish before their eyes. Holders of such paper around the world (originated in the U.S. and lots of other countries) will probably write off $50+ billion of value. Merrill Lynch announced today that they wrote off $5.5bn of these assets in Q3. Citigroup & UBS - $3bn each. These are real losses which are absorbed by the private banks, not any Central Bank or government.
Purchasers of 2006-originated CDOs (quite crappy underlying assets, but rated and priced like the higher-quality 2003-2005 CDOs) began to realize these assets weren't worth what they thought. Upon this uncertainly of asset quality, these investors stopped buying. Investment banks that put these securitizations together had no purchasers, and so stopped putting deals together. With no investment banks to syndicate and securitize the new mortages, lending banks stopped writing mortgages for a lot of transactions.
At the same time, hedge funds and banks had levered up on all of these products, and needed to liquidate other assets to cover margin calls or returns funds to investors. This caused a run on other short-term commercial paper, prices fall, rates rise, liquidity slows, and pretty soon the market for other types of commercial paper drys up too.
The injections of liquidity are to reassure the market that there will be enough free cash around to get transactions done in the normal course, even if banks are taking a bath on the mortgage-backed assets. Increased liquidity make the markets breathe easier, calm down, money starts being loaned again (but everyone has tightened up standards a bit, for now), and pretty soon things are back to normal until the next conflux of events.
Global financial markets and monetary policy - a hugely complex and chaotic system, that we've gotten better at understanding and reacting to, but still can't manage perfectly to keep all blips from happening.
I think of it like a traffic jam due to a small accident (subprime CDOs). There is no real reason
Your numbers are correct, but without context, they paint an unrealistic portrait.
$160k for first-years, at premier firms in NYC, Chicago, LA, DC, or San Fran./Silicon Valley. Maybe Boston. $120-140k in Miami, Houston, Atlanta, NorthWest.
Talent at that level is probably 500-1000 people a year nationwide. Top graduates of top law schools. Very smart, focused and they produce.
How much do top grad-level engineering graduates from MIT and Stanford make at the highest-paying jobs those schools place graduates in?
---
In most of those big cities with ridiculous housing costs, that salary doesn't go as far as you'd think it would. A nice life, sure, lots of spending money, but equivalent to $100k/year for a more reasonable metropolitan area - Charlotte, Phoenix, Kansas City.
Plus they often work 80-hour weeks so they can bill 2300 hours/year in order to earn the bonus and stay on the partner track they dangle in front of you.
Opportunity cost:
-3 years of salary given up (for people that would still have gotten a good job out of undergrad)
PLUS
-$120k in debt = $20k per year in pre-tax salary dollars in order pay that off in a reasonable time.
So, yes, it a lot of money, but all things considered, it might not be a comparable position to the work a graduate-degree'd engineer might do. And so just looking at cash comp. is not enough.
BTW - the average starting salary of my law school graduating class (1999, well regarded state school) ? Around $40,000. For every person making $100k starting out of my law school (the $160k of the day, and that part of the country), there were 10 making less than $60k working for the government, public policy groups, for family businesses, or not practicing at all (useful for their current career).
The same people that read Playboy for the articles? [sarcastic]
If you'd ever bothered to read Playboy, instead of giggling like a schoolboy at pictures of naked women (gasp!), then you would realize that it actually IS filled with great articles and other content.
Long interviews with diverse people (sports, entertainment, business)
Short fiction by well-known authors
Good articles
Reviews of movies, books, video games, technology
Cooking, wine, drinks, entertaining
but until he actually harms someone, he should be free to do whatever the hell he likes.
Sorry, it is a crazy opinion.
Murder-for-hire conspiracies, egregious drunk driving, germ-warfare experiments in your garage. They haven't harmed anyone YET, but do you really think that as a society we shouldn't try to stop imminent harm, on the basis that it hasn't actually happened yet?
Follow the proto-criminal and arrest him after the murder, after the automobile manslaughter, after the smallpox outbreak? "But you could have stopped it! Why didn't you?" "Well, he was free to pursue his willfully reckless behavior that any reasonable person would know would harm other people in the future, but that harm hadn't happened yet, so we couldn't. Sorry. We only arrest people, we don't prevent crime."
I'm certainly not suggesting 'Minority Report'-style pre-crime police action, but as stupid humans show everyday, the threat of post-hoc arrest is not enough to prevent behavior that we as a society decide is not allowed.
People do harmful things. People PLAN to do harmful things. People PLAN to do things to which any reasonable person would say "Are you an idiot?", and then they do those things, and then those things harm others. Where would you stop the chain? Or would you?
Where that line is, is very gray. And subjective, to the individual and to society. Intent is hard to prove, as it the likelihood of harm (in some corner cases, like this one).
But there is a line, and it is well before "until he actually harms someone".
(I realize you're talking mostly about personal email, but I'll talk about business email)
To each their own, certainly. If you're at a desk most of the time, then webmail probably works for most people.
However, for anyone that travels a lot, a local email client/data_store is essential. Webmail doesn't cut it, even these days with Wi-Fi, 3G cards and cellphone tethers. Planes, cars in the middle of nowhere, network issues, etc - webmail just wouldn't work for me.
And I couldn't agree more with this comment to your post. Comprehensive keystrokes? Pg-Up/Dn? Sane screen layout regardless of display size? Nope - instead you often get nested scroll boxes like this very Slashdot comment page - Arrrgh!!!!!!
And that makes my keyboard-based life just a bit harder, every 15 minutes of every day.
And no, Gmail, although much better that 1998-era web clients, isn't the answer to every webmail complaint.
Europe's freer than the US in some respects, but not as free in others. There's no nation in the world that's totally free, and likely never will be, since "freedom" and "government" are a contradiction in terms.
At first I was going to agree with you, but then I thought: what if the government stops other people from perpetrating uncalled-for violence against me? The ol' your-freedom-stops-at-my-nose idea.
Am I LESS free because of this governmental interference (with anarchy), or I am MORE free because now someone isn't killing me?
My hypothesis:
Starting from anarchy, increases in government correlate with increases in freedom. The strength of this correlation decreases as government increases, and at some point, they turn inversely correlated. Freedom begins to decrease as government increases. The point at wich this happens depends on the type of government, the type of freedom under analysis, and the point of view of the observer.
People view these relationships differently - each person brings their own views about what freedom means to them, under the current political bargain they live subject to, weighs all of these variables and eventually says "too much".
Where this tipping happens can be be unexpected to citizens of stable Western democracies: witness Iraq, where polls overwhelmingly show that most Iraqis want security first, democracy second. They'd prefer immediate, if authoritarian, security at the expense of voting booths.
It was easy to THINK that oppressed people want democracy above all else. However, it's hard for them be thrilled about constitutional drafting sessions and discussions about oil-sharing provisions when cabinet ministers are being assasinated, firefights happen on neighborhood corners and fathers are pulled out of bed at night and shot in the street.
Per the IRS's Revenue Rulings and appellate decisions, any increase in the economic position of a person is considered to be income, and then they carve out exceptions to that presumption. A gift is something that is motivated by love, kindness or charity.
The IRS, and the courts, wouldn't take 5 seconds to tell both parties that the car is income to the kid, and he owes taxes on it. The kid would then have to demonstrate why this transfer is related to love, kindness or charity, which would be hard to demonstrate when it happened at the same time as a payment for services rendered, and there was probably no prior relationship between the parties. Chances are, the company will deduct both the value of the car and the iPhones as wages or other business expenses, and that would be the nail in the coffin of "Gift". This issue comes up thousands of times a year, and this fact pattern isn't even close to being a tough call under precedent.
Does this mean they can subpoena the contents of the white board in conference nine at 7:23 AM on June the 13, 2005?
YES, if the court gives you notice that you must preserve everything that is written on the whiteboards in all conference rooms, then they will expect you to have it preserved, and produce it when ordered.
Take a picture, log the contents, don't erase it - whatever you need to do to preserve the information. Saying "But I erased it!" isn't going to fly when you are subject to a prior order to NOT erase it.
Why can't the court grasp the transient nature of the content of RAM?
It sounds like the company was saying "But I really don't have it, it's just in RAM". That doesn't mean you don't have the information.
Note that this is a prospective discovery order - YOU WILL HAVE THE INFORMATION IN YOUR POSSESION, I REALIZE IT'S TRANSITORY AND YOU NORMALLY DON"T PRESERVE IT, BUT YOU CAN PRESERVE IT, AND I'M ORDERING YOU TO PRESERVE IT.
What's so hard about that?
Incorrect statements about intestacy
on
Project Arcade
·
· Score: 2, Informative
So, your legal argument to support your position is "regardless what any goddamn bastard lawyer tells us, we listen to morality and common sense" ?
Get thee to the courts, next Chief Justice, for who could argue that !
Abandonware IS A FACT - a patent/copyright CANNOT EXIST in reality when all parties involved died and the holding corporation dissolved.
Who, then, owns the copyright? Care to provide a reference in the US Code to this 'abandonment' provision?
they die intestate and their assets are free to distribute. The same concept applies to corporations
Now you're making stuff up - that's just not correct.
If the owner of the copyright is an individual, then that copyright is part of the normal estate, and is distributed to heirs like other property. If the individual is truely intestate, then their property gets escheated to the state - the state would then own the copyright, and could do with it what it sees fit (including releasing the copyright to the public domain, or asserting damage claims against infringers).
If the owner is a corporation, then either corporation was dissolved correctly, and the net assets (including the copyright) were distributed as a liquidating dividend to the shareholders (or the company entered liquidating bankruptcy and the copyright is now owned by a creditor). If the corporation wasn't properly dissolved, then the copyright is owned by a dormant, non-operating shell, with the copyright is in legal limbo.
But this doesn't cause the copyright to vanish or be relased to public domain. Absent the copyright holder releasing the copyright, or the copyright expiring per statue, the copyright is owned by SOMEONE.
Sincerely,
- your local Intellectual Property Fascist corporation asstroturfer
- a/k/a reasonable person who may agree with your position, but doesn't like people talking out of their ass and giving incorrect information about stuff they know nothing about.
Kevlar, of course.
Also Nomex - known for it's heat-resistant attributes, also strong. It's an "aromatic nylon, the meta variant of the para-aramid Kevlar."
How do people know what stock options they are actually being granted?
You should have received a stock option grant certificate, which shows the number of options, the strike price, vesting terms, length of option, exercise terms, etc. The company won't tell you the actual percentage ownership, just the number of options/shares (numerator). You can figure out the total number of outstanding shares from the 10K, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance (denominator).
An option is "in the money" if you can use the option to buy a share from the company at a price (the pre-determined strike or exercise price) that is less that what the share is currently trading for. If the trading price is less that your option stike price, then the option is 'underwater' and (generally) worthless.
You'd know if you had any significant percentage. More likely that you own 1,000 shares of a company with 200,000,000 outstanding.
As background: I'm a forensic accountant, do large financial investigations of public companies, and am currently doing a stock option investigation. I do not have any inside knowledge of the issues at Apple.
In fact, it isn't at all possible that the SEC could require Jobs to resign from Apple.
Not true at all. The SEC has fairly broad powers to permanently ban a person from serving as director or officer of a public registrant.
It's amazing what gets 'blamed' on Sarbanes-Oxley. And most of the time, completely off base. While there is surely some money-grubbing from Apple, this is probably nothing more than Apple making a conservative decision to apply existing accounting policy more stringently. The previous poster here gets it right.
I am a forensic accountant - I do large corporate financial investigations, which involve accounting analysis and numerous interviews of management.
And I can't tell you how many times I've heard people in companies, when asked about $FOO, say "we had to do this because of SOX". Most of the time, they couldn't tell you what SOX is, or why that is the cause of $FOO.
SOX has turned into the Boogeyman, the shadow lurking in the background of any financial discussion. Unknown reason? SOX made us!
At its simplest, SOX requires that companies document what they do and how they do it. "404" is just a requirement that companies have a complete set of working documents describing accounting processes and the controls around those processes, and that they have actually tested to see that the processes and controls work properly.
Along with 404, SOX also heightened the burden on the financial accounting groups. Now CEOs and CFOs sign statements in quaterly and annual SEC filings, under penalties of civil and criminal law, that certify that they are "responsible for establishing and maintaining internal controls", including upward reporting from subordinates and subsidiaries, and that the controls have been tested and reported on in the filing.
As a result, corporate accounting departments have tightened up, More documentation of different types of accounting processes mean that existing, latent accounting issues are being surfaced and addressed. More conservative usually, in the sense that one does not 'push the envelope' of GAAP.
This is not really 'SOX made us do it', but rather as result of the analysis that SOX calls for. Sematics, but an important difference, I think.
Accounting Background - What is at work here?
SOP 97-2 "Revenue Recognition for Software Products with Multiple Deliverables".
SEC and AICPA: Revenue generally is realized or realizable and earned when all of the following criteria are met:
- Persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists
- Delivery has occured or services have been rendered
- The seller's price to the buyer is fixed or determinable, and
- Collectibility is reasonably assured
So, Apple decided that at the time of the sale of the computer with 802.11n (but not yet functional), with no additional amounts due from the customer, that since Apple had not perfected delivery of the complete laptop with 802.11n, they had not finalized all terms of the delivery, and thus had not "earned" all of the revenue from that sale. This would cause them to 'defer' some portion of the revenue (a liability on the balance sheet) until the final piece of the sale (802.11n) was delivered to the customer.
Under Apple's current policy, the computer is sold without 802.11n, delivery of this total package is complete when the customer receives the laptop, and Apple recognizes that entire sale as current revenue. Then a new $4.99 sales happens when the customer purchases the upgrade.
Now, there are certainly valid objections to the scope and scale of 404, but those are fairly focused on the size of companies that SOX should apply to, and how much testing the auditor should demand that they and the company do around 404.
The reason that this is interesting is not because "blind people can remember things, too", but rather that this is an indication that the source of deja vu is not in the visual cortex, caused by the temporal delay between recognizing images and integrating into memory.
This seems to show that deja vu is some difference between when overall experiences are interpreted by the brain, which don't necessarily need visual components.
Bad title, I do realize. It should be "Strange Bacteria Sustains Itself Without Dependence on Photosynthetic-based Food Chain"
all the bacteria in our digestive track surely relies on sunlight for life (tounge-in-cheek)
It isn't that everything else, including the bacteria in your gut, relies directly on sunlight for photosynthesis that it performs iteself, but rather that the entire food chain depends on photosynthesis as the underlying energy-fixating process.
The bacteria in your GI tract rely on the food you eat, which is either plants (photosynthetic autotrophs) or animals (heterotrophs feeding on photosynthetic autotrophs).
Every part of life that you are used to ultimately depends on photosythesis as the source for the energy in the food chain.
Exceptions are rare, which is why this is interesting. Chemosynthetic organisms (such as archaea and other extremophiles), are found near deep sea hydrothermal vents, using geothermal heat as the source energy. These South African bacetria are a second type of chemosythetic ecosystem.
It appears that these newly discovered bacteria in South Africa are chemotrophs using hydrogen and sulfates, with radiation being the underlying energy source, with no underlying food-chain-based dependency on photsynthesis.
After reading a more informative article refered to in this post, my guess is that the researchers arrrived at the figure of 986 billion years by figuring out how fast the cosmological constant decays over time from the value posited by normal partical physics and that which we observe today, then worked backwards to figure out when the predicated cosmological constant = calculated actual. The precision is fairly impressive, though. IANA_cosmologist.
After reading a more informative article refered to in this post, my guess is that the researchers arrrived at the figure of 986 billion years by figuring out how fast the cosmological constant decays over time from the value posited by normal partical physics and that which we observe today, then worked backwards to figure out when the predicated cosmological constant = calculated actual. The precision is farily impressive, though. IANA_cosmologist.
If I trade you two chickens for a goat, are they entitled to take for themselves the drumsticks off one chicken and one udder from the goat?
Actually, yes. Well, not payable in drumsticks, udders or MMO silver, but....yes.
You'd owe taxes on the excess of the market value of goat over the market value of the two chickens. If equivalent tranactions value the goat at more than two chickens, then you just made a profit, and probably owe personal income tax.
Income doesn't have to be in cash, and bartering counts. An equal trade would probably be counted as a either [Revenue-Cost of Goods Sold=zero Net Income], or a like-kind echange of assets.
Reportable on Schedule C (profit or loss from a business-sole proprietorship), or Schedule F (farm income and expenses)
Since the article is focuses on U.S. tax theories, this post will as well.
Publication 525 is what the article refers to when it mentions "tax law...clause #525". This IRS publication is put out to help taxpayers interpret various code sections, case law, and the fundamentally vague term "income"
In general, "income" has been spoken about by the courts as an increase in economic position, and if this increases, the tax man wants a piece of it. This includes amounts paid to you for the services of your labor (physical or mental) or or your capital (monetary or physical). The government then specifies things that are NOT income, but the presumption is that if a person's economic position increased, then that increase is income.
If you sold MMO 'assets' in the real world, and received real value for those 'rights', then that IS income, and you WILL owe tax on that income. Whether or not the IRS has specifically said that "proceeds from the sales of MMO gold is income to the taxpayer". At some point, the IRS probably will issue such guidance (Rev. Rul.), but that doesn't mean it isn't income now.
Think of it as IP - you gradually increased your rights to some virtual property, and then sold those rights to a real person for real money. That is income. Easy to value: how much did they pay you in real world asets?
Gaining, but not selling, virtual assets would be trickier. If you are pursing the MMO game with the goal of making money, then even this might be income. The IRS has the concept of "constructively received income", which is income that you have rights to, even if you don't actually 'have it yet'. If you receive rights to virtual assets based on your effort, those rights are probably income, even if you havn't turned them into cash yet.
How much? For this MMOs with real markets in the real world, it is simple: look to equivalent transactions. Non-market-driven rights would be tougher for the IRS to claim as income, and tougher for them (and you) to value. There could be earned income for the initial rights, and then capital gains if those right appreciate in value over time.
Uncertain is what the Service might say if you play a game (with a real world market for virtual assets) for fun, never intend to sell virtual assets in the real world, and never do. That is like the Monopoly reference in the article. One might say that there is no increase in real economic position for the player, so there might not be income. Rest assured, that if there was a large, real market for buying and selling Monoply money or real estate, the IRS would tax those transactions as well.
Some states have an "ad valorem tax" (tax on physical assets) and some an "intangibles tax" (tax on intabgile assets, usually stocks, bonds, partnerships interests,etc.). Some are relatively small, like ad valorem taxes on your automobile, boat (not license fees, or tag fees, but based on the value of the assset). Ad valorem taxes on real estate can be more significant. MMO virtual property is probably not subject to ad valorem tax.
Florida, for instance, does not have an income tax, but raises its revenue through an intangible tax. Not based on income from those intangible assets, but based directly on the value of those asssets, whether or not they actually increased in value, or spun off income to you. So virtual assets that have a real monetary value might count here as well.
my thoughts... (which are not to be used as any specific accounting or legal guidance, I speak for myself and not my employer, IANA_CPA, IANA_L, etc.)
Generall, experience valuation practitioners use 3 separate ways to value assets, or indeed, enterprises.
(1) Cost - what it cost you to create. More applicable to tangible, long-lived fixed assets in mature industries. Less so to IP, or to companies.
(2) Market - what it costs for comparable assets on the market. Very good if you can find similar comps. For IP, you'd look to licensing rates, for enterprises, you'd look to market transactions of similar companies.
(3) Income - the present value of a stream of future cash flows that arise from that assets. Depends a great deal on the assumptions that go into the model (market adoption of your IP, enterprise revenue and expense growth and the discount rate used)
You take these amounts, weight them according to the type of asset you are valuing, and give a range of probable value.
See also my post above about transfer pricing in this case. The IRS would use the above valuation techniques to figure out the appropriate transfer price.
Transfer pricing is how companies allocate revenues and expenses across borders. Because an inter-company transaction isn't arms-length (nor at presumed fair market value), companies can play games with the prices at which goods are transfered between related parties. You try to shift income (minimize revenue, maximize expense) out of countries with high taxes, and into countries with lower taxes.
BTW, this is the same idea that underlies SALT strategizing (State and Local Tax). You move income out of states with high taxes (NY), and into states with low/no taxes (FL). That is why you'll see cost centers (backoffice) in low-tax states. The company then "charges" the revenue-generating units for use of these services, and income is shifted from the revenue units (high tax locations) into cost centers (low tax locations)
Here, it looks like Veritas licensed software (IP) to a subsidiary in Ireland, and at a transfer price that the IRS thought was too low (below market). The IRS is claiming that Vertias-U.S. should have recognized greater licensing revenue than they did, and as a result, they underreported their income. Complexities of international tax treaties aside, it could be because they wanted to leave more income in Ireland (lower expense for the Ireland sub), which might have had a lower tax rate. Or timing, or US vs IRE tax credits, or deductibility or software expensing/amortization, or witholding, or offsets with other subs, or phases of the moon, etc.
From the 8-K, "The Notice of Deficiency primarily relates to transfer pricing in connection with a technology license agreement between VERITAS and a foreign subsidiary."
From a news article: "Genevieve Haldeman, Symantec's vice president of corporate communications,...explained that the notices related to transfer pricing of intellectual property, in effect licensing technology from the Symantec parent company to its Irish affiliate to sell outside of the Americas."
"Effectively what the IRS is saying is that separately both Symantec and Veritas undervalued the technology license that was used in the international subsidiary," she said. "They believe it should be valued at a higher rate, and given their valuation, we owe additional taxes."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm trying to avoid the whole fanboy thing, but it's hard to not like it. I mean, the pricing of the hardware is certainly high, but once you dive it it's quite nice.
"It hurts...at first. But after a while, the pain goes away, just as they promise. There's a moment...when you can almost see it through his eyes. He makes it sound perfect, a place where anyone can start over."
Riddick would kill you with a Leopard Install disc for joining the necro-Mac-ers (sorry, the whole scene popped into my head as I read your post).
Actually, I'm looking forward to agreeing with you. If the rumors about the new Mac Mini/Nano are true, I might be getting my first Mac soon.
Hard to justify when a nice desktop linux install is up & humming, but a Core2Duo Mac the size of paperback, with Mac OSX 10.5, for several hundred dollars? Too neat to pass up.
I agree with your point that the patent system has gotten a bit absurd.
However, it is not true to say that any subsequent damages don't go, at least indirectly, to "the original inventors and holders of this patent." Quite the contrary - it is these very (potential) enforced royalties that caused the first purchaser to buy the patent rights from the original inventor.
What supposedly encourages the innovation is the ability to monetize the patent rights. An inventor can do this by (a) manufacturing the product themselves for the next 20+ years, or (b) licensing the patent to someone else for the next 20+ years and collecting royalties, or (c) selling the patent to someone else.
The poster seems to think that only (a) is acceptable. But what the financial difference to the inventor between (a), (b) and (c)? And wouldn't (c) also stimulate R&D? If you know there's a market for your research (in the form of a patent), wouldn't that encourage you to develop patentable ideas? In economic theory, there would be an increase in R&D at the margins, as the value of patent rights in the market increased.
Now, I agree that 'patentable ideas' has gotten out of control. But the theory behind a market for selling & buying patent rights isn't, in and of itself, a corrupt idea. It's just that the current implementation of that idea isn't optimum.
[Codec patents] Since when is this a problem for linux?...Maybe it's not entirely legal, but since when does the end user care?
Well, it's not a problem for Linux, but it IS a problems if the end user is a U.S. company that wants to deploy Linux on the desktop.
How is Linspire going to make legit codecs a selling point when the average user doesn't even know what a codec is, and why they need to be licensed?
I don't think the lack of legit codecs would be a deal-breaker for lots of corporate desktop linux - after all, a company could just not install media apps on corporate desktops - if there are no codecs, then it doesn't matter if those codecs would have needed licensing.
If, on the other hand, a U.S. company is looking to deploy desktop Linux with working media apps (sound, video - useful for training, video conferencing, media development), then that company might think that licensed versions of U.S. patent-restricted codecs IS a selling point.
Why do you think that RedHat doesn't ship patent-restricted codecs (or at least MP3)? My guess - lots of their enterprise desktop customers wouldn't get Linux from RedHat if RH was knowingly including unlicensed-but-patent-encumbered software.
---
PATENT LAW QUESTION: I'm not sure about U.S. law re: USERS of patent-protected software (as opposed to the developer/distributor, i.e. RH). What could happen to a company that knowingly USES software that infringes on a third-party's patent? A Cease n Desist? Infringement damages - is there such thing as contributory infringement by users in the patent arena?
Then they would have made billions...Manipulation of financial assets beats manipulation of physical assets every time./b>
So true....At times, it feels like if you have $100mm of capital, you can find numerous ways to make seemingly easy money by financial re-structuring. Form over substance, and someone walks away with tons of cash.
I'll be the first to defend it all, and I'm sure there is ultimately a re-allocation and re-pricing of different risk components associated with the total transaction that makes sense. But then it would appear that there is a lot of latent value in these financial structures (aka businesses) that professional managers don't recognize.
Or maybe the only way these financial transactions make fundamental sense is with very cheap cost of money. Or, as we've seen, when purchasers don't get what they thought they were getting (AAA-rated paper), which means they overpaid for the assets. In other situations this is often known as fraud - it's easy to make the deal look good is one of the parties is getting screwed.
I'm not sure that is what happened. Now, it is true that the central banks:
1. Lowered the governed rate which they force large banks to charge each other for loans,
2. Lowered the rate that the Central Banks charge large banks for loans.
3. Provided additional amounts to banks by PURCHASING assets from banks with a round-trip provision to sell the assets back to the banks in the short-term future.
All of this had the effect of pumping liquidity into the system. From what I know, it wasn't a "bail out" in the sense that the Central Banks bought crappy securities from banks at 100 cents on the dollar and rescued banks from their bad loans.
The holders of all of this paper (CDOs, securitized debt, asset-backed commercial paper) have seen the value of their assets vanish before their eyes. Holders of such paper around the world (originated in the U.S. and lots of other countries) will probably write off $50+ billion of value. Merrill Lynch announced today that they wrote off $5.5bn of these assets in Q3. Citigroup & UBS - $3bn each. These are real losses which are absorbed by the private banks, not any Central Bank or government.
Purchasers of 2006-originated CDOs (quite crappy underlying assets, but rated and priced like the higher-quality 2003-2005 CDOs) began to realize these assets weren't worth what they thought. Upon this uncertainly of asset quality, these investors stopped buying. Investment banks that put these securitizations together had no purchasers, and so stopped putting deals together. With no investment banks to syndicate and securitize the new mortages, lending banks stopped writing mortgages for a lot of transactions.
At the same time, hedge funds and banks had levered up on all of these products, and needed to liquidate other assets to cover margin calls or returns funds to investors. This caused a run on other short-term commercial paper, prices fall, rates rise, liquidity slows, and pretty soon the market for other types of commercial paper drys up too.
The injections of liquidity are to reassure the market that there will be enough free cash around to get transactions done in the normal course, even if banks are taking a bath on the mortgage-backed assets. Increased liquidity make the markets breathe easier, calm down, money starts being loaned again (but everyone has tightened up standards a bit, for now), and pretty soon things are back to normal until the next conflux of events.
Global financial markets and monetary policy - a hugely complex and chaotic system, that we've gotten better at understanding and reacting to, but still can't manage perfectly to keep all blips from happening.
I think of it like a traffic jam due to a small accident (subprime CDOs). There is no real reason
Your numbers are correct, but without context, they paint an unrealistic portrait.
$160k for first-years, at premier firms in NYC, Chicago, LA, DC, or San Fran./Silicon Valley. Maybe Boston. $120-140k in Miami, Houston, Atlanta, NorthWest.
Talent at that level is probably 500-1000 people a year nationwide. Top graduates of top law schools. Very smart, focused and they produce.
How much do top grad-level engineering graduates from MIT and Stanford make at the highest-paying jobs those schools place graduates in?
---
In most of those big cities with ridiculous housing costs, that salary doesn't go as far as you'd think it would. A nice life, sure, lots of spending money, but equivalent to $100k/year for a more reasonable metropolitan area - Charlotte, Phoenix, Kansas City.
Plus they often work 80-hour weeks so they can bill 2300 hours/year in order to earn the bonus and stay on the partner track they dangle in front of you.
Opportunity cost:
-3 years of salary given up (for people that would still have gotten a good job out of undergrad)
PLUS
-$120k in debt = $20k per year in pre-tax salary dollars in order pay that off in a reasonable time.
So, yes, it a lot of money, but all things considered, it might not be a comparable position to the work a graduate-degree'd engineer might do. And so just looking at cash comp. is not enough.
BTW - the average starting salary of my law school graduating class (1999, well regarded state school) ? Around $40,000. For every person making $100k starting out of my law school (the $160k of the day, and that part of the country), there were 10 making less than $60k working for the government, public policy groups, for family businesses, or not practicing at all (useful for their current career).
The same people that read Playboy for the articles? [sarcastic]
If you'd ever bothered to read Playboy, instead of giggling like a schoolboy at pictures of naked women (gasp!), then you would realize that it actually IS filled with great articles and other content.
Long interviews with diverse people (sports, entertainment, business)
Short fiction by well-known authors
Good articles
Reviews of movies, books, video games, technology
Cooking, wine, drinks, entertaining
And beautiful women. It's not shameful - grow up.
but until he actually harms someone, he should be free to do whatever the hell he likes.
Sorry, it is a crazy opinion.
Murder-for-hire conspiracies, egregious drunk driving, germ-warfare experiments in your garage. They haven't harmed anyone YET, but do you really think that as a society we shouldn't try to stop imminent harm, on the basis that it hasn't actually happened yet?
Follow the proto-criminal and arrest him after the murder, after the automobile manslaughter, after the smallpox outbreak? "But you could have stopped it! Why didn't you?" "Well, he was free to pursue his willfully reckless behavior that any reasonable person would know would harm other people in the future, but that harm hadn't happened yet, so we couldn't. Sorry. We only arrest people, we don't prevent crime."
I'm certainly not suggesting 'Minority Report'-style pre-crime police action, but as stupid humans show everyday, the threat of post-hoc arrest is not enough to prevent behavior that we as a society decide is not allowed.
People do harmful things. People PLAN to do harmful things. People PLAN to do things to which any reasonable person would say "Are you an idiot?", and then they do those things, and then those things harm others. Where would you stop the chain? Or would you?
Where that line is, is very gray. And subjective, to the individual and to society. Intent is hard to prove, as it the likelihood of harm (in some corner cases, like this one).
But there is a line, and it is well before "until he actually harms someone".
(I realize you're talking mostly about personal email, but I'll talk about business email)
To each their own, certainly. If you're at a desk most of the time, then webmail probably works for most people.
However, for anyone that travels a lot, a local email client/data_store is essential. Webmail doesn't cut it, even these days with Wi-Fi, 3G cards and cellphone tethers. Planes, cars in the middle of nowhere, network issues, etc - webmail just wouldn't work for me.
And I couldn't agree more with this comment to your post. Comprehensive keystrokes? Pg-Up/Dn? Sane screen layout regardless of display size? Nope - instead you often get nested scroll boxes like this very Slashdot comment page - Arrrgh!!!!!!
And that makes my keyboard-based life just a bit harder, every 15 minutes of every day.
And no, Gmail, although much better that 1998-era web clients, isn't the answer to every webmail complaint.
Europe's freer than the US in some respects, but not as free in others. There's no nation in the world that's totally free, and likely never will be, since "freedom" and "government" are a contradiction in terms.
At first I was going to agree with you, but then I thought: what if the government stops other people from perpetrating uncalled-for violence against me? The ol' your-freedom-stops-at-my-nose idea.
Am I LESS free because of this governmental interference (with anarchy), or I am MORE free because now someone isn't killing me?
My hypothesis:
Starting from anarchy, increases in government correlate with increases in freedom. The strength of this correlation decreases as government increases, and at some point, they turn inversely correlated. Freedom begins to decrease as government increases. The point at wich this happens depends on the type of government, the type of freedom under analysis, and the point of view of the observer.
People view these relationships differently - each person brings their own views about what freedom means to them, under the current political bargain they live subject to, weighs all of these variables and eventually says "too much".
Where this tipping happens can be be unexpected to citizens of stable Western democracies: witness Iraq, where polls overwhelmingly show that most Iraqis want security first, democracy second. They'd prefer immediate, if authoritarian, security at the expense of voting booths.
It was easy to THINK that oppressed people want democracy above all else. However, it's hard for them be thrilled about constitutional drafting sessions and discussions about oil-sharing provisions when cabinet ministers are being assasinated, firefights happen on neighborhood corners and fathers are pulled out of bed at night and shot in the street.
Freedom truly is relative.
These thoughts influenced by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall
---
if you were just referring to the freedom to buy an unlocked handset, well, um, never mind then. :)
OK, Europeans win that one. But we USians have the freedom to buy an unlocked handGUN :)
Per the IRS's Revenue Rulings and appellate decisions, any increase in the economic position of a person is considered to be income, and then they carve out exceptions to that presumption. A gift is something that is motivated by love, kindness or charity.
The IRS, and the courts, wouldn't take 5 seconds to tell both parties that the car is income to the kid, and he owes taxes on it. The kid would then have to demonstrate why this transfer is related to love, kindness or charity, which would be hard to demonstrate when it happened at the same time as a payment for services rendered, and there was probably no prior relationship between the parties. Chances are, the company will deduct both the value of the car and the iPhones as wages or other business expenses, and that would be the nail in the coffin of "Gift". This issue comes up thousands of times a year, and this fact pattern isn't even close to being a tough call under precedent.
Does this mean they can subpoena the contents of the white board in conference nine at 7:23 AM on June the 13, 2005?
YES, if the court gives you notice that you must preserve everything that is written on the whiteboards in all conference rooms, then they will expect you to have it preserved, and produce it when ordered.
Take a picture, log the contents, don't erase it - whatever you need to do to preserve the information. Saying "But I erased it!" isn't going to fly when you are subject to a prior order to NOT erase it.
Why can't the court grasp the transient nature of the content of RAM?
It sounds like the company was saying "But I really don't have it, it's just in RAM". That doesn't mean you don't have the information.
Note that this is a prospective discovery order - YOU WILL HAVE THE INFORMATION IN YOUR POSSESION, I REALIZE IT'S TRANSITORY AND YOU NORMALLY DON"T PRESERVE IT, BUT YOU CAN PRESERVE IT, AND I'M ORDERING YOU TO PRESERVE IT.
What's so hard about that?
So, your legal argument to support your position is "regardless what any goddamn bastard lawyer tells us, we listen to morality and common sense" ?
Get thee to the courts, next Chief Justice, for who could argue that !
Abandonware IS A FACT - a patent/copyright CANNOT EXIST in reality when all parties involved died and the holding corporation dissolved.
Who, then, owns the copyright? Care to provide a reference in the US Code to this 'abandonment' provision?
they die intestate and their assets are free to distribute. The same concept applies to corporations
Now you're making stuff up - that's just not correct.
If the owner of the copyright is an individual, then that copyright is part of the normal estate, and is distributed to heirs like other property. If the individual is truely intestate, then their property gets escheated to the state - the state would then own the copyright, and could do with it what it sees fit (including releasing the copyright to the public domain, or asserting damage claims against infringers).
If the owner is a corporation, then either corporation was dissolved correctly, and the net assets (including the copyright) were distributed as a liquidating dividend to the shareholders (or the company entered liquidating bankruptcy and the copyright is now owned by a creditor). If the corporation wasn't properly dissolved, then the copyright is owned by a dormant, non-operating shell, with the copyright is in legal limbo.
But this doesn't cause the copyright to vanish or be relased to public domain. Absent the copyright holder releasing the copyright, or the copyright expiring per statue, the copyright is owned by SOMEONE.
Sincerely,
- your local Intellectual Property Fascist corporation asstroturfer
- a/k/a reasonable person who may agree with your position, but doesn't like people talking out of their ass and giving incorrect information about stuff they know nothing about.
As with anything, the devil's in the details. From a previous trip around the web in re: bodyarmor.
It's not Tupperware, but 'Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene'.
See also:
Spectra
Dyneema
Aramids (from "aromatic polyamide")
- Example: Twaron
Kevlar, of course.
Also Nomex - known for it's heat-resistant attributes, also strong. It's an "aromatic nylon, the meta variant of the para-aramid Kevlar."
How do people know what stock options they are actually being granted?
You should have received a stock option grant certificate, which shows the number of options, the strike price, vesting terms, length of option, exercise terms, etc. The company won't tell you the actual percentage ownership, just the number of options/shares (numerator). You can figure out the total number of outstanding shares from the 10K, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance (denominator).
An option is "in the money" if you can use the option to buy a share from the company at a price (the pre-determined strike or exercise price) that is less that what the share is currently trading for. If the trading price is less that your option stike price, then the option is 'underwater' and (generally) worthless.
You'd know if you had any significant percentage. More likely that you own 1,000 shares of a company with 200,000,000 outstanding.
I recall the same. However, he was named the interim CEO in 1997, and the "interim" was dropped in 2000.
Currently, Jobs is the CEO and a (non-Chairman) Director of Apple, Inc.
As background: I'm a forensic accountant, do large financial investigations of public companies, and am currently doing a stock option investigation. I do not have any inside knowledge of the issues at Apple.
In fact, it isn't at all possible that the SEC could require Jobs to resign from Apple.
Not true at all. The SEC has fairly broad powers to permanently ban a person from serving as director or officer of a public registrant.
Section 10(b) of the 1934 Act. See: http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2003/0303/featur es/f031803.htm
I'm free to take questions!
It's amazing what gets 'blamed' on Sarbanes-Oxley. And most of the time, completely off base. While there is surely some money-grubbing from Apple, this is probably nothing more than Apple making a conservative decision to apply existing accounting policy more stringently. The previous poster here gets it right.
I am a forensic accountant - I do large corporate financial investigations, which involve accounting analysis and numerous interviews of management.
And I can't tell you how many times I've heard people in companies, when asked about $FOO, say "we had to do this because of SOX". Most of the time, they couldn't tell you what SOX is, or why that is the cause of $FOO.
SOX has turned into the Boogeyman, the shadow lurking in the background of any financial discussion. Unknown reason? SOX made us!
At its simplest, SOX requires that companies document what they do and how they do it. "404" is just a requirement that companies have a complete set of working documents describing accounting processes and the controls around those processes, and that they have actually tested to see that the processes and controls work properly.
Along with 404, SOX also heightened the burden on the financial accounting groups. Now CEOs and CFOs sign statements in quaterly and annual SEC filings, under penalties of civil and criminal law, that certify that they are "responsible for establishing and maintaining internal controls", including upward reporting from subordinates and subsidiaries, and that the controls have been tested and reported on in the filing.
As a result, corporate accounting departments have tightened up, More documentation of different types of accounting processes mean that existing, latent accounting issues are being surfaced and addressed. More conservative usually, in the sense that one does not 'push the envelope' of GAAP.
This is not really 'SOX made us do it', but rather as result of the analysis that SOX calls for. Sematics, but an important difference, I think.
Accounting Background - What is at work here?
SOP 97-2 "Revenue Recognition for Software Products with Multiple Deliverables".
SEC and AICPA: Revenue generally is realized or realizable and earned when all of the following criteria are met:
- Persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists
- Delivery has occured or services have been rendered
- The seller's price to the buyer is fixed or determinable, and
- Collectibility is reasonably assured
So, Apple decided that at the time of the sale of the computer with 802.11n (but not yet functional), with no additional amounts due from the customer, that since Apple had not perfected delivery of the complete laptop with 802.11n, they had not finalized all terms of the delivery, and thus had not "earned" all of the revenue from that sale. This would cause them to 'defer' some portion of the revenue (a liability on the balance sheet) until the final piece of the sale (802.11n) was delivered to the customer.
Under Apple's current policy, the computer is sold without 802.11n, delivery of this total package is complete when the customer receives the laptop, and Apple recognizes that entire sale as current revenue. Then a new $4.99 sales happens when the customer purchases the upgrade.
See: NY Society of CPA's discussion of SOP 97-2.
Now, there are certainly valid objections to the scope and scale of 404, but those are fairly focused on the size of companies that SOX should apply to, and how much testing the auditor should demand that they and the company do around 404.
The reason that this is interesting is not because "blind people can remember things, too", but rather that this is an indication that the source of deja vu is not in the visual cortex, caused by the temporal delay between recognizing images and integrating into memory.
This seems to show that deja vu is some difference between when overall experiences are interpreted by the brain, which don't necessarily need visual components.
Interesting, definitely.
Bad title, I do realize. It should be "Strange Bacteria Sustains Itself Without Dependence on Photosynthetic-based Food Chain"
all the bacteria in our digestive track surely relies on sunlight for life (tounge-in-cheek)
It isn't that everything else, including the bacteria in your gut, relies directly on sunlight for photosynthesis that it performs iteself, but rather that the entire food chain depends on photosynthesis as the underlying energy-fixating process.
The bacteria in your GI tract rely on the food you eat, which is either plants (photosynthetic autotrophs) or animals (heterotrophs feeding on photosynthetic autotrophs).
Every part of life that you are used to ultimately depends on photosythesis as the source for the energy in the food chain.
Exceptions are rare, which is why this is interesting. Chemosynthetic organisms (such as archaea and other extremophiles), are found near deep sea hydrothermal vents, using geothermal heat as the source energy. These South African bacetria are a second type of chemosythetic ecosystem.
It appears that these newly discovered bacteria in South Africa are chemotrophs using hydrogen and sulfates, with radiation being the underlying energy source, with no underlying food-chain-based dependency on photsynthesis.
After reading a more informative article refered to in this post, my guess is that the researchers arrrived at the figure of 986 billion years by figuring out how fast the cosmological constant decays over time from the value posited by normal partical physics and that which we observe today, then worked backwards to figure out when the predicated cosmological constant = calculated actual. The precision is fairly impressive, though. IANA_cosmologist.
After reading a more informative article refered to in this post, my guess is that the researchers arrrived at the figure of 986 billion years by figuring out how fast the cosmological constant decays over time from the value posited by normal partical physics and that which we observe today, then worked backwards to figure out when the predicated cosmological constant = calculated actual. The precision is farily impressive, though. IANA_cosmologist.
If I trade you two chickens for a goat, are they entitled to take for themselves the drumsticks off one chicken and one udder from the goat?
Actually, yes. Well, not payable in drumsticks, udders or MMO silver, but....yes.
You'd owe taxes on the excess of the market value of goat over the market value of the two chickens. If equivalent tranactions value the goat at more than two chickens, then you just made a profit, and probably owe personal income tax.
Income doesn't have to be in cash, and bartering counts. An equal trade would probably be counted as a either [Revenue-Cost of Goods Sold=zero Net Income], or a like-kind echange of assets.
Reportable on Schedule C (profit or loss from a business-sole proprietorship), or Schedule F (farm income and expenses)
Since the article is focuses on U.S. tax theories, this post will as well.
Publication 525 is what the article refers to when it mentions "tax law...clause #525". This IRS publication is put out to help taxpayers interpret various code sections, case law, and the fundamentally vague term "income"
In general, "income" has been spoken about by the courts as an increase in economic position, and if this increases, the tax man wants a piece of it. This includes amounts paid to you for the services of your labor (physical or mental) or or your capital (monetary or physical). The government then specifies things that are NOT income, but the presumption is that if a person's economic position increased, then that increase is income.
If you sold MMO 'assets' in the real world, and received real value for those 'rights', then that IS income, and you WILL owe tax on that income. Whether or not the IRS has specifically said that "proceeds from the sales of MMO gold is income to the taxpayer". At some point, the IRS probably will issue such guidance (Rev. Rul.), but that doesn't mean it isn't income now.
Think of it as IP - you gradually increased your rights to some virtual property, and then sold those rights to a real person for real money. That is income. Easy to value: how much did they pay you in real world asets?
Gaining, but not selling, virtual assets would be trickier. If you are pursing the MMO game with the goal of making money, then even this might be income. The IRS has the concept of "constructively received income", which is income that you have rights to, even if you don't actually 'have it yet'. If you receive rights to virtual assets based on your effort, those rights are probably income, even if you havn't turned them into cash yet.
How much? For this MMOs with real markets in the real world, it is simple: look to equivalent transactions. Non-market-driven rights would be tougher for the IRS to claim as income, and tougher for them (and you) to value. There could be earned income for the initial rights, and then capital gains if those right appreciate in value over time.
Uncertain is what the Service might say if you play a game (with a real world market for virtual assets) for fun, never intend to sell virtual assets in the real world, and never do. That is like the Monopoly reference in the article. One might say that there is no increase in real economic position for the player, so there might not be income. Rest assured, that if there was a large, real market for buying and selling Monoply money or real estate, the IRS would tax those transactions as well.
Some states have an "ad valorem tax" (tax on physical assets) and some an "intangibles tax" (tax on intabgile assets, usually stocks, bonds, partnerships interests,etc.). Some are relatively small, like ad valorem taxes on your automobile, boat (not license fees, or tag fees, but based on the value of the assset). Ad valorem taxes on real estate can be more significant. MMO virtual property is probably not subject to ad valorem tax.
Florida, for instance, does not have an income tax, but raises its revenue through an intangible tax. Not based on income from those intangible assets, but based directly on the value of those asssets, whether or not they actually increased in value, or spun off income to you. So virtual assets that have a real monetary value might count here as well.
my thoughts... (which are not to be used as any specific accounting or legal guidance, I speak for myself and not my employer, IANA_CPA, IANA_L, etc.)
Generall, experience valuation practitioners use 3 separate ways to value assets, or indeed, enterprises.
(1) Cost - what it cost you to create. More applicable to tangible, long-lived fixed assets in mature industries. Less so to IP, or to companies.
(2) Market - what it costs for comparable assets on the market. Very good if you can find similar comps. For IP, you'd look to licensing rates, for enterprises, you'd look to market transactions of similar companies.
(3) Income - the present value of a stream of future cash flows that arise from that assets. Depends a great deal on the assumptions that go into the model (market adoption of your IP, enterprise revenue and expense growth and the discount rate used)
You take these amounts, weight them according to the type of asset you are valuing, and give a range of probable value.
See also my post above about transfer pricing in this case. The IRS would use the above valuation techniques to figure out the appropriate transfer price.
Transfer pricing is how companies allocate revenues and expenses across borders. Because an inter-company transaction isn't arms-length (nor at presumed fair market value), companies can play games with the prices at which goods are transfered between related parties. You try to shift income (minimize revenue, maximize expense) out of countries with high taxes, and into countries with lower taxes.
BTW, this is the same idea that underlies SALT strategizing (State and Local Tax). You move income out of states with high taxes (NY), and into states with low/no taxes (FL). That is why you'll see cost centers (backoffice) in low-tax states. The company then "charges" the revenue-generating units for use of these services, and income is shifted from the revenue units (high tax locations) into cost centers (low tax locations)
Here, it looks like Veritas licensed software (IP) to a subsidiary in Ireland, and at a transfer price that the IRS thought was too low (below market). The IRS is claiming that Vertias-U.S. should have recognized greater licensing revenue than they did, and as a result, they underreported their income. Complexities of international tax treaties aside, it could be because they wanted to leave more income in Ireland (lower expense for the Ireland sub), which might have had a lower tax rate. Or timing, or US vs IRE tax credits, or deductibility or software expensing/amortization, or witholding, or offsets with other subs, or phases of the moon, etc.
From the 8-K, "The Notice of Deficiency primarily relates to transfer pricing in connection with a technology license agreement between VERITAS and a foreign subsidiary."
From a news article: "Genevieve Haldeman, Symantec's vice president of corporate communications, ...explained that the notices related to transfer pricing of intellectual property, in effect licensing technology from the Symantec parent company to its Irish affiliate to sell outside of the Americas."
"Effectively what the IRS is saying is that separately both Symantec and Veritas undervalued the technology license that was used in the international subsidiary," she said. "They believe it should be valued at a higher rate, and given their valuation, we owe additional taxes."