What states CAN do, and what has been the crux of the issue (I think), is in redefining what constitutes a "presence". And this is where things get very grey and murky. Trying to get affiliates declassified as a "presence" certainly isn't unconstitutional. It's constitutionally-questionable to consider them as a presence to begin with. Traditionally a presence required just that -- a physical presence in the state -- a warehouse, and office, a distribution center, etc; NOT just some kind of affiliation with someone else doing business from the state in question.
Don't look now, but Amazon is also arguing that a distribution center doesn't count as a physical presence. See Nevada, and the fact that Amazon doesn't feel the need to collect taxes there despite their two large distribution centers.
The problem is that sales taxes are a patchwork nightmare. Not only do different states have different rates, different collection mechanisms, and different auditing requirements, so do counties and municipalities. Just doing sales taxes for a small company that does business in 3 or 4 states is a nightmare; for a national company, it would be almost impossible. Then if you don't collect the right amount of tax, when the offended entity gets around to auditing you they hand you a bill for the tax on every transaction you've ever done since their last audit. I can understand why Bezos is so adamant about this; it's not about civic duty, but about practical possibility. If the tax was flat across the country and there was a single unified mechanism for remitting it, I doubt he would care so much.
And yet, somehow, nearly every other national retailer manages to collect sales taxes just fine. I'm sorry, but this is simply bullshit.
Sears actually took this very issue all the way to the supreme court and WON. That's how we have the "physical nexus" rule, any why Amazon's Fernley, NV distribution center handles most orders in California, in the first place. The ironic thing is that now Sears has done a 180 and wants Amazon to have to pay the tax that Sears does not. Fortunately, the ruling protects everyone, not just Sears.
How the state legislature thinks they can override the SCOTUS though, I don't know.
Semi off-topic, but in a list of states that Amazon collects taxes from Nevada wasn't mentioned. I know they have distribution centers there; anyone know what special deal allows them to operate a distribution center without collecting taxes on Nevada orders? I'm fairly sure that Nevada does in fact have a statewide sales tax.
Never mind, just looked it up. Seems that Amazon has been arguing that a distribution center doesn't count as a physical presence in a state, so they don't collect taxes in Nevada. That right there should be enough to show that Amazon is full of shit.
Apparently the same thing happened in Texas, only when they were sent a bill for uncollected taxes they closed their distribution center instead of paying. I suppose they could do the same thing in Nevada (of course, if it suddenly takes another day or two for deliveries to California, which is the whole point of having their warehouses in Nevada, they would likely lose a lot of California business; probably better just to collect taxes on Nevada orders).
For a number of years, as a Netflix customer, I've been watching and thus receiving less and less DVDs a month. Two years ago I cut back to one-at-a-time. Streaming was free. Then the price went up for $2 (apparently, history being re-written, that hike was for the one-at-a-time dvd plan, the cost of the original one-at-a-time dvd plan being directed towards a streaming plan!) $10/mo still felt like a soft cost, I could absorb it, I did. Now it's going up to $16/mo. I like getting a dvd now and then, rarely, maybe 1-2 a month. I stream a movie about as often. I can live without both of those. I'll get my DVDs at the corner store or on demand and live without old movies. Netflix, a company I once thought of as great, is now just another company trying to get as much out of me as they can. Well, the pushed a bit too hard. They now get ZERO out of me and I hold grudges. Netflix: Don't expect me to return to you anytime soon EVEN if you improve your cost structure. It will cost you all the money you lose from me in the meanwhile AND the cost of re-acquiring me as a customer - buying my loyalty back, should you choose to, to get me back.
I'm in a similar situation. And I would be tempted to drop DVDs completely from the plan, except that when we had the urge to pick up a movie and watch it NOW (predictably it wasn't available to stream) we discovered that in the last year four of the six video stores in town have closed; now we can drive halfway across town to go to a tiny video store with a very limited selection, or drive clear across town to a decent video store that looks like it is hanging on by a fingernail. Red box is a possibility, except it has extremely limited selection - the three times I've thought of something I want to watch it hasn't been available at either of the two closest locations.
Yes, we do 99% of our Netflix viewing in the living room on our HD TV through the PS3, either the streaming or the DVD's.
Me too. My only complaint (okay, I'm lying; I've got more than one) is that the Netflix app on the PS3 is really crappy for finding things to watch. No way to browse by genre (beyond the few "suggestions" they sometimes put up) or search by actor or director or anything else. If you don't know the name of the movie, you're out of luck.
Most of the recent DVD's I've gotten from Netflix actually say "Netflix" on them, and there are NO extra features. There was the 'hint' of extra features and when you click it says 'get the real DVD.' So don't hold your breath there.
Yeah, I've been seeing this more and more lately - Netflix branded DVDs, or even at other rental places DVDs that say "Rental Version" on them. Usually with few or no special features and lots of unskippable ads.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the studios are doing their best to drive people to piracy these days?
I'm a firm believer in using the tax code to influence behavior. Tax the snot out of them. Considering that my house is entirely lit by canned lighting on dimmer switches, an incandescent ban means I basically have to rewire my house - fluorescent dimmables just don't work. If they were heavily taxed - to the point of being slightly more expensive that the fluorescents - then I would have an alternative, while the majority of the market will still make the choice you want them to. Everybody wins.
Out of curiosity, are halogens affected? All the canned, dimmable lighting in my house uses PAR38 (I think) halogens. There are some LEDs available, but I haven't heard good things about them so far - low power use, but the light is apparently highly directional - more spot than flood, which wouldn't really work very well for me.
My first thought looking at the linked paper was, "January 2010? Why hasn't this been all over the place if the results are so promising?" But there could be lots of reasons for that. Just sort of popped out.
Another question that comes up is overall system efficiency. One advantage of the current fan + heat sink paradigm is that in addition to moving air across the heat sink, which is not terribly efficient, the fan also serves to mix the heated air around the heat sink with the larger reservoir of surrounding air. They don't really directly discuss it, but my impression is that their design would result in very little large-scale mixing; one of the efficiency advantages is that they aren't moving large amounts of air around. It seems that in a setting like a CPU cooler this might be a non-issue, as you would still presumably be using case fans to move air through the case (exchanging the reservoir); but in something like an air conditioning unit, it seems like it would become limited by convection for larger scale heat transfer - or require an external fan for air exchange.
Basically, my concern is that while this method might be very efficient in moving heat from the base plate to the air in the immediate vicinity, you would then have the problem of heat building up around it. Perhaps not an issue where you have a small-scale device open to a large, room-temperature environment (or where you already have something in place to move air around, like a computer case), but it seems like it could be an issue moving to something like a residential air conditioner.
Still, it appears to eliminate the boundary layer problem, so you could use a pretty efficient, large, slow-moving fan for air exchange - so probably more efficient than blowing high-speed air across a heat sink, but something that would need to be considered in a full implementation.
FF just pushed me ("Strongly Recommended") to upgrade to Firefox 6. My favorite part is after the upgrade installs, then it runs a check to see which of my plugins are compatible. Hmm, you think maybe it would be a useful feature to run the check BEFORE doing the upgrade so then I can make an informed decision about whether to upgrade?
The summary confused the hell out of me. Apparently it's talking about some service called Origin, which has nothing to do with the game developer company named Origin that EA acquired.
Origin as an internal development team was disbanded years ago, early 2000's I think.
so i'll be sticking with steam then - the games are much cheaper on there anyway
Lol. So your answer to a company introducing a system aimed at preventing resale of games is to only buy games from a system that has never allowed you to re-sell games? I don't get it.
Not to say I hate Steam or anything (I'm not a big fan, but I did buy the Orange Box on it a few years back), I just find it sort of funny that a lot of people are saying similar things - screw Sony, I'm going to go back to PC... where one-time-use codes or similar systems have been in use for years and where there has never really been a used game market.
Even though the Bonneville Power administration was running 100% with renewables already (without even using microhydro, solar thermal, or tidal), and is making money at it, it's important to notice that Slashdot's mod system says this can't be done.
A couple of issues here. One, at least according to their 2010 financial statement BPA isn't making money (they do have a small operating profit, but not enough to cover interest payments - not to mention that their operating profit was slightly less than the amount they received in treasury credits, meaning their operations were not profitable without government subsidies even before debt payments).
Second, BPA doesn't just use renewables - they also get power from a nuclear power plant, and several "other" power plants, presumably fossil fuel of some sort. Unless we've decided that nuclear is renewable, you can't say they get all their power from renewables even ignoring the "other" plants.
Third, there is no (well, little) doubt that in certain areas renewable power is currently viable. Hydro power, which is largely the basis of BPA's power, is generally pretty cheap and reliable - assuming you have a lot of precipitation and some appropriate topography to work with. It works great in the Pacific Northwest and some other areas, but we have pretty much tapped this resource everywhere it is available (in the U.S., at least). I don't doubt that large-scale wind and solar can be profitable now or in the near future, but again - the areas you can deploy these technologies to the best advantage (i.e., profitably) are limited.
Sorry, spending by the legislature is not CA's problem. Actually, there are many interrelated problems, many of which are a result of Prop 13. 1. Property taxes, which are a generally stable source of income are limited to the point of insignificance. This was sold as a way to protect grandma, but the real beneficiaries are big corps like chevron who are still sitting on the same land they were when it passed. Because property taxes cannot be touched, we have to rely on income and sales taxes, which are inherently unstable and obviously tank when you need them most. 2. Ballot box budgeting, has tied the hands of our legislature for quite some time. We keep passing laws specifying where and how much money must be spent, but without any regard to where the money comes from or to whether there is, in fact, any money to spend. 3. Prop 13 also raised the bar on tax increases to the point where it is virtually impossible to raise taxes at all. It used to be, if the budget stayed within 5% of the previous year's budget, it could be passed with a majority vote. If the budget grew or shrank too much, a super majority was needed. This seems quite logical and effective to me. 4. We pass stupid laws that dramatically increase our prison population without considering the financial impact of housing them.
There are many reasons why CA is in the shape that it is in. Raising taxes and cutting spending are only stop gap measures for what is really needed. The only way CA is going to get out of the shape it's in is to hold a Constitutional Convention. We need to gut and rewrite it in such a way as to be fair, effective and quite a bit more strict as to how it is modified.
I don't completely disagree, but a higher reliance on property taxes would certainly not be helping the situation now. In case you haven't noticed, in most parts of California property values have taken a big dump the last couple of years. There would be a massive hole in the budget no matter what is getting taxed at this point.
Amazon is fighting the good fight, but it is a losing battle. With states hurting for tax dollars, online retailers are being targeted as a source of income for the states.
The days of tax free internet orders is coming to an end.
I do have sympathy for online retailers, if there was a simple tax rate for each state, it would not be so bad, but each county, each city, certain merchandise all have different tax rates. What a accounting nightmare to keep up with. Every time you turn around another city council is passing another tax on something, having to keep up with would be next to impossible.
Actually, California is only trying to recover the state taxes, not force them to cough up any local taxes. So it really would just be 50 different tax rates, depending on what state you are in. California doesn't care that much if the localities get their taxes or not (though I would expect counties/cities would band together and sue to recover taxes is California is successful in recovering taxes from Amazon).
I really don't understand people that still claim it is a huge burden to figure out the tax rate, anyway. Nearly every website except for Amazon that I shop at has managed to do so for many years. It really isn't that big a deal. That isn't to say that Amazon is legally wrong and should be forced to cough up sales tax in California, just that people whining that it is too difficult apparently have never shopped at an online retailer other than Amazon.
How about a Google Classic page, just the little friendly box that we type our queries into, hit enter, and get our results. Nothing else.
Sounds like you are wasting effort already by going to the google.com search page. Why not just type it in either the search engine bar or super bar in FF/IE or the address bar in Chrome? There's no reason to go to Google.com with modern browsers.
I've used google.com as my homepage for years, long before the introduction of the search bar or super bar. I see it whenever I open a new browser window. I, too, wish for a return to the clean, classic Google look.
Not that I care that much; I just think the latest addition of that black bar across the top is really ugly and distracting. It's great if they want to add the ability to change the color (I don't know why you would want to, but I don't mind them offering it); I just question why they push out changes like this that offer absolutely nothing positive and in fact give me a negative impression of the site.
There was always a menu at the top. Now it's a different color, and has a new item. Not a big deal.
Google.com used to look nice and clean and sleek, now they've continued their uglifying+overcomplicating streak by making the top of the page a different color for no apparent reason (except to draw attention away from what I actually go to the site for, the search box). Another example of the need Google seems to have to be seen to be doing something regardless of whether it is actually an improvement.
Yeah..article said he wasn't involved..wonder why?
Has he had some kind of spat or parting with the others?
Does he not walk sufficiently silly these days?
I was wondering about that too. Based on comments from some of the other Pythons (especially Jones, and to a lesser extent Gilliam) regarding Spamalot it sounds like they are not very impressed with what he did with the Python material. I also got the feeling from the documentary on Monty Python that came out a couple of years ago that he had pretty firmly gone his own way (though they all have to a great extent); he sounded a little pissed off and even on the edge of being unhinged during some of the interviews. I generally liked his work in the past, but his manner in those interviews really left a bad taste in my mouth. Makes me think that there must have been something of a split, though I haven't seen any kind of confirmation of it (well, aside from the fact that he isn't appearing in this film).
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get to excited they're implants.
It might be a tumor.
What states CAN do, and what has been the crux of the issue (I think), is in redefining what constitutes a "presence". And this is where things get very grey and murky. Trying to get affiliates declassified as a "presence" certainly isn't unconstitutional. It's constitutionally-questionable to consider them as a presence to begin with. Traditionally a presence required just that -- a physical presence in the state -- a warehouse, and office, a distribution center, etc; NOT just some kind of affiliation with someone else doing business from the state in question.
Don't look now, but Amazon is also arguing that a distribution center doesn't count as a physical presence. See Nevada, and the fact that Amazon doesn't feel the need to collect taxes there despite their two large distribution centers.
The problem is that sales taxes are a patchwork nightmare. Not only do different states have different rates, different collection mechanisms, and different auditing requirements, so do counties and municipalities. Just doing sales taxes for a small company that does business in 3 or 4 states is a nightmare; for a national company, it would be almost impossible. Then if you don't collect the right amount of tax, when the offended entity gets around to auditing you they hand you a bill for the tax on every transaction you've ever done since their last audit. I can understand why Bezos is so adamant about this; it's not about civic duty, but about practical possibility. If the tax was flat across the country and there was a single unified mechanism for remitting it, I doubt he would care so much.
And yet, somehow, nearly every other national retailer manages to collect sales taxes just fine. I'm sorry, but this is simply bullshit.
Sears actually took this very issue all the way to the supreme court and WON. That's how we have the "physical nexus" rule, any why Amazon's Fernley, NV distribution center handles most orders in California, in the first place. The ironic thing is that now Sears has done a 180 and wants Amazon to have to pay the tax that Sears does not. Fortunately, the ruling protects everyone, not just Sears.
How the state legislature thinks they can override the SCOTUS though, I don't know.
Semi off-topic, but in a list of states that Amazon collects taxes from Nevada wasn't mentioned. I know they have distribution centers there; anyone know what special deal allows them to operate a distribution center without collecting taxes on Nevada orders? I'm fairly sure that Nevada does in fact have a statewide sales tax.
Never mind, just looked it up. Seems that Amazon has been arguing that a distribution center doesn't count as a physical presence in a state, so they don't collect taxes in Nevada. That right there should be enough to show that Amazon is full of shit.
Apparently the same thing happened in Texas, only when they were sent a bill for uncollected taxes they closed their distribution center instead of paying. I suppose they could do the same thing in Nevada (of course, if it suddenly takes another day or two for deliveries to California, which is the whole point of having their warehouses in Nevada, they would likely lose a lot of California business; probably better just to collect taxes on Nevada orders).
Basically, this will drive people to use Redbox for disc-based movies and NetFlix for screaming.
Well, except for the fact that the only thing with a more limited selection of titles than Netflix Streaming is Redbox.
For a number of years, as a Netflix customer, I've been watching and thus receiving less and less DVDs a month. Two years ago I cut back to one-at-a-time. Streaming was free. Then the price went up for $2 (apparently, history being re-written, that hike was for the one-at-a-time dvd plan, the cost of the original one-at-a-time dvd plan being directed towards a streaming plan!) $10/mo still felt like a soft cost, I could absorb it, I did. Now it's going up to $16/mo. I like getting a dvd now and then, rarely, maybe 1-2 a month. I stream a movie about as often. I can live without both of those. I'll get my DVDs at the corner store or on demand and live without old movies. Netflix, a company I once thought of as great, is now just another company trying to get as much out of me as they can. Well, the pushed a bit too hard. They now get ZERO out of me and I hold grudges. Netflix: Don't expect me to return to you anytime soon EVEN if you improve your cost structure. It will cost you all the money you lose from me in the meanwhile AND the cost of re-acquiring me as a customer - buying my loyalty back, should you choose to, to get me back.
I'm in a similar situation. And I would be tempted to drop DVDs completely from the plan, except that when we had the urge to pick up a movie and watch it NOW (predictably it wasn't available to stream) we discovered that in the last year four of the six video stores in town have closed; now we can drive halfway across town to go to a tiny video store with a very limited selection, or drive clear across town to a decent video store that looks like it is hanging on by a fingernail. Red box is a possibility, except it has extremely limited selection - the three times I've thought of something I want to watch it hasn't been available at either of the two closest locations.
Yes, we do 99% of our Netflix viewing in the living room on our HD TV through the PS3, either the streaming or the DVD's.
Me too. My only complaint (okay, I'm lying; I've got more than one) is that the Netflix app on the PS3 is really crappy for finding things to watch. No way to browse by genre (beyond the few "suggestions" they sometimes put up) or search by actor or director or anything else. If you don't know the name of the movie, you're out of luck.
Most of the recent DVD's I've gotten from Netflix actually say "Netflix" on them, and there are NO extra features. There was the 'hint' of extra features and when you click it says 'get the real DVD.' So don't hold your breath there.
Yeah, I've been seeing this more and more lately - Netflix branded DVDs, or even at other rental places DVDs that say "Rental Version" on them. Usually with few or no special features and lots of unskippable ads.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the studios are doing their best to drive people to piracy these days?
I'm a firm believer in using the tax code to influence behavior. Tax the snot out of them. Considering that my house is entirely lit by canned lighting on dimmer switches, an incandescent ban means I basically have to rewire my house - fluorescent dimmables just don't work. If they were heavily taxed - to the point of being slightly more expensive that the fluorescents - then I would have an alternative, while the majority of the market will still make the choice you want them to. Everybody wins.
Out of curiosity, are halogens affected? All the canned, dimmable lighting in my house uses PAR38 (I think) halogens. There are some LEDs available, but I haven't heard good things about them so far - low power use, but the light is apparently highly directional - more spot than flood, which wouldn't really work very well for me.
My first thought looking at the linked paper was, "January 2010? Why hasn't this been all over the place if the results are so promising?"
But there could be lots of reasons for that. Just sort of popped out.
Another question that comes up is overall system efficiency. One advantage of the current fan + heat sink paradigm is that in addition to moving air across the heat sink, which is not terribly efficient, the fan also serves to mix the heated air around the heat sink with the larger reservoir of surrounding air. They don't really directly discuss it, but my impression is that their design would result in very little large-scale mixing; one of the efficiency advantages is that they aren't moving large amounts of air around. It seems that in a setting like a CPU cooler this might be a non-issue, as you would still presumably be using case fans to move air through the case (exchanging the reservoir); but in something like an air conditioning unit, it seems like it would become limited by convection for larger scale heat transfer - or require an external fan for air exchange.
Basically, my concern is that while this method might be very efficient in moving heat from the base plate to the air in the immediate vicinity, you would then have the problem of heat building up around it. Perhaps not an issue where you have a small-scale device open to a large, room-temperature environment (or where you already have something in place to move air around, like a computer case), but it seems like it could be an issue moving to something like a residential air conditioner.
Still, it appears to eliminate the boundary layer problem, so you could use a pretty efficient, large, slow-moving fan for air exchange - so probably more efficient than blowing high-speed air across a heat sink, but something that would need to be considered in a full implementation.
FF just pushed me ("Strongly Recommended") to upgrade to Firefox 6. My favorite part is after the upgrade installs, then it runs a check to see which of my plugins are compatible. Hmm, you think maybe it would be a useful feature to run the check BEFORE doing the upgrade so then I can make an informed decision about whether to upgrade?
Pfff. Firefox Infinity is where fun is at.
Yeah, but the hardware requirements are a killer.
The summary confused the hell out of me. Apparently it's talking about some service called Origin, which has nothing to do with the game developer company named Origin that EA acquired.
Origin as an internal development team was disbanded years ago, early 2000's I think.
People DO sell Steam accounts.
Don't know whether this is legal under the EULA, but it is being done.
You could just as easily set up a unique account for each Sony game and sell that along with the game.
so i'll be sticking with steam then - the games are much cheaper on there anyway
Lol. So your answer to a company introducing a system aimed at preventing resale of games is to only buy games from a system that has never allowed you to re-sell games? I don't get it.
Not to say I hate Steam or anything (I'm not a big fan, but I did buy the Orange Box on it a few years back), I just find it sort of funny that a lot of people are saying similar things - screw Sony, I'm going to go back to PC... where one-time-use codes or similar systems have been in use for years and where there has never really been a used game market.
Game company using this technology to restrict any access to the game whatsoever to the first buyer in 3... 2...
Already happened, see Steam.
Tang 2.0
Now with more wang?
And they have that patented burp...
Still good!
Even though the Bonneville Power administration was running 100% with renewables already (without even using microhydro, solar thermal, or tidal), and is making money at it, it's important to notice that Slashdot's mod system says this can't be done.
A couple of issues here. One, at least according to their 2010 financial statement BPA isn't making money (they do have a small operating profit, but not enough to cover interest payments - not to mention that their operating profit was slightly less than the amount they received in treasury credits, meaning their operations were not profitable without government subsidies even before debt payments).
Second, BPA doesn't just use renewables - they also get power from a nuclear power plant, and several "other" power plants, presumably fossil fuel of some sort. Unless we've decided that nuclear is renewable, you can't say they get all their power from renewables even ignoring the "other" plants.
Third, there is no (well, little) doubt that in certain areas renewable power is currently viable. Hydro power, which is largely the basis of BPA's power, is generally pretty cheap and reliable - assuming you have a lot of precipitation and some appropriate topography to work with. It works great in the Pacific Northwest and some other areas, but we have pretty much tapped this resource everywhere it is available (in the U.S., at least). I don't doubt that large-scale wind and solar can be profitable now or in the near future, but again - the areas you can deploy these technologies to the best advantage (i.e., profitably) are limited.
Sorry, spending by the legislature is not CA's problem. Actually, there are many interrelated problems, many of which are a result of Prop 13.
1. Property taxes, which are a generally stable source of income are limited to the point of insignificance. This was sold as a way to protect grandma, but the real beneficiaries are big corps like chevron who are still sitting on the same land they were when it passed. Because property taxes cannot be touched, we have to rely on income and sales taxes, which are inherently unstable and obviously tank when you need them most.
2. Ballot box budgeting, has tied the hands of our legislature for quite some time. We keep passing laws specifying where and how much money must be spent, but without any regard to where the money comes from or to whether there is, in fact, any money to spend.
3. Prop 13 also raised the bar on tax increases to the point where it is virtually impossible to raise taxes at all. It used to be, if the budget stayed within 5% of the previous year's budget, it could be passed with a majority vote. If the budget grew or shrank too much, a super majority was needed. This seems quite logical and effective to me.
4. We pass stupid laws that dramatically increase our prison population without considering the financial impact of housing them.
There are many reasons why CA is in the shape that it is in. Raising taxes and cutting spending are only stop gap measures for what is really needed. The only way CA is going to get out of the shape it's in is to hold a Constitutional Convention. We need to gut and rewrite it in such a way as to be fair, effective and quite a bit more strict as to how it is modified.
I don't completely disagree, but a higher reliance on property taxes would certainly not be helping the situation now. In case you haven't noticed, in most parts of California property values have taken a big dump the last couple of years. There would be a massive hole in the budget no matter what is getting taxed at this point.
Amazon is fighting the good fight, but it is a losing battle.
With states hurting for tax dollars, online retailers are being targeted as a source of income for the states.
The days of tax free internet orders is coming to an end.
I do have sympathy for online retailers, if there was a simple tax rate for each state, it would not be so bad, but each county, each city, certain merchandise all have different tax rates. What a accounting nightmare to keep up with. Every time you turn around another city council is passing another tax on something, having to keep up with would be next to impossible.
Actually, California is only trying to recover the state taxes, not force them to cough up any local taxes. So it really would just be 50 different tax rates, depending on what state you are in. California doesn't care that much if the localities get their taxes or not (though I would expect counties/cities would band together and sue to recover taxes is California is successful in recovering taxes from Amazon).
I really don't understand people that still claim it is a huge burden to figure out the tax rate, anyway. Nearly every website except for Amazon that I shop at has managed to do so for many years. It really isn't that big a deal. That isn't to say that Amazon is legally wrong and should be forced to cough up sales tax in California, just that people whining that it is too difficult apparently have never shopped at an online retailer other than Amazon.
How about a Google Classic page, just the little friendly box that we type our queries into, hit enter, and get our results. Nothing else.
Sounds like you are wasting effort already by going to the google.com search page. Why not just type it in either the search engine bar or super bar in FF/IE or the address bar in Chrome? There's no reason to go to Google.com with modern browsers.
I've used google.com as my homepage for years, long before the introduction of the search bar or super bar. I see it whenever I open a new browser window. I, too, wish for a return to the clean, classic Google look.
Not that I care that much; I just think the latest addition of that black bar across the top is really ugly and distracting. It's great if they want to add the ability to change the color (I don't know why you would want to, but I don't mind them offering it); I just question why they push out changes like this that offer absolutely nothing positive and in fact give me a negative impression of the site.
There was always a menu at the top. Now it's a different color, and has a new item. Not a big deal.
Google.com used to look nice and clean and sleek, now they've continued their uglifying+overcomplicating streak by making the top of the page a different color for no apparent reason (except to draw attention away from what I actually go to the site for, the search box). Another example of the need Google seems to have to be seen to be doing something regardless of whether it is actually an improvement.
Yeah..article said he wasn't involved..wonder why?
Has he had some kind of spat or parting with the others?
Does he not walk sufficiently silly these days?
I was wondering about that too. Based on comments from some of the other Pythons (especially Jones, and to a lesser extent Gilliam) regarding Spamalot it sounds like they are not very impressed with what he did with the Python material. I also got the feeling from the documentary on Monty Python that came out a couple of years ago that he had pretty firmly gone his own way (though they all have to a great extent); he sounded a little pissed off and even on the edge of being unhinged during some of the interviews. I generally liked his work in the past, but his manner in those interviews really left a bad taste in my mouth. Makes me think that there must have been something of a split, though I haven't seen any kind of confirmation of it (well, aside from the fact that he isn't appearing in this film).
That line-up looks awfully familiar...
I heard Japan will be looking to its neighbors, the greater east-Asian sphere if you will, to help meet future energy needs.