Between many (most?) cities in the continental US, there are no passenger trains or boats. Try again.
And whose fault is that? Sounds like there's a need to develop a more efficient transportation infrastructure. If the asians and europeans can do it, why can't the US?
Population Density - take Germany, which is roughly the size of Georgia, N and S Carolina combined. It has about 4x the population and many more large cities. The distances between cities and large groups of people is small enough so rail travel is efficient and relatively quick.
To get the same population you'd need 4x the area on the East Coast (or West Coast) and much more between them, and the distances from major cities would make travel time prohibitive; compared to air.
The US is much larger and centers of commerce much farther apart so rail travel simply isn't as efficient or fast; and by necessity would bypass many smaller cities since the traffic would not support the cost of laying track.
You do see rail service in areas where there is enough traffic and short distances so it is competitive with air - such as the DC - NYC - BOS corridor where the Acela is a viable alternative to flying.
Is it possible that the water is simply an electrolyte that is used in a battery? You can, after all, make batteries from all sorts of things; and creating a battery by adding water would mean that the laws of physics weren't violated.
So water may not be the only thing fueling this car. They use a chemical reaction to crack the water, and then use the hydrogen from the water and oxygen from the air to run a fuel cell. The real questions are: What is in these membranes? Suckeranium
How long do they last?
Unknown What does it cost to renew the membranes? Irrelevant. There's an endless supply with one born every minute.
No it doesn't. The Constitution outlines the basic workings of our government and the bill of rights outlines a series of things the government can't do. The 10th and final portion of the bill of rights specifically states that anything not specifically mentioned in the Constitution or it's amendments is to be regulated by the states and if not regulated by a state, then to remain a right of the people. That would be why it took an amendment to the Constitution for the government to collect income tax. That is why it took an amendment to the Constitution to ban the sale of alcohol. The constitution is not a "living, breathing" document that's meaning changes as society changes. The Constitution is the rock solid list of the basic outline of our government and certain things that it specifically can and can not due. Everything not specifically mentioned can be regulated by laws passed via the states. If we want to add or subtract things from the document it gives us a way to do so. By amending it. Not by having some judge decide that it says or implies something it does not say. Why are so many people afraid of the democratic process? You don't like something. Convince enough people that it shouldn't happen, pass a law and have it regulated. Otherwise, if it doesn't directly affect your rights, let it go. I beg to differ Section 8 is pretty broad:
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
(snip)
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
The general welfare and interstate commerce clasues, IMHO, give Congress a lot of latittude in what powers tehy are given.
"Non profit" just means they'll have a zero budget balance, i.e., no money to share after the year is up. It's not the same as a charity. Your point is still valid, and personally I've gone from eagerly awaiting the give-one-get-one program in Europe to no interest at all.
Not necessarily. Non-profit refers to the source of funds, not the amount. Non-profits often have cash left; and for profits may not for a variety of reasons.
The matter is being 'looked into,' but that doesn't tell us whether it was an accident or a ploy to see how outraged viewers would be at being stripped of the time-shifting rights they've enjoyed ever since Sony v. Universal.
As much as I enjoy being able to timeshift, I don't consider it a right - rather it is a legally allowable action; however a content owner is free to take actions to prevent someone from time shifting. their doing so does not violate my rights; it's simply the content owner deciding to exercise their ability to control how the content is used. I'm free to decide whether or not I like it by my watching or forgoing the content.
I realize there are ways to circumvent the flag'; but that is seperate issue.
There's still code running for nuclear power plants that was written in the 60's or earlier; given the challenge of certifying emulators we ran it on the original machines; embedded code in machinery was probably been older. Although, most really old stuff was mechanical not based on ICs.
Some military hardware may be even older; reliability and certainty is often more important than the latest and greatest.
But the average survival rate of a plane-crash is ZERO - and the amount of people inside are in the hundreds. There were 3 major air crashes last year !
Actually, the survival rate for commercial aviation crashes is around 24% for this decade. Last year alone, for example, in the April 15th crash in the Congo almost all of the passengers survived; as did all of the passengers on the BA 777 that had an unplanned early impact with the ground at Heathrow.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Congress, the President and the courts have been ignoring the 10th Amendment for ages.
Actually, no. The beauty (or problem, depending on whose ox is being gored by government) is that the US Constitution actually gives the government some pretty broad powers.
The antitrust laws have been gutted by a series of court cases. One of the "new" standards is harm to the consumer, an almost impossible to prove issue. (So, how do you know Netscape wouldn't have gone bankrupt anyway?) Actually, harm to the consumer is a good standard - since predatory pricing generally helps, not harms, the consumer. If Company A decides to sell a product below cost to drive out company B; the consumer gets goods at below market - a good deal. Now, when A decides to raise prices, competitors reenter the market; keeping prices lower than what A would like to charge. In the end, A loses a lot of money and doesn't get the benefits at the end; a net win for consumers. This is especially true for markets where entry / exit is easy; if companies invest large amounts of capital they often stay in business hoping that either they have deeper pockets or the predatory pricer will eventually give up and let prices return to profitable levels (which is what the airline industry wants).
As for the computer fields, there are alternatives to almost everything MS sells; at prices starting at free and selling for more than their products.
As a consumer; I like the harm standard because it lowers my cost; I really don't want the government deciding what prices should be - I really don't want to go back to paying $2000 or more for an airline ticket I can get today for $900 or less, for example.
The FSFLA, the South American sister organization of the FSF, is trying to get the license altered, but comments like those of Omar Kaminski, one of the drafters of the license, that the "GPL is incompatible with Brazilian legislation," and that "perhaps free software in Brazil is moving in a different direction than in the USA" do little to reduce the concerns of FOSS advocates.
That is an interesting issue - we assume the GPL is enforceable but much of that seems to be based on US copyright laws and various international agreements. It would be interesting to see if the GPL really would hold up in the face of conflicting national laws.
A country could pass legislation allowing companies to keep self-developed code proprietary even if it uses GPL code in a product. Protecting one's local companies and developing industries would be a higher priority than keeping the spirit of FOSS.
The experiences you have as an American tourist mean very little in terms of deciphering the true feelings of the civilian population. Especially if you're there for business. True, but as someone who has traveled abroad on business and pleasure; and have many friends and relatives abroad, disdain for American government policies does not translate to disdain or dislike of Americas, or even "America."
Most people outside of the US can keep those things separate; something many Americans seem to have difficulty with, as demonstrated by the accusations of "unpatriotic" if you say negative things about GHB.
The first amendment, and indeed the entire Constitution, should apply to all citizens appearing before a US court. Actually, it applies to all people on US territory, not just citizens.
...where my SMTP server and email accounts begin. The Do Not Call registry, as well as the laws banning unsolicited faxes and telemarketing calls to mobile phones also operate on this principle.
That's the key - snail mail senders are paying the cost of sending the email; here you are covering its cost.
On a related note, I wish those principles applied to my snail mailbox, I'm tired of dealing with all the junk mail. I'm about ready to go truly paperless and just take the darn thing down, because the postal service is only concerned about the money they make from bulk mailers and not whether I want that trash, which I have to dispose of. It takes far more effort and potential expense to deal with trash mail than spam, even. It's of course the USPS' choice, since they own the system and think it's fine and dandy. I treat it the same way, though, I don't even CONSIDER unsolicited commercial mail from anyone, it goes right into the trash. I don't even open them to sort out recyclable content.
The USPS has a form - 1500 Application for Listing and / or Prohibitory Order - that allows you to stop being sent pornographic material. You need to fill it out for each sender; what is explicit or pornographic is your call. So, if you find coupon mailers pornographic or explicit, well, to each his own.
As a number of other posts here indicated, an organization can and indeed we do use our own domain name for email addresses when using GMail. (Our MX record points to GMail servers.) Great. You learn something everyday, even on/.
The question I have is do you use a web interface to access your email and does outgoing email have your domain instead of a gmail address?
As a small business user of GMail, I find the service hard to beat. After all, it's still free, and free is really hard to beat. GMail is by far the best component of the Google Apps business suite, but their other components (calendar comes to mind, for example) are slowly and surely maturing, also. While I agree with you, Google needs to add a new feature - the ability to register and use non-gmail domain names with the service. Having yourname@yourcompany.com would avoid the "I'm tiny" syndrome plus allow you to move to another service if you outgrow gmail or Google pulls the plug on it.
Quick guide to iPhoneExchange integration: Step 1: Turn on IMAP support. Step 2: There is no step 2. First of all, IMAP is not exchange integration - all it gives you is the ability to pull email to a device. In addition, some companies don't enable IMAP, for whatever reason.
Exchange integration puts contacts, calender, and ideally tasks as well as push email on your device. It lets you use your phone as your mobile scheduler and task manager without having to physically synch to a computer.
Seriously, complaining that the iPhone doesn't have MAPI support is like complaining that DOS doesn't read files on 400k floppies formatted with MFS. Well, until the iPhone really synchs with exchange it is not nearly as useful as a Blackberry / Treo / WM device for many businesses.
there appears to be nothing that prevenst a PG developer form doing exactly what Sun is
From a legal standpoint, maybe. Apparently the GPL isn't really helping keep MySQL free either, because the MySQL code is owned entirely by Sun, so they can do whatever they want. For instance, if Sun develops a crucial feature and makes it closed, like online backup, they can prevent the GPL versions from being accepted to the project, and can let alternatives to that closed solution fall into unmaintained disrepair. However, someone else could maintain the GPL'd code; add whatever features they want or other users want; and release it under the GPL. There is no reason the code can't be forked; other than if there turns out to be a lack of interest in he wider community in maintaining a fully GPL'd version of MySQL.
My SQL is no less free if Sun adds proprietary extensions; the underlying code which is available today would still be available for anyone to use as they see fit; including adding GPL'd versions of Sun's closed extensions.
In contrast, the PostgreSQL community is a group of many individuals and companies, and they cannot prevent free versions of important features from being committed. Neither can Sun, nor can the PG community prevent someone from modifying PG and not making the modifications available.
So really, the question is not what could be done legally, but what actually is happening, and what is likely to continue happening. MySQL started as a commercial product, went GPL, and now they are introducing closed features again. They always maintained copyright ownership. As a copyright owner they are obviously free to with their product whatever they want; it also appears that they will allow others to add proprietary features if they desire via API's.
Again, in contrast, the PostgreSQL community started with a free license, and has a wide group of contributors that each retain copyright for their respective contributions. Perhaps most importantly, PostgreSQL has very well-commented, readable source code. Which, under the license, can be taken by anyone an used in a closed source project.
I'm not saying any one model is better; just pointing out similarities between the two.
IMHO, the BSD license is more permissive than the GPL in that it allows anyone to use the code in closed as well as open sourced projects; whether that is "good" is obviously open to debate.
The GPL only allows the copyright owner to do that; it appears SUN has decided to modify MySQL to allow closed source code to run in conjunction with the GPL'd code but not be incorporated in the GPL'd code base so they can sell that as a value added product. If that results in improvements to the GPL'd and a more robust open product then I think it's a good thing; but again YMMV.
The current maintainers of Postgres still release new source to the public. Sun intends to hold back some. I don't mind some proprietary software, but open source software which suddenly turns proprietary is downright uncool. No MySQL on my dinky little servers; PG all the way. Perhaps the maintainers do; but that does not mean everyone that makes and distributes changes has to make the code available, according to the PG license.
While I share your sentiments there appears to be nothing that prevenst a PG developer form doing exactly what Sun is; in fact the PG sourceforge page trumpets that as a good feature of the BSD license.
Would you like another round of ammo with that foot gun Sun? From the pSQL web page:
Best of all, PostgreSQL's source code is available under the most liberal open source license: the BSD license. This license gives you the freedom to use, modify and distribute PostgreSQL in any form you like, open or closed source. Any modifications, enhancements, or changes you make are yours to do with as you please. As such, PostgreSQL is not only a powerful database system capable of running the enterprise, it is a development platform upon which to develop in-house, web, or commercial software products that require a capable RDBMS.
That seems to be the same thing Sun is saying - we're going to add some closed source features to MySQL; the same as pSQL's license allows.
I would say for virtually every interviewer I've known, myself included, where you went to school as an undergrad was not a factor in the hiring process. As a new graduate, you will be essentially an unknown quantity. We want to know - is this person trainable? Will they fit in to our culture? Are they a good worker? Your college experiences - were you active in student orgs? Did you take leadership roles? What are your grades and what courses did you take? Where you went to school have little bearing on those answers; what you did where you went does.
Go to the school that is the best fit for you - visit them, talk to students and faculty to see which best suits your needs and desires. School should not be a 4 year grind because you are someplace you don't really like. You'll do better at a place you want to be than at one you felt you had to be. I would not worry about the lack of programming classes - specific technology skills change rapidly and company's specific requirements vary so what you learn in school may be of no value to an employeer. You can teach somebody specific programming skills on the job much more easily tahn you can teach them to think critically and develop problem solving approaches or how to work nice in groups. Develop those skills, as well as the ability to communicate clearly and well and you will be better of than most of your fellow students.
Frankly, I doubt if either school would result in much different of a job search outcome for a student with a similar profile (GPA/activities/experience) from either school. The primary difference may be who actually visits the campus - but that's why you send letters to employeers who don't visit to try to get an interview; and get to know your professors so they can help with your job search as well.
Go with your heart - in 4 years after you graduate where you went to school will be meaningless to most employeers anyway.
Even Congress does not have the power to force someone living in one state to conform to the STATE laws of a different state. It doesn't work that way. So they can't force a Californian to pay Oklahoma state taxes and vice versa. Except that is not what the law would do, it would allow states to collect, from their residents, sales tax on goods bought out of state from retailers with no physical presence in their state. Rather than rely on self reported use tax payments, states could require those retailers to collect and remit taxes. That seems to be a perfectly allowable regulation of interstate commerce permitted by Art 8 Sec 1.
It might theoretically be possible for the Federal government to levy a tax on commerce between states, but what a godawful precedent that would set! The states would be apoplectic; they certainly don't want anything like that! It would have to be a uniform tax, and it would be unregulatable by the states, and -- probably -- the states would only receive a fraction of the proceeds. They could establish a antional sales tax, under Art 1 Sec 8 as well. I agree taht would be a very unpopular move.
No, what they really want to do is enforce sales taxes across state borders, and there really is no Constitutional way to do that. Art 1 Sec 8. As you have pointed out elsewhere, this is not a new idea. retailers who have physical presences in states have collected sales tax for mail order goods, and some states have agressively pursued out of state purchasers of big ticket items in order to collect sales or use taxes. All this law would do is clarify their ability to require payments from retailers. As the article points out, the Supremes have said that Congress could step in and do this.
There are ALREADY laws and taxes in place! A state does not have legal authority to impose taxes on a sale made in another state. That is, it cannot force an Oklahoma retailer to collect California sales taxes for a sale made to a Californian.
However, as far as I am aware ALL 50 STATES have "use taxes" in place, that are supposed to be paid for out-of-state purchases. In most cases the amount of use tax is identical to what the sales tax would have been if the sale had been local. The difference is that the purchaser, not the seller, is responsible for paying the tax. This is the way it MUST be... neither the individual States nor the Federal government have the Constitutional authority to force a business to collect taxes for the other 49 states.
Actually, while states don't have the power the US Congress does:
Article 1 Section 8.
The Congress shall have Power...
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
I get the feeling you don't run a business that collects sales tax then. PayPal may collect the sales tax, but the business is still on the hook for sending the tax into the state.
If I were running PayPal I'd set up a service that collected and paid the state the required sales tax. It'd be a lot easier for PayPal to negotiate deals with all the tax collecting states than for the states to try and manage collections on their own. They could setup an automated process that collects and forwards tax payments; sellers would probably need to setup state tax ID's in each state they do business in but that ID could be electronically submitted with each payment to ensure it is credited properly. PayPal could even get the tax ID's since they already have much of the merchant information anyway. They could also allow buyers to identify that they are a sales tax exempt organization, and either ask for a tax exemot number or the state could get records of purchase amounts and addresses to audit if they want.
What's on it for the seller - no need to deal with all the various tax laws and rates and associated record keeping. This is especially true if local jurisdictions also want their sales tax as well; I'd hate to try to ensure I collected the right tax for each of Georgia's 159 counties and the City of Atlanta.
What's in it for states - easier, less costly collection of taxes.
What's in it for PayPal - the chance to get more merchant locking by providing a valuable service, driving more business to them. The float on the additional sales tax money they collect; plus the fee the states pay merchants to collect the tax. They could offer the service for no additional charge and still make money of of it.
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Population Density - take Germany, which is roughly the size of Georgia, N and S Carolina combined. It has about 4x the population and many more large cities. The distances between cities and large groups of people is small enough so rail travel is efficient and relatively quick.And whose fault is that? Sounds like there's a need to develop a more efficient transportation infrastructure. If the asians and europeans can do it, why can't the US?
To get the same population you'd need 4x the area on the East Coast (or West Coast) and much more between them, and the distances from major cities would make travel time prohibitive; compared to air.
The US is much larger and centers of commerce much farther apart so rail travel simply isn't as efficient or fast; and by necessity would bypass many smaller cities since the traffic would not support the cost of laying track.
You do see rail service in areas where there is enough traffic and short distances so it is competitive with air - such as the DC - NYC - BOS corridor where the Acela is a viable alternative to flying.
Is it possible that the water is simply an electrolyte that is used in a battery? You can, after all, make batteries from all sorts of things; and creating a battery by adding water would mean that the laws of physics weren't violated.
The question is how long does it run on a charge?
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
(snip)
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
The general welfare and interstate commerce clasues, IMHO, give Congress a lot of latittude in what powers tehy are given.
"Non profit" just means they'll have a zero budget balance, i.e., no money to share after the year is up. It's not the same as a charity. Your point is still valid, and personally I've gone from eagerly awaiting the give-one-get-one program in Europe to no interest at all.
Not necessarily. Non-profit refers to the source of funds, not the amount. Non-profits often have cash left; and for profits may not for a variety of reasons.The matter is being 'looked into,' but that doesn't tell us whether it was an accident or a ploy to see how outraged viewers would be at being stripped of the time-shifting rights they've enjoyed ever since Sony v. Universal.
As much as I enjoy being able to timeshift, I don't consider it a right - rather it is a legally allowable action; however a content owner is free to take actions to prevent someone from time shifting. their doing so does not violate my rights; it's simply the content owner deciding to exercise their ability to control how the content is used. I'm free to decide whether or not I like it by my watching or forgoing the content.
I realize there are ways to circumvent the flag'; but that is seperate issue.
There's still code running for nuclear power plants that was written in the 60's or earlier; given the challenge of certifying emulators we ran it on the original machines; embedded code in machinery was probably been older. Although, most really old stuff was mechanical not based on ICs.
Some military hardware may be even older; reliability and certainty is often more important than the latest and greatest.
But the average survival rate of a plane-crash is ZERO - and the amount of people inside are in the hundreds. There were 3 major air crashes last year !
Actually, the survival rate for commercial aviation crashes is around 24% for this decade. Last year alone, for example, in the April 15th crash in the Congo almost all of the passengers survived; as did all of the passengers on the BA 777 that had an unplanned early impact with the ground at Heathrow.
Congress, the President and the courts have been ignoring the 10th Amendment for ages.
Actually, no. The beauty (or problem, depending on whose ox is being gored by government) is that the US Constitution actually gives the government some pretty broad powers.
As for the computer fields, there are alternatives to almost everything MS sells; at prices starting at free and selling for more than their products.
As a consumer; I like the harm standard because it lowers my cost; I really don't want the government deciding what prices should be - I really don't want to go back to paying $2000 or more for an airline ticket I can get today for $900 or less, for example.
Jere's a link:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/october01/civil2.html
Obviously, legal minds differ on the exact extent of protection, this context was with respect to excluding non-citizens from entry.
The FSFLA, the South American sister organization of the FSF, is trying to get the license altered, but comments like those of Omar Kaminski, one of the drafters of the license, that the "GPL is incompatible with Brazilian legislation," and that "perhaps free software in Brazil is moving in a different direction than in the USA" do little to reduce the concerns of FOSS advocates.
That is an interesting issue - we assume the GPL is enforceable but much of that seems to be based on US copyright laws and various international agreements. It would be interesting to see if the GPL really would hold up in the face of conflicting national laws.
A country could pass legislation allowing companies to keep self-developed code proprietary even if it uses GPL code in a product. Protecting one's local companies and developing industries would be a higher priority than keeping the spirit of FOSS.
Most people outside of the US can keep those things separate; something many Americans seem to have difficulty with, as demonstrated by the accusations of "unpatriotic" if you say negative things about GHB.
...where my SMTP server and email accounts begin. The Do Not Call registry, as well as the laws banning unsolicited faxes and telemarketing calls to mobile phones also operate on this principle.
That's the key - snail mail senders are paying the cost of sending the email; here you are covering its cost.On a related note, I wish those principles applied to my snail mailbox, I'm tired of dealing with all the junk mail. I'm about ready to go truly paperless and just take the darn thing down, because the postal service is only concerned about the money they make from bulk mailers and not whether I want that trash, which I have to dispose of. It takes far more effort and potential expense to deal with trash mail than spam, even. It's of course the USPS' choice, since they own the system and think it's fine and dandy. I treat it the same way, though, I don't even CONSIDER unsolicited commercial mail from anyone, it goes right into the trash. I don't even open them to sort out recyclable content.
The USPS has a form - 1500 Application for Listing and / or Prohibitory Order - that allows you to stop being sent pornographic material. You need to fill it out for each sender; what is explicit or pornographic is your call. So, if you find coupon mailers pornographic or explicit, well, to each his own.The question I have is do you use a web interface to access your email and does outgoing email have your domain instead of a gmail address?
Thanks,
-jlc
Step 1: Turn on IMAP support.
Step 2: There is no step 2. First of all, IMAP is not exchange integration - all it gives you is the ability to pull email to a device. In addition, some companies don't enable IMAP, for whatever reason.
Exchange integration puts contacts, calender, and ideally tasks as well as push email on your device. It lets you use your phone as your mobile scheduler and task manager without having to physically synch to a computer. Seriously, complaining that the iPhone doesn't have MAPI support is like complaining that DOS doesn't read files on 400k floppies formatted with MFS. Well, until the iPhone really synchs with exchange it is not nearly as useful as a Blackberry / Treo / WM device for many businesses.
From a legal standpoint, maybe. Apparently the GPL isn't really helping keep MySQL free either, because the MySQL code is owned entirely by Sun, so they can do whatever they want. For instance, if Sun develops a crucial feature and makes it closed, like online backup, they can prevent the GPL versions from being accepted to the project, and can let alternatives to that closed solution fall into unmaintained disrepair. However, someone else could maintain the GPL'd code; add whatever features they want or other users want; and release it under the GPL. There is no reason the code can't be forked; other than if there turns out to be a lack of interest in he wider community in maintaining a fully GPL'd version of MySQL.
My SQL is no less free if Sun adds proprietary extensions; the underlying code which is available today would still be available for anyone to use as they see fit; including adding GPL'd versions of Sun's closed extensions. In contrast, the PostgreSQL community is a group of many individuals and companies, and they cannot prevent free versions of important features from being committed. Neither can Sun, nor can the PG community prevent someone from modifying PG and not making the modifications available. So really, the question is not what could be done legally, but what actually is happening, and what is likely to continue happening. MySQL started as a commercial product, went GPL, and now they are introducing closed features again. They always maintained copyright ownership. As a copyright owner they are obviously free to with their product whatever they want; it also appears that they will allow others to add proprietary features if they desire via API's. Again, in contrast, the PostgreSQL community started with a free license, and has a wide group of contributors that each retain copyright for their respective contributions. Perhaps most importantly, PostgreSQL has very well-commented, readable source code. Which, under the license, can be taken by anyone an used in a closed source project.
I'm not saying any one model is better; just pointing out similarities between the two.
IMHO, the BSD license is more permissive than the GPL in that it allows anyone to use the code in closed as well as open sourced projects; whether that is "good" is obviously open to debate.
The GPL only allows the copyright owner to do that; it appears SUN has decided to modify MySQL to allow closed source code to run in conjunction with the GPL'd code but not be incorporated in the GPL'd code base so they can sell that as a value added product. If that results in improvements to the GPL'd and a more robust open product then I think it's a good thing; but again YMMV.
I don't mind some proprietary software, but open source software which suddenly turns proprietary is
downright uncool. No MySQL on my dinky little servers; PG all the way. Perhaps the maintainers do; but that does not mean everyone that makes and distributes changes has to make the code available, according to the PG license.
While I share your sentiments there appears to be nothing that prevenst a PG developer form doing exactly what Sun is; in fact the PG sourceforge page trumpets that as a good feature of the BSD license.
Would you like another round of ammo with that foot gun Sun? From the pSQL web page:
Best of all, PostgreSQL's source code is available under the most liberal open source license: the BSD license. This license gives you the freedom to use, modify and distribute PostgreSQL in any form you like, open or closed source. Any modifications, enhancements, or changes you make are yours to do with as you please. As such, PostgreSQL is not only a powerful database system capable of running the enterprise, it is a development platform upon which to develop in-house, web, or commercial software products that require a capable RDBMS.
That seems to be the same thing Sun is saying - we're going to add some closed source features to MySQL; the same as pSQL's license allows.
I would say for virtually every interviewer I've known, myself included, where you went to school as an undergrad was not a factor in the hiring process. As a new graduate, you will be essentially an unknown quantity. We want to know - is this person trainable? Will they fit in to our culture? Are they a good worker? Your college experiences - were you active in student orgs? Did you take leadership roles? What are your grades and what courses did you take? Where you went to school have little bearing on those answers; what you did where you went does.
Go to the school that is the best fit for you - visit them, talk to students and faculty to see which best suits your needs and desires. School should not be a 4 year grind because you are someplace you don't really like. You'll do better at a place you want to be than at one you felt you had to be. I would not worry about the lack of programming classes - specific technology skills change rapidly and company's specific requirements vary so what you learn in school may be of no value to an employeer. You can teach somebody specific programming skills on the job much more easily tahn you can teach them to think critically and develop problem solving approaches or how to work nice in groups. Develop those skills, as well as the ability to communicate clearly and well and you will be better of than most of your fellow students.
Frankly, I doubt if either school would result in much different of a job search outcome for a student with a similar profile (GPA/activities/experience) from either school. The primary difference may be who actually visits the campus - but that's why you send letters to employeers who don't visit to try to get an interview; and get to know your professors so they can help with your job search as well.
Go with your heart - in 4 years after you graduate where you went to school will be meaningless to most employeers anyway.
There are ALREADY laws and taxes in place! A state does not have legal authority to impose taxes on a sale made in another state. That is, it cannot force an Oklahoma retailer to collect California sales taxes for a sale made to a Californian.
However, as far as I am aware ALL 50 STATES have "use taxes" in place, that are supposed to be paid for out-of-state purchases. In most cases the amount of use tax is identical to what the sales tax would have been if the sale had been local. The difference is that the purchaser, not the seller, is responsible for paying the tax. This is the way it MUST be... neither the individual States nor the Federal government have the Constitutional authority to force a business to collect taxes for the other 49 states.
Actually, while states don't have the power the US Congress does:
Article 1 Section 8.
The Congress shall have Power
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
I get the feeling you don't run a business that collects sales tax then. PayPal may collect the sales tax, but the business is still on the hook for sending the tax into the state.
If I were running PayPal I'd set up a service that collected and paid the state the required sales tax. It'd be a lot easier for PayPal to negotiate deals with all the tax collecting states than for the states to try and manage collections on their own. They could setup an automated process that collects and forwards tax payments; sellers would probably need to setup state tax ID's in each state they do business in but that ID could be electronically submitted with each payment to ensure it is credited properly. PayPal could even get the tax ID's since they already have much of the merchant information anyway. They could also allow buyers to identify that they are a sales tax exempt organization, and either ask for a tax exemot number or the state could get records of purchase amounts and addresses to audit if they want.
What's on it for the seller - no need to deal with all the various tax laws and rates and associated record keeping. This is especially true if local jurisdictions also want their sales tax as well; I'd hate to try to ensure I collected the right tax for each of Georgia's 159 counties and the City of Atlanta.
What's in it for states - easier, less costly collection of taxes.
What's in it for PayPal - the chance to get more merchant locking by providing a valuable service, driving more business to them. The float on the additional sales tax money they collect; plus the fee the states pay merchants to collect the tax. They could offer the service for no additional charge and still make money of of it.