What the article is pointing out is that Massachusetts state offiicals are going after Massachusetts residents who show that they've paid a custom duty on an item but haven't paid the use tax on an item. Use tax is the tax that is put on an item that is brought in from a state with a lower sales tax than Massachusetts.
The problem with collecting use tax from an individual is that Massachusetts tax authorites can't make a New Hampshire store turn over names of people who shop there because they're outside of their jurisdiction, nor can they make the buyers confess to shopping in New Hampshire thanks to protection from self-incrimination. It's a tax that's on the books, but in most cases uncollectable.
"Tax free" shopping is a myth... if you avoid the sales tax you owe the use tax. Again, however, the state's going to have a hard time chasing you.
However, if you pay a customs duty while bringing an item into the USA and you live in MA... it's a pretty good case of "gotcha" that you owe the use tax on that item and haven't paid it. So, this is simply taking federal government records and using them to collect a state tax too. So, the unlucky few getting these notices just got caught ducking a tax nearly everyone doesn't pay...
Our consultant had never seen such a meeting. Never had he heard people answer "yes" to the question "are you saying you want to ignore all these recommendations, industry best practices (and standards) and suggestions presented by this industry giant who have proven that they know what they're talking about?"
Whenever you're changing the system that people use on a daily basis to do their job, all they're going to want to know is where you hid the menu function that they're supposed to use where such-and-such a situation is encountered.
These users have to be consulted in the design phase. Afterall, the people who do that job are going to be the world's leading authorities on what tool they most want to have helping them. Also, you'd better talk to their supervisor... there's nothing worse than a rare situation that the old software used to handle that your new software never took into account... so the rules say that the employee has to fill out a form your software never had. Then you've got a big design flaw...
One of the few technologies that Microsoft has managed to get right is ActiveX in the way that it is used in Visual Basic. With ActiveX, a program can easily expose an object-oriented API of hooks so that another program can come along and control the first one. All of the Microsoft Office applications are written in this way, so absolutely anything Office can do, your VB program can do too as long as that piece of Office can be found on the system it's running on.
VB isn't the programming language to use to write an audio codec... but when you just want to play music and don't want to be worried about what audio codec its in, you just call for the Windows Media Player control... You can write a media player with a totally revolutionary new interface without having to understand a single audio codec if you just write your software to use a component you're sure will be there on every Windows system.
VB sometimes blurs the line between being a "programming language" into just being a "scripting langage"... Apple just plain admits they support scripting with AppleScript... where's Linux's entry into this race?
"Image building" has another name... "Marketing". That's not something OSS can do, as any for-profit venture in the OSS field is instantly shunned... but they're the only ones who have the money with which to do marketing.
Linus, RMS, and the gang just aren't good at marketing. IBM and Sun are, so they're really the ones to turn to.
Unfortunately for Linux, they appear to have attracted an group by the name of SCO to scuttle any marketing efforts...
One of the few legit uses for the dreaded PHB is to make the developers listen when the usablity consultant tells them what to do...
I've seen far too many applications in both the open source and commerical world where it's clear to me that they developer took the option that was easier to code rather than the one that would have followed the standard UI conventions.
In Open Source, far too often developers are ending up coding for other developers rather than users. Only the for-profit concerns like Lindows and Apple appear to be making advancements in helping clueless users use operating systems.
It's something the other OSS projects need to pay more attention to if they want Linux on the desktop. Server opperators are more willing to drop to the command line than newbies.
This can be a sticky situation for employers. Frequently, they instruct employees that overtime is not available, people go over anyway, and the company has to pay up, whether or not they need/can afford the extra hours. That's the law.
As long as employers are clear about how many hours people are allowed to work, they shouldn't be required to shell out for people who go over.
The correct way to handle this is to hand the employee who does this three envelopes on payday. "Here's your regular pay. Here's you overtime pay. Here's your termination notice for working overtime without authorization." Make an example of this former employee, and nobody else will try that stunt again.
Your journal would be just as valid as their computerized journal as a created-at-the-time record that can be taken into evidence. At this point, the civil case would turn into "your word against their's" so it wouldn't complete the case on its own, but at least you're off to a good start.
The proper way to eliminate overtime is to tell employees that they're not allowed to work greater than 40 hours... and tell anybody going over that they have to stop working at their asigned time.
If a "you've got to get this done" order comes in conflict with the "you've got to stop on time" order, then the employee is already screwed.
Correct. When an employee's timecard is negatively being corrected, the employer should send the employee a memo explaining "Your shift of 8am to 4pm on 4/2/04 was against company policy because you did not take a 30-minute lunch break as required by state law. As a result, we are deducting 30 minutes of pay."
when i worked at the Burger King the system recorded time in 15-minute chunks. You could sign out for your break at 12:38 and your time card would show 12:45. So you could "get over on the man" if you timed it right.
Of course, somebody who stands by the timeclock from 12:37:43 to 12:38:00 is not actually working... so in this case it'd be legal for the manager to correct the stop time to 12:37:43 and therefore take advantage of the downward rounding to shave a quarter hour.
The problem is, if you're told not to work for more than 30 hours, and you do, you should be fired right there on the spot for disobeying the order not to clock in for more than you were supposed to. If the employee is given a task that can't be done in the allotted time, or be fired... then the employee is already damned if they do and damned if they don't, they're going ot get fired either way.
Under most state laws, any shift longer than a certain number of hours that crosses Noontime requires that the employee have a 30 minute lunch break.
This would mean that having a timecard that says 8am to 4pm with no breaks is just as illegal as inserting the 30 minute break that didn't actually get taken. It's just as much the employee's responsiblity to know they have to take a lunch break as it is the manager's responsiblity to tap the worker on the sholder and shut them down and force them to take the break.
Copyright Goon: Your honor, we want the ISP to turn over the name of the user who has IP adress 14.34.23.29 because they are sharing "Our Song", which is our copyrighted material on the Internet. Judge: Okay, how do you know that a computer 14.34.23.29 is committing copyright infingement against your copyrighted material. Copyright Goon: They're offering our material up for sharing over the StealTheirMusic protocol for anybody to download. Judge: Okay, can you prove that anybody actually downloaded that material? Copyright Goon: Yes, because we downloaded "Our Song" from that server. Judge: Uhm... that's not an unauthorized copy being made if you downloaded your own song. You started the download, you authorized the copy being made. Copyright Goon: Uhm... okay. Can we search the guys computer to see if there's transfer logs that prove he transfered "Our Song" to somebody else? Judge: No. You've gotta show that there's been an infigement first. You can't go blindly fishing like that. Copyright Goon: Can you make the ISP let us get a trace on that IP's outbound traffic so we can look for a transfer? Judge: No. That's still fishing. Copyright Goon: But we're sure they're stealing "Our Song" out there. Our sales are down! Judge: Come back when you've got some proof...
Technically, American laws are the same way, they either start with "H.R." to indicate first being proposed in the House, or "S." to indicate they came from the Senate. Any "name" to the bill such as "PATRIOT Act" or such is simply a "marketing name" that is attached, such as when we geeks call "802.11b" by the name of "WiFi". The name doesn't have to appear in the text of the bill at all, and if it does it's usually in a meaningless way such as "Section 1a: This act shall be refered to as 'The Slashdot Act'."
"Named legislation" is being seen as a way to get support for an otherwise unpopular law. Most people's first impression of "The law that assigns all rights a person has to an unborn fetus" would be negative, while "Connor's Bill", refering to the child a murder victim didn't have the chance to have, sparks more sympathetic emotions.
Copyright infringement is something that happens the moment you begin to distribute
That's the argument that just failed in a Canadian court. Here in the US it appears to be still valid... but I'm pretty sure somebody's going to try to test it here too.
Techincally, she can't. Only the legislative branch can pass a bill. Therefore, she's got no more power than any other citizen has to suggest a bill.
The same is true in the USA. The president cannot technically submit a bill to Congress... at least one member of the House or Senate must be willing to insert the proposal into the "hopper" for consideration. If none are willing to do so, then the president's proposal never even makes it to the status of being a numbered bill before the Congress. Anybody can write a proposed bill... including average citizens and lobbyists, but without a member of Congress willing to sponsor the act it goes nowhere.
see, in order to actually prove that there was a download they either have to either intercept a download in progress (good luck doing that...)
You have a lot to learn about tcpdump & ethereal, my friend.
Oh, the copyright police would have a wonderful time if they could just position themselves in a "man in the middle" position between the uploader and the downloader... too bad the ISPs aren't exactly inviting them in to allow that.
An analogy might be a bookstore that photocopies a book without authorization, rebinds it, and puts it on the shelf with a price tag on it. Whether or not someone actually buys that book, the store has committed a copyright violation.
Nope. The fact that they're on sale at a store clearly shows an intent to profit... but they still won't have actually hit any civil damages until there's actually been a sale.
You can't charge somebody with murder unless the victim is dead. "Attempted murder" is defined as a different crime that gets committed when somebody demonstrates an intent on committing murder but doesn't quite make it due to ineptiude or intervention. You don't just get to throw "attempted" in front of any other crime to create a new crime. "Attempted copyright violation" is not a crime on the books anywhere, yet.
The key part of the Canadian ruling was that sharing files is perfectly legal. They didn't say distributing was.
Basically, if you leave a copy machine in a room full of copyrighted books, no copyright violation has been comitted. Now, that copy machine could certainly be used in infriging ways, and it can also be used in a few ways that are okay under fair use. But if the machine just sits there and nobody uses it at all... then there's no way there's any infinging use could have happened.
Translated to the digital world, a server that is offering files up for download can't infringe any copyright until somebody actually accesses the files to make an illegal copy. And this brings up a Catch 22 for the "copyright police"... see, in order to actually prove that there was a download they either have to either intercept a download in progress (good luck doing that...) or they have to initiate a download themselves, but whoops... if the copyright owner tries to download their own work, they can't possibly infringe on themselves!
So, basically, there's a problem in the law that's driving the "copyright police" crazy... short of the copyright pirate confessing, how are they gonna prove that an actual violation took place?
It'd be sensible for the editors to set this up so that the torrent can be seeded with at least one copy of the whole thing before the slashdotting starts...
Actually, you're not going to get anything transfered between 2:00:00am and 2:59:59am tonight. Those times all aren't gonna happen because we're springing forward... you can have the extra hour in October.
Slashdot Mirror
What the article is pointing out is that Massachusetts state offiicals are going after Massachusetts residents who show that they've paid a custom duty on an item but haven't paid the use tax on an item. Use tax is the tax that is put on an item that is brought in from a state with a lower sales tax than Massachusetts.
The problem with collecting use tax from an individual is that Massachusetts tax authorites can't make a New Hampshire store turn over names of people who shop there because they're outside of their jurisdiction, nor can they make the buyers confess to shopping in New Hampshire thanks to protection from self-incrimination. It's a tax that's on the books, but in most cases uncollectable.
"Tax free" shopping is a myth... if you avoid the sales tax you owe the use tax. Again, however, the state's going to have a hard time chasing you.
However, if you pay a customs duty while bringing an item into the USA and you live in MA... it's a pretty good case of "gotcha" that you owe the use tax on that item and haven't paid it. So, this is simply taking federal government records and using them to collect a state tax too. So, the unlucky few getting these notices just got caught ducking a tax nearly everyone doesn't pay...
Graphic designers just make things look pretty... user interface design is a whole different art form.
Our consultant had never seen such a meeting. Never had he heard people answer "yes" to the question "are you saying you want to ignore all these recommendations, industry best practices (and standards) and suggestions presented by this industry giant who have proven that they know what they're talking about?"
Whenever you're changing the system that people use on a daily basis to do their job, all they're going to want to know is where you hid the menu function that they're supposed to use where such-and-such a situation is encountered.
These users have to be consulted in the design phase. Afterall, the people who do that job are going to be the world's leading authorities on what tool they most want to have helping them. Also, you'd better talk to their supervisor... there's nothing worse than a rare situation that the old software used to handle that your new software never took into account... so the rules say that the employee has to fill out a form your software never had. Then you've got a big design flaw...
One of the few technologies that Microsoft has managed to get right is ActiveX in the way that it is used in Visual Basic. With ActiveX, a program can easily expose an object-oriented API of hooks so that another program can come along and control the first one. All of the Microsoft Office applications are written in this way, so absolutely anything Office can do, your VB program can do too as long as that piece of Office can be found on the system it's running on.
VB isn't the programming language to use to write an audio codec... but when you just want to play music and don't want to be worried about what audio codec its in, you just call for the Windows Media Player control... You can write a media player with a totally revolutionary new interface without having to understand a single audio codec if you just write your software to use a component you're sure will be there on every Windows system.
VB sometimes blurs the line between being a "programming language" into just being a "scripting langage"... Apple just plain admits they support scripting with AppleScript... where's Linux's entry into this race?
"Image building" has another name... "Marketing". That's not something OSS can do, as any for-profit venture in the OSS field is instantly shunned... but they're the only ones who have the money with which to do marketing.
Linus, RMS, and the gang just aren't good at marketing. IBM and Sun are, so they're really the ones to turn to.
Unfortunately for Linux, they appear to have attracted an group by the name of SCO to scuttle any marketing efforts...
Real men recognize that the text based command line is where you prove your mettle and show who owns this place.
Unfortately, it's that "You've gotta type a command to do that!" mentality that keeps average desktop users away.
One of the few legit uses for the dreaded PHB is to make the developers listen when the usablity consultant tells them what to do...
I've seen far too many applications in both the open source and commerical world where it's clear to me that they developer took the option that was easier to code rather than the one that would have followed the standard UI conventions.
In Open Source, far too often developers are ending up coding for other developers rather than users. Only the for-profit concerns like Lindows and Apple appear to be making advancements in helping clueless users use operating systems.
It's something the other OSS projects need to pay more attention to if they want Linux on the desktop. Server opperators are more willing to drop to the command line than newbies.
This can be a sticky situation for employers. Frequently, they instruct employees that overtime is not available, people go over anyway, and the company has to pay up, whether or not they need/can afford the extra hours. That's the law.
As long as employers are clear about how many hours people are allowed to work, they shouldn't be required to shell out for people who go over.
The correct way to handle this is to hand the employee who does this three envelopes on payday. "Here's your regular pay. Here's you overtime pay. Here's your termination notice for working overtime without authorization." Make an example of this former employee, and nobody else will try that stunt again.
Your journal would be just as valid as their computerized journal as a created-at-the-time record that can be taken into evidence. At this point, the civil case would turn into "your word against their's" so it wouldn't complete the case on its own, but at least you're off to a good start.
The proper way to eliminate overtime is to tell employees that they're not allowed to work greater than 40 hours... and tell anybody going over that they have to stop working at their asigned time.
If a "you've got to get this done" order comes in conflict with the "you've got to stop on time" order, then the employee is already screwed.
Correct. When an employee's timecard is negatively being corrected, the employer should send the employee a memo explaining "Your shift of 8am to 4pm on 4/2/04 was against company policy because you did not take a 30-minute lunch break as required by state law. As a result, we are deducting 30 minutes of pay."
when i worked at the Burger King the system recorded time in 15-minute chunks. You could sign out for your break at 12:38 and your time card would show 12:45. So you could "get over on the man" if you timed it right.
Of course, somebody who stands by the timeclock from 12:37:43 to 12:38:00 is not actually working... so in this case it'd be legal for the manager to correct the stop time to 12:37:43 and therefore take advantage of the downward rounding to shave a quarter hour.
The problem is, if you're told not to work for more than 30 hours, and you do, you should be fired right there on the spot for disobeying the order not to clock in for more than you were supposed to. If the employee is given a task that can't be done in the allotted time, or be fired... then the employee is already damned if they do and damned if they don't, they're going ot get fired either way.
Under most state laws, any shift longer than a certain number of hours that crosses Noontime requires that the employee have a 30 minute lunch break.
This would mean that having a timecard that says 8am to 4pm with no breaks is just as illegal as inserting the 30 minute break that didn't actually get taken. It's just as much the employee's responsiblity to know they have to take a lunch break as it is the manager's responsiblity to tap the worker on the sholder and shut them down and force them to take the break.
We've got offsetting fouls on the play...
Copyright Goon: Your honor, we want the ISP to turn over the name of the user who has IP adress 14.34.23.29 because they are sharing "Our Song", which is our copyrighted material on the Internet.
Judge: Okay, how do you know that a computer 14.34.23.29 is committing copyright infingement against your copyrighted material.
Copyright Goon: They're offering our material up for sharing over the StealTheirMusic protocol for anybody to download.
Judge: Okay, can you prove that anybody actually downloaded that material?
Copyright Goon: Yes, because we downloaded "Our Song" from that server.
Judge: Uhm... that's not an unauthorized copy being made if you downloaded your own song. You started the download, you authorized the copy being made.
Copyright Goon: Uhm... okay. Can we search the guys computer to see if there's transfer logs that prove he transfered "Our Song" to somebody else?
Judge: No. You've gotta show that there's been an infigement first. You can't go blindly fishing like that.
Copyright Goon: Can you make the ISP let us get a trace on that IP's outbound traffic so we can look for a transfer?
Judge: No. That's still fishing.
Copyright Goon: But we're sure they're stealing "Our Song" out there. Our sales are down!
Judge: Come back when you've got some proof...
Technically, American laws are the same way, they either start with "H.R." to indicate first being proposed in the House, or "S." to indicate they came from the Senate. Any "name" to the bill such as "PATRIOT Act" or such is simply a "marketing name" that is attached, such as when we geeks call "802.11b" by the name of "WiFi". The name doesn't have to appear in the text of the bill at all, and if it does it's usually in a meaningless way such as "Section 1a: This act shall be refered to as 'The Slashdot Act'."
"Named legislation" is being seen as a way to get support for an otherwise unpopular law. Most people's first impression of "The law that assigns all rights a person has to an unborn fetus" would be negative, while "Connor's Bill", refering to the child a murder victim didn't have the chance to have, sparks more sympathetic emotions.
Copyright infringement is something that happens the moment you begin to distribute
That's the argument that just failed in a Canadian court. Here in the US it appears to be still valid... but I'm pretty sure somebody's going to try to test it here too.
Techincally, she can't. Only the legislative branch can pass a bill. Therefore, she's got no more power than any other citizen has to suggest a bill.
The same is true in the USA. The president cannot technically submit a bill to Congress... at least one member of the House or Senate must be willing to insert the proposal into the "hopper" for consideration. If none are willing to do so, then the president's proposal never even makes it to the status of being a numbered bill before the Congress. Anybody can write a proposed bill... including average citizens and lobbyists, but without a member of Congress willing to sponsor the act it goes nowhere.
see, in order to actually prove that there was a download they either have to either intercept a download in progress (good luck doing that...)
You have a lot to learn about tcpdump & ethereal, my friend.
Oh, the copyright police would have a wonderful time if they could just position themselves in a "man in the middle" position between the uploader and the downloader... too bad the ISPs aren't exactly inviting them in to allow that.
An analogy might be a bookstore that photocopies a book without authorization, rebinds it, and puts it on the shelf with a price tag on it. Whether or not someone actually buys that book, the store has committed a copyright violation.
Nope. The fact that they're on sale at a store clearly shows an intent to profit... but they still won't have actually hit any civil damages until there's actually been a sale.
You can't charge somebody with murder unless the victim is dead. "Attempted murder" is defined as a different crime that gets committed when somebody demonstrates an intent on committing murder but doesn't quite make it due to ineptiude or intervention. You don't just get to throw "attempted" in front of any other crime to create a new crime. "Attempted copyright violation" is not a crime on the books anywhere, yet.
The key part of the Canadian ruling was that sharing files is perfectly legal. They didn't say distributing was.
Basically, if you leave a copy machine in a room full of copyrighted books, no copyright violation has been comitted. Now, that copy machine could certainly be used in infriging ways, and it can also be used in a few ways that are okay under fair use. But if the machine just sits there and nobody uses it at all... then there's no way there's any infinging use could have happened.
Translated to the digital world, a server that is offering files up for download can't infringe any copyright until somebody actually accesses the files to make an illegal copy. And this brings up a Catch 22 for the "copyright police"... see, in order to actually prove that there was a download they either have to either intercept a download in progress (good luck doing that...) or they have to initiate a download themselves, but whoops... if the copyright owner tries to download their own work, they can't possibly infringe on themselves!
So, basically, there's a problem in the law that's driving the "copyright police" crazy... short of the copyright pirate confessing, how are they gonna prove that an actual violation took place?
um 1.4GB for the dvd quality version. Can anyone say server suicide and bandwidth bill from hell
:)
Worst part is... we all have to pay for that bandwidth bill from hell among other things on the 15th of this month.
Slashdot will be shutdown tomorrow for this terrorist act...
It'd be sensible for the editors to set this up so that the torrent can be seeded with at least one copy of the whole thing before the slashdotting starts...
Actually, you're not going to get anything transfered between 2:00:00am and 2:59:59am tonight. Those times all aren't gonna happen because we're springing forward... you can have the extra hour in October.