The infamous 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that ordered California not to hold the recall election in October as scheduled in response to a lawsuit from the ACLU that claimed that punch card ballots would result in miscount votes that just might change the outcome of the election and therefore the election should not be held until every precinct in the state is ready with non-punchcard systems, which they are scheduled to be by March for the presidential primaries. (The decision was a few days later reversed on appeal to a larger 9th Circuit panel.)
E911 is like the Monty Python definition of Spam... you're gonna get some with your order whether you like it or not because the Vikings said so.
E911 is not a voluntary decison. The cell phone providers wanted out, but for public safety sake the government said no, you can't opt out. Vonage doesn't deserve a free pass either. If you're gonna replace the tellphone, you've gotta bring a replacement for E911 with you.
Here's the problem, not being able to partispate in E911 is not an excuse that should get you out of paying for the 911 services... it's a reason why you should be charging your customers a much higher "E911 compliance fee" because you're going to be spending a lot of money getting your system into compliance.
Vonage is not as reliable as traditional phone service in such emergency communicaton situations, but some people are declaring that Vonage is good enough for them and they are canceling their traditional phone service. This is an erosion in our communication infrastructre that we should not allow to grab hold.
Cell phone providers tried to drag their feet at complying with 911 rules, but got shot down. VoIP-to-phone providers should have to play by the same PTSN rules as everyone else....
Can you name the threat of harm that VoIP poses to society that justifies its regulation?
Destruction of the E911 system we have spent so much money creating. If you dial 911 on a landline in most places, the 911 center that serves your area gets metadata identifying the address of the phone making the call. If you dial 911 on a cellphone, the cell phone providers are required to create a tower-based estimation of the location where the cell phone is calling from and use that to find the approprate 911 call center. VoIP services do not have a similar way of producing E911 data of where their callers physically are, and often have problems determining which call center should be given even a basic 911 call.
Refusal to comply with universal service No VoIP provider is willing to serve the entire nation at the same price like the phone monopolies are required to. If a VoIP provider is in a position to take profitable customers away from the monopolies, then they should either be prepared to take over the monopolies' universal service committments, or be prepared to pay the monopoly companies for continuing to do so. We don't want the digital devide problem to get worse than it already is...
Fax service is taxed. I sent a fax at Staples a couple weeks ago, the sign said $1 but the cashier asked me for $1.05. The reciept said 5 cents was tax which is the standard 5% sales tax we have around here.
If I had a fax machine at home, I'd have to pay a 5% tax on the cost of sending and receiving faxes there too. No, I wouldn't have to file a form for every fax that comes in or goes out... but I'd have to pay a 5% sales tax when I buy the machine. I'd then have to pay sales tax on the phone service I plug the machine into, and any tolls I'd be charged while the fax machine is sending. I'd be taxed again when I need to buy more paper and toner too. I'd even even taxed on the power the device consumes when the power bill comes!
I also have to pay taxes on my "automated call answeing" service... I paid a sales tax when I bought a answering machine too, and every time the battery runs out I've gotta pay tax on that too.
Oh, and don't tell me I can avoid taxes by shopping online. I can avoid sales tax that way, but then I incur a use tax of 5% of the purchase price of any goods I import into the state for use here that I didn't already pay 5% worth of sales taxes on. (What, you think I'm going to confess to being a tax cheat by not paying the use tax on things I buy out of state?... not unless I'm posting as an AC!)
If you can do it, the government can find a way to tax it...
Traditional telcos are regulated and taxed the way that they are due to the fact that they've been granted a monopoly on the last mile to a house.
Uhm, no. Telcos are in part regulated because of their monopoly status, but celluar companies also have to comply with similar regulations and they aren't a monopoly. See, in many industries there are laws that require that the goods or services they provide must be of a minimum quality in order to be legal. You can't sell tobacco products without a warning label. You can't serve uncooked meat at a restaurant. If you're gonna provide phone service. You've gotta give very special treatment to the 911 system. Those are the kind pesky regulations that Vonage needs to get itself into compliance with.
Phone service is taxed because, uhm, well, nearly everything is taxed. What the states are affraid of is that Vonage and similar companies will be able to wipe out the telco industry, and therefore wipe out the tax base that industry provides. If they do, the states want to be able to replace such taxes with equal taxes against Vonage's services...
they are planning to play a game called 'Starving Artist' with 5th-9th graders, where students come up with an idea for a record album, cover art, and lyrics only to be told by teachers that the album is already available for download for free.
Moral to that seems to be that the album's headed the way of the 8-track because you've gotta compete with free to sell an album... so go make your money at concerts.
When the Federal government doesn't pay for things such as education programs or road repairs, the states are left holding the bag. If the states refuse to fund education and roads too, then local communties are stuck having to pay for such things.
If nobody's willing to pay for education and road repairs... then society starts to fall apart.
Nobody's talking about installing a service-detecting tax machine at ISPs to detect VoIP connections and tax them, so let's lose the "It's just another form of data" claims right here. What they're talking about taxing VoIP that replaces phone service, which is really a phone service that's delivered over VoIP rather than a standard POTS twisted pair.
It's still phone service. Phone service that's delivered over airwaves, and often is digital these days, is called cellular and that's been taxed since the day it started. Why does VoIP's phone service deserve an exemption?
This is what drives the states crazy. They'd like to slap a percentage tax on the $21 or so you pay for dial-up or the $50 or so you pay for cable/DSL, but they can't because of this federal law.
Does too. If a service that they currently tax goes out of style and gets replaced by a service they can't tax, overall revenue for taxes go downward without any changes in the law.
If that happens, some other tax has to go up, some government program has to get cut, or the deficit increases... three ugly options for the polititians.
There is no place for a paperless voting system anywhere in America. It's one thing for having computers help you create a nice clear and unmistakable piece of paper, but we've got to have some sort of human-readable paper come out of any voting machine so there will always be an indullable audit trail.
They want to automatically generate bills for false alarms that havent been registered. And send them where? Huh? You call 911 because your neighbours alarm went off, thats the only address I have to work with, so you get a bill.
That's a bug. Your system should be smart enough to know that the respond-to address doesn't have to have any relationship at all to the caller's address...
Then I go out onsite to a client in california, and dipshit politically appointed top cops fuck the whole thing up. They want to book people before they arrest them. (Ie, data is imported into the arrest module from booking, not the other way like it was designed) Put people in jail, then arrest them? wha?
Now... there's one that you can blame on cops who think little things like the Constitution just get in their way...
Diebold's market capitalization is roughly $3.775 billion... That's not exactly a small business, but it's not quite on the same level as the major media companies either.
But there's no way of verifying the integrity of said central source. A new blacklist could show up, act well for a few months, and then start forgetting to block the IP range of its sponsoring spammer...
How you determine trust of a source that refuses to provide a "real world" identity is beyond me.... Wouldn't be too hard for spammers to create fake-outs in such an environment.
The thing is, you're closing the system because it's assumed that anybody who isn't a member of that "web of trust" isn't gonna get their mail through... you're halfway there already.
The anti-spammers have a bit of a problem in that they're now trying to hide their identity, which means they can't call the cops. Afterall, if there's going to be a court case, the victim has to go to court and the first question asked is going to be "Could you please state your name and address for the record?"
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The infamous 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that ordered California not to hold the recall election in October as scheduled in response to a lawsuit from the ACLU that claimed that punch card ballots would result in miscount votes that just might change the outcome of the election and therefore the election should not be held until every precinct in the state is ready with non-punchcard systems, which they are scheduled to be by March for the presidential primaries. (The decision was a few days later reversed on appeal to a larger 9th Circuit panel.)
E911 is like the Monty Python definition of Spam... you're gonna get some with your order whether you like it or not because the Vikings said so.
E911 is not a voluntary decison. The cell phone providers wanted out, but for public safety sake the government said no, you can't opt out. Vonage doesn't deserve a free pass either. If you're gonna replace the tellphone, you've gotta bring a replacement for E911 with you.
My post was supposed to attract a funny mod it hasn't gotten yet... and you need to read up on the news a little more.
Here's the problem, not being able to partispate in E911 is not an excuse that should get you out of paying for the 911 services... it's a reason why you should be charging your customers a much higher "E911 compliance fee" because you're going to be spending a lot of money getting your system into compliance.
Vonage is not as reliable as traditional phone service in such emergency communicaton situations, but some people are declaring that Vonage is good enough for them and they are canceling their traditional phone service. This is an erosion in our communication infrastructre that we should not allow to grab hold.
Cell phone providers tried to drag their feet at complying with 911 rules, but got shot down. VoIP-to-phone providers should have to play by the same PTSN rules as everyone else....
Can you name the threat of harm that VoIP poses to society that justifies its regulation?
Destruction of the E911 system we have spent so much money creating. If you dial 911 on a landline in most places, the 911 center that serves your area gets metadata identifying the address of the phone making the call. If you dial 911 on a cellphone, the cell phone providers are required to create a tower-based estimation of the location where the cell phone is calling from and use that to find the approprate 911 call center. VoIP services do not have a similar way of producing E911 data of where their callers physically are, and often have problems determining which call center should be given even a basic 911 call.
Refusal to comply with universal service No VoIP provider is willing to serve the entire nation at the same price like the phone monopolies are required to. If a VoIP provider is in a position to take profitable customers away from the monopolies, then they should either be prepared to take over the monopolies' universal service committments, or be prepared to pay the monopoly companies for continuing to do so. We don't want the digital devide problem to get worse than it already is...
Same reason anything is taxed... gotta fund the government somehow.
Fax service is taxed. I sent a fax at Staples a couple weeks ago, the sign said $1 but the cashier asked me for $1.05. The reciept said 5 cents was tax which is the standard 5% sales tax we have around here.
If I had a fax machine at home, I'd have to pay a 5% tax on the cost of sending and receiving faxes there too. No, I wouldn't have to file a form for every fax that comes in or goes out... but I'd have to pay a 5% sales tax when I buy the machine. I'd then have to pay sales tax on the phone service I plug the machine into, and any tolls I'd be charged while the fax machine is sending. I'd be taxed again when I need to buy more paper and toner too. I'd even even taxed on the power the device consumes when the power bill comes!
I also have to pay taxes on my "automated call answeing" service... I paid a sales tax when I bought a answering machine too, and every time the battery runs out I've gotta pay tax on that too.
Oh, and don't tell me I can avoid taxes by shopping online. I can avoid sales tax that way, but then I incur a use tax of 5% of the purchase price of any goods I import into the state for use here that I didn't already pay 5% worth of sales taxes on. (What, you think I'm going to confess to being a tax cheat by not paying the use tax on things I buy out of state?... not unless I'm posting as an AC!)
If you can do it, the government can find a way to tax it...
Traditional telcos are regulated and taxed the way that they are due to the fact that they've been granted a monopoly on the last mile to a house.
Uhm, no. Telcos are in part regulated because of their monopoly status, but celluar companies also have to comply with similar regulations and they aren't a monopoly. See, in many industries there are laws that require that the goods or services they provide must be of a minimum quality in order to be legal. You can't sell tobacco products without a warning label. You can't serve uncooked meat at a restaurant. If you're gonna provide phone service. You've gotta give very special treatment to the 911 system. Those are the kind pesky regulations that Vonage needs to get itself into compliance with.
Phone service is taxed because, uhm, well, nearly everything is taxed. What the states are affraid of is that Vonage and similar companies will be able to wipe out the telco industry, and therefore wipe out the tax base that industry provides. If they do, the states want to be able to replace such taxes with equal taxes against Vonage's services...
they are planning to play a game called 'Starving Artist' with 5th-9th graders, where students come up with an idea for a record album, cover art, and lyrics only to be told by teachers that the album is already available for download for free.
Moral to that seems to be that the album's headed the way of the 8-track because you've gotta compete with free to sell an album... so go make your money at concerts.
Uh... communication wants to be free? :)
As in speech, never as in beer...
When the Federal government doesn't pay for things such as education programs or road repairs, the states are left holding the bag. If the states refuse to fund education and roads too, then local communties are stuck having to pay for such things. If nobody's willing to pay for education and road repairs... then society starts to fall apart.
Nobody's talking about installing a service-detecting tax machine at ISPs to detect VoIP connections and tax them, so let's lose the "It's just another form of data" claims right here. What they're talking about taxing VoIP that replaces phone service, which is really a phone service that's delivered over VoIP rather than a standard POTS twisted pair.
It's still phone service. Phone service that's delivered over airwaves, and often is digital these days, is called cellular and that's been taxed since the day it started. Why does VoIP's phone service deserve an exemption?
This is what drives the states crazy. They'd like to slap a percentage tax on the $21 or so you pay for dial-up or the $50 or so you pay for cable/DSL, but they can't because of this federal law.
Does too. If a service that they currently tax goes out of style and gets replaced by a service they can't tax, overall revenue for taxes go downward without any changes in the law.
If that happens, some other tax has to go up, some government program has to get cut, or the deficit increases... three ugly options for the polititians.
They'll tax by whatever unit your ISP uses to charge you, and just take a percentage of that number...
When was the last time you carried a box of VoIP out of a store or had it shipped by UPS... seems more like a service to me...
There is no place for a paperless voting system anywhere in America. It's one thing for having computers help you create a nice clear and unmistakable piece of paper, but we've got to have some sort of human-readable paper come out of any voting machine so there will always be an indullable audit trail.
Go to court and see if you can stop the thing on that argument...
They want to automatically generate bills for false alarms that havent been registered. And send them where? Huh? You call 911 because your neighbours alarm went off, thats the only address I have to work with, so you get a bill.
That's a bug. Your system should be smart enough to know that the respond-to address doesn't have to have any relationship at all to the caller's address...
Then I go out onsite to a client in california, and dipshit politically appointed top cops fuck the whole thing up. They want to book people before they arrest them. (Ie, data is imported into the arrest module from booking, not the other way like it was designed) Put people in jail, then arrest them? wha?
Now... there's one that you can blame on cops who think little things like the Constitution just get in their way...
Diebold's market capitalization is roughly $3.775 billion... That's not exactly a small business, but it's not quite on the same level as the major media companies either.
But there's no way of verifying the integrity of said central source. A new blacklist could show up, act well for a few months, and then start forgetting to block the IP range of its sponsoring spammer...
if the source is trustworthy
How you determine trust of a source that refuses to provide a "real world" identity is beyond me.... Wouldn't be too hard for spammers to create fake-outs in such an environment.
The thing is, you're closing the system because it's assumed that anybody who isn't a member of that "web of trust" isn't gonna get their mail through... you're halfway there already.
The key is to make the central body a non-profit clib whose membership is the mainstream ISPs...
The anti-spammers have a bit of a problem in that they're now trying to hide their identity, which means they can't call the cops. Afterall, if there's going to be a court case, the victim has to go to court and the first question asked is going to be "Could you please state your name and address for the record?"