This is not true. A Washington citizen shipping to CA or NY would be responsible for *collecting* taxes from CA or NY citizens and sending them to CA or NY.
That idiot CIO's quote makes me livid. I worked in IT in '99 (I mean worked, not blathered or "managed") and as such spent a good couple months on Y2K issues. I was given the task of surveying a large portion of my company's software. I did this. In '99, I knew *exactly* what would happen if not updated down to the line number of broken code. I duly created my report, which listed every damn issue in the software. Most were stupid cosmetic crap like reports that would say "19100". There were two major data errors that would have caused data corruption, but both were almost trivial to fix.
Y2K was a real issue, and serious things might have happened had it not been addressed, but for the most part it was a simple bug-hunt.
These taxes wouldn't apply Washington citizens. These are taxes applied to California (or New York) citizens. As a California citizen, it is my representative who would vote for or against these taxes.
I am not saying California should get tax money from Amazon. I just think it's pretty pathetic that a poster who can't even figure out what state Amazon is in is getting a "+5,Insightful" for warning California that will chase business out of the state by...er...trying to tax businesses who aren't in the state in the first place.
Amazon's objection has little or nothing to do with the "undo burden", though the burden is certainly high. The reason Amazon will fight this tooth-and-nail is that because they don't charge sales tax while their brick-and-mortar competition does, they can compete on price. Right now, a book from Amazon with shipping costs about what a book at the physical Borders does with tax included. If Amazon has to pay taxes, they are no longer roughly equal in price, and their sales will likely go done.
It's more than "perceived price". It means the actual cost to the customer goes up. That will certainly translate into lost sales.
If Amazon moves overseas, everything they ship into the US is subject to import duties. Import duties are generally much higher than sales taxes.
Also: Amazon is not in California. It is in Washington. This might clue you in to why the LA times is pushing for this. California is getting zero tax revenue from Amazon at the moment. People pushing for this would require sales tax to be charged regardless of where they ship from be it Washington, Michigan or Shanghai.
Keep in mind that a store like Walmart only has to know the tax rate of their physical locations. Since they've obviously got many employees at each location, it is not an undo burden.
Under this proposal, Amazon would have to track tax rates for every conceivable location in the country, not just those locations where they already happen to have employees.
See, this is why I love slashdot. Someone points to an hour long evisceration of a movie, and someone immediately pops up with a comment that says that something that wasn't particularly complained about "isn't so bad" and gets rated 5 for it.
The big difference is that the insurance industry (for all its faults) insures against things that people have little hope in paying for, but that are rare.
For instance, if the chance of my house burning down is %0.00001 and it'd cost $500,000 to replace it, that's a good deal as I'd have little hope of coming up with $500,000. This is true even though it costs more statistically speaking. In the "long run" if I owned 10,000 houses and could afford $500,000 easily, the insurance would be a bad deal.
On the other hand, if the chance of the TV breaking is 5% and it costs $200 to repair, I can bear the burden of the unexpected cost, and I am much better off going for the "long run" and relying on the statistics.
It all comes down to math. For the extended warranty to be profitable, we know that:
WarrantyCost > RepairCost * ChanceOfFailure
over the set of all items on which the warranties are sold.
This is simple insurance. We do this for things like medical bills because the repair cost is so vast that it will wipe us out even if in the long run, it costs more. But for electronic devices, the repair cost is generally bearable.
Statistically speaking, you will have more money at the end of the day if you just spend the money to repair items when they break rather than taking bets against the house that the item will break. The only conceivable case where this might not be true is if you literally cannot afford to repair an item. This seems unlikely assuming you are spending responsibly on the item in the first place.
Even worse, by taking the warranty, you are essentially forcing yourself to repair any failures. Suppose you decide that you don't really need that second TV three years down the road...you still paid to get it fixed.
Extended warranties are like lottery tickets. They are for the mathematically ignorant.
Here's what you do: every time you buy a piece of electronics, put 10% of the purchase price in a bank account called "my personal extended warranty".
If the item breaks, withdraw money from this account to have the item fixed.
Given that extended warranties are sold to make a profit, you are pretty much guaranteed to end up financially better off if you purchase enough goods.
The root problem that will make this prediction fail is that all those things use power. The more you make that causes the user to use the device constantly, the harder it will be to keep the thing charged up enough to make phone calls.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not true. A Washington citizen shipping to CA or NY would be responsible for *collecting* taxes from CA or NY citizens and sending them to CA or NY.
No one is proposing Amazon pay extra taxes.
That idiot CIO's quote makes me livid. I worked in IT in '99 (I mean worked, not blathered or "managed") and as such spent a good couple months on Y2K issues. I was given the task of surveying a large portion of my company's software. I did this. In '99, I knew *exactly* what would happen if not updated down to the line number of broken code. I duly created my report, which listed every damn issue in the software. Most were stupid cosmetic crap like reports that would say "19100". There were two major data errors that would have caused data corruption, but both were almost trivial to fix.
Y2K was a real issue, and serious things might have happened had it not been addressed, but for the most part it was a simple bug-hunt.
These taxes wouldn't apply Washington citizens. These are taxes applied to California (or New York) citizens. As a California citizen, it is my representative who would vote for or against these taxes.
There is a state that doesn't have a state assembly? Do tell...
Epoch starts at January 1st, 1970, but the system call itself was not around in 1970.
Asking congress to "force taxation without representation" is an idiotic statement. Congress *is* the representation.
I am not saying California should get tax money from Amazon. I just think it's pretty pathetic that a poster who can't even figure out what state Amazon is in is getting a "+5,Insightful" for warning California that will chase business out of the state by...er...trying to tax businesses who aren't in the state in the first place.
Why? No time to muck with it beyond getting "advanced mode" working.
I haven't really been using it for much beyond lately anyway.
Amazon's objection has little or nothing to do with the "undo burden", though the burden is certainly high. The reason Amazon will fight this tooth-and-nail is that because they don't charge sales tax while their brick-and-mortar competition does, they can compete on price. Right now, a book from Amazon with shipping costs about what a book at the physical Borders does with tax included. If Amazon has to pay taxes, they are no longer roughly equal in price, and their sales will likely go done.
It's more than "perceived price". It means the actual cost to the customer goes up. That will certainly translate into lost sales.
That looks exactly like an import duty between states, which is unconstitutional.
If Amazon moves overseas, everything they ship into the US is subject to import duties. Import duties are generally much higher than sales taxes.
Also: Amazon is not in California. It is in Washington. This might clue you in to why the LA times is pushing for this. California is getting zero tax revenue from Amazon at the moment. People pushing for this would require sales tax to be charged regardless of where they ship from be it Washington, Michigan or Shanghai.
Keep in mind that a store like Walmart only has to know the tax rate of their physical locations. Since they've obviously got many employees at each location, it is not an undo burden.
Under this proposal, Amazon would have to track tax rates for every conceivable location in the country, not just those locations where they already happen to have employees.
Xandros on my eee 901 mounts USB drives as /media/D:, /media/E:, etc. Sheer idiocy.
Not true. I knew some in college. (I.e. met them in college, not a strip club.)
See, this is why I love slashdot. Someone points to an hour long evisceration of a movie, and someone immediately pops up with a comment that says that something that wasn't particularly complained about "isn't so bad" and gets rated 5 for it.
Yes, I am sure that it isn't all meant to be funny, and he also really does have a hooker tied up in his basement.
As a corollary, all working late should fall into those two classes. (And if the first type happens a lot, then you need to reshuffle management.)
Working late should always be seen as an exceptional circumstance.
Either you are unlucky, or you are buying from people who are selling the extended warranties at a loss.
Mathematically speaking, it's one or the other, and given the effort that goes into selling I wouldn't bet on the latter.
The big difference is that the insurance industry (for all its faults) insures against things that people have little hope in paying for, but that are rare.
For instance, if the chance of my house burning down is %0.00001 and it'd cost $500,000 to replace it, that's a good deal as I'd have little hope of coming up with $500,000. This is true even though it costs more statistically speaking. In the "long run" if I owned 10,000 houses and could afford $500,000 easily, the insurance would be a bad deal.
On the other hand, if the chance of the TV breaking is 5% and it costs $200 to repair, I can bear the burden of the unexpected cost, and I am much better off going for the "long run" and relying on the statistics.
It all comes down to math. For the extended warranty to be profitable, we know that:
WarrantyCost > RepairCost * ChanceOfFailure
over the set of all items on which the warranties are sold.
This is simple insurance. We do this for things like medical bills because the repair cost is so vast that it will wipe us out even if in the long run, it costs more. But for electronic devices, the repair cost is generally bearable.
Statistically speaking, you will have more money at the end of the day if you just spend the money to repair items when they break rather than taking bets against the house that the item will break. The only conceivable case where this might not be true is if you literally cannot afford to repair an item. This seems unlikely assuming you are spending responsibly on the item in the first place.
Even worse, by taking the warranty, you are essentially forcing yourself to repair any failures. Suppose you decide that you don't really need that second TV three years down the road...you still paid to get it fixed.
Extended warranties are like lottery tickets. They are for the mathematically ignorant.
Here's what you do: every time you buy a piece of electronics, put 10% of the purchase price in a bank account called "my personal extended warranty".
If the item breaks, withdraw money from this account to have the item fixed.
Given that extended warranties are sold to make a profit, you are pretty much guaranteed to end up financially better off if you purchase enough goods.
I'd kill for servers that didn't allow anyone under 30. It'd probably cut way down in the idiot racist/homophobic bullshit and cheating.
According to my math after using a Kill-A-Watt, running Folding@Home on my PS3 would cost me roughly $10/month in energy costs.
The root problem that will make this prediction fail is that all those things use power. The more you make that causes the user to use the device constantly, the harder it will be to keep the thing charged up enough to make phone calls.
Hah! The kernel is exactly what we used to call an "Operating System", before people started putting Window Managers on top.