Seriously, just because someone is trying to regulate the internet doesn't mean that they're eventually going to impose draconian measures to limit access to free information.
The internet is now somewhat of an economic center, and one of the oldest functions of government is to regulate trade. It doesn't mean there's some huge conspiracy to destroy the free internet. If you're worried about the course these things may take, be careful who you elect and what internet services you subscribe to.
All this FUD about big brother is really starting to get a bit absurd, and it only encourages journalists when stories like this get a big reaction. Is it so hard to just say that some people are trying to regulate the internet? Why does it always have to be some big huge deal that's going to destroy the world?
Yeah, we all know how many new spacecraft they've developed in the last two decades (0). And when was the last time they landed someone on the moon (never)? Very insightful.
The "infrastructure" for flying consists of airports, which are highly government regulated, so it's probably only fair that they should be subsidized.
"the US railroad infrastructure is thoroughly obsolete--it doesn't haev to be that slow"
The US railroad infrastructure is not obsolete, you just don't know the difference between Light rail (used for transporting passengers) and Heavy Rail (used for transporting cargo). With heavy rail, you want to move as much as possible, as cheaply as possible. Since running vehicles at higher speeds results in lower fuel efficiency, you don't want cargo trains to go fast.
Lets see, the fastest bullet trains travel a bit over 100 mph, the slowest airplanes travel a bit slower than 300 mph. To have access to air travel, you need only an airstrip, to have access to a light rail system, you need a set of rails devoted specifically to passenger transit. So. . . in a country as spread out as the U.S. it doesn't make a lot of sense to put in a country wide light rail system. Using air travel is faster, and cheaper. Now in Europe, where things are a lot less spread out, it makes sense because the higher level of use per length of track can make up for the cost of building and maintaining the track. That's because trains are more fuel-efficient than aircraft.
"Great! Let's apply that logic to planes and cars."
Well, okay. Plans and cars are doing great right now, so it's not wasted money. But Amtrak just isn't being used, why pay for something no one uses. It doesn't make any sense. Don't get me wrong. I think that the government should stop subsidizing roads and air travel. It would be nice for consumers to pay the cost of maintaining roads while they drive. It would probably encourage fewer people to commute, and those that do to seek out options other than driving. But, given the current state of reasoning in the US, I don't think that would fly.
"Of course, for coast-to-coast trips, planes will remain significantly faster for some time to come, but planes could be competitive for the most heavily traveled routes, up and down along the coast, within the mid-west, and other regional trips."
Not really, advances in aircraft control technology has lead airlines to believe that it is possible to run more direct fights. They want to use smaller, faster planes to run direct flights, and replace the slow and annoying hub-based system they use now. It's hard to imagine that a light rail system would be able to compete with that on speed, or price.
Let me help you out. This is not a municipal system. People riding the train will pay for internet access provided by an (evil) Corporation. So, this is evil because it is NOT provided at the taxpayers expense.
If they can only survive through government funding, Amtrak obviously isn't being used enough to merit its existence. Why shouldn't their funds be cut. Right now, a train ticket does not cost significantly less than a plane ticket. Traveling from one side of the US to the other takes a matter of hours by plane, but days by train (I've done it both ways).
Now, maybe this would be different if roads weren't almost entirely government funded, since more people would use trains as an alternative to driving. But right now, there is no good reason the government should be funding Amtrak.
The only things trains are good for in the US today are commuting short distances, transporting cargo, and tourism. Even high speed trains would never be able to compete with air travel on speed, or price.
"The last things I can remember HP doing right were their laser printers with single digit numbers. (EG. Laserjet II, III, 4 series, and even the 6P - which is a teriffic "small office workgroup" type printer.) The old scanners with single digit numbers were equally well-made and respectable (ScanJet 4 and so on)."
You find me a good printer that isn't an HP. Cannon? Epson? Brother? Come on. The best printers you can buy are HP. They're reasonably priced too.
It's pretty silly that HP tries to do the "oh, we do computers too" thing. Don't ever buy an HP computer. But they make some damn fine printers.
Not to sound like a troll or anything, but isn't this court case also partially the web sites fault? They were the ones publishing trade secrets, and they could have turned over their sources voluntarily, rather than forcing a court case with dangerous implications. I don't think it's really fair to place all the blame on Apple here. They have to do something to eliminate their information leaks. I think it's safe to say that if they've resorted to this, they've exhausted all their options with regard to internal investigations.
Oh, right I've heard this one before. I've been using macs for ~10 years, and I've never sun into these fabled incompatibility problems. In fact, if you worry that someone won't be able to read your file (which is never the case with MS office, or plain text files, or any images) you can save anything you can print as a PDF and send them the PDF. There's practically no way they'll have trouble with that.
Most of the applications people commonly use are available for the Mac and have interoperable files. For anything else, there are(usually better) alternatives.
If course, that'd be in line with the cost if apple only designed machines they eventually went on to build and sell. However, with any bleeding-edge R&D company this is not the case. They probably begin development on 10 products for every one they eventually build and sell. Of course prototypes are much more expensive to build than production machines, and any given consumer-products device requires dozens of prototypes. Moreover, there are products that Apple has in development for years before they decide they are ready for market, and many that they decide are failures altogether.
At any rate, you shouldn't complain that companies charge as much as they can get away with. Apple is not the most profitable company out there, but they have relatively high margins. How can this be? They invest the extra money they make into developing new products, which allows them to continue earning high margins. This is why you so often see the rest of the industry copying apple. Other companies can't afford to do this kind of continual experimenting and development, because they are trying to sell as much as possible for as low a price as possible. That's why the clones nearly killed Apple, Apple could not longer afford to be innovative.
If you business is obsolete, there's not much you can do about it except change your business. Anything these companies do to stop legal online distribution will not be enough to save them. The music industry needs to find a way to reinvent themselves in a way they are still useful and relevant if they want to survive.
One of the big things they do is market research. They could easily continue to invent and popularize new artists. Also, the can sell their marketing services to existing artists. They could develop a standard for online distribution and sell their music online. It is a mistake for them to refuse to adopt online distribution. Trying to force physical distribution is just going to push them into obsolescence. Things change.
Probably the worst assumption you've made is that the global population will continue to grow at it's present rate. This is not true for a number of reasons. First of all, the current rate of growth is slowing. Most actuaries that study this kind of thing think the global population will level off around 10 billion. Second of all, as a nation becomes more industrialized, it's birth rate drops. In Western Europe and Japan, the birth rate is not high enough to replace older people as they die. In the US, the birth rate is higher, but only barely to the point there is growth.
Another bad assumption is that the number of jobs available is static. Typically the number of jobs grows in proportion to population (the more people there are, the more work there is to do). Amazingly, this has continued to be true through both the industrial and the information revolutions. The thinking is simple enough, as machines replace people, there are fewer jobs to go around. Of course, the use of machines lowers the relative cost of living (by increasing efficiency) and as a result there is more room for the service sector (which people could not afford before).
I've already touched on this, the the third bad assumption is that the relative cost of living is static. This is not true, as technology increases efficiency, the relative cost of living decreases (an individual requires fewer resources to sustain him/herself). The result is that people need to do less work to sustain themselves, and there is more room for people in secondary professions (services) as fewer people are needed to work in industry and agriculture.
Wouldn't claiming drug-company patents be like killing the goose that laid the golden egg? I mean, drug companies use the money they make from drug sales to develop new drugs. Moreover, investors would be unwilling to invest in the development of new products, knowing that the government could just take the patent and make their investment worthless.
Let me put it this way. If you have a problem with drug companies making money from their research, how would you feel if those drugs were never developed in the first place? How much drug research would go on if if companies couldn't even make back what they invested? All the drug companies doing R&D would go out of business, and we'd be left with just the drugs we have now.
Sure, they'd cost less in the short term, but in the end it's better to have continued development.
They should offer a client card reader for internet transactions. That way the encryption could afford you some protection from internet identity theft as well.
That it 300% more power, as in they can provide 3 Watts of power instead of just 1. Of course, this does not have any effect on the amount of energy which may be stored in the batteries. Running the batteries at three times the power would result in 1/3 the battery life (assuming the batteries were similar in other respects). Unless you have an Athlon 64 laptop (or some other high-wattage need) the main thing you'll like about these batteries is that they can charge much faster (because they can also absorb energy at an increased rate).
It doesn't sound like snake oil to me, but it does sound like an incremental advance.
Wow, If you moderators think that was flamebait, you should read the rest of the thread, or the article for that matter. It's amazing how people claiming to be "liberal" and "open minded" are often quite the opposite when it comes to opposing viewpoints.
Oh sure, this legislation must be evil because it it was proposed by corporations trying to make money. And we all know that any thing done to make money must be evil and wrong. I know that every day after I get done with work, I feel guilty about another day spent under the evil influence of money. If only the government would do everything, maybe it could save us from all these evil opportunities to make profit.
That's right, the government can provide internet access more cheaply than business because they don't require a profit, in much the same way that public universities provide education more affordably than private ones. Of course, you'd better not count the money the government collects in taxes, or you might see the truth of the matter. ..
Who am I kidding. This is Slashdot. Let the rampant socialist ranting continue unabated. All hail wonderful, and infallible government spending. All hate our horrible, fucked up government. Yeah, the people on this discussion board sure have it figured out. It's too bad more americans don't appreciate the beautiful hypocrisy that is socialism.
I don't know about your personal account. I live in Moscow, Idaho, a city of 20,000 with a university population of about 10,000, and first step internet (http://www.firststepinternet.com/) provides wireless internet (they have for over five years).
In Idaho Falls, the city I am from, the population is less than 60,000, there is wireless internet access (and cable) available through Teton Wireless (http://www.tetonwireless.com/).
Neither of these businesses have had any trouble providing fast, affordable internet to people living outside of town. They let you lease your antenna and modem at a rate similar to DSL. If you buy the antenna and modem, internet access through wireless is cheaper than DSL (though not cable).
Why should the government implement WiFi networks when commercial businesses are doing it already?
You sound like you really hate business. Are you aware that businesses fuel our economy? In this county, the government is not supposed to produce a good or service if it will force businesses out of that market. This is a good policy, since it allows businesses in those markets to grow and adapt their product, and promotes efficiency.
I know that by now you've realized that I'm an evil capitalist pig, but try to keep reading, I think this is really important.
Because of the political nature of the government, state run entities are unadaptable and inefficient. This means that the more a country is state run, the less adaptable and efficient it becomes. This problem is particularly apparent in communist countries, but it can be seen in any country with too much government social spending. In Soviet Russia or the peoples Republic of China, the government stifles innovation because of the (perceived) threat to jobs, and the (real) threat to state run businesses which hold a lot of political sway. Moreover, these governments provide jobs to everyone, which means giving everyone make-work jobs, which do not contribute to the economy.This can be seen in a more indirect way in Europe, where 350 million Europeans are a little more than half as productive as 280 million Americans.
Now, before you say "the economy is bad because money is bad" you should consider just what money is. Money is a medium of exchange which is representative of resources available for the money holder to utilize. This means that he market-based economy is essentially a self-regulating resource distribution system. The desires of the people holding the money drive the allocation of resources. People who invest their money in ventures which increase their productivity, of the productivity of others, get more money. It makes sense that these individuals should be able to expend more resources, since they have proven that they know how to expend resources in a way that they produce more resources than were expended.
So, the right of business to compete is not a sacred right, it is a piratical one. While it might seem like the government can do better job right now, it result in a crippled industry later on.
The very purpose of the bill is to promote alternatives, by preventing local municipalities from using tax-money to fund WiFi networks. This is NOT a ban on WiFi. It has nothing to do with existing Telco's or land lines.
The real question is will the Kyoto Protocol have a positive effect. Will these government imposed heavy handed restrictions encourage development of more efficient replacement technologies. Given that this is the direction of technological development already, will the Kyoto protocol do anything positive to further bring about their development and implementation, or will the harsh and not necessarily scientific restrictions actually slow the development and adoption of new technologies by limiting the available technological options.
If things are already moving in the right direction with regard to energy-efficient technologies (plastics instead of metals and glass, thicker layers of insulation, fluorescent lights, hybrid cars) and environmentally friendly technologies (genetic modification vs. pesticides, wind turbine and solar, and natural gas power vs. coal and fuel oil) it might be worse to take drastic measures to try to alter the current direction of technological development.
People say that if fuel cells ever get developed, it won't make any difference because the hydrogen will be produced (at least in the early stages) by hydrocarbon reformation (which still produces CO2). But the truth is fuel cells (right now) are twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, and lend themselves to additional energy saving technologies (like energy reclaiming breaks). That means that even if the hydrogen is produced from oil, we will only need to use half as much of it (for transportation). It also means that electric power production from fuel cells would more efficient than turbine production (again, even if the energy source is oil). Of course, there is still the problem that no one has been able to produce a viable fuel cell (proton exchange membranes are currently too expensive, and wear out too quickly).
Anyway, it's a question that a lot of scientists don't seem to consider, but it seems pretty important to me.
The cigarette use tax is not a sales tax. The federal government has exempted internet transactions from state sales taxes only. Not paying sales taxes for internet transactions is perfectly legal, you needn't worry about your state trying to collect back taxes for unpaid internet sales taxes.
Smokers usually pay a set amount for each pack or carton of cigarets' purchased, while a sales tax is always proportional to the sale price of the item. Gasoline is also taxed by the gallon rather than by the dollar (also not a sales tax). So if you go to another state, or an indian reservation to guy cigarets or gasoline, you should be aware that you are still responsible for paying those respective taxes. I'm not sure about sales taxes and inter-state purchasing. But you defiantly aren't responsible for paying sales taxes online.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if I'm creative enough to come up with it, but I'm sure someone here on slashdot will enlighten us with the connection.
Seriously, just because someone is trying to regulate the internet doesn't mean that they're eventually going to impose draconian measures to limit access to free information.
The internet is now somewhat of an economic center, and one of the oldest functions of government is to regulate trade. It doesn't mean there's some huge conspiracy to destroy the free internet. If you're worried about the course these things may take, be careful who you elect and what internet services you subscribe to.
All this FUD about big brother is really starting to get a bit absurd, and it only encourages journalists when stories like this get a big reaction. Is it so hard to just say that some people are trying to regulate the internet? Why does it always have to be some big huge deal that's going to destroy the world?
Yeah, we all know how many new spacecraft they've developed in the last two decades (0). And when was the last time they landed someone on the moon (never)? Very insightful.
Of course the rail system is taxpayer funded, I was referring to the wireless network, dumb-ass.
The "infrastructure" for flying consists of airports, which are highly government regulated, so it's probably only fair that they should be subsidized.
"the US railroad infrastructure is thoroughly obsolete--it doesn't haev to be that slow"
The US railroad infrastructure is not obsolete, you just don't know the difference between Light rail (used for transporting passengers) and Heavy Rail (used for transporting cargo). With heavy rail, you want to move as much as possible, as cheaply as possible. Since running vehicles at higher speeds results in lower fuel efficiency, you don't want cargo trains to go fast.
Lets see, the fastest bullet trains travel a bit over 100 mph, the slowest airplanes travel a bit slower than 300 mph. To have access to air travel, you need only an airstrip, to have access to a light rail system, you need a set of rails devoted specifically to passenger transit. So. . . in a country as spread out as the U.S. it doesn't make a lot of sense to put in a country wide light rail system. Using air travel is faster, and cheaper. Now in Europe, where things are a lot less spread out, it makes sense because the higher level of use per length of track can make up for the cost of building and maintaining the track. That's because trains are more fuel-efficient than aircraft.
"Great! Let's apply that logic to planes and cars."
Well, okay. Plans and cars are doing great right now, so it's not wasted money. But Amtrak just isn't being used, why pay for something no one uses. It doesn't make any sense. Don't get me wrong. I think that the government should stop subsidizing roads and air travel. It would be nice for consumers to pay the cost of maintaining roads while they drive. It would probably encourage fewer people to commute, and those that do to seek out options other than driving. But, given the current state of reasoning in the US, I don't think that would fly.
"Of course, for coast-to-coast trips, planes will remain significantly faster for some time to come, but planes could be competitive for the most heavily traveled routes, up and down along the coast, within the mid-west, and other regional trips."
Not really, advances in aircraft control technology has lead airlines to believe that it is possible to run more direct fights. They want to use smaller, faster planes to run direct flights, and replace the slow and annoying hub-based system they use now. It's hard to imagine that a light rail system would be able to compete with that on speed, or price.
Let me help you out. This is not a municipal system. People riding the train will pay for internet access provided by an (evil) Corporation. So, this is evil because it is NOT provided at the taxpayers expense.
You're welcome.
If they can only survive through government funding, Amtrak obviously isn't being used enough to merit its existence. Why shouldn't their funds be cut. Right now, a train ticket does not cost significantly less than a plane ticket. Traveling from one side of the US to the other takes a matter of hours by plane, but days by train (I've done it both ways).
Now, maybe this would be different if roads weren't almost entirely government funded, since more people would use trains as an alternative to driving. But right now, there is no good reason the government should be funding Amtrak.
The only things trains are good for in the US today are commuting short distances, transporting cargo, and tourism. Even high speed trains would never be able to compete with air travel on speed, or price.
R.I.P. Amtrak
"The last things I can remember HP doing right were their laser printers with single digit numbers. (EG. Laserjet II, III, 4 series, and even the 6P - which is a teriffic "small office workgroup" type printer.) The old scanners with single digit numbers were equally well-made and respectable (ScanJet 4 and so on)."
You find me a good printer that isn't an HP. Cannon? Epson? Brother? Come on. The best printers you can buy are HP. They're reasonably priced too.
It's pretty silly that HP tries to do the "oh, we do computers too" thing. Don't ever buy an HP computer. But they make some damn fine printers.
Not to sound like a troll or anything, but isn't this court case also partially the web sites fault? They were the ones publishing trade secrets, and they could have turned over their sources voluntarily, rather than forcing a court case with dangerous implications. I don't think it's really fair to place all the blame on Apple here. They have to do something to eliminate their information leaks. I think it's safe to say that if they've resorted to this, they've exhausted all their options with regard to internal investigations.
Grandparent must be smoking crack to try to apply a New York State Law to a California State court case.
"I have a friend"
Oh, right I've heard this one before. I've been using macs for ~10 years, and I've never sun into these fabled incompatibility problems. In fact, if you worry that someone won't be able to read your file (which is never the case with MS office, or plain text files, or any images) you can save anything you can print as a PDF and send them the PDF. There's practically no way they'll have trouble with that.
Most of the applications people commonly use are available for the Mac and have interoperable files. For anything else, there are(usually better) alternatives.
If course, that'd be in line with the cost if apple only designed machines they eventually went on to build and sell. However, with any bleeding-edge R&D company this is not the case. They probably begin development on 10 products for every one they eventually build and sell. Of course prototypes are much more expensive to build than production machines, and any given consumer-products device requires dozens of prototypes. Moreover, there are products that Apple has in development for years before they decide they are ready for market, and many that they decide are failures altogether.
At any rate, you shouldn't complain that companies charge as much as they can get away with. Apple is not the most profitable company out there, but they have relatively high margins. How can this be? They invest the extra money they make into developing new products, which allows them to continue earning high margins. This is why you so often see the rest of the industry copying apple. Other companies can't afford to do this kind of continual experimenting and development, because they are trying to sell as much as possible for as low a price as possible. That's why the clones nearly killed Apple, Apple could not longer afford to be innovative.
If you business is obsolete, there's not much you can do about it except change your business. Anything these companies do to stop legal online distribution will not be enough to save them. The music industry needs to find a way to reinvent themselves in a way they are still useful and relevant if they want to survive.
One of the big things they do is market research. They could easily continue to invent and popularize new artists. Also, the can sell their marketing services to existing artists. They could develop a standard for online distribution and sell their music online. It is a mistake for them to refuse to adopt online distribution. Trying to force physical distribution is just going to push them into obsolescence. Things change.
Probably the worst assumption you've made is that the global population will continue to grow at it's present rate. This is not true for a number of reasons. First of all, the current rate of growth is slowing. Most actuaries that study this kind of thing think the global population will level off around 10 billion. Second of all, as a nation becomes more industrialized, it's birth rate drops. In Western Europe and Japan, the birth rate is not high enough to replace older people as they die. In the US, the birth rate is higher, but only barely to the point there is growth.
Another bad assumption is that the number of jobs available is static. Typically the number of jobs grows in proportion to population (the more people there are, the more work there is to do). Amazingly, this has continued to be true through both the industrial and the information revolutions. The thinking is simple enough, as machines replace people, there are fewer jobs to go around. Of course, the use of machines lowers the relative cost of living (by increasing efficiency) and as a result there is more room for the service sector (which people could not afford before).
I've already touched on this, the the third bad assumption is that the relative cost of living is static. This is not true, as technology increases efficiency, the relative cost of living decreases (an individual requires fewer resources to sustain him/herself). The result is that people need to do less work to sustain themselves, and there is more room for people in secondary professions (services) as fewer people are needed to work in industry and agriculture.
Yeah, heaven forbid people should be able to choose how they want to live. Asshole.
Wouldn't claiming drug-company patents be like killing the goose that laid the golden egg? I mean, drug companies use the money they make from drug sales to develop new drugs. Moreover, investors would be unwilling to invest in the development of new products, knowing that the government could just take the patent and make their investment worthless.
Let me put it this way. If you have a problem with drug companies making money from their research, how would you feel if those drugs were never developed in the first place? How much drug research would go on if if companies couldn't even make back what they invested? All the drug companies doing R&D would go out of business, and we'd be left with just the drugs we have now.
Sure, they'd cost less in the short term, but in the end it's better to have continued development.
They should offer a client card reader for internet transactions. That way the encryption could afford you some protection from internet identity theft as well.
That it 300% more power, as in they can provide 3 Watts of power instead of just 1. Of course, this does not have any effect on the amount of energy which may be stored in the batteries. Running the batteries at three times the power would result in 1/3 the battery life (assuming the batteries were similar in other respects). Unless you have an Athlon 64 laptop (or some other high-wattage need) the main thing you'll like about these batteries is that they can charge much faster (because they can also absorb energy at an increased rate).
It doesn't sound like snake oil to me, but it does sound like an incremental advance.
Wow, If you moderators think that was flamebait, you should read the rest of the thread, or the article for that matter. It's amazing how people claiming to be "liberal" and "open minded" are often quite the opposite when it comes to opposing viewpoints.
Not that same old tired argument again.
.
Oh sure, this legislation must be evil because it it was proposed by corporations trying to make money. And we all know that any thing done to make money must be evil and wrong. I know that every day after I get done with work, I feel guilty about another day spent under the evil influence of money. If only the government would do everything, maybe it could save us from all these evil opportunities to make profit.
That's right, the government can provide internet access more cheaply than business because they don't require a profit, in much the same way that public universities provide education more affordably than private ones. Of course, you'd better not count the money the government collects in taxes, or you might see the truth of the matter. .
Who am I kidding. This is Slashdot. Let the rampant socialist ranting continue unabated. All hail wonderful, and infallible government spending. All hate our horrible, fucked up government. Yeah, the people on this discussion board sure have it figured out. It's too bad more americans don't appreciate the beautiful hypocrisy that is socialism.
I don't know about your personal account. I live in Moscow, Idaho, a city of 20,000 with a university population of about 10,000, and first step internet (http://www.firststepinternet.com/) provides wireless internet (they have for over five years).
In Idaho Falls, the city I am from, the population is less than 60,000, there is wireless internet access (and cable) available through Teton Wireless (http://www.tetonwireless.com/).
Neither of these businesses have had any trouble providing fast, affordable internet to people living outside of town. They let you lease your antenna and modem at a rate similar to DSL. If you buy the antenna and modem, internet access through wireless is cheaper than DSL (though not cable).
Why should the government implement WiFi networks when commercial businesses are doing it already?
You sound like you really hate business. Are you aware that businesses fuel our economy? In this county, the government is not supposed to produce a good or service if it will force businesses out of that market. This is a good policy, since it allows businesses in those markets to grow and adapt their product, and promotes efficiency.
I know that by now you've realized that I'm an evil capitalist pig, but try to keep reading, I think this is really important.
Because of the political nature of the government, state run entities are unadaptable and inefficient. This means that the more a country is state run, the less adaptable and efficient it becomes. This problem is particularly apparent in communist countries, but it can be seen in any country with too much government social spending. In Soviet Russia or the peoples Republic of China, the government stifles innovation because of the (perceived) threat to jobs, and the (real) threat to state run businesses which hold a lot of political sway. Moreover, these governments provide jobs to everyone, which means giving everyone make-work jobs, which do not contribute to the economy.This can be seen in a more indirect way in Europe, where 350 million Europeans are a little more than half as productive as 280 million Americans.
Now, before you say "the economy is bad because money is bad" you should consider just what money is. Money is a medium of exchange which is representative of resources available for the money holder to utilize. This means that he market-based economy is essentially a self-regulating resource distribution system. The desires of the people holding the money drive the allocation of resources. People who invest their money in ventures which increase their productivity, of the productivity of others, get more money. It makes sense that these individuals should be able to expend more resources, since they have proven that they know how to expend resources in a way that they produce more resources than were expended.
So, the right of business to compete is not a sacred right, it is a piratical one. While it might seem like the government can do better job right now, it result in a crippled industry later on.
The very purpose of the bill is to promote alternatives, by preventing local municipalities from using tax-money to fund WiFi networks. This is NOT a ban on WiFi. It has nothing to do with existing Telco's or land lines.
The real question is will the Kyoto Protocol have a positive effect. Will these government imposed heavy handed restrictions encourage development of more efficient replacement technologies. Given that this is the direction of technological development already, will the Kyoto protocol do anything positive to further bring about their development and implementation, or will the harsh and not necessarily scientific restrictions actually slow the development and adoption of new technologies by limiting the available technological options.
If things are already moving in the right direction with regard to energy-efficient technologies (plastics instead of metals and glass, thicker layers of insulation, fluorescent lights, hybrid cars) and environmentally friendly technologies (genetic modification vs. pesticides, wind turbine and solar, and natural gas power vs. coal and fuel oil) it might be worse to take drastic measures to try to alter the current direction of technological development.
People say that if fuel cells ever get developed, it won't make any difference because the hydrogen will be produced (at least in the early stages) by hydrocarbon reformation (which still produces CO2). But the truth is fuel cells (right now) are twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, and lend themselves to additional energy saving technologies (like energy reclaiming breaks). That means that even if the hydrogen is produced from oil, we will only need to use half as much of it (for transportation). It also means that electric power production from fuel cells would more efficient than turbine production (again, even if the energy source is oil). Of course, there is still the problem that no one has been able to produce a viable fuel cell (proton exchange membranes are currently too expensive, and wear out too quickly).
Anyway, it's a question that a lot of scientists don't seem to consider, but it seems pretty important to me.
The cigarette use tax is not a sales tax. The federal government has exempted internet transactions from state sales taxes only. Not paying sales taxes for internet transactions is perfectly legal, you needn't worry about your state trying to collect back taxes for unpaid internet sales taxes.
Smokers usually pay a set amount for each pack or carton of cigarets' purchased, while a sales tax is always proportional to the sale price of the item. Gasoline is also taxed by the gallon rather than by the dollar (also not a sales tax). So if you go to another state, or an indian reservation to guy cigarets or gasoline, you should be aware that you are still responsible for paying those respective taxes. I'm not sure about sales taxes and inter-state purchasing. But you defiantly aren't responsible for paying sales taxes online.