This isn't restricting interstate commerce - it's just requiring companies that sell to states they are not located in to collect the sales/use tax for those states. It's adding requirements to collect taxes but not saying they can't sell to other states. If they don't collect the taxes the States will have to go after the companies and not the Federal government.
First, taxation is in fact a restriction of trade. Indeed it is one of the primary restrictions of trade exercised by governments.
Second, requiring a company to collect taxes in a state in which it has no physical presence could be construed as taxation without representation, an issue which historically speaking is unpopular in the USA - I think we fought a big war over it at one time... Which is why the interstate commerce clause exists in the first place. According to the Supreme Court (Gonzales v. Raich, 2005) "...For the first century of our history, the primary use of the [Interstate Commerce] Clause was to preclude the kind of discriminatory state legislation that had once been permissible."
There's a reason it's basically a shell company, and doesn't own any of the rights...
Piercing the Corporate Veil
A court may pierce through the veil of liability protection if the corporation does not follow proper corporate formalities, if it is undercapitalized, or if it can be shown that it is a sham that was set up to defraud.
Sure until all those web apps and cloud services go over that limit in a couple of days and Verizon starts charging you a few bucks per MB after.
100MB in a couple days? Possible, but unlikely. 100MB in a month? Most users would be within the limit. Verizon screwing us with overage charges? Every chance they get..
Secondly, how does that puny 3G justify charging 200+ dollars more than the thing is worth? You can get a more capable netbook and a 3G dongle for less than the 3G version.
And pay how much per month for the 3G data service?
This Freedom of Information Act is defective in my opinion because the burden of proof for harm [if any] is on the entity from which information is sought but not the party seeking the information.
In fact, the party that seeks information does not even have to say why or what they are going to use the information for. Absurd, isn't it?
Not at all. All government information is public information, unless there is a reason for it not to be. I don't need to say why I want public information, because it is public information. When asked, the government must say why it is withholding the information.
Per Obama's original statement, the photos are not being released because the administration felt that they could be used to incite acts of revenge (terrorism) against the USA.
Sounds like a simple: "Request denied for national security reasons" answer is to be expected.
Anyone can be anonymous, but not everyone is Anonymous. An action performed by a member of Anonymous, is not the same as an action by Anonymous. Think of it as a gestalt -it is not, until at some undefined point, it is.
There are leaders within Anonymous. Just because they are not part of a hierarchy does not mean they do not exist. No one appointed them, no one elected them, but others followed them. Leading is not the same as ruling.
How many college campuses do you know of in the USA without 3G coverage?
This offer is limited to students...
I see no place where they say "college students". I have a kid in high school who'd love one.
Minors cannot enter into contracts in the USA, so the targeted students can be assumed to be adult students and thus more than likely college students.
Even if we assume that the offer is made available to younger students, my point still is valid: How many campuses do not have 3g coverage in the USA? The few that are remote enough to not have coverage are simply not part of the target market.
Where this would likely fail is where building design interferes and provides poor signal quality. If this type of device/service becomes popular, repeaters can be installed as needed to increase signal penetration.
I'm not a fan of cloud based services, but at a $20 per month price point including connection I think Google can count on having as many test subjects as they desire.
Tax people a flat rate per year based on their weight (as that's the true determining factor in how much damage they do to the environment).
So they guy with the show truck that drives 50 miles per year gets to pay more than the guy with the Prius that drives 25k miles per year? That sounds fair.
Forget fair. We need $1000 from those two to pay for the roads that they both drive on? Tax em each $500 and be done with it. The additional overhead required by a proportional system is simply not worth it.
Or tax them based upon the amount of gas they use, since that actually determines the damage to the environment. Couldn't you just increase that if your goal is to raise revenue through taxes?
The point of the new proposal is that hybrid vehicles use less gas per mile driven, and thus tax revenue per mile driven is going down, and will continue to drop as people purchase more and more fuel efficient vehicles. The cost of maintaining the roadways does not go down because you drive a fuel efficient vehicle, but the revenue to pay for that roadway does.
I object to any tax which requires further invasion of my privacy. If more tax revenue is actually necessary to pay for the roadways, tack it onto the vehicle registration fees. It isn't "fair" as it does not tax proportionate to usage, but it doesn't require a GPS recorder shoved up my ass.
So yet again the same lesson: _never_ trust a computer on which you have not installed the OS yourself, and kept 100% secure from malware.
It just boggles my mind seeing people use these computers from big box stores loaded up with crapware, without having the first idea what all that shit does. Why would you use a computer like that? It's idiotic. This case is an even worse example: you trusted the OS that was there, which came complete with spyware.
You are a computer geek. It is obvious to YOU, not so obvious to the general public (aka Joe Sixpack).
Do you use a (modern) car? How about a cellphone? Do you know what all of it's components do? Do you know what data is being recorded about your daily habits? Do you know who has access to that data? Or do you just trust the engineers who designed it and the technician who maintains it for you?
Most people make a compromise between functionality and control. We don't know how to make or do everything, so we trust others to do it for us. Sometimes they fuck us. Sometimes we don't like getting fucked by anyone besides Ms Wallace... so we call in a couple of hard hitting attorneys and get medieval on their asses. (yes, that's a bad Pulp Fiction reference...)
I could probably name five or six just based on newspaper articles in my small city in the past few months. And that's only the kiddie porn guys worthy of press attention.
I tried leaving my wifi open for awhile, but other people using it would slow my connection down...
Many modern routers support a "guest connection" with a separate SSID and allow limiting the bandwidth available to the guest(s). You can offer an open wifi connection without compromising your bandwidth beyond what you are comfortable with.
I actually R'd the F'ing A you linked... and it doesn't support your statement.
I am not an apple fan by any means, but the iPad is a good tool for students. It's not a drop-in replacement for books and paper -or even laptops, but it is a very useful tool in teaching/learning. Other than it being an Apple product, my biggest issue with it is the price -which is largely a function of it being an Apple product...
Vista sucked. They learned a lot from it, and built something MUCH better (Win 7). MS doesn't want to waste the dev time to make their new browser work correctly with Vista -so they decided not to.
I know slashdot tends to be a little Luddite-ish when it comes to ebooks/ereaders for some reason, but as an avid reader I couldn't be more happy.
They are FAR more comfortable to read with than a real book as they are light and small, and don't have a fat side depending how far into the book you are. Nothing more annoying than starting a book and wanting to lay on your left side to read it. You also never have the problem of dry fingers having trouble getting a grip on the page, or accidentally grabbing 2 pages by accident.
I honestly have not yet found an e-reader that is comfortable to hold while reading. I have tried several, but never purchased one. Perhaps it becomes more comfortable once you "get used to it" after a few days.
That is the only thing holding me back. No submerged Luddite desires, just comfort.
I have an enormous library of books, mostly fiction. You are correct. I only occasionally reread them -usually when a new book in a long series lands in my hands and I can't recall the plot of the previous books. I do, however, lend/give them to friends far more often.
Oh yeah, just set up a table with the various tax rates for each of the 8000 tax zones in the US. Oh, and don't forget the rules differ from zone to zone as to what items are taxed and at what rates. Oh, and there is no single schedule for changes and updates -different locales update their tax rules at different times of the year.
Good luck keeping all of that straight without having to hire additional staff -which can kill a small business.
If its a good wheel, there is no need to reinvent it -just buy the existing one. If its a good concept, but a bad implementation, build a better one...
I don't understand why the government even needs the passwords. The point of the password is only to authenticate the user, the company in charge of the website surely has access to any data belonging to the user? I doubt if there's many passwords that reveal any useful information about a person!
People tend to reuse passwords. If I get your password on one site, odds are that one of the other sites you access uses the same password... so I can access your account there as well.
e.g. Your Amazon.fr password happens to be the same as your Google password... Amazon.fr (being a french company) hands over to the french authorities your account name and password. You used your Gmail account when you signed up with Amazon.fr, so Amazon.fr also has your Google userID in their files. The french authorities log into your Gmail account and have access to everything there, even if Google (not being a french company) refuses to hand over access on demand.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't restricting interstate commerce - it's just requiring companies that sell to states they are not located in to collect the sales/use tax for those states. It's adding requirements to collect taxes but not saying they can't sell to other states. If they don't collect the taxes the States will have to go after the companies and not the Federal government.
First, taxation is in fact a restriction of trade. Indeed it is one of the primary restrictions of trade exercised by governments.
Second, requiring a company to collect taxes in a state in which it has no physical presence could be construed as taxation without representation, an issue which historically speaking is unpopular in the USA - I think we fought a big war over it at one time... Which is why the interstate commerce clause exists in the first place. According to the Supreme Court (Gonzales v. Raich, 2005) "...For the first century of our history, the primary use of the [Interstate Commerce] Clause was to preclude the kind of discriminatory state legislation that had once been permissible."
There's a reason it's basically a shell company, and doesn't own any of the rights...
Piercing the Corporate Veil
A court may pierce through the veil of liability protection if the corporation does not follow proper corporate formalities, if it is undercapitalized, or if it can be shown that it is a sham that was set up to defraud.
Remember - TSA is there to act as a deterrant as well.
Mission accomplished. I have been deterred from flying.
Sure until all those web apps and cloud services go over that limit in a couple of days and Verizon starts charging you a few bucks per MB after.
100MB in a couple days? Possible, but unlikely. 100MB in a month? Most users would be within the limit. Verizon screwing us with overage charges? Every chance they get..
Secondly, how does that puny 3G justify charging 200+ dollars more than the thing is worth? You can get a more capable netbook and a 3G dongle for less than the 3G version.
And pay how much per month for the 3G data service?
Yes, I already read that in the summary. How does that justify charging someone 200 dollars more than the thing is actually worth?
$200 for 24 months of 3G data service is a very good price -at least currently in the USA.
This Freedom of Information Act is defective in my opinion because the burden of proof for harm [if any] is on the entity from which information is sought but not the party seeking the information.
In fact, the party that seeks information does not even have to say why or what they are going to use the information for. Absurd, isn't it?
Not at all. All government information is public information, unless there is a reason for it not to be. I don't need to say why I want public information, because it is public information. When asked, the government must say why it is withholding the information.
That is pretty simple.
Per Obama's original statement, the photos are not being released because the administration felt that they could be used to incite acts of revenge (terrorism) against the USA.
Sounds like a simple: "Request denied for national security reasons" answer is to be expected.
You are over-thinking it. It is simple.
Anyone can be anonymous, but not everyone is Anonymous. An action performed by a member of Anonymous, is not the same as an action by Anonymous. Think of it as a gestalt -it is not, until at some undefined point, it is.
There are leaders within Anonymous. Just because they are not part of a hierarchy does not mean they do not exist. No one appointed them, no one elected them, but others followed them. Leading is not the same as ruling.
How many college campuses do you know of in the USA without 3G coverage?
This offer is limited to students...
I see no place where they say "college students". I have a kid in high school who'd love one.
Minors cannot enter into contracts in the USA, so the targeted students can be assumed to be adult students and thus more than likely college students.
Even if we assume that the offer is made available to younger students, my point still is valid: How many campuses do not have 3g coverage in the USA? The few that are remote enough to not have coverage are simply not part of the target market.
Where this would likely fail is where building design interferes and provides poor signal quality. If this type of device/service becomes popular, repeaters can be installed as needed to increase signal penetration.
I'm not a fan of cloud based services, but at a $20 per month price point including connection I think Google can count on having as many test subjects as they desire.
who has the money to waste on 3G. on campus wifi is free.
... 3g service is included in the $20 /month rental.
How many college campuses do you know of in the USA without 3G coverage?
This offer is limited to students...
Tax people a flat rate per year based on their weight (as that's the true determining factor in how much damage they do to the environment).
So they guy with the show truck that drives 50 miles per year gets to pay more than the guy with the Prius that drives 25k miles per year? That sounds fair.
Forget fair. We need $1000 from those two to pay for the roads that they both drive on? Tax em each $500 and be done with it. The additional overhead required by a proportional system is simply not worth it.
Or tax them based upon the amount of gas they use, since that actually determines the damage to the environment. Couldn't you just increase that if your goal is to raise revenue through taxes?
The point of the new proposal is that hybrid vehicles use less gas per mile driven, and thus tax revenue per mile driven is going down, and will continue to drop as people purchase more and more fuel efficient vehicles. The cost of maintaining the roadways does not go down because you drive a fuel efficient vehicle, but the revenue to pay for that roadway does.
I object to any tax which requires further invasion of my privacy. If more tax revenue is actually necessary to pay for the roadways, tack it onto the vehicle registration fees. It isn't "fair" as it does not tax proportionate to usage, but it doesn't require a GPS recorder shoved up my ass.
So yet again the same lesson: _never_ trust a computer on which you have not installed the OS yourself, and kept 100% secure from malware.
It just boggles my mind seeing people use these computers from big box stores loaded up with crapware, without having the first idea what all that shit does. Why would you use a computer like that? It's idiotic. This case is an even worse example: you trusted the OS that was there, which came complete with spyware.
You are a computer geek. It is obvious to YOU, not so obvious to the general public (aka Joe Sixpack).
Do you use a (modern) car? How about a cellphone? Do you know what all of it's components do? Do you know what data is being recorded about your daily habits? Do you know who has access to that data? Or do you just trust the engineers who designed it and the technician who maintains it for you?
Most people make a compromise between functionality and control. We don't know how to make or do everything, so we trust others to do it for us. Sometimes they fuck us. Sometimes we don't like getting fucked by anyone besides Ms Wallace... so we call in a couple of hard hitting attorneys and get medieval on their asses. (yes, that's a bad Pulp Fiction reference...)
I could probably name five or six just based on newspaper articles in my small city in the past few months. And that's only the kiddie porn guys worthy of press attention.
Prove it. Give us the links.
I tried leaving my wifi open for awhile, but other people using it would slow my connection down...
Many modern routers support a "guest connection" with a separate SSID and allow limiting the bandwidth available to the guest(s). You can offer an open wifi connection without compromising your bandwidth beyond what you are comfortable with.
I actually R'd the F'ing A you linked... and it doesn't support your statement.
I am not an apple fan by any means, but the iPad is a good tool for students. It's not a drop-in replacement for books and paper -or even laptops, but it is a very useful tool in teaching/learning. Other than it being an Apple product, my biggest issue with it is the price -which is largely a function of it being an Apple product...
I take it you have never written bad code?
Vista sucked. They learned a lot from it, and built something MUCH better (Win 7). MS doesn't want to waste the dev time to make their new browser work correctly with Vista -so they decided not to.
Gert over it, and move on.
I know slashdot tends to be a little Luddite-ish when it comes to ebooks/ereaders for some reason, but as an avid reader I couldn't be more happy.
They are FAR more comfortable to read with than a real book as they are light and small, and don't have a fat side depending how far into the book you are. Nothing more annoying than starting a book and wanting to lay on your left side to read it. You also never have the problem of dry fingers having trouble getting a grip on the page, or accidentally grabbing 2 pages by accident.
I honestly have not yet found an e-reader that is comfortable to hold while reading. I have tried several, but never purchased one. Perhaps it becomes more comfortable once you "get used to it" after a few days.
That is the only thing holding me back. No submerged Luddite desires, just comfort.
I have an enormous library of books, mostly fiction. You are correct. I only occasionally reread them -usually when a new book in a long series lands in my hands and I can't recall the plot of the previous books. I do, however, lend/give them to friends far more often.
It would of course be branded the DeathStar.
I'd buy it, if it were.
Oh yeah, just set up a table with the various tax rates for each of the 8000 tax zones in the US. Oh, and don't forget the rules differ from zone to zone as to what items are taxed and at what rates. Oh, and there is no single schedule for changes and updates -different locales update their tax rules at different times of the year.
Good luck keeping all of that straight without having to hire additional staff -which can kill a small business.
If its a good wheel, there is no need to reinvent it -just buy the existing one. If its a good concept, but a bad implementation, build a better one...
I don't understand why the government even needs the passwords. The point of the password is only to authenticate the user, the company in charge of the website surely has access to any data belonging to the user? I doubt if there's many passwords that reveal any useful information about a person!
People tend to reuse passwords. If I get your password on one site, odds are that one of the other sites you access uses the same password... so I can access your account there as well.
e.g. Your Amazon.fr password happens to be the same as your Google password... Amazon.fr (being a french company) hands over to the french authorities your account name and password. You used your Gmail account when you signed up with Amazon.fr, so Amazon.fr also has your Google userID in their files. The french authorities log into your Gmail account and have access to everything there, even if Google (not being a french company) refuses to hand over access on demand.
If you spend an hour commuting each way, that's 2 hours less daycare you have to pay for if you work the same hours.
Daycare is not hourly... unless you are late picking them up (penalty fees). We even had to pay for the weeks we were gone on vacation.