I went to Seybold SF on Wednesday. Missed the keynote by Steve Jobs, but saw the enormous Apple presence. They showed the G4 w/ the Cinema Display, and I'll tell you right now this is the best I've seen in terms of clarity and color. They had three of them up on these revolving podiums, so I walked around in cirles as different images faded in and out. The color and clarity were literally flawless.
I also played with the G4 + Cinema hands on. Apple put something like 25 of them out for people to experience, but, like the frog in the headlights, I couldn't figure out what tests to run on it... I ran Adobe's InDesign (new product), which was screamingly fast. Interesting note: the letterbox format could be very cool for developing video, multimedia or web-based images. The extra space (out of the 3x4 rectangle) is the perfect place to stash your palettes.
Oh, off topic really, but they also had MacOS X Server running on a G4. They netbooted a dozen iMacs or so and showed the performance meter, which showed little effect. The OS felt fast even though the "great unwashed" were busy playing with all of the iMacs, as opposed to NT which feels sluggish when the print spooler is active... I told the Apple rep that I thought the idea of having the MacOS feel and a bash window was the sexiest part about the OS. He thought I was on crack...
First off, a US-directed sales tax on Internet-distributed goods is great if you're interested in big issues like claims of ownership, national sovereignty and imperialism. Sorry to be political, but politics are the root of all taxes. It's not so great if you're interested in growing markets and creating new channels for access to goods.
European 'net access is a good example of how taxes and questions like this can slow every initiative down to a crawl. Most of my friends in that area don't use the Internet much at all because of the high charges for phone use. And some countries (this may have changed) were taxing the Internet connection fees as "other than local" calls, making them subject to different tax structures and ultimately higher rates. While it's obviously tihsllub to say that we should all be tax free, there needs to be a smarter concession than what's being offered by Sen. Hollings.
A previous commenter noted that the Canadian purchasor should not (and, ultimately, will not) be charged a sales tax on their purchase of goods from an originating US seller. If the tax structure is not smart enough, then the next big Internet thing will be the offshore intermediary. It's pretty easy to write an app that automates this whole process. Drop it on Jamaica and avoid all taxes. Better yet, get a name like WalMart behind it and see how "brand equity" overcomes what would normally be politically problematic. It's pretty easy to see how this process could (and, I argue, WILL) develop. So now its up to our resident regulatory brain surgeons to redefine taxes. A national sales tax? That's NEVER worked. But its an easy model for some country bumpkin from South Carolina to say "hey, um, let's do this!!" At a local level, sales taxes are great. From a state level, they're difficult to manage but still effective. At a national level (and even international)?? Fuggedaboudit.
So, what's a country to do? Catalog and Internet sales are booming (well, compared to the GDP of a small African country, but it makes good headlines!). You could tax the sellers, but that makes producers move off-shore. You could tax the buyers, but that only works until an international billing address is found. I think, instead, we need a new model (sorry, I haven't thought it through yet...no real headlines here, no matter what my Econ degree says).
Oh, wait. This is the big flame opportunity: to tell me to my face that you're going to tax every Internet purchase and use this to fund teaching is the strongest sign of disrepect I can think of. They're full of shit and they know it, and this pisses me off terribly. Any initiative at your national, state or local level that's done with the intent of "providing funds for teachers" is lying to you (except for bonds...). Vote against it. Instead, look to vote in legislators who will allocate their budgets towards education. That's the only "tried and true" method of increasing funds. BTW, I'm including initiatives like STATE LOTTERIES in this list of worthless stuff. More money has gone to the administrations for the California State Lottery and the California Board of Education than to any of California's schools.
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I also played with the G4 + Cinema hands on. Apple put something like 25 of them out for people to experience, but, like the frog in the headlights, I couldn't figure out what tests to run on it... I ran Adobe's InDesign (new product), which was screamingly fast. Interesting note: the letterbox format could be very cool for developing video, multimedia or web-based images. The extra space (out of the 3x4 rectangle) is the perfect place to stash your palettes.
Oh, off topic really, but they also had MacOS X Server running on a G4. They netbooted a dozen iMacs or so and showed the performance meter, which showed little effect. The OS felt fast even though the "great unwashed" were busy playing with all of the iMacs, as opposed to NT which feels sluggish when the print spooler is active... I told the Apple rep that I thought the idea of having the MacOS feel and a bash window was the sexiest part about the OS. He thought I was on crack...
While we're at it, are there any good content management servers for Linux yet? I don't think Vignette runs on Linux yet, but the competition might...
First off, a US-directed sales tax on Internet-distributed goods is great if you're interested in big issues like claims of ownership, national sovereignty and imperialism. Sorry to be political, but politics are the root of all taxes.
It's not so great if you're interested in growing markets and creating new channels for access to goods.
European 'net access is a good example of how taxes and questions like this can slow every initiative down to a crawl. Most of my friends in that area don't use the Internet much at all because of the high charges for phone use. And some countries (this may have changed) were taxing the Internet connection fees as "other than local" calls, making them subject to different tax structures and ultimately higher rates. While it's obviously tihsllub to say that we should all be tax free, there needs to be a smarter concession than what's being offered by Sen. Hollings.
A previous commenter noted that the Canadian purchasor should not (and, ultimately, will not) be charged a sales tax on their purchase of goods from an originating US seller. If the tax structure is not smart enough, then the next big Internet thing will be the offshore intermediary. It's pretty easy to write an app that automates this whole process. Drop it on Jamaica and avoid all taxes. Better yet, get a name like WalMart behind it and see how "brand equity" overcomes what would normally be politically problematic. It's pretty easy to see how this process could (and, I argue, WILL) develop. So now its up to our resident regulatory brain surgeons to redefine taxes. A national sales tax? That's NEVER worked. But its an easy model for some country bumpkin from South Carolina to say "hey, um, let's do this!!" At a local level, sales taxes are great. From a state level, they're difficult to manage but still effective. At a national level (and even international)?? Fuggedaboudit.
So, what's a country to do? Catalog and Internet sales are booming (well, compared to the GDP of a small African country, but it makes good headlines!). You could tax the sellers, but that makes producers move off-shore. You could tax the buyers, but that only works until an international billing address is found. I think, instead, we need a new model (sorry, I haven't thought it through yet...no real headlines here, no matter what my Econ degree says).
Oh, wait. This is the big flame opportunity: to tell me to my face that you're going to tax every Internet purchase and use this to fund teaching is the strongest sign of disrepect I can think of. They're full of shit and they know it, and this pisses me off terribly. Any initiative at your national, state or local level that's done with the intent of "providing funds for teachers" is lying to you (except for bonds...). Vote against it. Instead, look to vote in legislators who will allocate their budgets towards education. That's the only "tried and true" method of increasing funds. BTW, I'm including initiatives like STATE LOTTERIES in this list of worthless stuff. More money has gone to the administrations for the California State Lottery and the California Board of Education than to any of California's schools.
Moderate Democrat, Berkely Alum. Troubled youth.