Ok, so that is a few examples of people whose rights were violated. Yes, that is wrong, and shouldn't have happened. HOWEVER, what you're missing here is that the passage of Prop 8 violated the rights of tens if not hundreds of thousands of gay Californians. The fourteenth amendment of the constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. Gay men and women in California do NOT have equal protection under the law. It is very wrong at a fundamental level when one group of people can vote away the rights of another group of people. That is exactly what they're trying to do in Washington. It is a grave injustice, and I support anything short of violence (or threats of) and property damage against the people who are trying to pass this law.
I'm a straight, married, father of two children who I do not want to grow up in a world where some people are "more equal than others."
As a Windows sysadmin I have 4 19" LCDs and could definitely use two more. I do maximize some applications, the ones that lend themselves to it anyway. The two screens I stare at the most have Chrome maximized on one (with anywhere from 2 to 12 tabs going), and Outlook on the other. Chrome because many of our management tools are web-based, and Outlook because a large portion of my tasks come to me via email.
The other two screens don't typically have maximized windows, they are a smattering of system monitoring tools, customer databases, provisioning tools, etc. which I neatly arrange so I can quickly get to any of them without having to go to my taskbar (which is auto-hidden, btw.)
Same with my Verizon phone. When I dial my voicemail I get "Please enter your password followed by the pound sign" which I don't have to listen to because I can just key in my password before the prompt completes. Then I get: "You have x new messages and x saved messages. First new message" and then the message starts playing. I'm not sure what the big deal is. I don't even have to listen to the whole message before deleting it if I don't want, just press 7 while its playing and *poof* message deleted.
Come to think of it, I'm not even sure that calls to my voicemail are billed to begin with. I never come anywhere near my monthly allotment of minutes on the minimum "Family Share" plan because over 90% of my calls are to my wife's Verizon phone which I don't pay for anyway, so I don't particularly care.
Where I live, the best coverage is provided by AT&T and VZW. I dropped AT&T after years with them because their customer service is atrocious. They will never get any of my money again if I can help it.
My phone died with 5 months left on my contract. I went to the AT&T store to try to get a new phone. This was during the ATT -> Cingular merger. They couldn't sell me an "AT&T" phone because there were no AT&T plans available, and I couldn't replace the phone on my existing plan. OK, how about a "Cingular" phone then? "We can do that, but you would have to pay the early termination penalty on your AT&T plan." I said piss off and went home to call AT&T customer service directly, and proceeded to get the same story.
I don't understand why companies feel the need to shoot themselves in the foot like this. I was more than willing to pay for a new phone and sign a new contract, but because they were pricks, I switched companies and will never deal with them again. Oh well, just traded one greedy corporation for another, but at least the new one hasn't tried to screw me over... yet
I switched my DNS to OpenDNS because Comcast's DNS servers were unreliable for me. I am definitely hitting OpenDNS because if I typo a domain I'm redirected to the OpenDNS guide page. I'm a Northern California Comcast user.
The statistics do say that. However I look at it from a more practical point of view: if the worst does happen, which am I more likely to survive: a 65MPH collision with airbags and all the other safety features of my car, or a fall from 35k feet?
I'll take my chances on the ground.
At least I have some measure of control over my own situation. I know that I can't control the other people driving, but at least I know that I don't drive drunk, or when I'm too exhausted to keep my eyes open. How am I to know that the pilot of my plane didn't down a case of red bull instead of sleeping during the FAA mandated time off after his last flight from halfway around the world?
Sales tax is the responsibility of the seller of the goods (who passes it on to you as a line item on your receipt) so it is in their best interest to charge the sales taxes to you in compliance with the tax laws of the states where they have a "presence" so that they don't get huge penalties. I'm actually surprised here that Apple, being based in California, is not charging sales tax to CA customers. All of my ITMS purchases have a "tax" line, but the amount is zero on all of the receipts. While I'm not going to complain about paying fewer taxes, I'd be interested to know how Apple can get away with this and not lose their CA sellers permit.
Use tax is the responsibility of the purchaser/user of the goods in question. AFAIK all states with sales tax have corresponding use tax for items imported from out of state (with a credit for sales taxes paid in the other state.) Technically, they can get you not only for tax evasion, but for perjury as well, if you submit your tax return and do not claim the appropriate use tax.
The states aren't going to try to identify individual downloaders to determine who's skipping out on their use taxes, which would be an exercise in futility. If anything they're going to approach the medium to large size sellers and kindly ask for sales records for their state. Many of the stores will comply, not wanting even a hint of legal trouble.
I'm glad this burden was placed on the buyer, not the seller actually. Can you imagine the burden that would be placed on the small shops that would have to maintain tax records for every state they do business in instead of just their own? The overhead would be such that you'd see most of the small shops forced out of business.
Except that stores don't charge you sales tax when you buy a gift card. They charge sales tax on the items when someone uses that gift card to make a purchase. The accounting would get really insane if they charged the sales tax when you bought the card.
If you bought a gift card in CA last December, you would've paid a minimum of 7.25% depending on what county/city you were in. Currently, the minimum tax rate in CA is 8.25%. Additionally, if you bought the card in Sacramento at 7.75%, and took the card to a store in San Francisco today, the current tax rate there is 9.5%. Sacramento is glad to get their.5% on the purchase of the card, the state they didn't get their new 1%, and SF is pissed because they didn't get their 1.25%
Actually, Microsoft helped me out on this one. Once the boss got a new computer with Office 2007 on it, and got tired of down-saving his files so that all of the other employees could open it on the single license of Office 2000 that was on the other 8 PCs in the office, I was able to get most of our software legitimately licensed. There were still a few apps which we were using that I couldn't locate any license for, and were on multiple computers. I made it clear to my boss that we were in violation of the license agreements to CMA, but he insisted the software be installed anyway. I should have got it in writing, but I didn't. Since I'm not there anymore, I'm not too worried about it.
I was able to deploy some OSS to get around a few applications: Deployed a Linux server with cvs and RequestTracker to replace some software we only had single licenses for that were being used on multiple systems. Also installed GIMP on several systems that were using a pirated copy of Photoshop 5.0.
I think the prospect of spending eight hours of your time being lectured would be a bigger deterrent than a sub $100 fine.
I don't know about Mississippi, but in California it's a $351 fine, not to mention the potential increase in your insurance premiums. The financial aspect is definitely a deterrent. I know that I have, on occasion, not come to a complete stop before a right-turn on red, but at the intersections where there are cameras I definitely do. I've seen the same behavior in others as well. $351 is a lot of cash, and so is paying an additional $10-20 a month for insurance over the next few years because of that stupid ticket.
What I don't understand is the "invasion of privacy" claim. Since when do you have any expectation of privacy when you're on a public street?
Slashdot Mirror
but what bone is the Google Bone connected to?
Ok, so that is a few examples of people whose rights were violated. Yes, that is wrong, and shouldn't have happened. HOWEVER, what you're missing here is that the passage of Prop 8 violated the rights of tens if not hundreds of thousands of gay Californians. The fourteenth amendment of the constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. Gay men and women in California do NOT have equal protection under the law. It is very wrong at a fundamental level when one group of people can vote away the rights of another group of people. That is exactly what they're trying to do in Washington. It is a grave injustice, and I support anything short of violence (or threats of) and property damage against the people who are trying to pass this law.
I'm a straight, married, father of two children who I do not want to grow up in a world where some people are "more equal than others."
Thank the Acronymic Legislation Labeling act of 2001 for that.
sorry, it's too late in the day for me to come up with a better acronym.
As a Windows sysadmin I have 4 19" LCDs and could definitely use two more. I do maximize some applications, the ones that lend themselves to it anyway. The two screens I stare at the most have Chrome maximized on one (with anywhere from 2 to 12 tabs going), and Outlook on the other. Chrome because many of our management tools are web-based, and Outlook because a large portion of my tasks come to me via email.
The other two screens don't typically have maximized windows, they are a smattering of system monitoring tools, customer databases, provisioning tools, etc. which I neatly arrange so I can quickly get to any of them without having to go to my taskbar (which is auto-hidden, btw.)
Same with my Verizon phone. When I dial my voicemail I get "Please enter your password followed by the pound sign" which I don't have to listen to because I can just key in my password before the prompt completes. Then I get: "You have x new messages and x saved messages. First new message" and then the message starts playing. I'm not sure what the big deal is. I don't even have to listen to the whole message before deleting it if I don't want, just press 7 while its playing and *poof* message deleted.
Come to think of it, I'm not even sure that calls to my voicemail are billed to begin with. I never come anywhere near my monthly allotment of minutes on the minimum "Family Share" plan because over 90% of my calls are to my wife's Verizon phone which I don't pay for anyway, so I don't particularly care.
What's you're point? Their not going to catch every error. This is a tech bored, abuse of the language is expected.
;)
"Sea Salt, obtained by the evaporation of seawater, is used in cooking and cosmetics."
Where I live, the best coverage is provided by AT&T and VZW. I dropped AT&T after years with them because their customer service is atrocious. They will never get any of my money again if I can help it.
My phone died with 5 months left on my contract. I went to the AT&T store to try to get a new phone. This was during the ATT -> Cingular merger. They couldn't sell me an "AT&T" phone because there were no AT&T plans available, and I couldn't replace the phone on my existing plan. OK, how about a "Cingular" phone then? "We can do that, but you would have to pay the early termination penalty on your AT&T plan." I said piss off and went home to call AT&T customer service directly, and proceeded to get the same story.
I don't understand why companies feel the need to shoot themselves in the foot like this. I was more than willing to pay for a new phone and sign a new contract, but because they were pricks, I switched companies and will never deal with them again. Oh well, just traded one greedy corporation for another, but at least the new one hasn't tried to screw me over... yet
I switched my DNS to OpenDNS because Comcast's DNS servers were unreliable for me. I am definitely hitting OpenDNS because if I typo a domain I'm redirected to the OpenDNS guide page. I'm a Northern California Comcast user.
The statistics do say that. However I look at it from a more practical point of view: if the worst does happen, which am I more likely to survive: a 65MPH collision with airbags and all the other safety features of my car, or a fall from 35k feet?
I'll take my chances on the ground.
At least I have some measure of control over my own situation. I know that I can't control the other people driving, but at least I know that I don't drive drunk, or when I'm too exhausted to keep my eyes open. How am I to know that the pilot of my plane didn't down a case of red bull instead of sleeping during the FAA mandated time off after his last flight from halfway around the world?
Sales tax is the responsibility of the seller of the goods (who passes it on to you as a line item on your receipt) so it is in their best interest to charge the sales taxes to you in compliance with the tax laws of the states where they have a "presence" so that they don't get huge penalties. I'm actually surprised here that Apple, being based in California, is not charging sales tax to CA customers. All of my ITMS purchases have a "tax" line, but the amount is zero on all of the receipts. While I'm not going to complain about paying fewer taxes, I'd be interested to know how Apple can get away with this and not lose their CA sellers permit.
Use tax is the responsibility of the purchaser/user of the goods in question. AFAIK all states with sales tax have corresponding use tax for items imported from out of state (with a credit for sales taxes paid in the other state.) Technically, they can get you not only for tax evasion, but for perjury as well, if you submit your tax return and do not claim the appropriate use tax.
The states aren't going to try to identify individual downloaders to determine who's skipping out on their use taxes, which would be an exercise in futility. If anything they're going to approach the medium to large size sellers and kindly ask for sales records for their state. Many of the stores will comply, not wanting even a hint of legal trouble.
I'm glad this burden was placed on the buyer, not the seller actually. Can you imagine the burden that would be placed on the small shops that would have to maintain tax records for every state they do business in instead of just their own? The overhead would be such that you'd see most of the small shops forced out of business.
Except that stores don't charge you sales tax when you buy a gift card. They charge sales tax on the items when someone uses that gift card to make a purchase. The accounting would get really insane if they charged the sales tax when you bought the card.
If you bought a gift card in CA last December, you would've paid a minimum of 7.25% depending on what county/city you were in. Currently, the minimum tax rate in CA is 8.25%. Additionally, if you bought the card in Sacramento at 7.75%, and took the card to a store in San Francisco today, the current tax rate there is 9.5%. Sacramento is glad to get their .5% on the purchase of the card, the state they didn't get their new 1%, and SF is pissed because they didn't get their 1.25%
Actually, Microsoft helped me out on this one. Once the boss got a new computer with Office 2007 on it, and got tired of down-saving his files so that all of the other employees could open it on the single license of Office 2000 that was on the other 8 PCs in the office, I was able to get most of our software legitimately licensed. There were still a few apps which we were using that I couldn't locate any license for, and were on multiple computers. I made it clear to my boss that we were in violation of the license agreements to CMA, but he insisted the software be installed anyway. I should have got it in writing, but I didn't. Since I'm not there anymore, I'm not too worried about it.
I was able to deploy some OSS to get around a few applications: Deployed a Linux server with cvs and RequestTracker to replace some software we only had single licenses for that were being used on multiple systems. Also installed GIMP on several systems that were using a pirated copy of Photoshop 5.0.
I think the prospect of spending eight hours of your time being lectured would be a bigger deterrent than a sub $100 fine.
I don't know about Mississippi, but in California it's a $351 fine, not to mention the potential increase in your insurance premiums. The financial aspect is definitely a deterrent. I know that I have, on occasion, not come to a complete stop before a right-turn on red, but at the intersections where there are cameras I definitely do. I've seen the same behavior in others as well. $351 is a lot of cash, and so is paying an additional $10-20 a month for insurance over the next few years because of that stupid ticket. What I don't understand is the "invasion of privacy" claim. Since when do you have any expectation of privacy when you're on a public street?
The point is you can reach your monthly download cap up to 333 times faster!