You're right, state tax is an example which isn't enforced... right now... but they can arbitrarily arrest anyone for supposed tax evasion when they would want to. Unenforced laws become a problem for you when you become a problem for them.
But other taxes are enforced, and more for the small guys. When you personally or a small company tries to evade tax by moving income overseas the IRS will hunt you down. Only large companies can pull shit like that. Remember the recent article about top US companies. A large portion of them pay less tax than any of us, some even 0%. How much tax does Amazon pay? You can calculate it yourself here. Tell me, is it more than you pay in taxes? And is Amazon an underdog good guy here fighting for our rights? Of course not!
The use tax is just a stupid trick to shift the burden of collecting sales tax to the consumer. Amazon is exploiting the fact that there is different legislation per state. And to the regular Joe it is just a cheaper offering from Amazon, most won't realize they still need to pay taxes, so by default commit the crime of not paying. It's a broken system.
The example of the Cooler Master 1200W supply is a good one, let me compare this with Europe (NL specifically)
The cheapest two offerings of this PSU are:
- 217 euro in a regular store nearby, but the same on their website with free shipping
- 205 euro in a webshop with 5 euro shipping (so 210 total)
The price saving of the webshop is only a little in this case (7 euro), but that is especially because the store is already fairly competitive (the high end for the prices for this PSU are above 250 euros), sometimes the difference can be more, but the webshops are always cheaper. But because the sales tax is calculated equally everywhere (19%) they can always compete fairly. The shop that has the PSU both in the webshop and the store makes a fixed markup and pays either the shipping or the rent and personnel from that markup. You can be damn sure the profit will be more when you order that product on the site.
The price without sales tax is only 182 euro, and that is listed next to the price everywhere. We might have a high sales tax but it's fair and equal for both on- and offline shops. Some other countries in the EU have a lower sales tax (15% instead of 19%) but when I order there I just pay that tax and i'm good. But there are no countries without sales tax so the system works here.
Webshops from the US don't ask sales tax, and I've been burned by that once. I've ordered a product cheaper from a US webshop, and when it arrived here I got a bill from customs with it to pay the sales tax, because when a product is shipped without tax payed in the country of origin it will get taxed here because every product needs to be taxed once in the EU... With the tax it would have been easier to just buy here, but I didn't know back then that the US makes a difference in ordering from a store and ordering online.
There is probably more extra markup being made than is being passed to the consumer as savings... What better way to make more money than slightly lovering the price and pocketing the rest... extra profit per sale and more sales because you are slightly cheaper than competitors.
I guess the states confuse things a little... There are a lot of strange legacy laws that make things more complicated in the US. But what happens with interstate commerce also happens with international commerce on a larger scale.
It illustrates my point that a company like Amazon is not sticking out for it's customers but only trying to maximize profit and minimize tax to the point that they don't pay any taxes at all... Which is not so far out when you see the strange tax evading schemes some companies employ to only have to pay a tax as low as single digit percentages.
I understand that as a consumer you like to pay a little less, but in the big picture this is not an advantage for the consumer but about companies earning a little more over your back...
That's a strange contradiction. Change a little and get a patent that even covers implementations that are wildly different... Wouldn't they also be able to pull the same trick and change something trivial to have their own patent?
I agree that patents have become ridiculous, but this exploit seems to be able to be used by anyone, not just the patent trolls.
Note to self: Tandberg (tm) not related to Oracle (tm)... They are part of the Cisco (tm) network imperium and although they deal in telepresence they are not supernatural in any way.
It would seem the Oracle lost it's touch... It's not very prescient to patent something after someone else published it for the world to see.
It's supposed to be *before* otherwise it's just called copying, cheating or stealing instead of prophetic, prediction or precognition.
The shipping cost are negligible compared to the rent of a store on a prime location. This has given online retailers an advantage from the first day an online store opened it's doors, so to speak... This saves them so much cost compared to the brick and mortar retailers that they can sell products for a lower price and deliver it to you in one day for free and still make more money than retailers do. The advantage is and has always been with the online retailers and the only way brick and mortar stores can compete is with service, and playing on peoples feelings because most people still prefer to be able to talk to someone in person, ask questions and feel the product they are buying (and are willing to pay a little extra for that). Both on- and offline stores have advantages, nothing special about that.
The sales tax is a whole different matter, it does create an unfair advantage because Amazon just shifts responsibility for the tax to the end customer. It has to be payed anyway they just don't because, supposedly, it's a hassle to figure out to who... It's tax-evasion and the larger the company the more accepted it is... It has come to the point that the largest companies with the greatest income pay the least amount of tax (percentage that is), that is the underlying unfair advantage that will eventually result in monopolies.
Smaller companies pay more tax => Unfair advantage for the big companies => Monopolies in the long run => The bill for the customer (whether in money, service or quality)...
Amount of Justice = Amount of Guilt / Amount of Money
I'm fairly sure regular folk would do more time for killing someone's dog... But on the other hand, it surprises me that a rich son of a bitch like this would get any time at all.
They seem to think they are above the law, but can you blame them... time and time this is proven in the court of law.
Solve equation for all variables results in: Law != Justice
It started as a cold-war system that did what you describe along with some other sigint. But it has since evolved into a worldwide sigint system used by several allies.
The system known as ECHELON is an interception system which differs from other
intelligence systems in that it possesses two features which make it quite unusual:
The first such feature attributed to it is the capacity to carry out quasi-total surveillance. Satellite
receiver stations and spy satellites in particular are alleged to give it the ability to intercept any
telephone, fax, Internet or e-mail message sent by any individual and thus to inspect its contents.
The second unusual feature of ECHELON is said to be that the system operates worldwide on
the basis of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among several states (the UK, the
USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), giving it an added value in comparison to national
systems: the states participating in ECHELON (UKUSA states) can place their interception
systems at each otherís disposal, share the cost and make joint use of the resulting information.
This quote is from this publicly available EU report from 2001.
The document further explains how sigint has become easier since the internet age, since all information passes trough a small amount of central nodes. They also recommend encrypting all sensitive information (especially data that can be abused in industrial espionage, because apparently that has become the #1 use of the system since the cold war was over). Cited examples include the 6 billion deal with Saudi Arabia (that went to McDonnel-Douglas instead of Airbus after the NSA released intercepted communications indicating bribes) and the Wobben wind wheel design that the NSA stole and Enercon patented before the inventor could.
Echelon exists today, but it's role changed a lot since the cold war. It's good indicator of govenment priorities.
Thanks for explaining. The question remains how much of the traffic is also routed trough ECHELON...
When you mention California I suspect that the 30% number may have been from an article about the infamous Room 641A.
I have the best of both, I pay good money for a newspaper subscription which gives me an online newsfeed of articles (with e-mail notification of important news) as well as the weekend newspaper. While the quality of news may decline the few good original researched articles in the newspaper are still wort it for me.
Really 30%? Wow, that's more than I thought... Do you have a source for that traffic statistic? Not that I don't believe it, I just want to repeat bullshit without checking facts like you illustrated.:)
Excellent example of non-technical journalism which blindly copies something without understanding it or looking in to it. I can already imagine them reading something about some master key to decrypt communication, and the Chinese also have a master key, so they put 2 and 2 together and think that the Chinese can decrypt anything... Don't bother checking facts, FUD sells!
There are certain keywords to look for to know if the journalist knows what he/she is talking about (regardless of subject). Note: "there was speculation that... " == "we're making this shit up as we go along, but try to cover our weasel asses"
But seriously, this is what old media claims time and time again, but the quality of their reporting is just as abysmal. A few original well researched pieces aside (I treasure those) every news item is either some unchecked internet hearsay or a rehash or an ANP newsitem (which is by the way used just as well on the internet).
I think this isn't about a conviction, but rather casting doubt at the person. Wikileaks is already being associated as 'that rapist club' by people who only casually follow the news. Some see this latest news and ask 'is that creep still out raping those lovely women?'. You analyzed right, but doubt isn't a problem here, it's what they need most to discredit him and his organization.
If and only if it has the following two speeds:
- The minimum guaranteed reserved bandwidth I pay for (which is currently almost always unknown, and can change without notice)
- The maximum burst bandwidth I pay for (which is what they currently advertise)
Currently there are too many oversold connections with burst speeds of 20, 30, 60 or even 120 mbit being sold without any mention of the minimum reserved bandwidth, and those speeds become lower and lower when they oversubscribe the line. Consumers need to know the minimum as well as the maximum bandwidth they are paying for.
* smartass notice: yes I know you can't guarantee an actual minimum bandwidth in practice, but I'm talking about the uplink (i.e. 100 mbit uplink shared with 50 users = 2mbit guaranteed, in contrast to the maximum advertised speed which would probably be 20mbit in this setup).
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, Dead and Loving it! Finally time to do nothing *and* be sure when you're finished.
Freedom -1, People -1, Government -1, Corporations +10, Rich +$$$
How many people still have faith in the government? They are also losing because of this kind of shenanigans...
You're right, state tax is an example which isn't enforced... right now... but they can arbitrarily arrest anyone for supposed tax evasion when they would want to. Unenforced laws become a problem for you when you become a problem for them.
But other taxes are enforced, and more for the small guys. When you personally or a small company tries to evade tax by moving income overseas the IRS will hunt you down. Only large companies can pull shit like that. Remember the recent article about top US companies. A large portion of them pay less tax than any of us, some even 0%. How much tax does Amazon pay? You can calculate it yourself here. Tell me, is it more than you pay in taxes? And is Amazon an underdog good guy here fighting for our rights? Of course not!
The use tax is just a stupid trick to shift the burden of collecting sales tax to the consumer. Amazon is exploiting the fact that there is different legislation per state. And to the regular Joe it is just a cheaper offering from Amazon, most won't realize they still need to pay taxes, so by default commit the crime of not paying. It's a broken system.
The example of the Cooler Master 1200W supply is a good one, let me compare this with Europe (NL specifically)
The cheapest two offerings of this PSU are:
- 217 euro in a regular store nearby, but the same on their website with free shipping
- 205 euro in a webshop with 5 euro shipping (so 210 total)
The price saving of the webshop is only a little in this case (7 euro), but that is especially because the store is already fairly competitive (the high end for the prices for this PSU are above 250 euros), sometimes the difference can be more, but the webshops are always cheaper. But because the sales tax is calculated equally everywhere (19%) they can always compete fairly. The shop that has the PSU both in the webshop and the store makes a fixed markup and pays either the shipping or the rent and personnel from that markup. You can be damn sure the profit will be more when you order that product on the site.
The price without sales tax is only 182 euro, and that is listed next to the price everywhere. We might have a high sales tax but it's fair and equal for both on- and offline shops. Some other countries in the EU have a lower sales tax (15% instead of 19%) but when I order there I just pay that tax and i'm good. But there are no countries without sales tax so the system works here.
Webshops from the US don't ask sales tax, and I've been burned by that once. I've ordered a product cheaper from a US webshop, and when it arrived here I got a bill from customs with it to pay the sales tax, because when a product is shipped without tax payed in the country of origin it will get taxed here because every product needs to be taxed once in the EU... With the tax it would have been easier to just buy here, but I didn't know back then that the US makes a difference in ordering from a store and ordering online.
There is probably more extra markup being made than is being passed to the consumer as savings... What better way to make more money than slightly lovering the price and pocketing the rest... extra profit per sale and more sales because you are slightly cheaper than competitors.
Indeed, tax for all or tax for none is the only fair solution here...
I guess the states confuse things a little... There are a lot of strange legacy laws that make things more complicated in the US. But what happens with interstate commerce also happens with international commerce on a larger scale.
It illustrates my point that a company like Amazon is not sticking out for it's customers but only trying to maximize profit and minimize tax to the point that they don't pay any taxes at all... Which is not so far out when you see the strange tax evading schemes some companies employ to only have to pay a tax as low as single digit percentages.
I understand that as a consumer you like to pay a little less, but in the big picture this is not an advantage for the consumer but about companies earning a little more over your back...
Yeah, it's just another way to cheat the government, and indirectly the people, out of taxes that we all have to pay...
That's a strange contradiction. Change a little and get a patent that even covers implementations that are wildly different... Wouldn't they also be able to pull the same trick and change something trivial to have their own patent?
I agree that patents have become ridiculous, but this exploit seems to be able to be used by anyone, not just the patent trolls.
Note to self: Tandberg (tm) not related to Oracle (tm)... They are part of the Cisco (tm) network imperium and although they deal in telepresence they are not supernatural in any way.
It would seem the Oracle lost it's touch... It's not very prescient to patent something after someone else published it for the world to see.
It's supposed to be *before* otherwise it's just called copying, cheating or stealing instead of prophetic, prediction or precognition.
Oracle, you're doing it wrong!
The shipping cost are negligible compared to the rent of a store on a prime location. This has given online retailers an advantage from the first day an online store opened it's doors, so to speak... This saves them so much cost compared to the brick and mortar retailers that they can sell products for a lower price and deliver it to you in one day for free and still make more money than retailers do. The advantage is and has always been with the online retailers and the only way brick and mortar stores can compete is with service, and playing on peoples feelings because most people still prefer to be able to talk to someone in person, ask questions and feel the product they are buying (and are willing to pay a little extra for that). Both on- and offline stores have advantages, nothing special about that.
The sales tax is a whole different matter, it does create an unfair advantage because Amazon just shifts responsibility for the tax to the end customer. It has to be payed anyway they just don't because, supposedly, it's a hassle to figure out to who... It's tax-evasion and the larger the company the more accepted it is... It has come to the point that the largest companies with the greatest income pay the least amount of tax (percentage that is), that is the underlying unfair advantage that will eventually result in monopolies.
Smaller companies pay more tax => Unfair advantage for the big companies => Monopolies in the long run => The bill for the customer (whether in money, service or quality)...
I thought every uplink came with free FAP.
Always remember to double tap!
Amount of Justice = Amount of Guilt / Amount of Money
I'm fairly sure regular folk would do more time for killing someone's dog... But on the other hand, it surprises me that a rich son of a bitch like this would get any time at all.
They seem to think they are above the law, but can you blame them... time and time this is proven in the court of law.
Solve equation for all variables results in: Law != Justice
The system known as ECHELON is an interception system which differs from other intelligence systems in that it possesses two features which make it quite unusual:
The first such feature attributed to it is the capacity to carry out quasi-total surveillance. Satellite receiver stations and spy satellites in particular are alleged to give it the ability to intercept any telephone, fax, Internet or e-mail message sent by any individual and thus to inspect its contents.
The second unusual feature of ECHELON is said to be that the system operates worldwide on the basis of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among several states (the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), giving it an added value in comparison to national systems: the states participating in ECHELON (UKUSA states) can place their interception systems at each otherís disposal, share the cost and make joint use of the resulting information.
This quote is from this publicly available EU report from 2001. The document further explains how sigint has become easier since the internet age, since all information passes trough a small amount of central nodes. They also recommend encrypting all sensitive information (especially data that can be abused in industrial espionage, because apparently that has become the #1 use of the system since the cold war was over). Cited examples include the 6 billion deal with Saudi Arabia (that went to McDonnel-Douglas instead of Airbus after the NSA released intercepted communications indicating bribes) and the Wobben wind wheel design that the NSA stole and Enercon patented before the inventor could.
Echelon exists today, but it's role changed a lot since the cold war. It's good indicator of govenment priorities.
Thanks for explaining. The question remains how much of the traffic is also routed trough ECHELON...
When you mention California I suspect that the 30% number may have been from an article about the infamous Room 641A.
I have the best of both, I pay good money for a newspaper subscription which gives me an online newsfeed of articles (with e-mail notification of important news) as well as the weekend newspaper. While the quality of news may decline the few good original researched articles in the newspaper are still wort it for me.
Really 30%? Wow, that's more than I thought... Do you have a source for that traffic statistic? Not that I don't believe it, I just want to repeat bullshit without checking facts like you illustrated. :)
Excellent example of non-technical journalism which blindly copies something without understanding it or looking in to it. I can already imagine them reading something about some master key to decrypt communication, and the Chinese also have a master key, so they put 2 and 2 together and think that the Chinese can decrypt anything... Don't bother checking facts, FUD sells!
... " == "we're making this shit up as we go along, but try to cover our weasel asses"
There are certain keywords to look for to know if the journalist knows what he/she is talking about (regardless of subject). Note: "there was speculation that
Hello Rupert is that you?
But seriously, this is what old media claims time and time again, but the quality of their reporting is just as abysmal. A few original well researched pieces aside (I treasure those) every news item is either some unchecked internet hearsay or a rehash or an ANP newsitem (which is by the way used just as well on the internet).
I think this isn't about a conviction, but rather casting doubt at the person. Wikileaks is already being associated as 'that rapist club' by people who only casually follow the news. Some see this latest news and ask 'is that creep still out raping those lovely women?'. You analyzed right, but doubt isn't a problem here, it's what they need most to discredit him and his organization.
I shamefully admit I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about...
Perhaps there is some soviet russia joke in there about the dial-up 'broadband' speeds they used to have but it is totally going by me...
2 speed internet mandated by law is a great idea!
If and only if it has the following two speeds:
- The minimum guaranteed reserved bandwidth I pay for (which is currently almost always unknown, and can change without notice)
- The maximum burst bandwidth I pay for (which is what they currently advertise)
Currently there are too many oversold connections with burst speeds of 20, 30, 60 or even 120 mbit being sold without any mention of the minimum reserved bandwidth, and those speeds become lower and lower when they oversubscribe the line. Consumers need to know the minimum as well as the maximum bandwidth they are paying for.
* smartass notice: yes I know you can't guarantee an actual minimum bandwidth in practice, but I'm talking about the uplink (i.e. 100 mbit uplink shared with 50 users = 2mbit guaranteed, in contrast to the maximum advertised speed which would probably be 20mbit in this setup).