I've already written to Vivendi about this issue. I think that in all fairness, Blizzard has good intentions. My hope is that by Monday afternoon they'll have a well-formed apology ready.
The stores that are affected by this are NOT the mom-n-pop stores that do most of their transactions over the Internet. This deal is ONLY used to tie major retailers' brick and mortar locations to their respective websites. As a specific example, here is a quote from the article:
"For example, Wal-Mart has 1,500 stores scattered across all 50 states, but WalMart.com, a separate subsidiary, has a physical presence in only nine states."
WalMart.com's presence in nine states requires them to collect taxes for those nine states. However, this deal would require them to collect in all fifty, since the.com's parent company Wal-Mart has retail stores in those states.
A store like mWave.com (a personal favorite), whose only presence is in California, would still be treated the same way they've always been: Purchases from outside California are tax-exempt, just like they would be from a mail-order catalog.
I imagine Dell will be affected by this. They charge no sales tax for orders from "Dell Home", but "Dell Business" charges tax to everyone. It's likely that, if they buy in to this deal, Dell Home will charge tax to everyone.
The short of it is, though, Don't Panic! If you're shopping for bargains online, you'll still find them.
I'm willing to bet it's a custom operating system. Why port Linux to custom hardware that serves one purpose, and one purpose alone: Take a whole lot of keys, and crack crack crack.
Sure, linux has some great multitasking features, and it's very diverse. But it really isn't very powerful when it comes to multiprocessor support, nor do they really need task swapping...
They said it was all "controlled" by a PC, though. I would imagine that that's a unix box... I can't imagine EFF running Windows:)
I'm doing my part, 4 PIIs cracking in the office. I'll try to load up some more in the next hour.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe this isn't getting more coverage!
I've already written to Vivendi about this issue. I think that in all fairness, Blizzard has good intentions. My hope is that by Monday afternoon they'll have a well-formed apology ready.
The stores that are affected by this are NOT the mom-n-pop stores that do most of their transactions over the Internet. This deal is ONLY used to tie major retailers' brick and mortar locations to their respective websites. As a specific example, here is a quote from the article:
.com's parent company Wal-Mart has retail stores in those states.
"For example, Wal-Mart has 1,500 stores scattered across all 50 states, but WalMart.com, a separate subsidiary, has a physical presence in only nine states."
WalMart.com's presence in nine states requires them to collect taxes for those nine states. However, this deal would require them to collect in all fifty, since the
A store like mWave.com (a personal favorite), whose only presence is in California, would still be treated the same way they've always been: Purchases from outside California are tax-exempt, just like they would be from a mail-order catalog.
I imagine Dell will be affected by this. They charge no sales tax for orders from "Dell Home", but "Dell Business" charges tax to everyone. It's likely that, if they buy in to this deal, Dell Home will charge tax to everyone.
The short of it is, though, Don't Panic! If you're shopping for bargains online, you'll still find them.
he misspelled the first word on his paper as "Forward", not "Foreword"
I'm willing to bet it's a custom operating system. Why port Linux to custom hardware that serves one purpose, and one purpose alone: Take a whole lot of keys, and crack crack crack.
:)
Sure, linux has some great multitasking features, and it's very diverse. But it really isn't very powerful when it comes to multiprocessor support, nor do they really need task swapping...
They said it was all "controlled" by a PC, though. I would imagine that that's a unix box... I can't imagine EFF running Windows
I'm doing my part, 4 PIIs cracking in the office. I'll try to load up some more in the next hour.