John Murdoch - Slashdot User

California Balks At Internet Sales Tax 268

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 12, 2007 @08:06PM from the what's-$2B-among-friends dept.

bob_calder writes "California has walked away from $2 billion a year in revenue by declining to get on board with a group working to standardize tax rates so a national tax on Internet sales could eventually be implemented by Congress. Supporters of the tax think they still have a chance in New York, Texas, and Florida. At the moment the largest states pursuing the Streamlined Sales Tax Initiative are New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. California didn't want to give up its autonomy in setting taxes to a coalition of smaller states."

Near-Complete Cure For Diabetes In Two Years? 271

Posted by kdawson on Saturday December 16, 2006 @07:21PM from the medical-miracle dept.

resistant writes "Researchers at a Toronto hospital have stumbled upon a dramatic treatment for mouse diabetes, with large implications for the treatment of diabetes in humans. From the article: 'The islet inflammation cleared up and the diabetes was gone. Some have remained in that state for as long as four months, with just one injection... They also discovered that their treatments curbed the insulin resistance that is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, and that insulin resistance is a major factor in Type 1 diabetes, suggesting the two illnesses are quite similar.'"
Update: 12/17 03:46 GMT by KD : resistant adds that the Cell Journal article is posted as a PDF as well as in plain text.

Submission + - Why cell phone outage reports are secret

Submitted by

thenendo

on Saturday December 16, 2006 @07:07PM

thenendo writes: "An MSNBC article reports on the recent rejection of FOIA requests for government-collected cell phone outage statistics. It would seem that the FCC is using the threat of terrorism as a thinly veiled excuse to protect Telecoms from fair market competition for reliability. From the article:
"A federal Freedom of Information Act request for the data, filed in August by MSNBC.com, has been rejected by the agency [the FCC]. The stated reasons: Release of the information could help terrorists plan attacks against the United States, and it would harm the companies involved.
...
"'There is nothing mysterious behind it, it is corporate competition protection,' said Cressey, now a partner in Good Harbor Consulting. 'The only reason for the government to not let these records get out is then one telco provider could run a full-page ad saying "the government says we're more reliable."'
...
"Al Tompkins, a Freedom of Information Act expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think-tank, said release of the cell phone outage reports would be 'a tremendous consumer tool,' and compared them to the Federal Aviation Administration's publication of airline on-time records.""

Slashdot Top Deals