I saw a Skype enabled monitor at Target. It was about $200.

If handheld GPS costs $100 and in vehicle navigation costs $2500, it is possible. at 6.5% (sales tax on vehicles, goes to the state, not fed) a family of 4 with one of each has paid $156 is sales taxes alone on stuff that wouldn't exist otherwise. That beats the $35 / resident, but barely.

If you count income taxes on that money it would be over $400, but that money likely would have been spent on something else if the GPS systems weren't there.

Most cable companies are most heavily regulated by local franchise agreements. If I had Mediacom doing this in my area I would probably have to start attending city council meetings to speak against them at every opportunity. I have a terribly despised ISP in my neighborhood, but they have recently upgraded their network and have provided me with great service (I believe they do NXDomain crap, but I use OpenDNS. They do it too but I have at least chosen them).

Sony previously avoided the war entirely. Having Other OS kept a great deal of hackers at bay. The problem was a few too many restrictions and tinkers who wanted more power. They would have left the security intact had the system not been crippled from the OtherOS.

Sony should have left well enough alone, fixed the hole, allowed access that people were looking for, and retained Other OS. The war would have quickly fizzled.

As it is now my family gripes every time the thing requires an update to connect and I'm ready to abandon the PS3 completely. I still have a 10GB partition with Linux that I can't use.

There is nothing worse than technical discussion being fragmented when people forget to use reply all! If I don't want my recipients to interact with each other, I will use BCC.

None is saying 90% gets passed down. Taxes have been 20% and will probably stay that way. If one person's incremental rate is 90% and another is 5%, the person paying 5% pays more and earns less. The person paying 90% is compensated that much more (and the costs shifted around).

Certainly this isn't 100%, but that's how it is going to usually work out.

And as a matter of fact Texas doesn't tax 3 of the 4 items on your list.

Texas has been demanding that Amazon collect taxes for a long time. They willfully disregarded. I bet if they were willing to put future taxes on the table Texas would settle to keep the jobs.

I live in Texas, I'll happily pay the sales tax too (as long as it's collected with my purchase).

Amazon didn't collect but they had a legal obligation to do so. Texas has never bothered to collect the use tax, so no one pays it.

Sales tax in texas starts at 6.5% (State) and is legally capped at 8.25%. Localities, library districts, metro and such can have taxes that add up to more, but there is a priority in who actually collects it (because of the 8.25% cap).

As far as know every state will credit sales tax paid towards use tax. Texas shouldn't have to build a use tax enforcement system (there isn't one for consumers).

Amazon should have been collecting these taxes. I usually try not to hold sales tax against the merchant when comparison shopping (although on expensive appliances I have been known to).

Dell did this LONG before they had stores. The rules are clear, you ship from within the state, you are considered to have a presence.

I have used my iPhone 3GS to tether to my laptop while fixing network problems and had no issues holding a conversation with the person I was helping at the same time. 4G assumption not required. I was at a Marina and an 18 wheeler parked between me and the Marina's WiFi access point.

Well, you don't have to have unlimited LD, caller Id, voicemail, etc. Those services are the only way your landline was $60.

I was able to have a land line (measured, I think 25 calls free a month and $0.02 per local call after that) and Elite DSL for $58/mo. I dropped it and went to cable Internet for $55 so I could get 3-4 times the speed (too far from equipment for Uverse. They have it at the other end of my block).