If live in Colorado and order an item from Illinois, where has the sale been made, Colorado or Illinois? I'm sure each state will argue their state is the location of the sale.

What about hosted sales sites? Let's say, I live in Idaho and order an item from a company registered in Maine, but all their internet presence is hosted in Texas. Now which state gets the taxes?

First I'm against an "internet sales tax." The only way I can see this working is for the federal government to create a single "internet sales tax" and divide it evenly among the states involved in the transaction.

I promise I'm not schilling. I use SpiderOak for my hosted files be it backups, shares or syncs. They don't store your password and can't reset it. If you forget your password you're S-O-L. All they can do is hand over an encrypted container that the government will have to crack.

"Zero knowledge" services like this are unlikely to become the norm in the US, because enough people won't understand just how the service works and will try to hold the service provider responsible when the user forgets their password (because they haven't had to type it in in 6 months and didn't have a way to store and access important passwords) and the company says, "Tough luck. We warned you."

I wish sci-fi was still nerdy and unpopular.

This is either:

1. A PR stunt to appeal to those who don't know much about open source things in general. Now the big tech companies look like they're doing something benevolent and giving to society.

or

2. A place for unsuspecting people to post code or ideas and have them freely adopted by the big tech companies, who will in turn charge you for THEIR enhancements and innovations.

I, too, can't believe this hasn't been presented in court in a similar manner.

By Monsanto's logic, if some of my patented drink mix unintentionally found it's way into an aquifer, anyone who gets water from that aquifer owes me money if I demand it. Soon enough I'll own the water cycle!

Should the FCC declare ISP services "common carrier?"

I ask this for 2 reasons:
1. Imposes some level of net neutrality
2. AT&T (as one example) is trying to shift as much of it's business as possible to IP based services (U-Verse) because they are unregulated (no minimum service mandates) and "premise techs" (u-verse techs) aren't union in many places and make MUCH less then their AT&T telephone service counterparts.

Was success of the internet up until the early 2000s a kind of de facto net neutrality? e.g. Companies did not have sophisticated enough equipment to control or spy on traffic as they do today, or ISPs were not content providers or vice versa.

Do you think the internet would be as ubiquitous and successful as it is today if the founding protocols and languages were patented or copyrighted and used in a manner we see technology patents being used today?

The end product should no longer be patentable, just the specific design to get to the end. Patents improving/tweaking an existing "invention" in which the end product has not changed should only protect the new, technical design.

They should make sure prior art can be applied as well and make sure "first to file" doesn't come to pass.

Buffalo/bison are the long term answer. They are the natural grazers of the US and Canadian plains. They don't stay in one place to eat all the food and starve since they can't survive in the snow well and they're massive. It's estimated that the pre-columbian bison population was between 30 and 60 million head, while the current us cattle population is just under 100 million. Historic bison ranges don't mesh well with current agribusiness. But, corporate animal farms and McDonald's can't make DESIRED profits being environmentally responsibly. We shouldn't have Asian and European cow breeds/hybrids as significant meat sources in the US. If only we weren't interested in starving the remaining Native Americans and making buffalo rugs and coats in the 1800s, this may be less of a problem.

Who gives a shit? Seriously, this isn't even tech worthy. This would be news if Apple switched to open/standard codecs/protocols to allow interoperability with non Apple devices or they switched to USB 3, or opened the walled garden.

The real issue here is Apple. They don't really want you be be able to do anything easily that doesn't involve a revenue stream outside Apple Inc.; it's too proprietary to be cost effective and sustainable over the long term for schools where money is tight and stubborn administrators are trying hopelessly to compete with wealthier schools. Here's an example: to send video wirelessly you have to buy another Apple product, Apple TV. Technology should use quality, open standards for all interfaces on all hardware, in other words interoperability that can't be blocked by greedy companies, e.g, if you have a networked video projector, there should be nothing extra you need to buy to wirelessly send it video from your ipad. If you, the end user, CHOOSE to use a proprietary codec/protocol, fine, as long as it's a CHOICE. This will force companies to compete on interface, hardware, and pricing, NOT today's golden goose "lock in/walled garden." We need to enrich the lives of our students and the world not the pockets of proprietary technology companies.

Notice there's no creditable defense, that grammar isn't necessary, in privately comprehensible chat drivel.