You are missing the point of the article, the articles are not proposing that Amazon et al. pay one more cent of tax on their income just collect and remit to the proper taxing authorities taxes that are legally owed by the purchaser of the goods. Would it increase the cost of doing business for e-commerce firms, yes but so what? The cost of doing business is part of any business plan. Amazon and its ilk are utilizing a legal loophole to get an unfair advantage over local merchants.

The handwriting is on the wall, there are too many states hurting for revenue. The current environment isn't fair, isn't sustainable, isn't long for this world.

Only if RIM finally goes out of business and companies are forced to support at least MS Active Sync (because it works on almost every smart phone) or preferably some open standard. Note to people who love their Blackberries, their best model is garbage compared to any of the current iPhones, Pres, Android phones or even (shudder) Windows Mobile Phones. Demand your companies stop buying these pieces of trash with no useful functionality and horrendous user interfaces.

Those entities where they do it are done on a country level, which is fairly simple.

I won't claim that Amazon can't get it done, because they're smart people with incredible infrastructure and metric crap-tons of money that they could throw at the problem if they so desired. I can tell you that I live in Cook County, Illinois where Amazon would be forced to collect not only the Illinois state sales tax, but also a Cook County sales tax. I can tell you that since they sell cigarettes, that county sales tax is different for that product versus others. I can tell you that while I myself do not live in Chicago, if I did and I ordered from Amazon they would also then be obligated to collect yet another sales tax. And that, you guessed it, Chicago also levies "sin taxes" on certain products including cigarettes, soft drinks and--don't ask me why--bottled water. And I can tell you that the tax rates are scheduled to change in July 2010.

That is, of course, one potential set of jurisdictions for one potential customer. Now multiply that ridiculous level of legal complexity for every possible combination of city, county and state that are applicable and you're quickly arriving at a system of rather ridiculous proportion. Better that we not bother, in my mind.

Before anybody says "but we're only talking about state taxes!" I'll head it off by saying two things: First, that if we're going to make them collect state taxes you can bet the next debate is going to be about other levels of government as counties* and cities all complain about how their budgets are struggling too. And second, that it only helps marginally. In my example, about half of those county and city taxes are actually collected and administered by the state of Illinois, essentially making them state taxes that are only applicable in certain areas.

I understand the plight of the brick-and-mortars who not only have to compete on price but also on a lack of sales tax. I also understand the struggles of many cities and states with their budgets for the past decade or so now. But this is a ridiculously complicated system, far different from the "ZOMG X% VAT" that Amazon deals with in other countries. Setup would be bad enough, much less maintaining compliance with all such systems.

Impossible? No. Unwieldy? Definitely. Worthwhile? Not in my mind.

* I think Cook County may be the only county in the country that is legally permitted to levy its own sales tax, but I'm not sure.

Exactly.

I received a nook and I gave one and one of the drawbacks is the price of the ebooks. Except for crap like Twitlight which is a few dollars - most of the books I'm interested in are $9.99.

It does support the EPUB and PDF and has no apparent DRM so it has it's advantages. I don't consider it a dud either. I don't read as fast as I used to and flipping a real page is just about the same time as the reader takes to show the next one (i think it's in the 1/2 second to second range) It does need a "zoom" as some of the PDFs I loaded don't show the diagrams with a larger font size. I think I need to look into converting the PDFs into a ebook format to see if that works.

The one I gave went to a huge hardcover reader so that should reduce his costs.

I'm still working on a couple of books I bought before I take a look at one of the Baen freebies that I loaded on it.

TL;DR - I like the nook - the prices of the books suck.

I too noticed this slight when I read the article referenced in the post above and left a comment there as well. The Nokia N770 came out in 2005; in 2006, the Nokia N800 was released. I think the N810 was released in 2008. These devices had GPS modules, extra cost + monthly service, so that would technically classify them as mobile devices. They just were NOT cellular.

I agree with you, WiFi + VoIP was the killer app for the decade. The next decade will be Fiber and virtual reality, at least that is my guess. 3G and cellular simply will not have the bandwidth of Fiber. And while the telcos have been able to take our money and lobby to suppress Fiber deployment for well over two decades; they simply can not keep this up if for no other reason then it is hurting the GNP of the United States and costing Americans jobs.

I would suggest to you that without job creation we are going to be in the recession/depression longer.

Smart communities will put in City wide WiFi connected to Fiber backbones. Perhaps we will see a technology that I first read about in 2000, it was a communication spectrum with a wave length so long that it could deeply penetrate buildings and other normal blockages of signals. It also could travel farther distances. A small company in Canada had invented the technology. The router like device basically could break apart a communication (as TCP/IP packets are done now via the Internet) and put pieces on different parts of the spectrum. The spectrum's bandwidth was virtually unlimited and made existing FCC licenses for Wireless spectrum obsolete. In fact that was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to acceptance, adoption and deployment; the fees received on FCC licenses. They would all be worthless as soon as the technology was released and rolled out. The packets could be encrypted and sent on different parts of the spectrum which would make eavesdropping on communication practically impossible. That was expected to be a concern to the various security agencies that want to know what everyone is saying, with or without a court order.

The Nokia N770 was out in 2005 and the Nokia N800 was out in 2006. They were/are great Linux computer / hand helds / VoIP smart phones / GPS + so much more. The Nokia N800 is still the standard by which I measure all other devices. No point in taking a step backwards technologically. And I do not give a rats about cellular. Weened myself many years back from that hole in the ethers to dump money in.

Read liked your posts and that was a bad car analogy, but all this is off topic...more on topic per your quote:

That's not entirely accurate...

We, you, your parents, their parents, all of us have give American telcos more than $200 Billion in tax money (out right cash + additional taxes and additional fees; all of which was approved by our elected leaders) since 1990; for their promise to Americans to provide Fiber To The Home FTTH; over the last mile, not just to our neighborhood, but to our house/apartment.

Not only is it economical and feasible, but instead of honoring their promises, they lobby our elected officials at the rate of $1.8 Million per week to not give us fiber, to not give us net neutrality, to not give us high speed broadband.

I pay over $50 per month for 16,000 Kbps down and 2,000 Kbps up stream bandwidth. They do not even give me that. I see it and sometimes during the Speed Test, but as soon as the Speed Test finishes, my cable (100% of Cable users experience this) broadband is throttled back to lower than the FCC definition of broadband. The FCC definition is 768Kbps, however I do not see above 400Kbps down or above 120 Kbps up stream bandwidth.

The US is not slightly behind the rest of the world, we are way behind the rest of the industrialized world. Thanks to putting in Fiber infrastructure (and density is relative as it costs more then anyone admits to dig up infrastructure in a large city where in rural areas they can lay miles of fiber in short periods of time) In 2007, we were 13th in the world.

In 2000, Japan had 100Mbps / 100Mbps bi-directional synchronous fiber broadband service for less than $55 per month. In 2006, thanks to Fiber, all the Japanese had to do was switch out the customer's modem and they could give them 1 Gbps / 1 Gbps bandwidth for less than $53 per month. Yes competition drove the price down. Their market is working, the US market has not worked for well over two decades.

Why? simple, follow the money. The telcos want you to believe bandwidth is scarce. The bandwidth scarcity myth is well a myth. (Proof is in their statements to stock analysts, especially in the light of current economic realities) A lie to keep their failed tiered pricing strategy. Their goal to drive all customers up to $150 per month. However it is back firing on them and for the very reasons that I mentioned above. Once you realize you are throttled and they are not delivering you a fraction of the bandwidth you are paying for; you will quickly discover that a DSL line providing you 1,500Kbps down and 384Kbps up stream is well over 3X faster than Cable Modem Internet access. And DSL service costs you between $20 - $30 per month. In fact for the price of one Cable Internet access you could have 2 DSL providers (redundancy and increased bandwidth). And remember 1 DSL line is 3X faster than a single throttled coaxial cable access. Ignore what they say you will get as they will never give you or me 12Mbps down or 2Mbps up. Just will never happen.

I do not mean to get on your case, I like your posts, but whenever I see another American acting as a Shill for the industry while getting screwed in the process, well some learning is in order.

Consider this: In 2006, a Telco executive said in the future the average household will consume at least 300GB of bandwidth per month. I would suggest to you that by 2010, you will need much more than 300 GB per household, just auto updating for most people will approach that limit in 2010. In spite of knowing this, in 2008, what was the monthly bandwidth CAP suggested by the Cable companies before consumer frustration forced them to increase it? Do you remember? Allow me, they attempted to implement a 50GB bandwidth CAP, if you went over the 50GB CAP you would be required to pay more per month! They KNEW you would go over a 50GB cap, if not now, sometime in the NEAR future. In fact I believe they know we will go over 300GB as well.

They throttle or limit you for one reason. They see it as critical to maintain their Cable TV/Movie business. What they failed to see is customers like me getting so pissed off that we would actually sell our Cable ready TVs (if they tried to force either a cable box or DVD/DVR box on me I would have said no and told them to take a long walk off a short pier!), Switch to Skype ($5 per month) VoIP phone service and ONLY need Internet Access.

Many Americans simply will never ever need their discounted "joke" combined combo service of TV - Internet - Telephone. I do not care if they can provide me with one inflated bill...just not interested.

Here it is 2009, and they are ONLY a TCP/IP packet provider, nothing more! (There worse fear realized)

And I am not alone, there are over 20 Million Skype users, you honestly think any of us are willing to pay more than $5 - $8 per month for phone service, ever? NOPE. If they did the unthinkable, buy Skype and kill it, I would simply provision my own Linux server running Asterisk VoIP and start my own VoIP company. I would actually make money, woot woot!

And if I ever purchase another 42" to 52" LG LCD/LED TV, It will be with intent to hook it up to the Internet ONLY, Cable will never be a desire or option to me, like the cellular companies, their customer-no-service mentality has soured me on their company and their service. It has been long in coming.

And today, they throttle you 24 X 7 X 365 whether its when others are at work or early in the morning when everyone is asleep. If you use the DD-WRT open source software on a supported device, you will see like I do, that you are throttled to less than 300Kbps down and less than 30Kbps up stream. Its happening as I type this to you and its after 3am on a work night. Sure there are too many other users up and on the pipe, surfing the Internet, NOT, sorry just not buying it! So much for the argument that they only throttle when your trunk is heavily used...total BS and an OUTRIGHT LIE!

There are no valid reasons for Americans not having Fiber to our homes, over the last mile today, 2009, only tired, old, lame excuses. Its simply unacceptable. There are certainly no reasons not to have net neutrality nor to have bandwidth artificially throttled when it is NOT necessary, but they do it.

Please stop spreading FUD. It makes me sad when I see a smart person, I have read over a dozen of your posts, the intelligence is obvious, they are well written, like you being made a shill by the telco, cable industry just because you are unaware of the many facts of the situation. Because if you knew, there is no way you would have said what you did, based on your past posts, you are too smart for that!. So I am providing this to help you and others, it is not a personal attack, not at all!

As for Fiber, I have bought and sold over 4 houses over the years, I will NOT purchase another house if it does not have a fiber link going to it with at least three or more potential service providers. I admit that having three or more service providers is a wish item to keep prices lower. (Utopia in Utah has this...) At this point just to have Fiber would be a huge improvement and worth the over $50 per month that I am paying now. My guess is that once I get use to DSL speeds for less than $30 per month, I will not be interested in paying much more for even Fiber as DSL will meet my content streaming needs!

The reality is Cable service does not meet my needs for streaming content right now and without fiber, they will not have hopes of meeting my needs in the future! It's probably why they literally lose hundreds of thousands of subscribers every year (over 200,000 4th quarter 2008) ...this trend will continue because of their customer-no-service business practices.

They are just pissing off too many people and acting like Americans simply do not matter!

I only make about one call per week with my cell phone and do not use it enough to even remember how to adjust the volume. All I want is a cell phone to make calls. Any unnecessary complexity just gets in the way of my remembering how to just make a call or adjust the volume.

I have memorized the several of my most commonly used phone numbers, which saves me from needing to know how to look up a telephone number in the cell phone. I keep a few other less commonly used telephone numbers on a card in my wallet.

I usually do not bring my reading glasses along when hiking or working outside, so I am then unable to see the menus or labels on the buttons. So when I forget which button does what, I have difficulty using the phone. As for the alternative of using voice activated commands when outdoors, I do not use the cell phone enough to ever remember how to use that feature either.

Despite being somewhat of a Luddite about some technology, I have built several of my own desktop computers for use at home over the years, and installed Linux on each of them. I even prefer to do many ordinary tasks such as moving files from the command line instead of using the built-in point-and-click GUI alternatives. But, I was once told by a computer expert, that Linux is too difficult for the average computer user. I have never managed to learn how to properly operate my cell phone, but I have had no building a computer and installing and using Linux. I also managed to easily setup my DSL modem and its firewall, even though the installation CD was not designed to run under Linux. But, using an ordinary cell phone is a much more difficult task which is too complicated for me.

By the way, all that advertising on TV about the minutes used in a plan, is as irrelevant to me as extra cell phone features, since I only use a total of several minutes per month. Cell phone are not designed or marketed towards customers like me.

Sorry, but that phone, with limited software application, with an itty bitty little screen is simply not that phenomenal. Also, it was released this year....past 10 years, come on already.

The Nokia N800 was released in 2006, the screen is about as small as I would ever want in the future. Thanks to the full browser, you surf the web in the same manner as you would on a desktop, laptop, and net book. This is a huge plus! If you had City wide WiFi (admittedly very few places did/do) it was mobile. Granted the GPS module would give you some interesting mobile tracking however you had to pay extra for that.

Now that its younger sibling, the Nokia N900 has arrived and provides for cellular capability in addition to everything else one could want on a hand held computer / smart phone, the only device that comes close, will be released in the 1st quarter 2010, the Google Android ~ unlocked with Linux root access capability. No tethering, no limitations, anything you can do on your netbook and laptop, except perhaps software development and video manipulation you will be able to do on this device.

And why limit yourself to an MP3 Player when you can have a Music player that pulls in other resources, information, fan sites, tour schedules, recent releases, photos and more while you are listening to the music as you can with Amarok (Linux Music playing software). Buy your music ONCE and listen to it on all your devices. Blows a little ole MP3 player away. Oh yea, you can watch H.264 codec formated high definition video on the device in addition to listening to music.

Once you get a taste of the possibilities with a Nokia Nxxx (N770, N800, N810, N900) and soon Android Google phone you will not want to use other devices. I mean I have a camera, I have a device that can do pretty much every thing else, why would I carry another phone, I would not.

Or go radical, ditch cellular and go 100% WiFi. I did and I have some friends that did. One friend of mine did this prior to the first WiFi phones after two different cellular companies tried to stick him with additional illegal charges over more than 10 years. He switched to VoIP and Skype. Back in the day he was paying over $150 per month for cellular so reducing his yearly costs to around $60 per month saved him almost $2,000 per year.

Today you can get cellular service by either Metro PCS or TMobile for approx $50 per month. Skype costs you $5 per month. So based on Amazon's price, that $571 phone cost could be recouped in just over 1 year ($571 / $45 = 12.68 months) No contracts, no tethering, the only limitation might be no cellular, unless you purchase the N900 which gives you cellular as well. And the next year, you would be free and clear except for the $60 fee to Skype.

For me Skype VoIP is the killer app of the decade, quickly followed by the Linux operating system. It gave me freedom, choice and options, which is better than FREE!

Actually ditching cellular is not that radical, it used to be considered bad business to allow your work to be interrupted by constant phone calls. When driving a car, in many states its illegal to talk on the cell phone without a hands free device. Back in olden land line telephone days, if someone called you when you were not home, they left a message and you called them back when it was convenient for you. (I remember when very few people had answering machines, if they did it was reel to reel tape on a unit the size of a desktop IBM PC) If a company wanted you to be on call, they provided a beeper and paid you extra for the privilege of interrupting your after hours life and being on call. A much more logical, simpiler time.

I consider not being connected to the Internet the same as not being home in the past. If someone calls, my Skype VoIP service allows them to record a message and I choose when to call them back based on what is going on in my life.

Make WinXP look like KDE http://www.tech-atom.com/windows/ultimate-linux-transformation-pack-for-windows-xp.html

Make GNOME look like WinXP http://ubuntu.online02.com/xpgnome

Make WinXP look likeUbuntu http://pc-hacks.blogspot.com/2007/10/make-up-over-your-windows-look-like.html

Make WinXP look like Enlightenment http://www.litestep.net/

Make Linux look like Win95 http://fvwm.org/

It all makes my head hurt.

They were never anything but helpful beyond not being able to ship the cards overseas forcing me to use an intermediary.

Try Citibank. They will courier a replacement card to you in any country at no charge.

Well the command line would be one good way.
If you want a GUI gnome-schedule looks good too.

I like others am hardcore enough to ditch cellular to save allot of money each month. I absolutely love Skype. Paying only around $5 per month for VoIP phone service has its advantages. Compared to cellular, the cheapest of which is around $50 per month, well its no contest. Considering that there are over 20 million Skype customers, growing daily, I am in good company.

There is probably a N900 in my future as well. With the Nokia N800 I have two Memory slots (Micro SSD card + camera size adapter works like a champ. Like many others I have two 4GB Micro SSD Cards in mine, only because back when I bought it, that was the largest Micro SSD card I could get at a decent rate. I think I paid $25.00 for a USB dongle + two adapters (one for camera / N800, not sure what the other one is for) + 1 4GB Kingston Micro SSD card. Not bad for all three (USB Dongle + 4GB SSD + Adapter). That was over a year ago and prices have really come down on these Micro SSD cards. Once you have that USB Dongle you can use it anywhere. I can purchase any Micro SSD card and copy data from My Camera or Nokia N800 to my Linux PC. In fact the same dongle works flawlessly in my Asus Eee PC (Xandros Linux Advanced Mode) as well. Friends of mine have had trouble when plugging in USBs (that have built in Windows specific software) like the Cruisers into their Asus Edee PCs. If you always use the Kingston, you are golden with the Asus Edee PCs, however if you use the Cruiser or other USB with software on it that will try to run when you plug it in, sometimes you are locked out of the USB interface on the Asus Eee PC.

Last year I saw either a 16GB or 32GB Micro SSD card on sale from Amazon for around $16.00. So storage for either the Nokia N800 or Nokia N900 should not be a problem.

I too like to have my storage local to me. I might utilize the cloud, however I will never put sensitive or private data there on purpose. And if any data is mission critical to me or my company I will have more than one local backup / copy of it just to be safe.

The big difference as I see it between the new Google Android expected in 1st quarter 2010 and the new recently released Nokia N900 are two things:

Up front cost of phone: Nokia N900 is over $500, closer to $600 while the new Android is suppose to retail at around $299.

Software applications: The Nokia N800 running OS2008 (Maemo) had well over 450 software applications running on it, with it and for it. The Nokia N900 does not list that many software packages yet. Granted I can not imagine any reasons the Nokia N800 OS 2008/Maemo applications will not run on the Nokia N900. At least you have access to the root account, so if you need to configure the application to run with the Nokia N900 you have that capability.

Since Nokia has not successfully marketed the Nokia N800, too many people believe the Nokia N900 is the first of its kind, when its the 4th generation of hardware, beginning with the Nokia N770 since 2005. Amazing gap in information and knowledge out there, that can only be explained by lack of adequate marketing. Nokia will not be the first company that has excellent products but does not market them effectively. I put Xerox, IBM in that same boat with Nokia as far as marketing or lack thereof killing off product revenue streams to the company. Its a shame.

The only thing unique about the Nokia N900 is cellular capability. I would suggest that not having a swivel webcam is actually a step backwards as that was some great functionality. At least they kept the FM chip even if they did not ship software for it, you can add it.

That's right, most of it goes into product promotion.

That's not unusual, and not necessarily 'wrong'; it's expected for a product that's marketed as a traditional experience, not unlike Coca Cola or a Football team. There isn't a lot of investment in research and development, it's mostly about getting the message out there and providing an optimal, gratifying experience in the traditional style that people prefer.

Missionaries are not a charity, they are promotion teams, out in the field to give users of other products a free sample and acquire new customers via tie-ins with other products.

Yeah - I taught myself Basic. Then I was told that C was the language to learn next. But the symbols scared me (I was 13 or 14), so I took the next recommendation, which was to learn Pascal.

Learning C was very exciting for me, as it seemed all arcane and mysterious. You're right that the symbols were difficult to understand, but pointers were worse. I'd ask one of the programmers at the university I hung out at (to use their PDP-11/70s and Vaxen) what a pointer WAS. Their answer was invariably something like "It's something that POINTS to something else" or "It's a variable that holds a value that points to something else."

It would have been nice if they could have said something like "You know how a variable can hold, say, an integer or a character value? Well, that variable is stored in memory. All bytes (don't confuse a kid with the concept of word-size please :-) ) have an 'address'. *draws typical picture of a memory layout* So any variable you create has an address. What if you want to know the address of that variable? In C, you can say '&variableName'; the value that you get from that is the address of the variable. If you store that value in ANOTHER variable, THAT variable is a POINTER to the 1st variable."

THAT, I would have understood, but nobody seemed to want to take the time to explain it to me.