"Sales" tax is still being levied in the form of "use tax" that consumers are supposed to pay on their state tax returns. Just because most consumers are committing tax fraud doesn't make Amazon a guilty party here.

Perhaps, but (and this is venturing into territory where I'm making more assumption than I am restating known facts), I believe it's outside the FDA's jurisdiction to cover beverages mixed at points of purchase or in the home - I believe the former would likely fall to state health departments (or, I suppose, specific action by Congress), adn the latter jeez, I don't even know who, if anyone, would regulate that.

Again, I think this whole debate is silly, especially here in slashdot. The FDA hasn't BANNED these mixtures. What they're asking for is proof that it's safe. The FDA operates under a null hypothesis that assumes all additives are dangerous until proven otherwise (proven as GRAS). I think that's pretty reasonable when it comes to federal regulation of food and beverage products, and if it truly isn't a big deal as many commenters seem to think, then the companies can come up with the requisite evidence and caffeine as an additive in alcoholic beverages gets added to the GRAS list.

As has been laid out in detail elsewhere in the comments section, the problem isn't a matter of type -- it's a matter of degree. Most of the drinks in question are not the functional equivalent of a rum and coke. We're talking more along the lines of a no-doze with a shot of rum as a chaser.

They're basically asking the mfg's to show why it's GRAS to have that much caffeine mixed with alcohol (my guess is they won't be able to).

To everyone who is going to make a similar comment, please please please RTFA.

This has nothing to do with banning Jack & Coke, Red Bull + Vodka, etc. You're free to get smashed and caffeinated at the same time until you keel over in twitchy delirium. All the FDA has indicated is that they haven't authorized caffeine as an additive to alcoholic beverages AS THEY COME FROM THE MANUFACTURER. Well, more specifically, they're asking the makers why they thought they didn't have to clear it with the FDA.

This has actually been litigated before -- as crazy as it sounds, courts HAVE consistently held that booting a computer (and thus loading it to memory) does create a copy. End-users are granted a license to do so, and here Pystar doesn't have such a license. Crazy yes -- but Apple is on solid precedential ground in claiming so.

"Actually, this new option is even worse: once you set it up, you can't go back to your carrier's voicemail system. You're stuck with Google's whether you like it or not."

Umm, you can revert your forwarding back to your carrier's voicemail. They'll even tell you how.

[citation needed] First, this has nothing to do with the DMCA - this has to do with the USB spec and the USB-IF (and Palm's forging of another company's USB Vendor ID, in violation of their contractual agreement with the consortium). Second, even if this did have to do with the DMCA, the "compatibility exception" you speak of isn't really in the statute. It allows for limited reverse engineering, which isn't what happened here -- this is purely circumvention. Even then, if you look at the case history the courts have pretty much viewed the reverse engineering exception as swamped by the weight of the anti-circumvention provisions. I'm not saying the DMCA is good -- but it is the law, and well, it's not even really applicable here.

How do you suppose you'll get a mortgage without a preexisting credit history? They don't just hand out hundreds of thousands of dollars without a little bit of information (read: how you handle credit/debt).