reifman writes "Last week, the Washington State House of Representatives passed a bill which would impose a 10% tax on custom software while all but eliminating a $100 million yearly tax obligation that some say Microsoft is wrongfully avoiding by routing large chunks of business through an office in Nevada. 'I believe we've got an issue of justice and fairness here,' said Rep. Maralyn Chase. 'Most of the custom software purveyors are small businesses. It's a question for me of how we fairly distribute the tax burden.' 'It means that a 5 person team of entrepreneurs building a cool custom software suite, or a group of system integrators, would face a 10% tax on their services while keeping the exact same project in-house would not be taxed,' wrote Rep. Reuven Carlyle. 'It would be a massive blow to the entrepreneurial community in our state.' The bill won't become law until the House and Senate work out how best to raise another $300 million in taxes. A sales tax increase on consumers is also being considered."

boarder8925 writes "In a move sure to surprise no one, Obama has come out on the side of the MPAA/RIAA and has backed the ACTA: 'We're going to aggressively protect our intellectual property,' Obama said in his speech, 'Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people [...] It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.'"

hrimhari writes "The settlement between Amazon and Macmillian got the attention of a known dinosaur. Consistent to his views, Mr. Murdoch wants to defend his book editors by killing the cheaper solution. '"We don't like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99," Murdoch said. "They pay us the wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge," he said. "But I think it really devalues books, and it hurts all the retailers of the hardcover books.'"

McGruber writes "The Atlanta fishwrap is reporting that an University of Georgia 'IT security support' employee was accusing students of copyright violations, then demanding money to clear their names. Sounds like he's been caught stealing the RIAA business model."

Hugh Pickens writes "In late October, Newsday put its web site behind a pay wall, one of the first non-business newspapers to take the pay wall plunge, so Newsday has been followed with interest in media circles anxious to learn how the NY Times own plans to put up a pay wall may work out. So how successful has Newsday's paywall been? The NY Observer reports that three months into the experiment only 35 people have signed up to pay $5 a week to get unfettered access to newsday.com. Newsday's web site redesign and relaunch reportedly cost about $4 million and the 35 people who've signed up have earned Newsday about $9,000. Still publisher Terry Jimenez is unapologetic. 'That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been,' said Jimenez to his assembled staff, according to five interviews with Newsday employees. The web project has not been a favorite among Newsday employees who have recently been asked to take a 10 percent pay cut. 'The view of the newsroom is the web site sucks,' says one staffer. 'It's an abomination,' adds another."

lorenlal writes "The Supreme Court of the United States must have figured that restrictions on corporate support of candidates was a violation of free speech, or something like that." From the AP story linked above: "By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states."

Several sources are reporting that federal judges have been harsh in their examination of the FCC's action against Comcast in 2008 for the throttling of Internet traffic from high-bandwidth file-sharing services. "'You can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good,' said US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Chief Judge David Sentelle during an oral argument. The three-judge panel grilled FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick on the parts of communications law it could cite to justify the Comcast punishment. The FCC argues that it was enforcing an open Internet policy implicit in the law. Judge A. Raymond Randolph repeatedly said the legal provisions cited by the FCC were mere policy statements that by themselves can't justify the commission's action. 'You have yet to identify a specific statute,' he said. The judges' decision in the case could throw into question the FCC's authority to impose open Internet rules."

wilsone8 writes "The New York Times includes an op-ed today arguing for Search Neutrality: 'Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's new Bing have become the Internet's gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include search neutrality: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.'"

thelordx writes "I've got a much younger brother who I'd like to teach how to program. When I was younger, you'd often start off with something like BASIC or Apple BASIC, maybe move on to Pascal, and eventually get to C and Java. Is something like Pascal still a dominant teaching language? I'd love to get low-level with him, and I firmly believe that C is the best language to eventually learn, but I'm not sure how to get him there. Can anyone recommend a language I can start to teach him that is simple enough to learn quickly, but powerful enough to do interesting things and lead him down a path towards C/C++?"

destinyland writes "This article asks, 'Why bother to type a document using a keyboard when you can write it by simply thinking about the letters?' A brain wave study presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society shows that people with electrodes in their brains can 'type' using just their minds. The study involved electrocorticography — a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of the brain after a surgical incision into the skull. ('We were able to consistently predict the desired letters for our patients at or near 100 percent accuracy,' explains one Mayo clinic neurologist.) And besides typing, there's new brain wave applications that can now turn brain waves into music and even Twitter status updates — by thought alone."

An anonymous reader writes "A family member recently asked me to pick up more ink for her Epson Photo RX 595. Unfortunately, replacing the black and color ink cartridges costs $81.92 + tax at the local store! That's so bad that I got a replacement printer that's just as good, and spare ink, for less. But now I have a useless piece of e-waste that I can't even give away. What can you do with a printer like that? I hate to just throw it away."

An anonymous reader noted a bit from Ars saying Microsoft will be switching internal focus from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in fiscal year 2010. Microsoft's fiscal year starts in July, which is only eight months away. According to Microsoft's roadmaps, the release of Windows 8 is scheduled for 2012."

reginaldo writes to clue us that pirates in Somalia have opened up a cooperative in Haradheere, where investors can pay money or guns to help their favorite pirate crew for a share of the piracy profits. "'Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 "maritime companies" and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,' Mohammed [a wealthy former pirate who took a Reuters reporter to the facility] said. ... Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel. 'I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,' she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony. 'I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the "company."'"

feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."

In another move sure to continue the certain doom looming over classic publications, Rupert Murdoch has elaborated on the direction he would take in an effort to monetize the content that his websites deliver by attempting to block much of Google's ability to scan and index his news sites. "Murdoch believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results. 'There's a doctrine called "fair use," which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,' Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. 'But we'll take that slowly.'"