Posts by JDB

Apple's screw-up leaves tethered iPhones easily crackable

stop reading a bit early, did we?

"This cut the time to crack automatically generated passwords down to 24 seconds, or 52 using a single AMD Radeon HD 6990 GPU."

White House backs US web sales tax - eBay hits panic alarm

Double Fail? The tax being collected is for the buyer, not the seller. So, as an Oregon resident, you won't be paying any sales taxes for online purchases from Washington (or anywhere else), but online stores located in Oregon will now have to collect sales taxes for anything shipped to those Washingtonian freeloaders (and send that tax money back to WA).

Re: This is just raping consumers

Coward and an idiot. The states are already taxing the consumers - the problem is that the consumers aren't paying. This just allows them to move the burden of collection to the online stores. Check your state tax code - there's a very good chance that you should be paying the sales tax on all those online orders yourself - you just haven't been doing it.

Re: Will it really be a level playing field?

No, but to say "this makes it a lot better, but not 100% perfect, so let's junk the whole thing and stick with the crap we have" is ridiculous.

Re: God I hate politicians...

Sure, tax free internet sales would be awesome - so would tax free income, and tax free property. The point is that states and cities require revenue to operate (build roads, fight fires and floods, protect citizens, and fun stuff like that) and the way they get that revenue (in most cases) is a mix of sales/property/income tax (and some fees for services). So, states that have decided to have low (or no) sales tax have to make up that difference in higher property/income tax, and vice versa. The problem comes now when the "internet changes everything" and states that plan their income based on expected sales taxes are coming up short because so many people are buying online from out of state and not paying those taxes. Personally I think the ideal solution is to eliminate sales tax and increase property and income tax to offset the loss, but until that happens I think this is the proper solution. I'm so sick of the idiots posting on here complaining about "the politicians" just trying to take more money away from "us" - these are taxes that we've already agreed to with our votes, but are refusing to pay on our own, so now the burden of collecting them is being moved to the online stores (just like it is already on the physical stores). If you don't like how much the taxes are or what they're being used for, fine, that's a totally different argument - go vote, run for office, or get them changed by whatever democratic process it takes in your state - this argument is only about how we collect those taxes. Remember - this won't make anything online cost more, it's just going to force people to pay the taxes they've already agreed to pay to keep their communities running.

Re: God I hate politicians...@Charles 9

That sounds pretty awesome to me, except Amazon delivers it right to my door. I suppose if I could get it even cheaper I wouldn't mind picking it up at a central location - I've always thought that UPS should have a cheaper delivery option where people can just ship stuff to the local UPS warehouse and we pick it up instead of it being delivered by truck. Would save them a ton of money on trucks/fuel/employees/etc. and they could advertise how "green" it was (even though it probably wouldn't be since now we're all driving to UPS).

Re: Have I understood it correctly?

No, I don't think so. The way I understand it is that this bill will shift the burden of paying sales tax to business that do more than $1 million in sales online. Currently, we're all supposed to pay sales tax on things we buy online (in most states, I think, if not all). The problem is that nobody does it, and it would be really hard to enforce. Right now a physical store needs to collect that sales tax at the time of purchase from the buyer, and then pass it on to the state. Online stores don't have to if the buyer is in a different state. This bill (if I understand it correctly) says that they will have to start doing that just like their physical counterparts. This isn't a "new" tax, and it's not an "internet" tax - this is just the closing of a loophole that's benefited online stores since people started buying stuff over the internet.

Re: US Gov sucks

From a previous Reg article on the Marketplace Fairness Act: "There's a $1m exemption built into this," a spokesman for MFA's sponsor Mike Enzi (R, Wy) told The Register. "If you have a business you can have $10m business, $1m of which can be in remote sales over the internet, and you're exempt." (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/22/marketplace_fairness_act_senate_vote/).

This bill isn't going to affect any little one person online stores, or the vast majority of people selling stuff on eBay. If you're doing over $1 million in sales online, I think you can handle the demands of collecting sales tax.

Re: God I hate politicians...

But this has nothing to do with supporting local businesses - it's about reclaiming lost sales tax revenue for cities and states and making sure that both local and online businesses are competing on a level playing field. If you don't like your local business, fine, keep ordering online (I pay sales tax on Amazon, but I still look there first for many of the reasons you mentioned) and if the local business can't make shopping there more compelling than online, they lose just as they should. Taking an unfair advantage away from player B is not the same as giving support to player A.

Re: God I hate politicians...

"So now that this will more then likely do is kill most online places tax revenues will more then likely fall as people will also no longer afford to be able to buy as much as they were, and people who were employed will now become unemployed."

Or - the local businesses will now be able to remain competitive and can hire local workers that they had to lay off because they were being beaten by their online competition who wasn't having to collect sales tax, and the local tax revenues will rise because more local people are now employed and all the sales taxes that weren't being collected because of online out of state sales are now being collected.

Also, I'd love to hear your reasoning on why "...tax revenues would more then likely fall as people will also no longer afford to be able to buy as much..." when the states weren't getting anything for those sales in the first place. If "Kevin" used to be able to buy a $100 pair of sneakers online without paying any sales tax, and now he can only afford an $90 pair, but pays a 5% sales tax, how does the tax revenue fall? Any% of $90 is a lot more than 0% of $100.

Wikipedia doesn't need your money - so why does it keep pestering you?

Re: *** STOP PRESS *** Business makes money.

Thanks for the link Tim - I have a son with SPD and will definitely look into making a donation to this place (not anywhere near me, but I love what they're doing). We built our own "gym" in the basement - but it sure would be great to have a resource like this locally.

US election: New Jersey email voting plan 'best of bad bunch'

read the story, or at least pay attention to the news

The problem isn't that they're lazy, it's that a ton of NJ infrastructure has been trashed by hurricane Sandy. People have been displaced and relocated, and some areas are just starting to get power back. Pay attention.

iPhone 5 poised to trounce Android, devastate BlackBerry?

small sample

I live on the border of Minnesota and that's a very heavily skewed iPhone state. I'm guessing California is, too (just a guess). That and the EXTREMELY small sample size make these number very suspect to me. I have no doubt the iPhone 5 will sell really well - I just wouldn't base any actual number expectations on a survey like that.

'Kindness of America' snapper shot himself in 'act of self-promotion'

Re: Local law?

it is when they pull you over while you're driving to *make* the arrest.

Re: >"under the influence when he was arrested"

it wasn't him that was drunk, it was the guy they originally arrested for shooting him.

Re: Why the delay in filing charges? Come on people. Smarten Up!

I'm from this area - the cops/courts are probably just too busy to want to deal with this stupid crap. The place is experiencing a huge oil boom right now and small towns of 5-15,000 have nearly doubled in size in the last two years with very little increase in the number of law enforcement - they just can't keep up. A very sizable percentage of the oil field workers are, to be polite, not the "upper crust" of society, so the number of assaults, drunken drivers, burglaries, and even murders have overwhelmed the local authorities. With much more serious stuff to deal with I'm sure that some idiot who shot himself in the arm is the last thing they want to busy themselves with. As far as the guy who was arrested - they stopped him because he matched the description the "victim" gave, arrested him, got a search warrant for his truck, then cleared him of the charges* after their search - sounds like good police work to me (*cleared him of the assault charge, he also happened to be drunk when they pulled him over). I agree he should have charges filed against him, there's just no rush to do it when there are more pressing issues for the local authorities.

Unfeasibly vast amphibian found croaked on video card

RIP Mr. Nielsen

It's Doofi, and don't call me Shirley.

How to make boots on Mars affordable - One way trips

long term

No, but if we're eventually to get far enough away, Mars would be the first step to get there.

YouTube clasps naked dancer to bosom

YES

I cannot vote this post up high enough. It's not censorship when it's private industry - it's choice.

Fraunhofer boffins develop 'Titanium foam' endoskeletal implants

better

doesn't make you live longer, but makes longer life better - that's tech I really like.

Canon EOS 7D

12 minutes

"What a shame about this limit. If only it wasn't there then this camera would be a fantastic all-rounder and a contender for making proper decent film footage..."

When was the last time you saw a movie with a single scene longer than 12 minutes? There aren't many. It puts a damper on recording the kids school play in one long shot, but for "proper decent film footage" this 12 minutes really isn't much of a barrier. BTW, I have one (and love it), and my personal guess would be the sensor heat issue you mentioned. I got it for photography, the video is a nice little add-on I use occasionally, but I can definitely imagine that sensor heating up when used for prolonged periods.

Homemade airship prang closes highway in Oklahoma

empty sky

you do realize that there was a lot less commercial air traffic aloft when the Wright boys were testing their craft, not to mention a bit less interstate road travel that this guy put in danger just to satisfy his hobby. There's the safe and legal way to do this, then there's his "rules don't apply to me, I'll do whatever the hell I please" way. And don't give me the "wide open USA" crap - he landed on the Interstate in Oklahoma, it's not like the state is covered with them, so he obviously wasn't out in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure you'd feel a bit different about his right to play with experimental aircraft if he landed one on your house.

Apple cult leader emails outside world

jerk

I understand Apple's side, and actually agree with it - but if Jobs is notorious for almost *never* answering email, and *this* is the one he decides to respond to, and *that's* what he tells a loyal Apple customer and developer - jerk.