If tax-hungry politicians get their way, the days of ordering items over the Internet and not paying sales tax may become just a fond memory. Right now, if a California resident orders something from Seattle-based Amazon.com, for instance, he or she won’t be charged sales tax at the time of purchase. That’s because Amazon doesn’t have offices in the state of California. Pro-tax politicians want to change this by allowing California to force Amazon to collect and submit sales taxes–and they may have found an ally in a U.S. Congress that’s controlled by Democrats.
by Charles Cooper, Executive Editor of Commentary, CNet News.com
What if someone started an auction and we all ignored it? I was hoping that might be the reaction in the “Twitosphere” after finding out that Andrew Baron put his Twitter account up for auction on eBay. Silly me.
Free streaming music turns people on to new music and encourages them to buy, says social-networking site Last.fm. In the music industry, this will not come as a huge revelation.
Last.fm, acquired by CBS last May, announced Wednesday that since the company launched its on-demand streaming service two months ago, CD and download sales through its partnership with Amazon.com have more than doubled.
So what does that mean?
Music discovery continues to be one of digital music’s greatest vulnerabilities. Nobody has come up with a sure or simple way to help people wade through the millions of tracks available on the Web.
by Michael Kanellos, Editor at Large, CNET News.com
It’s been a long haul for phase change memory, but the goal is in sight. Numonyx, the memory joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Intel, is already shipping samples of phase change memory (PCM) chips to customers, and will start shipping PCM chips commercially later this year, CEO Brian Harrison said at a press conference Monday. … Hearing a CEO talk about existing samples and near-term commercial shipments is a big deal for PCM. The technology has been stuck in the proverbial “a few years away” phase for a long time.
by Charles Cooper, Executive Editor of Commentary, CNET News.com
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved a $267 million loan to a Denver, Colorado-based company called Open Range. The idea: build out broadband service for 518 rural communities in 17 states. The loan represents one of the federal government’s biggest ever public-private investments in broadband service. Considering Uncle Sam’s miserly approach to [...]
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