Archive for June, 2009
Friday, June 26th, 2009
Offtopic Friday: time to re-think state sales taxes?
The topic of state sales taxes has been a sleeper issue over the last few years. Congress keeps passing moratoriums on out of state Internet sales, but states are trying to come up with clever ways of taxing the business. Amazon seems to be the target of many state legislators and understandably so.
I recently bought a Canon T1i for $950. I bought it online at Amazon.com with free shipping (took 3 days to arrive). The local camera shop had plenty of them in stock and I could have picked it up that day. However, at 8% local sales tax, that camera would have cost an extra $76 for no incremental benefit to me as I wasn’t in any rush to get it so the 3 day delay was fine. The camera shop also closes at 5pm promptly during the week which is an annoyance and nearly impossible for me to get to anyway.
Why would anyone buy from a local store? I bought a plasma HDTV for a few thousand dollars a couple years ago. I saved approximately $175 that would have gone to sales tax by again buying it online (at Amazon.com). I buy EVERYTHING online these days. I’m probably one of a few power users of the iPhone Amazon.com app.
State sales tax policies will kill local retailers, local businesses, and local jobs. It’s odd, but your states implicitly encourage you to buy things from other states rather than the shop down the street. The Internet, USPS, UPS and Fedex have made it infinitely easier today than say 10-15 years ago.
The state sales tax is antiquated and adversely impacting local businesses. State governments need to stop trying to chase down Amazon.com and the 1,000 other Internet retailers who will pop up next.
How should states fix this? Who knows – taxes and markets are a complicated and dynamic system. I haven’t researched which states may have found alternative approaches, but I personally think the state sales tax has to go away. Sure, “local items” like gas, alcohol, etc are easy targets to continue a sales tax, but that’s because they can’t be shipped across state lines by individuals. I can see some moron legislator coming up with a plan to ban importing HDTVs next…
The reality is states needs to create a new, modern tax policies that align local interests and provide the funding needed for the services residents expect. It won’t be easy, but it can be done.
Many cities still tax personal income – another nonsensical issue. They should tax people based on the property the occupy. There’s no reason I should have to contribute to a local city 3x more than the guy down the street does just because I work harder, invested for more higher education, and accepted a more work-intensive lifestyle. I get the same municipal benefit he does but I should pay 3x more? When my wife and I moved from Tarrytown NY last year (no municipal income tax), we moved into another municipality that has no income tax as well. Sure, we pay for these things in property taxes, but it’s a more “even” allocation of the tax burden.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an “anti-tax” person. I’ll pay my fair share and that’s fine. I think that many of these taxation systems are trying to patch a failing system that no longer makes sense in our modern economy where physical boundaries are no longer relevant.
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
YalvaS – this time from HP
Yet-another-low-volume-app-Store
That’s what you get when you add an “app store” to HP Printers. As I mentioned a short time ago I think it’s time to develop an open framework for app stores and delivery of applications. There are so many “one off” instances, it becomes a very inefficient support process for ISVs and developers. These “non-Apple” (read non-market-leaders) followers have an opportune moment to collaborate together in an open forum and put forth a truly competitive platform.
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2009/090622a.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news
In addition to receiving apps preloaded on the printer, people can download new ones as they become available at the HP Apps Studio to suit their interests and needs. With the sweep of a finger, users will be able to browse and view popular web destinations and simply touch the app of their choice to launch a web page where they can customize and print content on demand in an easy-to-read format.(1)
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Obama chooses IBM’s David Kappos to head USPTO
I think this is great news for potential patent reform (long overdue). David certainly has experience with open source licensing and IP issues related to open development.
While many will see the press generalizations about David’s views on IP reform, why not listen to his interview with Scoble from August of 2007 and hear for yourself? In the interview David talks about collaborative innovation, open standards and open source which I think many will still find very interesting.
Scoble Interview: http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/3286371/
Ars covered the news here:
The Obama administration’s choice to head the US Patent and Trademark Office, IBM’s David Kappos, appears to be getting rave reviews, which can only partly be attributed to the fact that Kappos has been a prominent advocate of patent reform.
And this is a link to the official announcement.
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
California will adopt open source, digital textbooks next year
Some very intriguing news over at Ars about California’s move to digital textbooks. I’m not sure they’re on a sustainable model yet and California will have to work out all the kinks. This comment in particular made me conclude this:
“We’re pretty excited about what we’re seeing,” he said. “We actually have one commercial publisher who is submitting several of their textbooks [as open sourced material] for review, so this will be pretty groundbreaking, and I think it will be a paradigm shift for the publishers as well. They’re taking a paid resource they used to charge the districts for, and basically allowing the districts to download it for free.”
In my opinion, California should consider establishing a governance body of key education materials stakeholders and find a way to both incentivize content submissions, ensure “polish”, and ensure there’s a strong pipeline of contributors. They’ll need a “community manager”.
I think the great news is that this approach appears to have been in the works for many years, it intuitively makes sense, and I’m sure there are many willing to contribute. Just think – perhaps PhD students should be required to contribute as part of their graduate coursework?? There’s many ways to make this work, but I really hope they don’t expect people will just come out of the woodwork with open source, “polished”, “free” textbooks that integrate and that anyone can use for all purposes.
The first link is to Arnold’s written statement, the second is to Ars’ interview where I pulled the quote above.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_12536333?nclick_check=1
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
OpenAppStore – Do we need one?
I can’t help but think with Apple, Sun, Nokia and others with “AppStores” live and working or clones in the works, is it time to have 1 set of open, “AppStore” APIs? I certainly wouldn’t expect it from Apple as they’re currently the market leader, but all these “me too” players should consider consolidating resources for 1 API set that could be shared and collaboratively built upon. There’s no reason this couldn’t be possible and successful. We need strong competition in this space – not just weak, feable, short term “tries” at building a competing store to Apple…
Monday, June 1st, 2009
ODF adoption continues – has it ‘crossed the chasm’?
There’s a certain point in any technology’s adoption that you step back and think to yourself “there’s no going back now”. It’s then that you realize the technology has “crossed the chasm” and whether some would wish it away or whether early adopters start testing a new “next generation” that technology will still be here to stay. I **think** ODF is there now. When you look at the government adoption levels it makes a very compelling case for “here to stay”. The fact is that as governments develop a standard, all government agencies, citizens who use the documents, and vendors who work with the government will all start to adopt the format.
I know within IBM we’re making the switch. Bob Sutor recently pointed that out. On Friday I also upgraded to the latest build of Symphony (as did every IBMer did per our automatic update tool). The switch still has miles to go, but much of the mythical “last mile cable” has been installed.
What prompted me to realize this just today? I receive the ODF Alliance Newsletter regularly in my inbox. Today, I noticed the following:
(note that while the URL is in Spanish, the translation can be seen here thanks to Google)
ECUADOR CHARTS PATH TO ODF ADOPTION
The latest government in South America to advance the use of ODF is Ecuador. Upon its approval by the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Normalización (INEN) as an Ecuadoran national standard, ODF was also adopted for sending and receiving documents by the national government’s Secretariat for Information Technology (Subsecretaría de Informática), whose mission is to improve the government’s management of IT projects and coordinate actions in this field in other public sector institutions in Ecuador . In South America, the governments of Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela have already adopted ODF, as have several regional governments, including Parana (Brazil) and Misiones (Argentina).
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