What now? Companies are doing whatever they can to avoid those extra taxes. Amazon pretty much gave those states with new taxes the finger. Amazon and Blue Nile simply remove their business from those states to avoid the taxes. Those states are simply shooting themselves in the foot. Now, instead of getting more money, they are going to possibly lose even more revenue from the businesses.

Another state, Maine, decide to use our tax money to pay for Mac for students. This is ridiculous. If they want to provide laptop for students, they need to use their own money and don’t ask the tax payers to pay for it.  This is very irresponsible. Waste of money. With teachers are being laid off, isn’t it better to use the money to hire those teachers and help with the unemployment? If those schools really need to provide computers to the students, why not use netbooks? Netbooks are way cheaper than those overpriced Mac.

Obama talked alot about being responsible. This definitely are not responsible. Feds need to not grant the stimulus money to Maine. The states need to rethink those new taxes. They need to support business to expand and not contract. We need to lower the unemployment numbers. The more people in the work place, the better our economy. More money circulating. More people will be willing to spend. Support the business and stop punishing the business. The economy is already bad. Need to help to improve it instead of making it worst.

Sometimes, I don’t understand. The news said that “a federal jury ruled”. Does that mean that there’s only 1 jury that decided the matter? Or a federal jury means a group of jurors?

Anyway, the jury is wrong in this matter. The plaintiff can’t even provide any proofs that distribution actually happened. The one that downloaded “the files” of the mom’s computer is the plaintiff by using Kazaa.

This thing is really out of hand. The rules and laws for the digital stuffs are really of of hands. The songs that the recording industry downloaded of the mom’s computer is actually just files. The song files are not any different with picture files or movie files or application files. They are just files. Now, in a computer, it’s really easy to make a duplicate of any files. How can we set a rules or law on this matter? What about the fair use law?

Now, is sharing itself illegal? Just because the mom put her files in a shared folder that accessible thru Kazaa, does that mean that she distributed the song? The files are just files. It can be copied easily and can also be deleted easily. Technology has moved really fast. The old rules and laws are not applicable at this time. The rules and laws needs to be change.

The verdict is a joke. Isn’t the mom supposed to be innocent until proven guilty? How come the mom is guilty and has to bear $1.92 million even when the plaintiff can’t even provide any proofs?

I am still pissed. Actually, I had been watching digital TV for a few years now. I was able to get the digital local channels fine before the switch. In fact, with antenna, I was getting all of the digital local channels (4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 20, 22, 33, 45, 54) . Then the switch happened yesterday. I lost channel 9, 11 and 13. The root cause is that these 3 stations decided to switch their digital signal from UHF to VHF frequency. #@! Grrr..  The rest of the stations stay on their UHF channels. For a long time, the DTV is on the UHF. I contacted the stations and asked about it. They claim that by using VHF, they can save cost and reach more. Which totally contradict. I was never able to receive the VHF signal in my area. I was able to get the UHF signals fine. The stations also claim that by using VHF, they are gaining viewers. But they definitely lost me.

I was not alone. Many people are in the same boat as me. http://www.kcts9.org/blog/2009/06/12/four-hours-dtv-day
http://www.kcts9.org/blog/2009/02/27/history-dtv-transmitter-transition-kcts-9
http://www.kcts9.org/video/re-scanning-your-tv-after-june-12-2009

I am not going to pay my local cable company (Comcast) in order to get the 3 channels I lost. I do not like Comcast. I had too many bad experience with them in the past.

I wish all of the stations switch back to UHF as before to transmit the digital signal. But from the responses I got from the stations, it seems that they are not going too. Since I can’t get any VHF signal in my area and I am not willing to pay Comcast, that means..  Bye to those 3 stations. No more KCTS, CWTV and FOX. We are going to need to adjust our lives with less TV.

Still, EU are not happy with Microsoft’s move. Instead, EU wanted Microsoft to include rival browsers into the new to be released operating system.

This is one of the biggest news this week as all media outlet were covering. So many people commented on this issue.

First, Opera complaint to EU that Microsoft unfairly bundle Internet Explorer. Now, Microsoft made a move that’ll remove IE from Windows. Yet, Opera and EU are still upset about it. This only means that their original complain were not legit in the first place.

I wrote not too long ago that the one that suffers from Anti Trust are us. It was proofen yesterday. Those EU commisioner are the bad guys. They’re running out of money, so let’s just sue Microsoft and ask for a huge fine.

Most people argue that Microsoft is a monopoly company. I don’t get it. There’re healthy competition in the OS market: Linux, Apple, etc. Many also argue that there’s a market for browser. But, since all of the browsers are free, where’s the market?

Opera and EU wanted Microsoft to include top 5 rival browsers into Windows. Huh? Are the rivals going to pay Microsoft to include their competitor applications? Who’s going to bear the cost of testing and integrating the other browsers? Who’s going to decide the top 5 browsers? How about the browsers that rank #6? There’s no end for this. If there’s security issue, who’s responsible? Are EU going to be responsible? Will EU pay Microsoft to have this feature?

Browser war has ended a long time ago and people has decided that a browser is a necessary tool for an OS and not a separate app. No other operating system come without a browser. Linux comes with Firefox as default. Apple with Safari. Microsoft with IE. There’s no revenue in the browser market. But, there’s a huge revenue in the search market.

Let’s see: The default search engine: Firefox – Google, Safari – Google, Chrome – Google, Opera – Google, IE – Bing/Live

Tell me, who’s the beneficiary? Google, of course. Google already own the majority of search, very close to Microsoft’s share in operating system market. And now what? EU asked Google for opinion about browser? Of course, google wants more search market share. Only IE stands in the way. The only browser that come default with Bing/Live search. Let’s get rid of it.

EU should not be involved with this. EU are the evil one.

The time has finally come to the end of this season Dancing With The Stars. The remaining three celebrities are very good. In the Paso Doble dance off, I pretty much agreed with the judges. All danced really well, Gilles were just a bit better than Melissa or Shawn.

In the second dance, the free style, I don’t really enjoy all three dances. Why do DWTS has to have free style in the final? I prefer ballroom or latin. Anyway, I disagree with the judges. Shawn is not any better than the other 2.

This is just another scripted plan of the producers. Making sure that the number are very close. Let’s see:

Shawn = 58 (33.7%)
Gilles = 58 (33.7%)
Melissa = 56 (32.6%)

About 1% difference between the 3 celebrities. That means it’s another popularity contest. The most popular of the 3 will win it.

My pick: Shawn will be third, Melissa second and Gilles the winner.

Why does American company have to pay for EU? EU has been bad. Whenever they needed money, they simply slap successful American company with fine. Why can’t the US do the same thing to European company? We are in need of money. Huge deficit. Lots of unemployment. We should simply sue the European company and slap them with fines.

Some of us may think that Intel has nothing to do with us. If you have 401K, then it indeed has an impact on our money. Many mutual funds include intel. Like it or not, it has some impact. I don’t like it.

Another company that’s slapped with big fine by EU was Microsoft. Again, the ones that complain was Real Networks, Netscape. Our American money only to support EU.   If any of you have a 401K, don’t you realize it?

Let’s see. Microsoft was slapped with anti trust. Microsoft can’t bundle Internet Explorer with the OS, yet Apple or Linux are fine to bundle anything they want with their OS.  Now, Microsoft has to release so many versions of Windows as a result. Otherwise, they’ll be slap with anti trust again. Now, think about it. Who’s the one that suffers? We the customers are the one that suffers, and us who has any 401K.

Anyway, I am rambling and it’s very late.

If Intel’s appeal failed and Intel has to pay, it’s going to make some dent to its financial statement. It may affect it’s stock price. It may have eliminate jobs. Economy is already bad and unemployement already high. Our economy is already shrinking.

A note to any American company. If you want to complain, complain in the US. I am tired of wasting our money to support EU.;

So, gay is more important than the future of our next generation? Our tax money will instead be given to those gays instead of our children.

I am definitely going to vote Republican next time.

Here are the judges’ scores from last night:
Ty = 25 + 23 = 48 (21.9%)
Melissa = 28 + 27 = 55 (25.1%)
Shawn = 30 + 26 = 56 (25.6%)
Gilles = 30 + 30 = 60 (27.4%)

The judges were very inconsistent. Let’s see. Len gave Ty a 9 and Shawn an 8? How do they score? Do they score base improvement? or the actual dance for the week? Scoring is always an issue in this type of subjective matter.

Anyway, based on the judges score, I predict there won’t be another upset tonight. Ty has become this year Marie Osmond. Ty need about 28% of total votes to advance to the final. Altough, it’s pretty doable considering he has a lot of votes from the public, I think he’s going to leave tonight. If he were to stay, then my 2nd choice to leave for tonight is Shawn.

Now, for next week, the final, I want Melissa to dance Jive. We know that from all of the stars that danced, they all said that Jive is the hardest dance to learn. This is the dance that she skipped. If she wants to be the champion, then she needs to show that she can dance that dance.

In the telecommunication, it was the Bell (was it? or AT&T.. I can’t remember and too lazy to search).

Anyway, those are all excellent companies and big. People are always jealous to those who succeed. Money always seem to be the root cause of everything. In the name of competition, successful companies are punished with antitrust. Instead of helping the companies to push the technology further, people have to interfere and gave the successful companies issues and stop them from expanding even further.

Patent lawsuit is the other thing that seriously need to be changed. The patent is a broken system. Too many patent troll now. Again, money is the root cause of the issue. Those lazy people simply jealous of the successful one. They want a piece of the money. And the sad thing is the jury awarded the troll and punish the one that’s actually using it to better the technology.

Sad. Very sad.

Source: CBS – Legalizing pot

Are we out of our mind? What will this country become?