Cody Taylor

Byzantine writes “The Mississippi Legislature has passed MS House Bill 1461 which would amend the state’s tax laws specifically to charge sales tax on ‘electrically transferred digital products,’ including products bought via mail-order. The bill is currently on the governor’s desk awaiting signature.” Softpedia claims that 20 states have enacted download taxes of one sort or another — most of them for iTunes music — and that New York is considering taxing downloads of all kinds.

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moonbender writes “Fake but working iTunes gift cards are being sold on Chinese auction sites for a fraction of their value: ‘The owner of the Taobao shop told us frankly that the gift card codes are created using key-generators. He also said that he paid money to use the hackers’ service. Half a year ago, when they started the business, the price was around 320 RMB [about ] for [a] 0 card, then more people went into this business and the price went all the way down to 18 RMB [about .60] per card, “but we make more money as the amount of customers is growing rapidly.”‘ The people at Chinese market researcher Outdustry have apparently confirmed this by buying a coupon and transferring it into an iTunes account. Oops.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many countries have faster and more widely available high speed Internet service than the United States. It has a lot to do with their urban density, not our poor technology.

NVIDIA is known primarily for their PC graphics cards, but they’ve been in the news recently both for the expansion of their CUDA and PhysX initiatives as well as (allegedly) developing a CPU to challenge Intel and AMD.

Right, not for offensive language in the app itself, but for offensive language on Twitter — an insanely strict new standard. Hell, Apple might as well reject the next versions of Safari and Mail, since they can display dirty words too — and let’s not forget the awful things people are doing with Notes and the camera.

If you think it is safe to download PDF documents and view them once Adobe finally releases its patch next week, think again. Didier Stevens, an IT security consultant last week demonstrated that simply viewing the folder containing compromised PDF documents within Microsoft’s Windows Explorer is enough to launch the exploit. It appears that this

Stop being an ass and don’t pirate songs and movies. Pirate money and get legal material! Chinese hackers have cracked the algorithm that generates the iTunes Store gift card: You can get 0 for .60.

When Apple introduced the new MacBooks, MacBook Airs, and MacBook Pros in October, they also introduced a new four-finger multi-touch trackpad gesture that allowed users to easily switch between applications (swipe left/right) or invoke Exposé (swipe up/down). While it’s long been known that the original MacBook Air and early 2008 MacBook Pros…

moonbender writes “Fake but working iTunes gift cards are being sold on Chinese auction sites for a fraction of their value: ‘The owner of the Taobao shop told us frankly that the gift card codes are created using key-generators. He also said that he paid money to use the hackers’ service. Half a year ago, when they started the business, the price was around 320 RMB [about ] for [a] 0 card, then more people went into this business and the price went all the way down to 18 RMB [about .60] per card, “but we make more money as the amount of customers is growing rapidly.”‘ The people at Chinese market researcher Outdustry have apparently confirmed this by buying a coupon and transferring it into an iTunes account. Oops.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ivaldes3 writes in to note his post up on Linux Medical News, pointing out the severe shortcomings of the Health IT provisions of the just-passed stimulus bill. “The government has authorized enough money to purchase EMR freedom for the nation. Instead the government appears set to double down on proprietary lock-down. The government currently appears poised to purchase serfdom instead of freedom and performance for patients, practitioners and the nation. An intellectual and financial servitude to proprietary EMR companies for little or no gain. A truly bad bargain.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.