I'm already paying Comcast for a certain level of service (not that they actually provide anything close to what's advertised), but they'd also want someone like Netflix to pay to send their data to me (which is what *I'm* paying Comcast for). In a better functioning market, Comcast would have an incentive to get the fastest possible connection to Netflix so that I'm a happy Comcast customer with great connectivity to Netflix. Since they're a near monopoly (slower DSL is the only other option I have), they don't need to make me particularly happy, because I don't have a better option to get high-speed access to Netflix. Comcast knows that, and can hold my eyes hostage and ransom Netflix to get better connectivity to me.

To more specifically address your question, let's assume that Comcast upgrades their network so that they now have sufficient bandwidth to me that Netflix can stream 1080P, and I as a customer pay for a connection sufficient to stream 1080P. Netflix pays for connections sufficient to stream to me in 1080P. What the ISPs want to do is refuse to actually provide the connectivity that they're obviously capable of, and that their customer has paid for, unless Netflix also pays them to carry the data *to the ISP's subscriber*.

As for the "climate of openness and innovation," lets say I want to start a competing video streaming service. Netflix has been making money for a while, and can afford to pay residential ISPs for better access to their subscribers. If I can't afford to do that, I can't stream in 1080P, and my service never gets off the ground, even if I've paid for sufficient uplink capacity, and my subscribers have paid the ISP for sufficient downstream capacity. If I don't pay my subscribers' ISPs for faster access, I can't send data to them at a rate that both they and I have paid our respective network providers for. The ISP must have the capacity if they're able to sell me that "faster" access, so if I don't pay they must be slowing my data down.

Maybe the ISPs will never throttle below the data rates they're providing in 2011, but they should have incentive to build out their networks to provide higher capacity for things like Blu-Ray quality streaming video. If they do build such capacity (and as a customer I should expect them to try) but won't transmit non-paid data at that rate, they are making everything else slower than it would otherwise be. I'm paying them for best effort, and expect their best effort to keep getting better.

When an ISP says they want to charge higher fees for faster/better access to their networks, what they really mean is that they want to charge higher fees for faster/better access to their subscribers (who requested that data, and paid the ISP to receive it). If they actually had to compete for business, they'd be the ones wanting to pay for faster/better access to the sites/services that their customers wanted to get to.

Unless it is a software problem, and neutral doesn't work. I'm not sure if its the case on all of their vehicles now, but I know that the Prius' gear selector isn't mechanical.

Well, the 9.5% is a sales tax. They pay property tax. I don't pay any income tax, which seems like what a tax on the revenue is, anyway... I don't know where CDs are manufactured and shipped from, but it's not Redmond. Most of the direct business uses of the roads should just be moving employees around...In any case, isn't that what gas and vehicle registration taxes should be covering?

No, I don't have a problem paying for the schools. I just don't personally use them (as in, I don't have kids that are being educated by them). I'm pretty happy about my tax dollars going to schools, libraries, parks, universities, the NSF, etc.

Eh, I'm not upset - and I really haven't put much thought into how fair or not fair whatever tax Microsoft might or might not pay is.

You described the load being created by the 40,000 employees, 30,000 children and 20,000 spouses. The way I read that (whether or not it was what you intended) was that there were 90,000 people who are a drain on the state and local economies. I don't really know how much Microsoft pays to the state in corporate taxes, but I'm pretty certain that those 90,000 (I really have no idea what the actual number is) put a lot of money into the state, and having them there is a net win.

I'm still not going to touch the "do they pay enough" question. I don't really know, and wouldn't normally write online at all about my employer - nothing specific about them, just don't really mix work and personal stuff like that. In any case, I don't really know how well this bill serves me, personally.

My impression of Washington has been that the state has way overextended itself. Maybe its cynical, but I do believe that the state government would take whatever they could get, and then want more from somewhere else. With seemingly no eye towards the future, they massively increased spending when property tax revenues went up, and now they're in trouble with property values dropping. Last I heard, they're still talking about a multi-billion dollar tunnel project downtown. They swear it won't end up like the big dig...

As far as the corporate tax, goes - it just seems like the money will get taken somewhere. Either I'll pay more tax and make more (since my salary is largely based upon an analysis of a competitive salary, adjusted for cost of living), or I'll pay less, but make less. Since Microsoft owns a *huge* campus, I bet they're paying a lot of property tax, regardless (but I'm not sure what special deals might be in place). With all the problems in the world right now, this one just seems pretty inconsequential.

I don't really want to start commenting on taxes that my employer does/doesn't/should/shouldn't pay, but to sort of answer your question...If Microsoft was taxed at 100%, they'd move out of the state, and either lay me off or relocate me. In either case, my loss of employment is a loss of a revenue stream to the state. If they're taxed at 0%, my burden of the state budget is higher, but they're more likely to keep employing me, and thus I'm more likely to keep paying. As part of their analysis of cost of living for competetive salaries, Microsoft must factor in how much tax I pay living here (since it impacts the cost of living, which is really high here), so presumably they pay me more than they would if I paid 0% tax to the state, so I'd consider that a somewhat hidden tax. I'm sure there's some tipping point where the state is attractive enough to employ a bunch of people, below which a company would be willing to pay more tax, and above which they'd want to move away.

It's just sort of a gut feeling, but I simply don't imagine raising corporate taxes necessarily impacts the budget situation at a 1:1 ratio. Either my employer pays it (and probably pays me less) or I pay it directly. In any case, it seems like it's in Washington's best interest to keep the state attractive to the high tech companies (Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Nintendo, Valve, Expedia, etc.) so that they keep all of the tech workers around, who pay way more into the system than a median wage earner.

Things like restaurants, gas stations, etc., would mostly stay around no matter what the tax structure looks like, but for big companies that attract people from all over the world, the barrier to moving seems a lot lower, since their employee pool is global anyway. While it might seem good on the surface to take money from the mega corp, it seems to me like it might be a better idea to tax the crap out of their employees while making it cheap for them to do business. That hurts me, but the state tax rate is unlikely to make me leave since I'm otherwise happy with my situation, and if it keeps a bunch of people like me in the state, it'd probably be a win for state finances.

In any case, the real part that bugged me about your original post was the implication that I'm a drain on the state. I don't know how best to tax corporations, but I know that I'm paying a lot for the services that the state provides.

Okay, so I'm a Microsoft employee, so factor that in however you want. I'm also a citizen of Washington, and it seems like your argument ignores that. I pay 9.5% sales tax on everything I buy, I sort of pay property taxes (I pay apartment rent, but the landlord takes some of my money and pays property taxes). I pay gas taxes, I pay to register my car, I pay stupidly high liquor taxes. There's no state income tax, so I don't pay that, but a lot of Microsoft employees have pretty expensive houses, so they pay a ton in property tax. Sure, there are more/bigger roads in Redmond than would exist without Microsoft, but as a citizen those are the roads that are most useful to me - isn't that why I pay my gas & vehicle registration taxes?

I don't know anything about this specific tax, and don't want to comment on it. But I'm always confused when I see the argument that Microsoft takes from the state, and that we'd be better off without it. I spend a lot of money in the local economy, pay quite a bit in taxes, etc. If Microsoft left, it'd be a disaster for the economy on the Eastside, and probably all of Seattle.

Your argument about the roads, schools, firefights, police, etc. just doesn't make much sense to me. Microsoft employees are citizens like any other (but since they tend to be pretty well paid, they're going to pay more in taxes), so of course they're going to use state/local resources. I am going to live somewhere, and I'll need roads, firefighters, police, etc, so some state and local government is going to tax me and be responsible for providing those services - because Microsoft employs me here, it's Washington/King Co./Redmond. I don't use the schools, I don't cause a burden to the police, I don't get any assistance from the state. I use the roads, parks and libraries. Like a lot of Microsoft employees, I'm young and have no kids, so I'm not using the schools, but I'm paying for them. I have to think that I pay way more into the system than I get out of it. That's fine, but if Microsoft left I'd probably leave too (I'm not a native Washingtonian, and can't imagine I would have moved to Seattle if not for this job), and from the perspective of state finances I think that'd be a loss for Washington.

Maybe we should kick all employers out of the state. If no one lived here, we wouldn't need any schools/police/firefighters/roads at all. The state budget problems would be solved!

For what it's worth, it links it on the main page - you can just click on "Travel" in the list of links on the left side. Searching for "Farecast" (the original name of the product) or "airline price predictor" both result in links to it as well...

Sidestep looks like it only shows what the price has been - Farecast attempts to guess what will happen in the next seven days. I don't know how helpful that turns out to be, but it does seem like it might be unique.

But I'm not aware of a whole lot of stuff that Microsoft physically produces in Seattle that they'd need to ship, and they pull in talent from all over the world, so the local educated populace might not be a huge deal, either.

Or Netflix isn't actually throttling and kdawson is a moron who just greenlit another "article" with faulty reasoning, bad accusations, and the general stupidity that I've come to expect from him. Seriously, I don't post here much and don't know a ton about how slashdot is set up, but doesn't anyone (cmdrtaco?) care about how much crap he generates? I've pretty much had it with slashdot at this point. It's no longer "News for Nerds," but "false gossip about tech stuff." Blah.

I never really looked into how they might work it into their license, but Gaussian provides a template for their *required* citation when you publish, so they're presumably doing it somehow. http://www.gaussian.com/citation_g03.htm