With free shipping if you're patient and no sales tax in most states, Amazon can undercut almost anybody by at least 5 percent—I know it's why I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon. The problem Best Buy—and every other brick & mortar store—has is that if you have a physical presence in a state, you have to to collect sales taxes. (Theoretically, we're supposed to calculate the taxes on stuff we buy online, and send it to the state ourselves.) Knowing not charging sales tax is a huge competitive advantage, Amazon studiously avoids them.

For instance, the entire reason it was founded in Washington, not California, was so it didn't have to charge CA residents sales taxes. And it only charges sales tax in 6 states (like Kansas) despite having some kind of presence in 14 of them, by putting portions of its business under wholly owned subsidiaries so it doesn't have to collect tax for them. In NY, it's still fighting the "Amazon tax" bill forcing it to collect tax in NY.

What's funny is that Netflix actually does charge sales tax—its discs count as a physical presence in every state, which seems utterly perverse—but rolls it into the general cost of your subscription. Given that Amazon is a $20 billion-a-year internet monolith and state governments could sure use the cash, they'll wake up to the whole internet thing eventually, so enjoy that 5 percent freebie while it lasts. I sure am! [NYT]

The president also said he's introducing an annual White House Science fair with the winners of national competitions in science and technology. " If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you're a young person and you've produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too. "

Students will launch rockets, construct miniature windmills, and get their hands dirty. They'll have the chance to build and create — and maybe destroy just a little bit — to see the promise of being the makers of things, and not just the consumers of things. [White House via NY Times]

Industry leaders like Sony are launching a nationwide challenge to design compelling, freely available, science-related video games. And organizations representing teachers, scientists, mathematicians, and engineers — joined by volunteers in the community — are participating in a grassroots effort called "National Lab Day" to reach 10 million young people with hands-on learning.

Business leaders from Intel, Xerox, Kodak, and Time Warner Cable are teaming up with Sally Ride, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the Carnegie Corporation, to find and replicate successful science, math, and technology programs all across America. Sesame Street has begun a two-year initiative to teach young kids about math and science. And Discovery Communications is going to deliver interactive science content to 60,000 schools reaching 35 million students.

These efforts extend beyond the classroom. Time Warner Cable is joining with the Coalition for Science After School and FIRST Robotics — the program created by inventor Dean Kamen, which gave us the "Cougar Cannon" — to connect one million students with fun after-school activities, like robotics competitions.

Lots of gear that's still kicking around only has an analog connection with a cable box: like TiVos and Slingboxes made before 2004. And what about your TV? You'd likely be forced to upgrade to gear with digital ports (like HDMI) to watch movies protected with Selectable Output Control.

The studios are desperate to show on-demand movies over cable prior to their DVD release, but claim they can't without SOC. They say the tech protects their revenue by blocking easy analog copying—the so called "analog hole". Problem is, DVDs (a supposed secure format) get ripped and shared online, anyway.

Not only that, but it's almost a moot point. Warner Brothers (who signed the original SOC petition last year) released Observe and Report, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past for video-on-demand this September—before their DVDs hit stores. Consumer advocacy groups, like Public Knowledge and the EFF, also point out that Magnolia Pictures, distributors like IFC, and more recently, Starz Media, are also doing VoD before DVD.

The MPAA says that the outputs would only be disabled for the new movies, and wouldn't impact any existing content. And they make the fair point that there's always a lag between new experiences early adopters get compared to those with older gear.

But I'm sorry MPAA, pull your head out of your arse. DVDs still get ripped, and one of the very studios you represent is still releasing on-demand movies prior to their DVD release. Why bother? Think about the huge customer base you're alienating, and stay away from the back of my TV. [Public Knowledge and PC Magazine via BoingBoing]

The leaks suggest that countries who sign up to the U.S promoted plan would have to force ISPs to proactively police copyright on user-generated content, cut off those accused (or face liability), and put "graduated response" clauses in customer contracts. An example of a graduated response is France's "three strikes and you're out" law. There, you get two warnings if caught sharing music or movies, then you're banned for up to two years.

This provision would mean that every country that signs up to ACTA must allow content owners such as record companies and Hollywood studios to sue ISPs for failing to stop their subscribers from illegally sharing copyright-protected material such as music and movies.

By the way, two major sources of counterfeiting—Russia and China—aren't in the talks. If you want to get your head further around the issue, these sites do a great job of breaking it all down: [Electronic Frontier Foundation and PC World via BoingBoing]

There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB.

In terms of data on current human scales, a yottabyte is nearly infinite (though I'm sure the NSA will manage to fill the thing in like 2 weeks, and iPods will come with yottabytes in just a few months).

To be fair, the yottabyte figure is just one estimate generated by a Pentagon think tank. The facility could hold a mere hundreds of petabytes. But either way, the prospect is as unsustainable as it is frightening. This one facility will burn through as much electricity as the entirety of Salt Lake City.

All of this data comes from the book The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid. And while the paranoid among you may read it, I, MARK WILSON, HAVE NO REASON TO FEAR THE NSA'S INVOLVEMENT IN MY LIFE OR INFORMATION AT ALL. [NYBooks via CrunchGear]

Most of the Maldives lie less than three feet above sea level, which puts them much more at risk if global sea levels keep rising. Some scientists have warned that the islands could even be uninhabitable within 100 years (provided a rise of 7-24 inches), and the Maldives government has been vocal in the campaign to battle rising sea levels. Eleven of the 14 cabinet members attended the meeting, conducted with whiteboards and microphones 20 feet underwater, and all signed their wetsuits, to be auctioned off for the cause. [Telegraph, image from AP via CBC]

Apparently, US government officials have been advising frequent business travelers to keep separate electronics for use in China that they only use there. This includes computers and cellphones. And if you used your normal phone over there, it may be time to toss it.

It's all about corporate espionage, as one bugged phone or computer in the hands of a powerful exec could end up costing millions of dollars if info falls into the wrong hands.

It's both totally nuts and completely sensible at the same time. This is the age we live in, friends. [Geek.com]

The app store will be managed by the General Services Administration, and in addition to business apps, will provide tools for storage, web hosting and social networking. Kundra hopes it will save both time, energy and money, while bringing the Government's IT infrastructure out of the dark ages. Somewhere a Vogon is shedding a tear.

Google Exec Sergey Brin was so excited that he drove over in his Tesla and promised to save a chunk of Google's cloud servers just for the government! Facebook, Vimeo, Microsoft, Adobe, and Salesforce.com are all providing services as well. Everyone wins! [Apps.Gov via White House via NY Times]

Leading by example, or you know by gimmick, the candidate believes that the state can save millions by slapping these GPS trackers on nonviolent criminal defendants instead of keeping them in jail. Here is a candidate really trying to relate to all the people. You can watch where he is right now on his website.

This reminds me of when my friend tried out his dog's invisible fence collar. He understood the punishment so much more after he ran through it and got shocked in the jugular. Either way, I'd still keep my eyes on Untermeyer to see if he slips up and forgets he is being tracked at all times. Oh in case you really do track him, the site doesn't work in Firefox. That already has to ignore about half of his voting constituency. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Credit to Nicholas Thompson over at Epicenter, who spent some quality time with the bill:

[I]n its original form, did have some seriously bad ideas in it. For example, in an emergency, the president could "order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network."

And then, Senate procedure happened. The softened, pared-down language of the current bill would only entitle the President to, "In the event of an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network" help to "direct the national response" to a crisis, "in coordination with relevant industry sectors." As Thompson notes, nothing scary is granted here, and the President definitely hasn't been authorized to take over private networks, for malign ends, for fun, or otherwise.

In reality, the bill might actually aid transparency, oddly enough: Thompson highlights a theory that, by ensuring the government's digital emergency management powers are kept out of the less accountable hands of the NSA and in the public view, abuses are less likely. So there's that! [Wired Epicenter]

Hollow, because China's still got a national content firewall, which pretty much precludes access to naked folks and Tibet's Wikipedia page, or whatever it is that the government wants blocked. Hollow, because lots of Chinese citizens don't own PCs, and depend on internet cafes for access. Hollow, because it sounds like this drawdown was due to logistical concerns, and doesn't reflect a change of philosophy in the government, which keeps hatching more and more plans to keep "true things" (and evidently, "sexting") from its citizens:

The government recently proposed a requirement that all users of online chat rooms and bulletin boards use their real names when posting comments, a move that would stifle the sometimes-freewheeling debate on many sites. Until now, government censors have played a cat-and-mouse game with anonymous Internet users who posted comments that flout approved positions.

That's mildly terrifying, for Chinese e-people! [NYT]

Batteries have been a bottleneck in consumer electronics for years now, and it's getting ridiculous. Think back ten years ago: you probably couldn't have imagined all the wild stuff you can do with 2009's smartphones, but you definitely wouldn't have guessed that their batteries would last less than two days. It doesn't make sense, and it's slowing things down—imagine what our gadgets could do if manufacturers didn't have to spend so much of their engineering efforts of reducing power consumption.

The problem is, truly new battery technologies require huge institutional investments, the likes of which most companies aren't able—or willing—to make. As Wired explains, we've been stuck for years, but maybe, just maybe, this 2.4-billion dollars will somehow transmute into a breakthrough battery technology that'll trickle down to our gadgets, rendering out DC adapters obsolete once and for all. Or, it'll just sink into some kind of giant corporate money hole, and we'll just have to charge our iPhone 5GS Nanos six times a day. We'll see! [WSJ]

The NY Times Bits blog says that Transportation Secretary David La Hood will announce plans for the September 15th summit on Tuesday, which will address methods of "combating distracted driving." This conveniently lines up with the US Senate's recent introduction of a bill to outlaw texting while driving, which is the first such effort on a national level. [NY Times Bits]

The iPhone certainly isn't as ubiquitous for corporate use as BlackBerry or even Windows Mobile, but that's starting to change, and Zdziarski is very concerned that the iPhone 3GS's security puts sensitive data at unnecessary risk. He claims that with easily-available software, anybody can break into an iPhone 3GS and start extracting data within two minutes, and access everything on the phone within 45. After reading this, we could see why companies might just be reluctant to trade their BlackBerrys in for a shiny new iPhone 3GS. [Wired]

Internet Explorer isn't mandated in every governmental department, and Firefox has been vetted and cleared as just as secure as IE (duh), so it's a legitimate question: Why not use the faster, safer, more customizable and more reliable browser? Clinton has no idea why Firefox is barred, which is totally fine with us—we really are happy she's spending her time on other things.

But Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy chimes in that it's "an expense question," at which point he is promptly and rightfully shouted down that Firefox is free, for god's sake. He goes into a lot of nonsense about "patches" and how even things that are free aren't really free, which sounds to us like a lame attempt to explain away his first answer—he probably didn't know Firefox was free when he cited expense in the first place. If Firefox has already been implemented in other sectors of government, it stands to reason that it could be adopted by the State Department fairly easily and quickly, and with minimal expense.

The rest of both his and Secretary Clinton's answer is mostly impenetrable, metaphor-laden government-speak about cutting costs that, sorry guys, isn't going to make us forget that you just claimed a free and vastly superior program, one that's already in wide use in other sectors of government, is too expensive to implement.

Pat Kennedy, you're officially on my bad side. [State Department via Switched]

According to PC World, FCC Chairman Michael Copps hinted that if they do discover unfavorable effects as a result of exclusive handset deals, they won't be opposed to regulation. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar also rambled on, saying something about how if Microsoft and IBM had exclusive deals Google would have never existed. Um, what?

But there's a twist! AT&T's Paul Roth fired back at this line of thinking, mentioning that exclusive deals prevent the mobile handset world from completely devolving into a lowest common denominator mentality when it comes to new tech. Both sides have valid points, I suppose. So let the battle begin. [PC World]

The site provides both raw data as well as widgets for getting updated information on various topics such as H1N1 flu or the FBI. But if you're really interested in having a data set of the locations and characteristics of the world's copper smelters or past East Pacific storm tracks, this is your new one stop shop. They're even taking requests if the data you're looking for isn't here.

This probably isn't useful to too many people, but if it's useful to you, you know how cool it is. [Data.gov via The Daily What]