Tag: cloud

Chicago’s Exciting Xbox / Cloud Computing tax!

Well, it’s going to be exciting to everybody who lives outside of Chicago.

As of July 1, 2015, citizens of Chicago who enjoy their Netflix, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Prime, Xbox Live, and/or PlayStation Network subscriptions are now subject to the city’s 9 percent “Amusement Tax” for the privilege. Further, should you decide to digitally rent a movie or videogame via these services, the 9 percent tax would be applied for every rental. In other words, Chicago now taxes its citizens 9 percent on their $99 annual Amazon Prime subscription because of its instant video/music service, plus 9 percent for each $3.99 digital rental through the same service. The same applies for rentals and music services offered directly from Microsoft and Sony. Fans of Sony’s PlayStation Network ecosystem are hit hardest: a 9 percent tax each on their PlayStation Plus subscription, PlayStation Music, PlayStation Now (videogame streaming), and Sony’s recently introduced PlayStation Vue live-TV service. Throw in other rental/subscription services such as Hulu, Gamefly, Google Play, HBO Go, iTunes, and Vudu, and you get a sense of the sheer breadth of this tax on Chicago consumers’ digital lives.

So, basically, avoid living in Chicago if you enjoy living in the 21st Century. Or working in it, because they’re also going to tax the cloud. That’s why everybody outside of Chicago is excited about this. It’s not every day that a major city decides to deliberately drive non-geographically fixed companies out to the suburbs.

Quote of the Day, Hillary Clinton Will Be Yelling At Clouds Next edition.

Ed Rogers actually put the boot in, here. It was very entertaining.

…a few recent decisions by Clinton’s team have left me wondering whether Hillary Clinton is stuck in a time warp — and how that will impact her 2016 presidential run. She should be making moves to present herself as the fresh new Democrat for the next era. But recently, she seems to be doing the exact opposite.

Read the whole thing, including the bit where Ed Rogers mentioned all those legacy and retread politicians that the Democrats ran (mostly unsuccessfully) in 2014.  Turns out that even Official Washington is noticing the remarkable lack of new blood in Democratic veins.  Good stuff, good stuff. Oh, sure: I know that eventually the Democratic party will recover from this, but for right now it’s all making for fascinating viewing…

Slate, twitter, and strange questions.

It’s always fascinating to see how non-political people treat Twitter.  There are people out there who don’t use it as a trusted-source to trusted-source communications network that can’t be jammed by one’s enemies*?

Weird.

Via @keder.

Moe Lane

PS: By the way… damn straight it’s not rude to ignore a Tweet sent at you.  Particularly when it’s sent by one of those aforementioned would-be jammers.

*God knows the Online Left keeps trying; unfortunately, they’re critically hampered by their hierarchical, top-down worldview.  In retrospect, the slow gelding of the Left-blogosphere by the Democratic establishment was probably not to benefit of either, if only because it is worse than useless to even try to impose groupthink on what is rapidly becoming a true Cloud.