Leefe rates the world…

Retails are complaining about the no GST online. Customers are complaining about prices and service in stores. Westfield is gouging stores for rent.

Retailers warn customer service will suffer if the online GST loophole is not closed, but how good is it now? Seriously lacking.

Vodafone have failed to implement proper security of customers' information. Vodafone stores have one username/password to share amongst all employees, which are someone times shared to 3rd parties. And therefore allow access to customers' information over the internet, anywhere.

Australian online retailers like Catch of the Day and Deals Direct are more threat to the bricks and mortar stores, like Harvey Norman, than foreign online retailers.

A ruling about catalogue sales to out of state customers (in the USA) don't pay tax is being applied to online sales. Which is also used for out of country sales. Cash strapped states now want some of the tax they are missing out on.

Gerry Harvey has found that being the front man for the charging of GST for online retailer campaign is not fun. He now believes that small retailers need to be sent in as cannon fodder.

Gerry Harvey | GST online purchases | Retail kingpin Gerry Harvey has admitted a campaign to force the government to act on GST

Retail kingpin Gerry Harvey has admitted a campaign to force the government to act on GST on online purchases has placed him in a difficult position and "trying to extricate myself is quite difficult".

Retailers are not stitching up consumers – the government is. At least, that is what the soon-to-be-incorporated Retail Coalition is arguing.

Gerry Harvey predicted the dotcom crash in 2000. But didn't foresee the comeback of online retailing.

A MOVE by big retailers to sidestep GST by moving their e-commerce operations offshore risks being caught up in a Tax Office crackdown.

THE Harvey Norman founder, Gerry Harvey, will step back from the retailers' campaign for GST to be imposed on overseas online purchases, saying he is hurt by the avalanche of criticism directed at him and feels that getting involved was ''suicidal''.

In recent weeks, some of Australia’s larger retailers have vigorously argued that the ability of Australians to buy online will destroy retailing in Australia, with thousands of jobs going off-shore, and that we need to tax the internet to “create a level playing field”.  This is despite the fact that less than 3 per cent of all retail sales in Australia are transacted online!

I’m referring, of course, to the new campaign by some Australian retailers (including Myer, David Jones, Target and a host of others) calling for GST to be applied to online purchases under $1000 from overseas sellers. They feel that they simply can’t “compete” fairly with internet retailers who don’t have to collect the 10 per cent tax.

Palo Alto, CA — Uh-oh. Another piece of top-secret Apple material has been left behind in a public place. Only this time the culprit is Steve Jobs himself.

Doctor Who the 10th, David Tennant, is planning to get hitched to his fictional daughter Georgia Moffett, who also happens to be the real daughter of his fictional fifth incarnation.

A powerful virus targeting smartphones in China running Google's Android operating system may represent the most sophisticated bug to target mobile devices to date, security researchers said.

Andrew Cooper, CEO of dstore.com, writes from an Australian online retailers perspective about the current GST for overseas online purchases debate.

THE business tycoons demanding the imposition of GST on Australians' overseas online purchases have vowed to extend their advertising campaign despite a public backlash against them and calls for retailers to concentrate on lifting their own performances.

THE business leaders demanding the imposition of GST on Australians' internet purchases from overseas have vowed to extend their advertising campaign despite a public backlash and calls for retailers to concentrate on lifting their own performances.

Commentary about Zuckerberg getting Time man of the year over Arssange. The best comment is "Zuck won because he is responsible for the leak of more private information than Assange."

An RPG where you are a civil servant in secret goverment agency who's job it to protect against the supernatural. – Cthulhu drops an enormous stack of paperwork on your desk. Roll for san loss, against the paperwork.

Government auditors have faulted the TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, for failing to properly test and evaluate technology before spending money on it. The TSA spent about $36 million on devices that puffed air on travelers to 'sniff' them out for explosives residue

RIM had a complete internal panic when Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, a former employee revealed this weekend. The BlackBerry maker is now known to have held multiple all-hands meetings on January 10 that year, a day after the iPhone was on stage, and to have made outlandish claims about its features. Apple was effectively accused of lying as it was supposedly impossible that a device could have such a large touchscreen but still get a usable lifespan away from a power outlet.

While official channels want us to focus on Julian Assange, the real meat of Wikileaks is not the leader but the leaks. And news from Spain suggests we should be learning from those leaks.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently issued a circular declaring that VOIP services other than those offered by State-owned giants China Telecom and China Unicom are illegal. (Also read the comment by Peter Schloss.)

An Australian man has been issued with an innovation patent for the wheel after setting out to test the workability of a new national patent system.

Mark Zuckerberg has been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. He edged out Julian Assange, the overwhelming reader favorite who — unlike the billionaire CEO of Facebook — really could have used whatever street cred still comes with this honor, as he cools his heels in a British prison cell.

At the Chaos Computer Club Congress in Berlin, Germany on Monday, researchers from the University of Regensburg delivered a new warning about the Tor anonymizer network, a system aimed at hiding details of a computer user’s online activity from spying eyes.

This game is an interactive interpretation of the essay "Conspiracy as Governance" by Julian Assange, a fundamental document to understand Wikileaks and the concept of radical transparency as strategy for social change. We published the text below, in its most recent version.