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This is really frustrating…

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly [ http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/CLICS2010A/csl.nsf/directory?openframeset= ] and to Governor Ritter [ http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/GovRitter/GOVR/1177024890452 ], who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

UPDATE: Brad has a thoughtful piece on this.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I thought about writing a post on NDAs, but luckily the internets have already done it for me.

Read these:

• NDAs are unnecessary because ideas are worthless — Less Everything Blog
  

  It’s worthless because ideas in general are worthless. Anyone can have a good idea, and they do. What has value is execution. The ability to take an idea and transform it into something real, something people love, something someone will pay for.

• Why Most VC’s Don’t Sign NDAs
  

  In 20 years of high tech (as an entrepreneur, angel investor, and VC), I’ve never been involved in a situation where an NDA is enforced except in an M&A context. It’s simply a waste of paper and time for anything but M&A.

• Rands In Repose: FriendDA
  

  But I want Phil to know that what I want to chat about is more than our average conversation. I want slightly more than a smidge of ceremony before I spill the beans about my bright idea and I call this ceremony the FriendDA. The FriendDA is a non-binding, warm blanket agreement that offers absolutely no legal protection.

• Sacred Cow Dung: MYTH: NDAs are a Good Idea
  

  What is the entrepreneur really saying when requesting that executed NDA? [&hellpi;] b) “What I am about to reveal to you is so earth-shattering that it is a distinct possibility that you will drop everything in your life and try to steal my idea and do it without me.”

  and
  

  “Let me explain it this way — Even if you were to go down to the corner of Broad and Wall Street — ground zero for the financial markets — and randomly pass out 1000 copies of your business plan, no one will ever execute that plan without you — no matter how great it is.”

• Why Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) Are Useless | Misanthropy Today
  

  The judge looks at it. “So you’re telling me that the founders of Google discussed search engines with other search engine companies before launching the biggest search engine in the world? I will not believe it!” This judge is very sarcastic.

I’ll still sign them from time to time, but my feelings about it are well covered in the articles above.

I have plenty of ideas (and a hundred or so domain names to match) that I want to pursue of my own. I’ll be lucky if I even get to start on half of them before time runs out, they become obsolete, and replaced by new ideas that pop up.

Popularity: 1% [?]

When blog posts here slow down as they have over the last few weeks, it’s a good bet I have my head down building something.

I ran across an issue today that I’d worked around in the past, but had never explicitly investigated. It appears that when assigning a variable within a multiple condition check in PHP, if you don’t explicitly look for a value the first item in the expression is cast as a bool.

I particularly use this technique a lot in CodeIgniter, for example when pulling data from $this->input->post('foo') – a method that will either return semi-sanitized data from $_POST['foo'] or will return false.

I tested this in PHP 5.3 (built-in version on Snow Leopard).

Here is some sample code that demonstrates this issue, and the workaround.

function foo() {
	return 'foo';
}

function bar() {
	return 'bar';
}

if ($foo = foo()) {
	echo '<p>Condition <code>$foo = foo()</code> passed</p>';
}

var_dump($foo);

echo '<hr />';

if ($foo = foo() && $bar = bar()) {
	echo '<p>Condition <code>$foo = foo() && $bar = bar()</code> passed</p>';
}

var_dump($foo);

echo '<hr />';

if ($foo = foo() && $bar = bar()) {
	echo '<p>Condition <code>$foo = foo() && $bar = bar()</code> passed</p>';
}

echo '<p>$foo:<br />';
var_dump($foo);
echo '<p>$bar:<br />';
var_dump($bar);

echo '<hr />';

if (false !== ($foo = foo()) && $bar = bar()) {
	echo '<p>Condition <code>false !== ($foo = foo()) && $bar = bar()</code> passed</p>';
}

echo '<p>$foo:<br />';
var_dump($foo);
echo '<p>$bar:<br />';
var_dump($bar);

Here is the output of this code:

Hopefully this will be useful to someone else when they run across this issue.

Know why PHP works this way? Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: wrapping each expression in parenthesis works around this. See comments for more detailed explanation.

Popularity: 29% [?]

I’m very pleased that we have reached the point with WordPress HelpCenter where we need to add another developer to our team.

We’re looking for someone with a broad range of WordPress, PHP, XHTML and CSS experience, basic server configuration experience, and in particular someone with outstanding communication skills.

Ideally we’d like to add someone who lives on the west end of the country¹ in order to have better coverage throughout the work day across all US timezones. However, we’re definitely looking for the best person for the job.

Providing great service is our number one priority, and we need someone who understands this inherently. Not only does the HelpCenter team reflect on Crowd Favorite, but we also have a responsibility to every affiliate plugin and theme developer who puts their trust in us. It’s also important to continue receiving good press and word-of-mouth recommendations.

See the job posting on the HelpCenter web site for more details and to apply. The position is open immediately and we hope to fill it within the next 30 days.

Questions? Post them in the comments and I’ll try to answer.

1. You can work remotely. [back]

Popularity: 7% [?]