1 Unless you live in an American state like Oregon, which doesn't have a sales tax...

2 It was very convenient when I lived in Vancouver, Washington.  Washington doesn't have a state income tax, and Portland Oregon was just across the bridge for sales tax free shopping.  Although technically one is supposed to pay a "Use tax" equal to the sales tax you would have paid had you bought it in state, they only got serious about collecting that when you were buying things they could track, like cars.

3 Pixy, please fix http://ace.mu.nu/index.xml.  It's been broken for half a year.  It seems like a simple problem, but since you haven't fixed it for so long, I'm guessing it's not.  Here are the issues as I see them:

1: the links on the page connect to the wrong page.  For example, http://minx.cc/?post=353444 instead of http://minx.cc:1080/?post=353444.  So if I open 20 AoS pages at once, they all hang at "One moment, redirecting you to your requested page."  Can't you just cut out the middleman and have the first link go directly to port 1080?  Also, why does it have to go to port 1080 in the first place?

2: If I make the click to allow the page to be redirected, it goes to the wrong page anyway Ex:

http://minx.cc:1080/?post=353444/
instead of
http://minx.cc:1080/?post=353444

The top one loads a ridiculous amount of crap and renders the page too wide to be conveniently readable. 

This issue is causing me to read Ace less and less, which makes me unhappy.  The Jawas' RSS works fine.  Can't you just cut and paste the code or something?

Thanks in advance.

4 There's a reason why the Jantzen Beach Shopping mall is one of the biggest in Oregon. It's the first exit on I-5 in Oregon when you're travelling south, and the parking lot there is always full of Washington state license plates. Washington's sales tax is something like 6% so it's even worth driving to Oregon for grocery shopping, not just big ticket items.

5 The thing is, some tech companies (both hardware and software) like to slap a 50% markup on products in Australia even after you account for exchange rates and sales tax.  Adobe was really bad about this; Lenovo still is.  Apple used to do this, but cleaned up their act a few years ago.

It's bad enough that our Post Office - run by the government - offers a reshipping service so we Australians can shop online in the US.  And yes, their US office is based in Portland.

6 Actually, Washington sales tax varies, since it has a local component as well. If you get into Seattle, it can top 10%, and typically you're paying in the neighborhood of 8-8.5%

Ah, here it is.  I have a table listing the rates (part of my state Business and Occupation tax form).  The lowest anywhere is 7% in unincorporated Klikitat county.  Most places are around 8.5%, and Seattle tops out at 9.5% (But I think that doesn't include a city tax - and they wonder why businesses are leaving.).