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Moments after the world was shocked to learn of “The Sopranos” star James Gandolfini’s untimely death, Amazon took to its Facebook fanpage to remember the star. But instead of simply posting a picture of him, the company decided to boost sales by reminding people that they can purchase the complete first season of the show on DVD.

The digital retail giant posted a picture of the DVD with a caption that reads: “Saddened to hear about the passing of James Gandolfini today. We’ll miss you, James, and the memorable characters you brought to life.http://amzn.to/11P1hZc.“ While the company’s actions seemed to be a nice gesture to remember the deceased actor, fans of the Amazon.com Facebook fanpage immediately started harshly criticizing the company for placing a link with the image to direct people to purchase the first season of the show.

Tolyl Jenkins, a fan of the Amazon Facebook fanpage, left this comment on the picture: ”Posting about his death, and then including a link to buy something from you = uber tacky. You’re better than that, amazon.” Gabe Ortega, also a fan of the digital retail giant’s Facebook fanpage, commented: ”Tacky. [I'll] be buying my copy from best buy, thanks.” The image immediately gained close to 300 comments, within five minutes of posting, accusing the company of using Gandolfini’s death to acquire sells. The comments ranged from telling Amazon that it was too soon to promote sells of the DVD to fans being outraged by the company’s actions and vowing to never make another purchase from them again. The digital retail giant’s PR team must be on speed dial because roughly ten minutes after the image was posted, it was deleted.

At the time this article was published, the company had not issued an apology on its Facebook fanpage.

Do you believe it was too soon for Amazon to promote “The Sopranos” DVD set?

If you are thinking of moving to another state that has no income tax to help you with your taxes, think again. You could end up having to fork out a fortune in back taxes and penalties to your old state.

If you do decide to move to a new sttate but plan to return to your old state from time to time, you had better make sure you don’t stay there any longer than 183 days, otherwise you could be classed as a resident and be liable to pay tax.

Apparently, time spent in their state isn’t the only way that authorities determine whether you owe them any taxes, even if you actually live in some other state.

Certified Public Accountant, Jon Blakesberg of Boca Raton, Florida said “States will often take the most, minute shred of evidence to make an assumption of residence and follow that path in pursuit of collecting state taxes.”

Apparently the taxman usually focuses on the rich, who tend to shuttle between two homes in different states, but that is not always the case and it doesn’t only apply to those who have moved to states without income tax.

Two of the most aggressively know states for zeroing in on former residents for taxes are New York and California. People who come from these states should beware if they have moved to states like Florida, Nevada, Texas, South Dakota, Washington, Wyoming and Alaska, that don’t have income taxes.

According to Cara Griffith, editor-in-chief of state tax publications for Tax Analysts, recent technology that allows states to analyze data faster from the IRS and such, may entice other states to become more aggressive in collecting taxes.

However, there are ways to avoid the scrutiny of tax inspectors.

You should change all your ID’s to your new home address as soon as you move. This includes changing your driver’s license, car and voter registration and mailing address for bills and financial statements.

You should also keep proof of how many days you spend in your old state, so that they can’t consider you to be a resident. Most tax experts say you should keep a detailed travel log, including any receipts for gas, airline tickets and credit card records.

A recent government report, states that the housing market showed signs of recovery during the month of May, with housing starts rising seven percent to an annual pace of 914,000 homes.

According to the report, the main reason for this climb is due to the increase in the number of buildings with five or more housing units. The report shows that they were up by twenty five percent from the figures in April.

Apparently, because every unit in Multi-family building is counted as one building start, the statistics are unstable.

Single family home construction was about the same as April, according to the report, but it was up 16 percent from the same time last year. This shows continuing improvement of the housing market conditions.

However, the usual sign, building permits, that shows builder’s confidence in the market, dropped by 3 percent to 974,000. Apparently, this had something to do with the 11 percent drop of permits for multi-family buildings.

The report continues that single family home permits were slightly on the increase during May and the number of single family homes that are being constructed attained a four-year high.

Other good news for the housing market includes a drop in foreclosures and a steady rise in home prices. Sales of both new and previously-owned homes are also on the rise.

Mortgage rates, which have been at record lows, have recently been increased, but even that doesn’t seem to have affected the rise in the housing market.

According to another government report, there is only about a 4.1 month supply of new homes for sale on the market at the current time, but, there again, that is above the nine-year low that was recorded for January.

Although a recent survey of builder’s confidence in the housing market, done by the industry’s trade group, shows that most builders are confident that the housing industry will continue to grow. The problem for builders, apparently, is finding workers to build the new homes.

Is it too little, too late or right on time?  Well, if you ask the victims of the holocaust that occurred during World War II, you’ll hear that it’s right on time.  Prosecutors this week decided to charge a 98-year old man who they say is responsible for numerous atrocities that occurred during World War II.  The prosecution is raising eyebrows, in part, because some are wondering if it should be a matter of letting sleeping dogs lie.  But not in this case.

Laszlo Csatary was found guilty in absentia back in 1948 of torturing Jews and deporting them to death camps for Hitler and others who sought to harm them.  He was a police commander in the city of Kosice in 1944.   He was sentenced to death for his crimes and was on the run for decades before Hungarian authorities put him under house arrest in Budapest this year.   He says he didn’t do anything and that they have the wrong guy.

“He is charged with the unlawful execution and torture of people, (thus) committing war crimes partly as a perpetrator, partly as an accomplice,” said Bettina Bagoly, a spokeswoman for the Budapest Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

Csatary is set to go on trial within three months for his crimes.  He was named the Most Wanted suspect last year by the Wiesenthal Center.

Google made an announcement more than a year ago, that they would be allowed issue more shares. After a long legal battle with its shareholders what they announced seems to be coming closer to becoming reality,.

Google apparently made a settlement deal with their existing shareholders last week and it seems to have dealt with some of the major original complaints that caused the split, but if you look more deeply it seems that the settlement is more on Google’s side.

The split involves giving existing shareholders two shares for every one that they own along with the price of the shares to be cut in half. Looks good doesn’t it?…Until you find out that the new Class C shares are not allowed voting powers.

Some think the settlement is to give CEO, Larry Page, Chairman, Eric Schmidt and co-founder, Sergey Brin, even more power as to how the company is run.

According to a recent regulatory filing, these three founders essentially have 64 percent of the voting power of Google’s shares.

One of the reasons for this is that Google already has a dual-class share system, where the founder’s stock holds 10 votes per share.

The trio apparently convinced the shareholders of the merits of this stock split, because they approved of it in June 2012. However, some of the shareholders didn’t think it such a fair deal and decided to take it to court.

The board of directors approved a settlement to try to ease the split amongst them last Sunday. Instead of using stock with no voting power, Google will consider using stock with voting rights for any future acquirements.

Another part of the settlement is that if Brin and Page decide to sell some of their stock, again Google will consider getting rid of the multi-class stock system.

Maybe the important part of the settlement deal here lies in the word consider. Doesn’t that have the same meaning as thinking about it? I mean if they consider doing it they don’t have to actually do it, do they.

The next step is for Google to file the proposition in court for approval and then give the stockholders chance to review it.

Although Google has been criticized recently by some stockholders for spending too much on silly projects, like space elevators and driverless cars, it seems to be bringing in the profits.

If you look at Google’s rivals, Apple and Facebook, who are both down in stock share profits this year, then Google is way ahead because its shares are still up 25 percent this year.

Google has also beaten their search engine competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, over the last five years by quite a large margin.

Meadowlawn Middle School, St. Petersburg, Florida, have been hit with a petition from the mother of a 14 year old male student because they refused to allow him to wear makeup on his last day of classes.

The pupil, Chris Martin, apparently went to school on June 5th, wearing mascara, eye liner, eye shadow and black lipstick on his last day of class. If that wasn’t enough to upset officials, he wore a shirt with an obvious anarchistic message.

Martin was asked to remove the makeup by school administrators because it was a violation of the dress code at the school.

Martin said the principal told him that the makeup was “distracting” and “completely ridiculous and unnecessary for boys to wear makeup.” Martin goes on to say that he was upset because they wouldn’t allow him to keep his makeup on.

Katelynn Martin and Jamie Himes, the two lesbian mothers of Martin, said that the decision of the school was “shocking, unacceptable, and distressing.” They went on to say that the school’s decision was an example of intolerance to other people’s ways.

Katelynn said that she found it hard to believe that nowadays someone would think wearing makeup to school was a big problem.

Although the school’s officials have been keeping silent about the issue, a spokeswoman for the district did say that there was some information, of a confidential nature, that was being kept out of the mother’s story.

However Katelynn has filed a petition to the county school board titled “Pinellas County (FL) School Board: Don’t Side With the Bullies!”

Apparently the petition is pushing for more, acceptance of gay friendly programs into the school and more tolerance for all students, even if they are male and want to wear makeup.

The petition asks for tolerance training to be given to school administrators so that they can welcome and sponsor gay-straight alliance (GSA) organizations within the schools.

The petition goes on to ask the school district to introduce a curriculum within the school that gives the Lesbian, Gay, Bis*xual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community a positive image.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) seems to be in agreement with Katelynn. They sent a letter to the superintendent of the school board demanding that action be taken over this matter.

The ACLU wrote that if female students can wear makeup at school, then so too should male students be allowed to wear it, any divergence from this would mean the school is guilty of “s*x discrimination.”

According to Apple (APPL, Fortune 500), federal, state and local authorities have asked them to share data about thousand of users during the last seven months.

Apple said that various authorities had requested them to share details of between nine and ten thousand accounts or devices and have made approximately four to five thousand requests for information from these accounts.

Apple went on to say that some requests for information pertained to matters of national security. However, they added that the majority of requests came from police who were conducting investigations into crimes that had been committed, for missing persons or information to help people who are trying to commit suicide.

Edward Snowden, computer analyst, recently revealed details of an alleged conspiracy between the U.S. government and various telecommunications and technology firms, to monitor millions of internet users’ emails, photos, search histories and other supposedly private data.

After the revelations of Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA), along with several tech companies, has come under fierce scrutiny and debate.

According to Snowden, the NSA has been gathering data on unsuspecting Americans since the al Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 and some tech companies have willingly been giving out this information.

Apple has apparently been dealing with the NSA’s security program, Prism, since early June last year and they say that they have been cooperating with them but only giving out information that has been passed by the government.

Apple says that it doesn’t give direct access to its servers to anyone but complies with government regulations as to the sharing of data.

In a statement Apple said “Regardless of the circumstances, our legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities.”

The statement continued, that if they saw “inconsistencies or inaccuracies,” in a request for information, then they would not give out that information.

Facebook and Microsoft have also come forward to admit they have been sharing data and information.

According to Facebook, during the last half of 2012, they received about 9 to 10,000 requests for information, covering about eighteen to nineteen thousand accounts.

Similarly, Microsoft says that they have dealt with about six to seven thousand requests about crime and security related issues that cover about 32,000 customer accounts.

According to Apple, there are some cases in which it cannot supply information, no matter who is asking for it.

Apparently some data, such as iMessage or FaceTime conversations, are protected by end-to-end encryption, which means that only the sender and the recipient can read the information contained in them.

Apparently, Britain’s Guardian newspaper, published a report based on details given by Snowden, which states that the British Intelligence Agency, scrutinized phone calls and emails of delegates during an economic summit in 2009.

The report continues that the intelligence agency even went so far as to try and capture the delegates’ passwords.

Perhaps it’s safer if you don’t want your messages to become known by others, to use iMessage or FaceTime. Alternatively you could always, make direct contact, eye to eye, to avoid snooping. But on the other hand you never know who might be listening.

A new drug mostly in use in Colombia, has authorities worried about the long-term implications.  The drug is called “the zombie drug” because it puts the user into a trance, making him or her do whatever their captors tell them to do.   In fact, they are happy to do it.

According to a report in The Global Post, the drug has led to a large number of people being admitted to the hospital with terrible injuries.  Others have been arrested after committing robberies and other crimes against themselves and other people.  The drug is called scopolamine, it comes from the Datura stramonium plant, also known as jimsonweed.

The drug has been used heavily in s-exual assaults and other crimes.

“[Victims] go out to party and then wake up two or three days later on a park bench,” Maria Fernanda Villota, a nurse at San Jose University Hospital, told The Global Post. “They arrive here without their belongings or their money.”

The drug is administered in small doses in the US to patients who need anti-naseua medication.  But it is more widely available in Colombia.

You can watch a short documentary about the drug and it’s effects.   One other side effect is that the drug can cause the victim to become violent and attack the person who gave it to them.  So, don’t try this at home, or anywhere else for that matter. 

One of Google’s latest projects, “Project Loon,” got off to a start this week by launching balloons over a frozen field near LakeTekapo, along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin in the South Island of New Zealand.

Google has been working on the project for over 18 months to try and bring the internet to inhospitable or remote regions of the world.

Apparently, there are approximately 4.8 billion people in the world who are not connected to the internet and Google hopes to launch thousands of these balloons, 12 miles into the stratosphere, to help connect them with the 2.2 billion who are connected.

Project leader, Mike Cassidy, said that it was a “huge moon-shot,” and a very ambitious project. He went on to say that, if successful, it could help countries that don’t want to or can’t afford to pay for the laying of fiber cable to access the internet in remote areas of the planet.

According to reports, Charles Nimmo, who is a farmer in Leeston, a small town on the Canterbury Plains in the South Island of New Zealand, was the first person to benefit from Google’s Balloon Internet.

Nimmo was apparently one of 50 local people who signed on as a tester for the project, but because the project was kept so secret, Nimmo didn’t really know what to think of it or what was going on.  Apparently, before the balloon sailed on past his home and went out of reach for internet access, Nimmo got to use the internet for about 15 minutes, and he used that time to check on weather reports.

Nimmo told Google technicians that he wanted to find out if the weather would be good to shear his sheep.

Although the idea of using balloons to connect to the internet is a new concept for access to the Web, it’s not a new idea.

Balloons have been used for communication purposes for many years and in the past, stationary balloons, or tied balloons, have been used by the military and aeronautical researchers to jump internet signals back to earth based stations.

Balloon internet could certainly provide a more reasonable way to connect to the internet than paying the huge fees of satellite internet connection, which can be up to $1,000 for a month’s access.

With thousands of these balloons, the signal, bounced up to the balloons from ground stations, would hop from one balloon to another. The balloons are powered by solar cells attached to the bottom of them.

During the testing stage of these balloons in California’s central valley, reports on local media were coming in that local residents had seen UFOs.

Danny Zuker, executive producer for the sitcom “Modern Family,” has been having another battle of wits against Donald Trump on Twitter.

Although Trump did his best to insult Zuker, he was pounded into the ground by the writer, according to the comments of those who read their exchange.

It all started on June 12 when Trump tweeted that he had been warning about the danger from China since the early 80’s but no one wanted to listen. He went on to say that now, America was in real trouble.

Picking up on this Zuker sarcastically replied that Trump had always been tough on China. He went on to say “Particularly the children who make your sh*tty clothes,” referring to the Trump clothes brand.

Trump came back with a half hearted reply that Zuker was a total loser.

Again Zuker took up the challenge and tweeted that Trump’s insults needed more work. He continued to tweet one of his own to Trump, “Every picture you post of yourself is a d**k pic.”

After another lame reply by Trump, Zuker told him that maybe he could outsource his comebacks to China.

Trump then decided to have a go at the sitcom, Modern family, where Zuker is also one of the script writers. Trump said it was really boring and was written by a moron.   Zuker quipped back that the show had never been popular among the racist, hypocritical and multiple bankruptcy types.

Trump’s final word was a question asking “Who is Danny Zuker?” He answered it himself by saying that Zuker was a “lightweight moron who only gets attention by attacking trump.”

Zuker came back by stating that the only thing Trump didn’t inherit from his father was a thesaurus, referring to Trump’s choice of words.

The comedy series Modern Family, which debuted on ABC on September 23, 2009, seems to have quite a following.

The idea for the sitcom came from Christopher Lloyd, TV screenwriter and producer, and Steven Levitan, director, screenwriter and producer of television comedies, while they were talking about their own funny moments with their families.

The show was watched by over 12.6 million viewers during its premier and was picked up for a full season in October of 2009.

The show has won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for the last three years and two of its cast members, Eric Stonestreet and Ty Burrell, have won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Stonestreet won it twice.