The old "unlimited" data plan contract included language which would allow them to take action if they decided too many customers used more than 5GB. To paraphrase the legalese they used, they basically said "we *could* consider 5GB to be 'too much' if we decided to."
Regardless of whether 5GB was the actual number, the fact is their "unlimited" data plan contract did permit AT&T to impose actual data transfer limits.
You're correct; if you go over your 200MB, you get charged another $15 for another 200MB.
So instead of paying $25 for 2GB, you're paying $30 for 400MB. Yes, AT&T is being quite generous by not charging overages... *eye roll*
My SO and I keep our data counts down by using WiFi wherever we can
I only dropped from the old $30 "unlimited" (read: 5GB) plan to the $15 200MB plan because they added wifi access points for our mobile devices at work, so generally the only time I'm out of wifi range is during my commute.
I'm still super-nervous about going over the 200MB though, because of the pricing I mentioned above: if I'm going to go over, I may as well switch to the 2GB plan and save $5. (You could probably do this manually yourself in the middle of a billing cycle...)
200MB ($15) 400MB ($30) (by going over your 200 and getting another 200) - 2GB ($25) 3GB ($35) (by going over 2GB and getting another 1GB) 4GB ($45) (same) 5GB ($55) (same)
Not only is there a rather absurd gap between 400MB and 2GB, but 400MB is more expensive than 2GB!
That has been the case with AT&T too (at least for the iPhone), until recently. They gave you what was labelled an "unlimited" plan, but the cap was really 5GB.
Now, my choices are 200MB (!!!) for $15/month (going over gives you another 200MB for another $15), or 2GB for $25/month (going over gives you another 1GB for another $10, up to 3 additional GB).
Even worse, they charge $20 just to enable tethering, and in doing so you get exactly zero additional data.
Their own data shows that the people that are paying the highest percentages in taxes are the ones that will benefit the most from this measure and make the tax system more progressive.
What? That's not what their data shows at all. Their data shows that the tax system is already somewhere between flat and progressive; it also shows that the group paying the highest percentages is already the wealthy. How, exactly, will this measure benefit them the most?
So, it ins't taxation that the pretender-tarians object to, it's income tax. Riiiight.
I can't speak for the rest of the state, but yes, that is my position.
No doubt we wouldn't have heard a peep from them if Washington State was proposing an additional 5% property tax on all property with an assessed value of over $200,000, 9% over $500,000, we wouldn't have heard a peep.
Well, the state raised taxes by some $800 million earlier this year, and I didn't hear a peep, so...
Washington has the most regressive tax in the nation.
Oh? Defeat 1098 actually looked at the data used to support that argument and found that those calculations exclude some rather significant data points -- what's more, if you include those figures, as you should if you're trying to determine how progressive a state's tax is, you get a very different picture.
Perhaps you shouldn't simply regurgitate what you hear from D.C. think-tanks.
The richest in the state currently pay less than 3% in taxes, while the poorest are paying over 17%.
So your complaint is that the poor buy just as much e.g. food as the rich, but they aren't taxed less for it? Please.
At any rate, citation needed for those percentages. (If the numbers are from that D.C. think-tank that's strongly pushing progressive taxes, well, that's hardly unbiased...)
This law will make it 12% for the rich, and around 14% for the poor.
... and that is simply incorrect. You see, this law won't magically make the poor pay less taxes; they won't be paying income tax, but they're not doing so now; they'll be buying just as much stuff as they buy now, so they'll be taxed just the same. It simply adds taxes to the rich. The percentage for the rich *will* go up, but the percentage for the poor will *not* go down.
(Property taxes would go down, and business and occupational taxes for small businesses will go down, but as far as I'm aware most of the poor live in apartments and probably aren't business owners, so you'll need to show that those groups are large enough among the poor that the percentage you cited, if it's valid at all, would actually go down.)
I will say that the state's lack of income tax was a major factor in my decision to accept a job here, and I am sure this is true of others.
Though I am far below the $200k limit, I am quite certain that if this passes, it won't be many years before that $200k limit is lowered to the poverty line. There is nothing in this proposal to prevent the state legislature from doing that, nor from raising the tax rate, and there's nothing to prevent them from re-raising the B&O and property taxes that this proposal lowers.
I'm not generally fond of "slippery slope" arguments, but gradual tax increases are hardly unprecedented, so it's not far-fetched to say this is likely to happen; earlier this year, in fact, they raised taxes by $800 million, so clearly the state is not opposed to raising taxes regularly.
Except the rich aren't really spending. Businesses have been swimming in profits, but not hiring or undertaking other projects that would create jobs indirectly (expansion projects, etc).
Yeah, let's pretend Amazon isn't actively hiring (they are), that they're not expanding (they just moved to new, larger buildings so they can accomodate their projected hiring), that they're not starting new projects (why do you think they're hiring?), etc etc.
Nope, Amazon isn't doing anything at all to stimulate Washington's economy.
You have to really stretch things to try and argue that state governments don't have the responsibility/right to run things like schools and hospitals
I'm opposed to this tax -- I live in WA but I make less than half the $200k limit (not to mention the $400k limit that would actually apply to me since I file jointly) -- because there are better ways for the state to get income that don't come across as "take from the rich" but still effectively tax the rich more than the poor.
I also have to consider the likelihood that the state will continually lower that $200k limit, so that I end up paying income tax even though even as it is it will be years before I've made enough above my expenses to pay off the student loans I needed to get through school. (And if you don't think the state will try to push that $200k limit lower, you're deluding yourself.)
To be more clear, I'm not particularly opposed to the rich paying more taxes... I just think there's ways to get them to do it willingly (better property and consumption taxes, for example, instead of income tax), which don't make them feel targeted.
Good idea, so lets take that to its logical conclusion. All income is money that people make, thus entitled to, and _none_ of it should be taxed. Collapse of government in 3.. 2.. 1..
Right, because income tax is the only possible method that the government can use to obtain funds. There aren't any possiblemethods that would tax the rich more than the poor without making the rich feel unfairly taxed..
Well of course you would want to *have* a cousin Jim who is willing to say he had given you a spare hard drive. Or replace "cousin Jim" with "friend Steve" or whoever. It's not *that* hard. Heck you could even *get* your cousin/friend to give you an old hard drive, so that what he tells the police is true!
As for the "signs of an OS installation", that's easy... say you haven't gotten home yet so it's still just/dev/urandom output, as you didn't have your OS installation media with you.
I think you and I have different definitions of "high end". My Core i7 920 (complemented by 12GB of RAM and a 1GB GTX 285) can't handle emulating Metroid Prime at a playable framerate, not even with the processor overclocked to 4GHz. What do you mean by "high end"?
(I realize Metroid Prime is a Gamecube game, not a Wii game, but the two systems are pretty similar so I think my point stands nonetheless.)
No, you ALL miss the point. How are you going to explain having a HDD or partition full of "garbage"? Nobody with half a brain will believe you there's nothing encrypted in the noise.
You tell them you just visited your cousin Jim, who had an old hard drive he didn't want anymore, and you needed a spare so he gave it to you, but not before he ran "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda1" because he didn't want you having his old tax documents. All you've done with it since is install the OS...
How many times this year have you seen headlines that were completely false? I'd bet it's at least double digits.
For me, I'd guess more like triple digits... and I basically only read Slashdot. I am continually frustrated by the Slashdot editors not bothering to even do the most basic fact-checking on a headline or summary (or both) before posting someone's submission.
I paid $9 shipping for the last set of items I ordered from Thinkgeek (one of which was larger than a t-shirt). I do not consider that unreasonable.
International shipping, even "just" to Canada, is more expensive than domestic shipping. I do not consider $15 unreasonable for international shipping. For international postage, USPS charges $10 for a 1-pound large envelope, or $13.50 for a small flat-rate box. If you think $1.50 is an unreasonable amount for Thinkgeek to charge to cover the cost of locating the shirt you ordered, boxing it, addressing it, and mailing it, then I don't think they want your business.
I guess that's a roundabout way of saying, if you do not want to pay $15 to get a t-shirt shipped to you in Canada from the US, don't order t-shirts from the US.
You realize they charge you what they get charged by USPS/DHL/UPS/whoever, plus a little for packaging etc., right?
If they let people choose "pay what you feel is fair" for shipping, especially international shipping, 99% of customers would choose "free", and they'd have to compensate by raising product prices. I don't think that's the outcome you desire.
(I am of course not talking about the jerks on eBay or Amazon who sell things for dirt cheap and then charge absurd amounts for shipping, I'm talking specifically about companies like Thinkgeek.)
I think the bigger issue is that the ISP is basing their assessment of the web site's "hate speech" (which it may or may not be) based on the politics of the situation, and not the web site itself. They were apparently fine with it before.
You're assuming Rackspace actively polices the sites run on their servers. (They most likely do not.) A more likely scenario is that they simply did not notice the contract-violating content until the group brought attention to themselves.
Amazon Payments is a good replacement for Paypal, and if all you need is shopping cart integration, Google Checkout is good too. Personally I consider both of those companies to be more reputable than Paypal...
(I added GC as a payment option recently on a site, in addition to the existing Paypal option; I'm pleasantly surprised at how often people choose to use Google instead of Paypal. I'm still working on Amazon Payments integration, though...)
I mean - surely such free spirited church goers would have absolutely no problem with homosexual atheists doing such a thing, right? They'd probably defend their right to do so with blood if they had to.
As a Christian, I would indeed defend that right with my blood if it came to it -- but that's not the right in question here with Rackspace. An analagous situation would be if the owner of the property on which the atheist homosexuals gathered told them they could gather there so long as they didn't start any fires, and then they did so anyway, and as a result he kicked them off. Nobody would be complaining that he's wrong for doing so; Rackspace did exactly the same thing, so why are people saying Rackspace is in the wrong?
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The old "unlimited" data plan contract included language which would allow them to take action if they decided too many customers used more than 5GB. To paraphrase the legalese they used, they basically said "we *could* consider 5GB to be 'too much' if we decided to."
Regardless of whether 5GB was the actual number, the fact is their "unlimited" data plan contract did permit AT&T to impose actual data transfer limits.
You're correct; if you go over your 200MB, you get charged another $15 for another 200MB.
So instead of paying $25 for 2GB, you're paying $30 for 400MB. Yes, AT&T is being quite generous by not charging overages... *eye roll*
My SO and I keep our data counts down by using WiFi wherever we can
I only dropped from the old $30 "unlimited" (read: 5GB) plan to the $15 200MB plan because they added wifi access points for our mobile devices at work, so generally the only time I'm out of wifi range is during my commute.
I'm still super-nervous about going over the 200MB though, because of the pricing I mentioned above: if I'm going to go over, I may as well switch to the 2GB plan and save $5. (You could probably do this manually yourself in the middle of a billing cycle...)
That's AT&T's tiered policy.
Not really. AT&T gives you these choices:
200MB ($15)
400MB ($30) (by going over your 200 and getting another 200)
-
2GB ($25)
3GB ($35) (by going over 2GB and getting another 1GB)
4GB ($45) (same)
5GB ($55) (same)
Not only is there a rather absurd gap between 400MB and 2GB, but 400MB is more expensive than 2GB!
That has been the case with AT&T too (at least for the iPhone), until recently. They gave you what was labelled an "unlimited" plan, but the cap was really 5GB.
Now, my choices are 200MB (!!!) for $15/month (going over gives you another 200MB for another $15), or 2GB for $25/month (going over gives you another 1GB for another $10, up to 3 additional GB).
Even worse, they charge $20 just to enable tethering, and in doing so you get exactly zero additional data.
Their own data shows that the people that are paying the highest percentages in taxes are the ones that will benefit the most from this measure and make the tax system more progressive.
What? That's not what their data shows at all. Their data shows that the tax system is already somewhere between flat and progressive; it also shows that the group paying the highest percentages is already the wealthy. How, exactly, will this measure benefit them the most?
So, it ins't taxation that the pretender-tarians object to, it's income tax. Riiiight.
I can't speak for the rest of the state, but yes, that is my position.
No doubt we wouldn't have heard a peep from them if Washington State was proposing an additional 5% property tax on all property with an assessed value of over $200,000, 9% over $500,000, we wouldn't have heard a peep.
Well, the state raised taxes by some $800 million earlier this year, and I didn't hear a peep, so...
Washington has the most regressive tax in the nation.
Oh? Defeat 1098 actually looked at the data used to support that argument and found that those calculations exclude some rather significant data points -- what's more, if you include those figures, as you should if you're trying to determine how progressive a state's tax is, you get a very different picture.
Perhaps you shouldn't simply regurgitate what you hear from D.C. think-tanks.
The richest in the state currently pay less than 3% in taxes, while the poorest are paying over 17%.
So your complaint is that the poor buy just as much e.g. food as the rich, but they aren't taxed less for it? Please.
At any rate, citation needed for those percentages. (If the numbers are from that D.C. think-tank that's strongly pushing progressive taxes, well, that's hardly unbiased...)
This law will make it 12% for the rich, and around 14% for the poor.
... and that is simply incorrect. You see, this law won't magically make the poor pay less taxes; they won't be paying income tax, but they're not doing so now; they'll be buying just as much stuff as they buy now, so they'll be taxed just the same. It simply adds taxes to the rich. The percentage for the rich *will* go up, but the percentage for the poor will *not* go down.
(Property taxes would go down, and business and occupational taxes for small businesses will go down, but as far as I'm aware most of the poor live in apartments and probably aren't business owners, so you'll need to show that those groups are large enough among the poor that the percentage you cited, if it's valid at all, would actually go down.)
I will say that the state's lack of income tax was a major factor in my decision to accept a job here, and I am sure this is true of others.
Though I am far below the $200k limit, I am quite certain that if this passes, it won't be many years before that $200k limit is lowered to the poverty line. There is nothing in this proposal to prevent the state legislature from doing that, nor from raising the tax rate, and there's nothing to prevent them from re-raising the B&O and property taxes that this proposal lowers.
I'm not generally fond of "slippery slope" arguments, but gradual tax increases are hardly unprecedented, so it's not far-fetched to say this is likely to happen; earlier this year, in fact, they raised taxes by $800 million, so clearly the state is not opposed to raising taxes regularly.
Except the rich aren't really spending. Businesses have been swimming in profits, but not hiring or undertaking other projects that would create jobs indirectly (expansion projects, etc).
Yeah, let's pretend Amazon isn't actively hiring (they are), that they're not expanding (they just moved to new, larger buildings so they can accomodate their projected hiring), that they're not starting new projects (why do you think they're hiring?), etc etc.
Nope, Amazon isn't doing anything at all to stimulate Washington's economy.
</sarcasm>
You have to really stretch things to try and argue that state governments don't have the responsibility/right to run things like schools and hospitals
I'm opposed to this tax -- I live in WA but I make less than half the $200k limit (not to mention the $400k limit that would actually apply to me since I file jointly) -- because there are better ways for the state to get income that don't come across as "take from the rich" but still effectively tax the rich more than the poor.
I also have to consider the likelihood that the state will continually lower that $200k limit, so that I end up paying income tax even though even as it is it will be years before I've made enough above my expenses to pay off the student loans I needed to get through school. (And if you don't think the state will try to push that $200k limit lower, you're deluding yourself.)
To be more clear, I'm not particularly opposed to the rich paying more taxes... I just think there's ways to get them to do it willingly (better property and consumption taxes, for example, instead of income tax), which don't make them feel targeted.
Good idea, so lets take that to its logical conclusion. All income is money that people make, thus entitled to, and _none_ of it should be taxed. Collapse of government in 3.. 2.. 1..
Right, because income tax is the only possible method that the government can use to obtain funds. There aren't any possible methods that would tax the rich more than the poor without making the rich feel unfairly taxed..
Speaking of creating jobs, what's taking them so long?
I'm not really sure who you're referring to when you say "them", but Amazon is actively hiring, and so is Microsoft...
Psh, wake me up when Methuselah logs on again.
Well of course you would want to *have* a cousin Jim who is willing to say he had given you a spare hard drive. Or replace "cousin Jim" with "friend Steve" or whoever. It's not *that* hard. Heck you could even *get* your cousin/friend to give you an old hard drive, so that what he tells the police is true!
As for the "signs of an OS installation", that's easy... say you haven't gotten home yet so it's still just /dev/urandom output, as you didn't have your OS installation media with you.
You don't need 12Gigs and 4GHz for Wii emulation
Depends on what you're trying to emulate ;) For Metroid Prime, 4GHz apparently isn't enough... that or Dolphin isn't nearly efficient as it could be.
At any rate, it is certainly impressive what they've managed to do.
You can do Wii emulation on a high end PC.
I think you and I have different definitions of "high end". My Core i7 920 (complemented by 12GB of RAM and a 1GB GTX 285) can't handle emulating Metroid Prime at a playable framerate, not even with the processor overclocked to 4GHz. What do you mean by "high end"?
(I realize Metroid Prime is a Gamecube game, not a Wii game, but the two systems are pretty similar so I think my point stands nonetheless.)
No, you ALL miss the point. How are you going to explain having a HDD or partition full of "garbage"? Nobody with half a brain will believe you there's nothing encrypted in the noise.
You tell them you just visited your cousin Jim, who had an old hard drive he didn't want anymore, and you needed a spare so he gave it to you, but not before he ran "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda1" because he didn't want you having his old tax documents. All you've done with it since is install the OS...
How many times this year have you seen headlines that were completely false? I'd bet it's at least double digits.
For me, I'd guess more like triple digits... and I basically only read Slashdot. I am continually frustrated by the Slashdot editors not bothering to even do the most basic fact-checking on a headline or summary (or both) before posting someone's submission.
How do the packing materials and shipping speed compare between Thinkgeek and the others?
There are more factors than "can it possibly be done cheaper"...
I paid $9 shipping for the last set of items I ordered from Thinkgeek (one of which was larger than a t-shirt). I do not consider that unreasonable.
International shipping, even "just" to Canada, is more expensive than domestic shipping. I do not consider $15 unreasonable for international shipping. For international postage, USPS charges $10 for a 1-pound large envelope, or $13.50 for a small flat-rate box. If you think $1.50 is an unreasonable amount for Thinkgeek to charge to cover the cost of locating the shirt you ordered, boxing it, addressing it, and mailing it, then I don't think they want your business.
I guess that's a roundabout way of saying, if you do not want to pay $15 to get a t-shirt shipped to you in Canada from the US, don't order t-shirts from the US.
You realize they charge you what they get charged by USPS/DHL/UPS/whoever, plus a little for packaging etc., right?
If they let people choose "pay what you feel is fair" for shipping, especially international shipping, 99% of customers would choose "free", and they'd have to compensate by raising product prices. I don't think that's the outcome you desire.
(I am of course not talking about the jerks on eBay or Amazon who sell things for dirt cheap and then charge absurd amounts for shipping, I'm talking specifically about companies like Thinkgeek.)
I think the bigger issue is that the ISP is basing their assessment of the web site's "hate speech" (which it may or may not be) based on the politics of the situation, and not the web site itself. They were apparently fine with it before.
You're assuming Rackspace actively polices the sites run on their servers. (They most likely do not.) A more likely scenario is that they simply did not notice the contract-violating content until the group brought attention to themselves.
Sure, but that's not what I was replying to...
The post I was replying to merely asked, "does ANYONE know of another service ANY service like Paypal but run reputably?"
Amazon and Google both provide services that fall under the umbrella of "ANY service like Paypal" ;)
Amazon Payments is a good replacement for Paypal, and if all you need is shopping cart integration, Google Checkout is good too. Personally I consider both of those companies to be more reputable than Paypal...
(I added GC as a payment option recently on a site, in addition to the existing Paypal option; I'm pleasantly surprised at how often people choose to use Google instead of Paypal. I'm still working on Amazon Payments integration, though...)
I mean - surely such free spirited church goers would have absolutely no problem with homosexual atheists doing such a thing, right? They'd probably defend their right to do so with blood if they had to.
As a Christian, I would indeed defend that right with my blood if it came to it -- but that's not the right in question here with Rackspace. An analagous situation would be if the owner of the property on which the atheist homosexuals gathered told them they could gather there so long as they didn't start any fires, and then they did so anyway, and as a result he kicked them off. Nobody would be complaining that he's wrong for doing so; Rackspace did exactly the same thing, so why are people saying Rackspace is in the wrong?