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User: William+Ager

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Comments · 64

  1. Re:Rather unjustifiable reactions? on Canadians File Class Actions Over Incoming SMS Fees · · Score: 2, Interesting

    People being held liable for unsollicited traffic they cannot control is criminally absurd, and if their regulatory bodies refuse to crush it in the womb, then I say billing phone companies for their time is an excellent proactive demonstration of, and against, that absurdity.

    And how, pray tell, is the sending of such bills going to change anything? The company doesn't need to pay them, and the customers are still paying just as much; there really isn't anything to motivate the companies to care about the bills at all. If the customers were deducting the amounts from their phone bills, it might make a bit more sense as a form of protest.

  2. Re:Rather unjustifiable reactions? on Canadians File Class Actions Over Incoming SMS Fees · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If the matter is breach of contract, then it should be dealt with accordingly. There are mechanisms in society to deal with these sorts of issues, and they don't involve billing people without legal justification.

  3. Re:Rather unjustifiable reactions? on Canadians File Class Actions Over Incoming SMS Fees · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I you were to hit me with a brick, and then demand a dollar for doing so, I would have you arrested, not send you a bill for the time I took to discard the brick. I can certainly understand that the change is unpleasant, but responses to such changes need to make sense. Arbitrary billing of this sort is pointless: the company is certainly never going to pay, and they have no obligation to do so. Dealing with the matter in the courts, or through cancelling the service, would make far more sense.

  4. Rather unjustifiable reactions? on Canadians File Class Actions Over Incoming SMS Fees · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can understand how this might be a breach of contract issue for customers with binding contracts, and I would certainly expect many customers, even without binding contracts, to cancel their service over this. However, I really can't see how a customer can consider themselves justified in arbitrarily billing a company for their time just because the company makes changes that they dislike, no matter how horrible those changes may be.

  5. Re:This has nothing to do with his name.. on Verizon Denies DSL Because of Subscriber's Name · · Score: 1

    While it is true that the summary is very misleading, there is still a problem with the handling of the case. While there could be many legitimate and understandable reasons why someone couldn't have a particular email address, denying an email address of someone's name due to a policy against expletives is astoundingly offensive and inappropriate; in certain cases, it could arguably have legal implications.

  6. Re:Poor choice of words on New Results Contradict Long-Held Chemistry Dogma · · Score: 1

    As I said, we do have very successful predictions, like CMB results and BBN, along with a number of other things.

    If what you say about results were true, there would be many in the community desperate to break old theories and come up with new explanations. Science thrives on experiments with unexpected, unexplained results, and scientists are usually extremely eager to find things that don't make sense with current theories. I've heard many high energy theorists, for example, say that they would prefer the LHC find nothing rather than just find the Higgs and nothing else, which would simply be a confirmation of current theories. Similarly, there is significant effort being put into experiments trying to find problems with GR; to date, none of them have been able to do so, much to the disappointment of everyone hoping to come up with new theories. We've been so desperate that we've even come up with things like supersymmetry and string theory that create more complexity and end up giving the same results as current theories, just because we have nothing else to use as a base for new theoretical research.

  7. Re:Poor choice of words on New Results Contradict Long-Held Chemistry Dogma · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh dear... as someone said already, I expect this is probably an electric universe rant, and that responding to it will do almost nothing. I could moderate it down, but other mods probably wouldn't understand my reasons for doing so, as the parent avoided mentioning the crackpot theory itself.

    It should be said, however, that the odd thing about the dark matter predictions are that they work very well, as do the dark energy predictions. We did many have other models that were put forward, some containing significant changes to various theories. None of them worked nearly as well as our current model with dark matter. There are many people in the community that don't like our lack of knowledge about dark matter, but it works so well that, as with many things in high energy physics, we can only assume that it is actually there until we come up with a better theory.

    As for black holes, I would suggest that you actually learn modern GR before suggesting that you understand the theory better than everyone else in the community does. In fact, try learning real cosmology, and looking at results like measurements of CMB anisotropy, and Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

  8. Re:Ain't cryin' for him or anyone else on Social Networking Sites Becoming Useful For Lawyers · · Score: 1

    And what if the pictures were taken and posted by other people, and tagged with your name? I, for example, have never posted any pictures of myself at parties; nevertheless, they are a few on Facebook. Some of them were, in fact, there before I even joined the site in order to monitor such things.

    I don't actually see this as being such a horrible thing, but it should be noted that these sorts of pictures don't necessarily require the involvement of the subjects in order to be released to the world.

  9. Re:Way to be logical... on Social Networking Sites Becoming Useful For Lawyers · · Score: 1

    A car accident in which she was the driver and she killed her passenger. Drinking and joking about it while awaiting sentencing for drunk driving, after having killed somebody, suggests someone that hasn't quite grasped the gravity of brutally killing someone sitting not two feet away from you.

    ...

    Not that bad of an idea considering the fact that she killed someone and still saw to make light of it.

    Making light of a serious issue doesn't necessarily mean that one hasn't grasped the seriousness of the issue. Among other things, I believe humour can be used as a coping mechanism in these sorts of situations. Considering that it was a passenger who died, I expect she may be far more affected by the event than you seem to think.

    How about ceasing the activity that previously lead to someone's death? Is that too much to expect? At least during the sentencing phase?

    How do you know she didn't? Driving isn't always necessary, and is by far the more dangerous of the two activities, even when one isn't inebriated while doing it.

  10. Re:Be warned.... Don't lose your iPhone on Full Review of the iPhone 2 On Launch Day · · Score: 1

    If one isn't eligible for an upgrade, one can buy a phone from AT&T without renewing the contract, apparently, which makes sense. The iPhone for non-eligible customers is full price and requires a renewed contract. Considering the price difference, it could well be cheaper for me to cancel my service and pay the early termination fee in order to buy an iPhone at the subsidized price.

  11. Re:Be warned.... Don't lose your iPhone on Full Review of the iPhone 2 On Launch Day · · Score: 1, Informative

    It should also be noted that current ATT customers apparently have to both pay the full price and sign up for a two year contract too, despite the fact that this isn't the case for any other phone ATT sells.

  12. Re:Goodbye House of Lords on UK's House of Lords Speaks To Voters Via YouTube, Blogs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The House that has in recent years so often tried to foil the plans of the government to erode the rights of citizens is a useless anachronism?

  13. Re: Eur 1800 for a webcam?? on Running Mac OS X On Standard PCs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is this the same Apple Care that refused to even speak to me for an in-warranty hard drive replacement without getting a credit card number first, along with an agreement that they could decide to charge me for the call afterward if they decided the problem wasn't covered under the warranty? And then took a month to replace the hard drive, while also removing my (perfectly functional) DVD+CD+-RW drive and replacing it with an older CD-ROM drive? Compared to my experience with Dell's email support, which replaced anything I needed replaced within 24 hours, with no questions asked, Apple seemed horrid.
    Technical support anecdotes are generally not indicative of the overall quality of technical support that a company offers. I'm sure others have had horrible experiences with Dell and wonderful experiences with Apple.

  14. Re:Really... on To Curb Truancy, Dallas Tries Electronic Monitoring · · Score: 1

    While your post is certainly funny, it does illustrate that the spokesman probably hasn't read 1984, as "a buddy who wants to keep you safe" is very similar to how the Party portrayed Big Brother.