As usual, they miss the measurement of "quality" and instead dumb it down to "quantity". Playing Candy Crush 5 minutes a day is not the same as playing the Xbox until 4am.
I think quantity is a perfectly acceptable metric but not as "total number of women who played a game last week" but rather "total minutes played by women last week". I would define someone who is playing games 4-6 hours a day as a gamer even if those games only consist of candy crush, farmville, and word with friends. And as far as advertisers are concerned the candy crush, farmville, and word with friends group is more valuable as they are exposed to alot more ads than the person playing mario on an xbox. The world doesn't care how stupid and mindless the game is as long as you're spending hours doing it.
Candy crush players are not gamers anymore than people who like to watch Star Trek on occasion are Trekkies
Why did you bother to use "on occasion" for trekkies but not for gamers. I would define a gamer based on intensity. I would define someone who is playing games 4-6 hours a day as a gamer even if those games only consist of candy crush, farmville, and word with friends.
wait...
so you are saying its not a bug, its a feature?
I've actually said this for a while. I think cancer is closely linked with aging. I expect that we will "cure" cancer about the same time we manage to "cure" aging.
As cancer is mainly an affliction of the older post reproduction and upbringing population it has very little evolutionary impact, those that are more likely to suffer are not going to fail evolution and hence retain and equal reproduction opportunity.
No problem, we should just start sterilizing all the children and grandchildren of anyone who gets cancer. Problem solved. In a couple generation no one will have cancer anymore.
I'm totally making this up, but if cancer processes were to be discovered to be mostly a function of a rapid partially undifferentiated cell division pathway that occurs when you are a blastosphere that was partly reused in the process to heal skin break or say white-blood cell production etc, etc
You aren't too far from the truth. The reason many cancer treatments kill white blood cells and hair is because scientists have discovered that they can selectively target the "fast growing" cells. White blood cells, hair, and cancer fall into this category so while they aren't accurate enough to target just the cancer the collateral damage is acceptable.
I'm assuming over time by discovering additional pathways that they will be able to be a little specific in their targeting than "kill all the fast ones" but it works and is a step in the right direction.
Why do you actually care how much time your washing machine uses? Fill it up, switch it on and do something else during the time.You are not a cat, you don't have to stay and watch it spin. European washing machines take so long because the detergents are much milder.
What if you have 4 loads of laundry to do or what if that "something else" is leave the house? With 2.5 hours to wash and 1.5 hours to dry AND the requirement to switch it halfway thru you have to be at your house and awake for 16 hours straight to do only 4 loads of laundry. You can't just start it before you leave for work as when you get home the clothes will be musty or wrinkled depending on whether you left them in the washer or the dryer.
I can deal with the wrinkles and I've considered actually replacing my washer and dryer with 2 single cycle wash/dry combo units where you don't have to move them from the washer to the dryer but I've heard those all-in-one units aren't very good.
Before there were movies (and the ability to copy them) we still had performance based entertainment but actors (and musicians) were making the same kind of money as a chimney sweep rather than being the highest paid employees in the world.
The only reason all those salaries are so high is because movies make obscene amounts of money and the workers want a cut.
That's not exactly true. There are plenty of actors who are still willing to work for chimney sweep wages just as there are plenty of musicians, artists, and ball players that are willing to work for chimney sweep wages. The reason actors, musicians, artists, and ball players are some of the highest paid in the world is because we as a society have decided that we only want to watch the "best of the best". A director would love to film a film with a bunch of "cheap" actors but cheap actors don't do as good of a job and the producer can't splash the cheap actor's name on the trailers and posters. If people were willing to watch second rate actors and second rate ball players then first rate actors and ball players wouldn't be able to demand the huge salaries.
The fashion industry doesn't get by on copy protection: they rely on the advantage of being first to market. With a new design, you've got a monopoly for as long as it takes the first person to copy you, which is long enough to make a profit.
Movies often make about half their profit on their opening weekend. If it takes even a couple of days for copies to hit bittorrent, they'll still make half their profit. Downsize Hollywood by a factor of two and... would there be much difference? Would movies be noticeably less entertaining if the superstars were paid $5m for each appearance rather than $10m?
You're comparing apples to oranges. The "time to market" for the fashion industry copycats is orders of magnitude longer. I can have a copy of a movie torrented 2 hours after the first midnight showing long before most people even watch it. To copy a dress would probably take several weeks minimum. There are other differences too. Coach has went on record that they don't mind copycats because it just helps their brand and the people buying copycats can't afford coach and the people buying coach don't want a knockoff.
So we're throwing a man in prison to keep one form of entertainment flowing? That seems backwards.
Seems backwards how? Would you say the same if someone snuck into an amusement park and disabled all the rides? What about if that same person broke into your house and stole your dvd collection or stole all the copies of that movie from walmart? What about if he decided to start making copies of dollar bills instead of cds?
Laws are designed to keep order. We have different punishments for different crimes but even "small crimes" like speeding can eventually land you in prison if you blatantly disregard the law. Prison is also the ultimate deterent for someone like this person who has "nothing to lose". You can't have a civilized society without some form of punishment for someone with "nothing to lose". If you don't like a law then you can work to change it or if there is enough disagreement then you can actively ignore like in prohibition but even in prohibition plenty of people went to jail before the laws were eventually reversed. The best thing to do is obey the laws until you are able to get them changed.
Trust me, they don't make a movie and not pay everyone while the movie is being made. Where do you think the budget goes for a film? Most of it goes to pay people, like any other business venture. If you're going to comment on how damaging something is to a system (like movie making) then you better have a basic understanding of how that system *actually* works.
Of course that's how it works. I never said it wasn't but do you think the "investors" are going to keep paying everyone to make the movies if they don't make money on them?
And how many of those people are actually being paid by a percentage cut from ticket/dvd sales?
It doesn't matter. It actually makes it worse that they aren't because it increases the risk to the investor if they have to prepay all those services. People who invest millions in a movie are taking a risk. If the movie flops (or if everyone downloads it for free), then the investor is loses money and will no longer be willing to front the movie for future films to be made. Many people behind the scene even if given the option would rather have a steady paycheck than to risk working for 6 months for free.
The stories are a bit dumb, but I have no doubt that without the million dollar budgets, the effects that these movies rely on to function would not be possible. Cutting out copy protection would hurt these movies the most, and I've seen indie attempts at making science fiction and fantasy movies. The writing is normally better, but the effects are almost hilariously bad, and the actors are pretty iffy as well.
There would be alternatives. It would be theoretically possible to crowdsource a movie (i.e. kickstarter). Someone big in hollywood would probably have enough clout to say "we need 20 million to produce this movie" and sell "tickets" on kickstarter. When/if it reaches the $20million then they produce the movie and release it for free on the internet. That being said, it actually might be the "little guys" that removing copy protection would hurt the most. Someone who already has a name could crowdsource $20million. Someone who doesn't have name recognition would have a much harder time "preselling" that many tickets.
Instead, we see that people are still paying for these movies to be made (judging by the industry's growth and continued profits), despite rampant illegitimate digital distribution. From this, we can speculate that the only real effect of legalizing digital copying would be to create fewer felons from otherwise-normal people.
Except that I know tons of people that don't download illegal movies. If downloading illegal movies became safe, legal, and easy then why would I spend $20 on a movie at walmart? The current market only continues to work because *most* people buy the majority of their movies. It might be "rampant" in some circles but the average person by and large still pays for movies.
Why should anyone have control over the copying industry? Free market here would be great IMO.
I'm all for the free market but it's not the copying that is the problem. The problem is that it takes thousands of man hours to produce a movie and all those people want to get paid. If you made copying legal then one of 3 things happen: 1) Noone produces movies anymore 2) They figure out another way of paying for the movie (merchandise tie-ins, product placement, etc..) 3) Metal detectors, etc... at the movie theatre and/or some other way of preventing copying. Copying is too hard to enforce and we need a better way. I don't think swat teams and prison is the answer but I don't really like the idea of movies being even more corrupted with advertisement either.
artists can get payed better when not bottlenecked by shitty distributors with monopolies
That might be so but if copying is legal then the indie film producer has the same problem. They can only sell 1 copy. How do you fairly compensate the people who spend the many man hours producing the movie? The movie industry isn't perfect by any means and there are plenty of people getting rich who maybe shouldn't but removing all copy protection would require movies as we currently know them to cease to exist.
The issue isn't wifi. I happened to mention 2 issues with wifi. I could easily list a dozen more issues with a dozen different subsystems. I'm a linux administrator. I use linux daily. It's easier to configure for someone who knows what they're doing but it lacks many of the wizards that power users hate but people who can't find the C drive love. The issue is ease of use. When I plug in a usb drive, does it automount? Personally, I don't want it to, but someone who has a hard time finding the C drive is going to be lost. Installing a printer on linux is alot more cumbersome and is less step by step. Even some advantages like multiple desktops can make it more confusing. Linux is not ready for people like my dad who "lost" his desktop icons once because he accidently maximized his current application window. Unfortunately the linux "power users" would hate a linux that is made for newbies as it would have to hide alot of what makes linux great under the "advanced" options.
Linux has also been superior on the desktop for quite some time.
Superior by what definition? Stability? sure, I'll give you that. ease of use? I doubt it. I've been a linux only user for over a decade but it still doesn't work as smoothly as windows out of the box. I occasionally still run into random problems like wifi failing to connect, can't read a cd which windows has no problem with, wifi card is not supported, etc... Granted most thinks come with windows drivers but even when they do happen to include linux drivers the linux drivers are often an afterthought and subpar. These small little rough edges are a fine trade off for a geek but a huge turn off for a "normal"
If a divorce happens, then having a joint login isn't really a problem as you already both have access to the money. So you both can log in and see that the other person already emptied the account. No need to worry about changing the password.
Same with mortage accounts. The fact that the login/password is shared is less important that the fact that you own a house together. The login/password is usually only useful for paying the bill and not much else anyways. It seems pointless to have 2 separate login/passwords and even stupider if those 2 separate login/passwords can't see each other's payment histories.
I'm also surprised it's not higher but not because people are stupid but because there are a bunch of different use cases. Even if the bank allows it, what advantage does a husband/wife have to create separate logins for a joint account? There are plenty of people that share accounts. There might be a sales email address that multiple people in an office take turns checking. I know quite a few husband/wife pairs that share a single facebook account and I even know a few that share a single email address. It's not because they're stupid but rather if one or both of them is a light user then it's easier to just have everything in one place. There are also plenty of not-so-important accounts that people don't really care about and leave the password on a post it note or use 123123 as the password because there is nothing of importance there and even if someone bothered to hack it, they wouldn't really care.
What alternative would you recommend? The only one I can think of is burying a few conduits in advance when performing other utility maintenance, and then leasing each individual conduit to an ISP to blow its own fiber or copper.
This isn't as crazy as it sounds. If the city owns the conduit, let's say a 6 inch pvc conduit and then rents it out at a nominal fee to anyone and everyone who wants to send fiber down it. You could literally send thousands of strands of fiber down a single 6 inch conduit. Plenty of room for competition for anyone who wants to try to compete. Now the city only has to maintain a simple piece of plastic pipe and can distribute the cost with dozens of companies and each company gets to maintain their own fiber inside of this conduit.
What's so unreasonable about this? Netflix isn't wanting this for free, they are wanting peering agreements. Basically, they are saying, let us run fiber directly to you so that:
1) Our customers get a faster connection
2) Your customers get a faster connection to us.
3) Your customers are no longer bogging down your internet connection with traffic to us
4) Your customers get a faster connections to the rest of the internet
5) You don't have to buy bigger pipes to the rest of the internet therefore saving money. etc...
It's a win/win for all involved. There is no reason money needs to be continually exchanged as it's now a private lan between the two companies and I'm sure Netflix would gladly pay for the hardware. The only reason they don't want to peer with netflix is because they feel like they own the customers and are willing to hold their own customers hostage in the hopes that netflix will cave. Netflix unfortunately is not critical enough to do the opposite. (i.e. peer with us or your customers can't use netflix) as netflix actually has competition unlike the people they are trying to peer with.
In fact, the editing process is such that the cost of printing, shipping, warehousing, distribution is really only around 10% of the retail cost.
If the printing and shipping (including the cost of amazon to ship it to me) is really only 10% then I will never be buying an ebook unless forced to because it's worth alot more than 10% to me to have the physical book plus the resale value of the book is almost always worth more than 10%.
So what you're basically saying is that ebooks can't afford to compete with paper books on price which I find utter nonsense. Amazon might have to reduce their commission or they might have to rethink how they do it but it makes no sense that an ebook shouldn't be able to compete with a paper book and currently they are many times priced higher than the paperback versions. This might make sense if the paperback versions had advertisement or something to offset the cheaper price but I don't believe this is the case so why is the paperback version cheaper than the ebook?
The only news story I've ever seen was one in florida where an old person's neighborhood was attempting to evict someone because they had a "no children" policy. The media was as usual making a big deal about it but the homeowner's association had spent months trying to evict her. Yes, the contracts are enforceble and if you're in the wrong then you can be found guilty in court but it's a long drawn out process for both sides. Where I'm from (middle of missouri), there are all kinds of crazy clauses like how many bushes you are suppose to have but most people take them as suggestions instead of rules and you can go through any neighborhood and see dozens of violations. Which by the way is how it plays out in court. If you can show that the rule is selectively enforced (for instance your neighbor already has a fence) then the court will throw out the rule.
Compare to an ebook: I buy it. Then my wife has to buy it(*). Them my friends/family have to buy it. Then my kids have to buy it. Their kids have to buy it. See the problem?
I might be ok with this for certain books if ebooks were substantially cheaper. Currently even for books I don't want to keep it's cheaper to buy the book, read it, and resell it on amazon. If a $20 paper book gives the author $7 of royalties then at a maximum an ebook should be priced at about $7.50 but because you can't turn around and resell that ebook it should probably be priced closer to $3 or less. If ebooks actually started being priced at a rental price then it would make alot more sense to buy ebooks. I still prefer paper books and most of the times the paperback and used copies are cheaper than the ebooks even before you include resell value and alot of that goes to shipping. I would love to see 30 day rental fees for ebooks be priced at or below the paperback/used book price instead of ebooks being priced at 70% of the hardback price. It makes no sense that I can get a NEW physical paperback book SHIPPED to me cheaper than I can buy the electronic version.
at some point after he originally stained it they decided the previously allowed colors were no longer allowed.
Homeowners associations have very little actual power. I would have told the home owner's association to take a hike. You can't make a law after the fact. If this is true there is no way this would have held up in court. I've heard rumors of crazy homeowner's associations demanding crazy stuff but to actually enforce it is expensive as you have to take them to court to enforce it and many times the court will still decide in the actual homeowner's favor.
I'm not going to argue whether the story is true or not but illegal != false. Just because he is suppose to report it doesn't mean he did. There are plenty of deals the are "off the books" or "under the table" that are illegal and both parties are smart enough not to report it anywhere. I personally know of quite a few:
entertainment equipment with purchase of the house (mortgage company wouldn't approve it so it was done off the books)
both parties underreporting the sell price of a vehicle to reduce sales tax on the car (this is both highly illegal and extremely common)
large scale bartering like 20 tons of gravel for 2 weeks of work.
free website design in exchange for dentistry work. (these last 2 happen alot and many people probably don't even know it's illegal) I could name quite a few more. There are plenty of people out there who both cheat the system and don't even bother to keep quiet about it.
Slashdot Mirror
As usual, they miss the measurement of "quality" and instead dumb it down to "quantity". Playing Candy Crush 5 minutes a day is not the same as playing the Xbox until 4am.
I think quantity is a perfectly acceptable metric but not as "total number of women who played a game last week" but rather
"total minutes played by women last week". I would define someone who is playing games 4-6 hours a day as a gamer even
if those games only consist of candy crush, farmville, and word with friends. And as far as advertisers are concerned the
candy crush, farmville, and word with friends group is more valuable as they are exposed to alot more ads than the person
playing mario on an xbox. The world doesn't care how stupid and mindless the game is as long as you're spending hours
doing it.
Candy crush players are not gamers anymore than people who like to watch Star Trek on occasion are Trekkies
Why did you bother to use "on occasion" for trekkies but not for gamers. I would define a gamer based on intensity.
I would define someone who is playing games 4-6 hours a day as a gamer even if those games only consist of candy crush, farmville, and word with friends.
wait...
so you are saying its not a bug, its a feature?
I've actually said this for a while. I think cancer is closely linked with aging.
I expect that we will "cure" cancer about the same time we manage to "cure" aging.
As cancer is mainly an affliction of the older post reproduction and upbringing population it has very little evolutionary impact, those that are more likely to suffer are not going to fail evolution and hence retain and equal reproduction opportunity.
No problem, we should just start sterilizing all the children and grandchildren of anyone who gets cancer.
Problem solved. In a couple generation no one will have cancer anymore.
I'm totally making this up, but if cancer processes were to be discovered to be mostly a function of a rapid partially undifferentiated cell division pathway that occurs when you are a blastosphere that was partly reused in the process to heal skin break or say white-blood cell production etc, etc
You aren't too far from the truth. The reason many cancer treatments kill white blood cells and hair is because scientists have discovered
that they can selectively target the "fast growing" cells. White blood cells, hair, and cancer fall into this category so while they aren't
accurate enough to target just the cancer the collateral damage is acceptable.
I'm assuming over time by discovering additional pathways that they will be able to be a little specific in their targeting than "kill all the fast ones"
but it works and is a step in the right direction.
Why do you actually care how much time your washing machine uses? Fill it up, switch it on and do something else during the time.You are not a cat, you don't have to stay and watch it spin. European washing machines take so long because the detergents are much milder.
What if you have 4 loads of laundry to do or what if that "something else" is leave the house?
With 2.5 hours to wash and 1.5 hours to dry AND the requirement to switch it halfway thru you have to be at your house
and awake for 16 hours straight to do only 4 loads of laundry. You can't just start it before you leave for work as when you
get home the clothes will be musty or wrinkled depending on whether you left them in the washer or the dryer.
I can deal with the wrinkles and I've considered actually replacing my washer and dryer with 2 single cycle wash/dry combo units
where you don't have to move them from the washer to the dryer but I've heard those all-in-one units aren't very good.
Before there were movies (and the ability to copy them) we still had performance based entertainment but actors (and musicians) were making the same kind of money as a chimney sweep rather than being the highest paid employees in the world.
The only reason all those salaries are so high is because movies make obscene amounts of money and the workers want a cut.
That's not exactly true. There are plenty of actors who are still willing to work for chimney sweep wages just as there are
plenty of musicians, artists, and ball players that are willing to work for chimney sweep wages.
The reason actors, musicians, artists, and ball players are some of the highest paid in the world is because we as a society have
decided that we only want to watch the "best of the best". A director would love to film a film with a bunch of "cheap" actors but
cheap actors don't do as good of a job and the producer can't splash the cheap actor's name on the trailers and posters.
If people were willing to watch second rate actors and second rate ball players then first rate actors and ball players wouldn't
be able to demand the huge salaries.
The fashion industry doesn't get by on copy protection: they rely on the advantage of being first to market. With a new design, you've got a monopoly for as long as it takes the first person to copy you, which is long enough to make a profit.
Movies often make about half their profit on their opening weekend. If it takes even a couple of days for copies to hit bittorrent, they'll still make half their profit. Downsize Hollywood by a factor of two and ... would there be much difference? Would movies be noticeably less entertaining if the superstars were paid $5m for each appearance rather than $10m?
You're comparing apples to oranges. The "time to market" for the fashion industry copycats is orders of magnitude longer. I can have a copy
of a movie torrented 2 hours after the first midnight showing long before most people even watch it. To copy a dress would probably take
several weeks minimum. There are other differences too. Coach has went on record that they don't mind copycats because it just helps
their brand and the people buying copycats can't afford coach and the people buying coach don't want a knockoff.
So we're throwing a man in prison to keep one form of entertainment flowing? That seems backwards.
Seems backwards how? Would you say the same if someone snuck into an amusement park and disabled all the rides?
What about if that same person broke into your house and stole your dvd collection or stole all the copies of that
movie from walmart? What about if he decided to start making copies of dollar bills instead of cds?
Laws are designed to keep order. We have different punishments for different crimes but even "small crimes" like
speeding can eventually land you in prison if you blatantly disregard the law. Prison is also the ultimate deterent
for someone like this person who has "nothing to lose". You can't have a civilized society without some form of
punishment for someone with "nothing to lose". If you don't like a law then you can work to change it or if there
is enough disagreement then you can actively ignore like in prohibition but even in prohibition plenty of people went
to jail before the laws were eventually reversed. The best thing to do is obey the laws until you are able to get
them changed.
Trust me, they don't make a movie and not pay everyone while the movie is being made. Where do you think the budget goes for a film? Most of it goes to pay people, like any other business venture. If you're going to comment on how damaging something is to a system (like movie making) then you better have a basic understanding of how that system *actually* works.
Of course that's how it works. I never said it wasn't but do you think the "investors" are going to keep paying everyone to
make the movies if they don't make money on them?
And how many of those people are actually being paid by a percentage cut from ticket/dvd sales?
It doesn't matter. It actually makes it worse that they aren't because it increases the risk to the investor if they have to
prepay all those services. People who invest millions in a movie are taking a risk. If the movie flops (or if everyone
downloads it for free), then the investor is loses money and will no longer be willing to front the movie for future films
to be made. Many people behind the scene even if given the option would rather have a steady paycheck than to risk
working for 6 months for free.
The stories are a bit dumb, but I have no doubt that without the million dollar budgets, the effects that these movies rely on to function would not be possible. Cutting out copy protection would hurt these movies the most, and I've seen indie attempts at making science fiction and fantasy movies. The writing is normally better, but the effects are almost hilariously bad, and the actors are pretty iffy as well.
There would be alternatives. It would be theoretically possible to crowdsource a movie (i.e. kickstarter).
Someone big in hollywood would probably have enough clout to say "we need 20 million to produce this movie" and
sell "tickets" on kickstarter. When/if it reaches the $20million then they produce the movie and release
it for free on the internet. That being said, it actually might be the "little guys" that removing copy protection would
hurt the most. Someone who already has a name could crowdsource $20million. Someone who doesn't
have name recognition would have a much harder time "preselling" that many tickets.
Instead, we see that people are still paying for these movies to be made (judging by the industry's growth and continued profits), despite rampant illegitimate digital distribution. From this, we can speculate that the only real effect of legalizing digital copying would be to create fewer felons from otherwise-normal people.
Except that I know tons of people that don't download illegal movies. If downloading illegal movies became safe, legal, and easy then
why would I spend $20 on a movie at walmart? The current market only continues to work because *most* people buy the majority of
their movies. It might be "rampant" in some circles but the average person by and large still pays for movies.
Why should anyone have control over the copying industry? Free market here would be great IMO.
I'm all for the free market but it's not the copying that is the problem. The problem is that it takes thousands of man hours
to produce a movie and all those people want to get paid. If you made copying legal then one of 3 things happen:
1) Noone produces movies anymore
2) They figure out another way of paying for the movie (merchandise tie-ins, product placement, etc..)
3) Metal detectors, etc... at the movie theatre and/or some other way of preventing copying.
Copying is too hard to enforce and we need a better way. I don't think swat teams and prison is the answer but I
don't really like the idea of movies being even more corrupted with advertisement either.
artists can get payed better when not bottlenecked by shitty distributors with monopolies
That might be so but if copying is legal then the indie film producer has the same problem. They can only sell 1 copy.
How do you fairly compensate the people who spend the many man hours producing the movie? The movie industry
isn't perfect by any means and there are plenty of people getting rich who maybe shouldn't but removing all copy
protection would require movies as we currently know them to cease to exist.
The issue isn't wifi. I happened to mention 2 issues with wifi. I could easily list a dozen more issues with a dozen different subsystems.
I'm a linux administrator. I use linux daily. It's easier to configure for someone who knows what they're doing but it lacks many of the
wizards that power users hate but people who can't find the C drive love. The issue is ease of use. When I plug in a usb drive, does
it automount? Personally, I don't want it to, but someone who has a hard time finding the C drive is going to be lost. Installing a printer
on linux is alot more cumbersome and is less step by step. Even some advantages like multiple desktops can make it more confusing.
Linux is not ready for people like my dad who "lost" his desktop icons once because he accidently maximized his current application window.
Unfortunately the linux "power users" would hate a linux that is made for newbies as it would have to hide alot of what makes linux
great under the "advanced" options.
Linux has also been superior on the desktop for quite some time.
Superior by what definition? Stability? sure, I'll give you that. ease of use? I doubt it.
I've been a linux only user for over a decade but it still doesn't work as smoothly as windows out of the box.
I occasionally still run into random problems like wifi failing to connect, can't read a cd which windows has no problem with,
wifi card is not supported, etc... Granted most thinks come with windows drivers but even when they do happen to
include linux drivers the linux drivers are often an afterthought and subpar. These small little rough edges are a fine
trade off for a geek but a huge turn off for a "normal"
If a divorce happens, then having a joint login isn't really a problem as you already
both have access to the money. So you both can log in and see that the other person
already emptied the account. No need to worry about changing the password.
Same with mortage accounts. The fact that the login/password is shared is less
important that the fact that you own a house together. The login/password is
usually only useful for paying the bill and not much else anyways.
It seems pointless to have 2 separate login/passwords and even stupider if
those 2 separate login/passwords can't see each other's payment histories.
I'm also surprised it's not higher but not because people are stupid but because there are a bunch of different use cases.
Even if the bank allows it, what advantage does a husband/wife have to create separate logins for a joint account?
There are plenty of people that share accounts. There might be a sales email address that multiple people in an office take turns checking.
I know quite a few husband/wife pairs that share a single facebook account and I even know a few that share a single email address.
It's not because they're stupid but rather if one or both of them is a light user then it's easier to just have everything in one place.
There are also plenty of not-so-important accounts that people don't really care about and leave the password on a post it note or use 123123 as
the password because there is nothing of importance there and even if someone bothered to hack it, they wouldn't really care.
What alternative would you recommend? The only one I can think of is burying a few conduits in advance when performing other utility maintenance, and then leasing each individual conduit to an ISP to blow its own fiber or copper.
This isn't as crazy as it sounds. If the city owns the conduit, let's say a 6 inch pvc conduit and then rents it out at a nominal fee to anyone and
everyone who wants to send fiber down it. You could literally send thousands of strands of fiber down a single 6 inch conduit. Plenty of room
for competition for anyone who wants to try to compete. Now the city only has to maintain a simple piece of plastic pipe and can distribute the cost
with dozens of companies and each company gets to maintain their own fiber inside of this conduit.
They don't want to pay for bandwidth anymore.
What's so unreasonable about this? Netflix isn't wanting this for free, they are wanting peering agreements.
Basically, they are saying, let us run fiber directly to you so that:
1) Our customers get a faster connection
2) Your customers get a faster connection to us.
3) Your customers are no longer bogging down your internet connection with traffic to us
4) Your customers get a faster connections to the rest of the internet
5) You don't have to buy bigger pipes to the rest of the internet therefore saving money.
etc...
It's a win/win for all involved. There is no reason money needs to be continually exchanged as it's now a private
lan between the two companies and I'm sure Netflix would gladly pay for the hardware.
The only reason they don't want to peer with netflix is because they feel like they own the customers and
are willing to hold their own customers hostage in the hopes that netflix will cave.
Netflix unfortunately is not critical enough to do the opposite. (i.e. peer with us or your customers
can't use netflix) as netflix actually has competition unlike the people they are trying to peer with.
In fact, the editing process is such that the cost of printing, shipping, warehousing, distribution is really only around 10% of the retail cost.
If the printing and shipping (including the cost of amazon to ship it to me) is really only 10% then I will never be buying an ebook unless forced to
because it's worth alot more than 10% to me to have the physical book plus the resale value of the book is almost always worth more than 10%.
So what you're basically saying is that ebooks can't afford to compete with paper books on price which I find utter nonsense.
Amazon might have to reduce their commission or they might have to rethink how they do it but it makes no sense that an ebook
shouldn't be able to compete with a paper book and currently they are many times priced higher than the paperback versions.
This might make sense if the paperback versions had advertisement or something to offset the cheaper price but I don't believe this
is the case so why is the paperback version cheaper than the ebook?
The only news story I've ever seen was one in florida where an old person's neighborhood was attempting to evict someone
because they had a "no children" policy. The media was as usual making a big deal about it but the homeowner's association
had spent months trying to evict her. Yes, the contracts are enforceble and if you're in the wrong then you can be found guilty
in court but it's a long drawn out process for both sides. Where I'm from (middle of missouri), there are all kinds of crazy
clauses like how many bushes you are suppose to have but most people take them as suggestions instead of rules and you
can go through any neighborhood and see dozens of violations. Which by the way is how it plays out in court. If you can
show that the rule is selectively enforced (for instance your neighbor already has a fence) then the court will throw out the
rule.
Compare to an ebook: I buy it. Then my wife has to buy it(*). Them my friends/family have to buy it. Then my kids have to buy it. Their kids have to buy it. See the problem?
I might be ok with this for certain books if ebooks were substantially cheaper. Currently even for books I don't want to keep
it's cheaper to buy the book, read it, and resell it on amazon. If a $20 paper book gives the author $7 of royalties then at
a maximum an ebook should be priced at about $7.50 but because you can't turn around and resell that ebook it should
probably be priced closer to $3 or less. If ebooks actually started being priced at a rental price then it would make alot more
sense to buy ebooks. I still prefer paper books and most of the times the paperback and used copies are cheaper than
the ebooks even before you include resell value and alot of that goes to shipping. I would love to see 30 day rental fees for
ebooks be priced at or below the paperback/used book price instead of ebooks being priced at 70% of the hardback price.
It makes no sense that I can get a NEW physical paperback book SHIPPED to me cheaper than I can buy the electronic version.
at some point after he originally stained it they decided the previously allowed colors were no longer allowed.
Homeowners associations have very little actual power. I would have told the home owner's association to take a hike.
You can't make a law after the fact. If this is true there is no way this would have held up in court. I've heard rumors of
crazy homeowner's associations demanding crazy stuff but to actually enforce it is expensive as you have to take
them to court to enforce it and many times the court will still decide in the actual homeowner's favor.
I'm not going to argue whether the story is true or not but illegal != false. Just because he is suppose to report it
doesn't mean he did. There are plenty of deals the are "off the books" or "under the table" that are illegal and both
parties are smart enough not to report it anywhere. I personally know of quite a few:
entertainment equipment with purchase of the house (mortgage company wouldn't approve it so it was done off the books)
both parties underreporting the sell price of a vehicle to reduce sales tax on the car (this is both highly illegal and extremely common)
large scale bartering like 20 tons of gravel for 2 weeks of work.
free website design in exchange for dentistry work. (these last 2 happen alot and many people probably don't even know it's illegal)
I could name quite a few more. There are plenty of people out there who both cheat the system and don't even bother to keep quiet about it.