some just want a solid cable that will last for 20 years and will not break during normal use.
Wow, you described some of my Radio Shack cables perfectly (actually, I think they've made it over 20 years)
Yeah those ones that were made 20 years ago are still around, but the Radio Shack cables I bought 5 years ago were thrown in the garbage 4 and a half years ago. RIP Radio Shack.
I further give you the point that I might be biased - I come from a place that was a fallout hotspot after Chernobyl.
Well there you go. I'm very sorry for what happened. The fact of the matter is that we can't base political decisions upon emotion. We have to look at facts.
There have only been a small handful of deadly nuclear accidents in the world. All of them took place outside the United States. Two of them (Chernobyl and Mayak) were due to sheer incompetence and were completely avoidable. One of them was due to a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the tsunami that followed, and subsequent massive aftershocks that continue to this day. In all the years of nuclear energy production, there have been several thousand deaths. It's unfortunate for those people, but a pretty damned good safety record in the grand scope of things.
Not a single death to the public in the United States. Three Mile Island is the one incident that a lot of anti-nuclearites like to cite, but it wasn't a disaster by any means. Nothing really happened. A core meltdown occurred, but so what? People like to talk about the word meltdown like it's some evil thing that will destroy the world, but it's just what happens when a cooling system fails. The walls of the facility were built so that radioactive material wouldn't escape (and it didn't), and the staff were competent enough to stop the meltdown (and they did). There have been no deaths and the cancer rate in the area directly surrounding the plant has not changed as a result of the incident.
So yes, nuclear power has an incredible safety record. The Chernobyl disaster was extremely unfortunate, but it would not have happened if controlled by the United States. Mayak was extremely unfortunate, but it would not have happened if controlled by the United States. Fukushima was extremely unfortunate, but look at what the fuck kind of stress that place is under. It was built thirty years ago to withstand an 8.0 earthquake. It mostly contained the damage after a 9.0 earthquake but then the emergency generators were flooded by the tsunami. That is a result of poor design, and so the disaster could theoretically have been avoided. New reactors will not be designed as such because we saw what happened. We will learn from that mistake, and nuclear power will only continue to become safer.
That wasn't related to nuclear power, as the plant's purpose was - at the time - to "make, refine, and machine plutonium for use in nuclear weapons". Other notable excerpts from that Wikipedia article include "Working conditions at Mayak resulted in severe health hazards and many accidents," "The Mayak plant was built in 1945–48, in a great hurry and in total secrecy, as part of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapon program," and "Two operators were using an "unfavorable geometry vessel in an improvised and unapproved operation as a temporary vessel for storing plutonium organic solution."[8] In other words, the operators were decanting plutonium solutions into the wrong type of vessel."
Sounds like Mayak was run with even less care and even more blatant stupidity than Chernobyl, and it was commissioned by the same organization in shambles that I mentioned above (Russia).
Accidents like Chernobyl and Mayak are the direct result of outright stupidity and lack of any sense. Nuclear operations in the United States aren't even comparable to what went on in Russia and Ukraine that caused those completely avoidable incidents.
Indeed. In theory, nuclear power can be safe in practice. In practice, it never will be. Not as long as fallible humans are in charge of building and running the plants, at least.
Name one major accident related to nuclear power that resulted in death to those outside the operations of the plant and was not Chernobyl.
I deny mention of Chernobyl because that reactor was less robust than what comes out of my dog's anus after he eats a bowl of prunes. It was a total piece of crap staffed by an incompetent team managed by idiotic foremen and commissioned by an organization in shambles (Russia).
A sane person would not believe a single word that comes out of the mouthpiece of that insane bunch. Even former Greenpeace co-founders have gotten sick of Greenpeace's anti-corporate anti-capitalist propaganda that has to do with the environment vaguely at best.
Accidents are high profile, because they hardly ever occur, and because "nuclear" is a stigmatized buzzword that everybody - subconsciously or otherwise - relates to weapons of mass destruction.
Even worse, if the thieves manage to damage your credit, that is exceptionally hard to repair and will stay with you for at least seven years.
Identity theft does not stay on your credit report. If you follow the proper legal channels to ensure that the credit falsely in your name is removed from your name, a quick email to the credit bureaus will have your report fixed up in a jiffy.
Smart metering should reduce power costs and consumption, not increase it. With the current system, most of the electricity we produce is simply wasted. If the public utility has more information about usage patterns, it should be able to conserve more energy.
That's not true. The utilities know how much power is being used at any given time based on the draw from their sources. Electricity is traded on an open market. In California, that market is managed by the California Independent System Operator. Electricity is being bought and sold in real-time so the utilities can get the lowest price and the sources can get the highest. Prices change literally every millisecond and as more demand is placed on a given source, the price of power from that source goes up, triggering power to be bought from a lower-priced source. That source knows who and where is buying how much power from them and they balance their generation capacity to match it. It's a very efficient system.
On an anecdotal note, my father is a superintendent for the electrical contractor that just finished building the new California ISO headquarters. That place is huge, secure, has massive datacenters and control rooms, and has power and telecom redundancy like you wouldn't believe. It's really neat.
Guess why - they're being charged $4 or more per transaction
No they're not. They're probably being charged something along the lines of $0.30 + 3% of the transaction amount. So for a $10 lunch that would be more along the lines of $0.60. Still a pretty large chunk of change but it's nowhere near several dollars for a transaction that small.
According to this survey, 42% of Groupon SMBs would not repeat. That's quite a lot, and it's from this and cases like this story that I suspect that the Groupon-like business model will not last too long, once the fad has died.
I'd give you mod points if I had any. The article mentions one of the benefits is "getting good exposure". But it works both ways. If you have to rush to get all 300 done and do a bad job, you've just delivered a product for a lower profit margin and provided yourself with bad publicity - worst of all worlds.
I don't understand why anybody would offer such a labor-intensive service via Groupon. Groupon is great for coupons at restaurants and stores and getting exposure for your little hole-in-the-wall store that has cool things but nobody seems to have heard of. It also seems to be great for dentists given the number of ads I get by email every week for dental services. But photography? First of all, that's not really something that's usually based upon a set price. That's something that should be a negotiated price on a per-contract basis. A Groupon would be just fine for, say, $25 for $100 Off Services From Hasselhoff Photography, but $29 for a $200-value remote photoshoot in the location of your choice? That's just ridiculous.
He made a really stupid decision and now he has to eat it. That's all part of running a business. It's not Groupon's fault. But I also don't see anywhere that the photographer himself is complaining... The article doesn't mention any statement by the photographer or have any links to his website. This just seems to be some retarded commentary from the sidelines by somebody who thinks he knows what he's talking about when he says "look what happened to this guy because of Groupon omfg". This whole thing is leaking stupid out of every pore.
I suggest you try that with a phone that was purchased for Sprint (GSM) and move to Verizon (CDMA).
Sprint and Verizon are both CDMA and phones from either network work on both. I see the point you're trying to make, but try being a little more informed if you're going to be snarky.
Simply don't pay it. If they charge your credit card, report the charge as fraudulent. If they send you to collections, tell them to stuff it and file petitions with the credit reporting agencies to keep them off your records. If they sue you for it, sue them right back.
Your right, except that according to the terms you listed you don't owe the ETF if Verizon terminates the agreement either "with good cause" or otherwise.
"If you cancel a line of Service, or if we cancel it for good cause, during its contract term, you'll have to pay an early termination fee."
Or perhaps the problem will be better solved by giving them easier access to credit
What are you proposing? Loans from the government?
- from reputable sources such as banks that don't charge ursurous amounts of interest
Banks don't charge ursurous (whatever that means) amounts of interest if you have good credit. High interest rates are there to offset high risk.
coupled with sound financial advice designed to prevent them getting into a debt spiral as a result of trying to give their children a chance to get out of the poverty trap.
"They WILL eat the device charges. They have to. Declining a change in your contract and causing Verizon to cancel it is NOT "good cause" to charge an ETF."
Whether the pitcher strikes the stone, or the stone the pitcher, it is bad for the pitcher. What are you going to do with a Verizon phone and no carrier to put it on?
I don't know. But given these options--Be stuck in a contract that has changed without being invalidated; Pay an ETF to get out of the contract; or Have a useless phone in your hand--which one would you choose? I'm pretty sure you're able to put Verizon phones on Sprint, by the way. It's not as easy as GSM where you can just move the SIM card over, but it's possible.
They have your credit card and a contract that says you promised to pay, and the credit card company will simply pay it and bill you. You won't have a leg to stand on when you complain.
If you are a lawyer you would know that the agreed to right to modify, signed in advance, is enforceable the vast majority of the time. Only rarely do you find a judge who with tell them they can't do it. If they were getting bitch slapped by judges as often as you seem to think, they would stop putting that in their contracts in the first place. But its still in there. Know why? Cuz it works.
I promised to pay $199.99 plus tax for my Droid X, to extend my contract for 2 years, and to be subject to an early termination fee of $350 should I cancel my service before the contract time is up. That's what I promised to pay. They didn't loan me the extra $400 of MSRP and tell me that it will be paid off over time automatically as I continue my service. I paid $199.99, and that's it.
If you cancel a line of Service, or if we cancel it for good cause, during its contract term, you'll have to pay an early termination fee. If your contract term results from your purchase of an Advanced Device after November 14, 2009, your early termination fee will be $350 minus $10 for each full month of your contract term that you complete. (For a complete list of Advanced Devices, check verizonwireless.com/advanceddevices.) Otherwise, your early termination fee will be $175 minus $5 for each full month of your contract term that you complete.
Can Verizon Wireless Change This Agreement or My Service? We may change prices or any other term of your Service or this agreement at any time,but we'll provide notice first, including written notice if you have Postpay Service. If you use your Service after the change takes effect, that means you're accepting the change. If you're a Postpay customer and a change to your Plan or this agreement has a material adverse effect on you, you can cancel the line of Service that has been affected within 60 days of receiving the notice with no early termination fee.
What Are Verizon Wireless' Rights to Limit or End Service or End this Agreement?We can, without notice, limit, suspend or end your Service or any agreement with you for any good cause, including, but not limited to: (1) if you: (a) breach this agreement; (b) resell your Service; (c) use your Service for any illegal purpose, including use that violates trade and economic sanctions and prohibitions promulgated by any U.S. governmental agency; (d) install, deploy or use any regeneration equipment or similar mechanism (for example, a repeater) to originate, amplify, enhance, retransmit or regenerate an RF signal without our permission; (e) steal from or lie to us; or, if you're a Postpay customer, (f) pay late more than once in any 12 months; (g) incur charges larger than a required deposit or billing limit, or materially in excess of your monthly access charges (even if we haven't yet billed the charges); (h) provide credit information we can't verify; or (i) are unable to pay us or go bankrupt; or (2) if you, any user of your device or any account manager on your account: (a) threaten, harass, or use vulgar and/or inappropriate language toward our representatives; (b) interfere with our operations; (c) "spam," or engage in other abusive messaging or calling; (d) modify your device from its manufacturer's specifications; or (e) use your Service in a way that negatively affects our network or other customers. We can also temporarily limit your Service for any operational or governmental reason.
They WILL eat the device charges. They have to. Declining a change in your contract and causing Verizon to cancel it is NOT "good cause" to charge an ETF.
If YOU are a lawyer you would know that there's a reason Verizon's customer agreement goe
Hmm, I would guess there would need to be at least some spot-checks that the transcription is working properly.
The only time somebody at Google listens (well, is allowed to listen) to your voicemail or recordings is when you click the red X and consent to their review.
Indeed, it would be better to live in perpetual ignorance. We can trust the Government and Corporations to rule us fairly.
If Wikileaks et al would do things the right fucking way rather than rushing things so they can be in the headlines tomorrow then it wouldn't be such a problem. Maybe we already knew where Osama was. Maybe we have known for years and have been allowing him to live without knowing we know where he lives so that he can continue to have power over his crippled and generally-useless organization. Now we were forced to kill him due to these recklessly-released documents and so his organization is leaderless. A radical organization like Al Qaeda doesn't remain leaderless for long, and now we don't know who it is or where they are, and that's a Bad Thing(TM).
and any time you challenge it, they simply terminate the contract and send you packing.
Because saying you automatically agree to any changes is illegal and they can't hold you to it. Anybody can put ANYTHING in a contract, but that doesn't mean they can enforce it. All they can do is terminate the contract, which is exactly what's being discussed here. Wireless companies cannot charge you an ETF when you decline a change to your contract. The contracts state "We (The Company) may terminate the Contract at any time for any reason" and any change to the contract that is met with your declination will cause the company to enact that clause and send you packing. Of course, they would have to eat the cost of the device as well, but that's what they'll do if the new contract terms are so important.
I would like more elaboration on what "touched the keyboard" means. It has more than one dictionary meaning, and it's very vague in this context.
Like, did they touch it and press a key?
Did they touch it for an extended period, typing "killall cloud"?
Was it an accidental touch, or was the person an idiot who's not supposed to touch important things?
The keyboard they touched wasn't a keyboard in the conventional sense. It was a small 3"x3" yellow/black striped board with one large circular red key on it. Somebody touched that key even though the sign said "DON'T PUSH THIS." A harmless prank.
Not a damned one of them can remain stable and online for more than an hour, except when configured as a simple wireless bridge device.
Just install network traffic loggers on each machine. Do some simple math at the end of the month.
Try a WRT160N. Make sure you get a v3 (any new one should be a v3, but make sure) and follow the instructions here: WRT160Nv3 Instructions - DD-WRT Wiki and get the latest version from here: ftp://dd-wrt.com/others/eko/V24-K26/. My router's uptime is 73 days, and the last downtime was due to a power outage.
If you don't want to get a new router, do some searching on the forums. The "official" database of "official" firmware versions that you find on the front page isn't very comprehensive and isn't well-maintained. They also absolutely refuse to put up experimental, but perfectly stable, builds on it. It took me a while to find Eko's NEWD-2 builds, but I was very happy once I did. I used to have a WRT54G with DD-WRT and it crashed almost daily due to lack of memory.
...do you really think the TSA's antics have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks? Other than using the attacks as an excuse.
... are you saying they're groping everybody simply for the sake of groping everybody? It has everything to do with the 9/11 attacks, and these policies are implemented by overreaction and an attempt to garner a false sense of security by cupping everybody's balls in a physical sense before they get on an airplane. Well guess what, there's more to my body than just my balls and the terrorists want to kill the whole thing.
If you wanted a SQL server or mail server on that Windows XP, Microsoft would probably want to to upgrade to Windows 2003 and buy Exchange & MSSQL server licenses that would cost you a lot more than 275GBP.
Why would you use Exchange and MSSQL? You can get free open source mail and SQL servers for Windows. If you wanted to use Exchange and MSSQL ANYWAY, then your point is moot because that's what you would have to do ANYWAY.
And why would you use a unsupported open source SQL and mail server if the goal was to have a platform that was supported for 10+ years?
Who said anything about unsupported? MySQL is available for Windows and I'm sure there are several actively-developed open source mail servers.
Err, how do you accidentally collect WiFi packets on platform whose ostensible purpose is to take photographs, and transmit them back via some other means (3g most likely) entirely?
They were mapping out WiFi network locations to assist with location services. A terrestrial GPS-like system, if you will. The Street View team basically included an old experimental bit of code in their WiFi system which, unbeknownst to them, actually recorded from all categories of publicly-broadcast WiFi data. They only intended to record SSIDs and MAC addresses of access points. They had no payload data from encrypted WiFi networks (if you have a password on your network, it is encrypted) and they had absolutely no data at all from encrypted networks not broadcasting an SSID. They wanted to delete the data they recorded as soon as it was discovered, but that data was at that point recognized as evidence so deleting it would be very illegal. They were basically forced to hold onto it until authorization from authorities allowed them to rid themselves of it.
So now you understand the purpose of what they were doing and that they had made a mistake. Do you not agree that Mistake != Malice?
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some just want a solid cable that will last for 20 years and will not break during normal use.
Wow, you described some of my Radio Shack cables perfectly (actually, I think they've made it over 20 years)
Yeah those ones that were made 20 years ago are still around, but the Radio Shack cables I bought 5 years ago were thrown in the garbage 4 and a half years ago. RIP Radio Shack.
I further give you the point that I might be biased - I come from a place that was a fallout hotspot after Chernobyl.
Well there you go. I'm very sorry for what happened. The fact of the matter is that we can't base political decisions upon emotion. We have to look at facts.
There have only been a small handful of deadly nuclear accidents in the world. All of them took place outside the United States. Two of them (Chernobyl and Mayak) were due to sheer incompetence and were completely avoidable. One of them was due to a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the tsunami that followed, and subsequent massive aftershocks that continue to this day . In all the years of nuclear energy production, there have been several thousand deaths. It's unfortunate for those people, but a pretty damned good safety record in the grand scope of things.
Not a single death to the public in the United States. Three Mile Island is the one incident that a lot of anti-nuclearites like to cite, but it wasn't a disaster by any means. Nothing really happened. A core meltdown occurred, but so what? People like to talk about the word meltdown like it's some evil thing that will destroy the world, but it's just what happens when a cooling system fails. The walls of the facility were built so that radioactive material wouldn't escape (and it didn't), and the staff were competent enough to stop the meltdown (and they did). There have been no deaths and the cancer rate in the area directly surrounding the plant has not changed as a result of the incident.
So yes, nuclear power has an incredible safety record. The Chernobyl disaster was extremely unfortunate, but it would not have happened if controlled by the United States. Mayak was extremely unfortunate, but it would not have happened if controlled by the United States. Fukushima was extremely unfortunate, but look at what the fuck kind of stress that place is under. It was built thirty years ago to withstand an 8.0 earthquake. It mostly contained the damage after a 9.0 earthquake but then the emergency generators were flooded by the tsunami. That is a result of poor design, and so the disaster could theoretically have been avoided. New reactors will not be designed as such because we saw what happened. We will learn from that mistake, and nuclear power will only continue to become safer.
Here you go.
That wasn't related to nuclear power, as the plant's purpose was - at the time - to "make, refine, and machine plutonium for use in nuclear weapons". Other notable excerpts from that Wikipedia article include "Working conditions at Mayak resulted in severe health hazards and many accidents," "The Mayak plant was built in 1945–48, in a great hurry and in total secrecy, as part of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapon program," and "Two operators were using an "unfavorable geometry vessel in an improvised and unapproved operation as a temporary vessel for storing plutonium organic solution."[8] In other words, the operators were decanting plutonium solutions into the wrong type of vessel."
Sounds like Mayak was run with even less care and even more blatant stupidity than Chernobyl, and it was commissioned by the same organization in shambles that I mentioned above (Russia).
Accidents like Chernobyl and Mayak are the direct result of outright stupidity and lack of any sense. Nuclear operations in the United States aren't even comparable to what went on in Russia and Ukraine that caused those completely avoidable incidents.
Nuclear can be safe, but never will be.
Indeed. In theory, nuclear power can be safe in practice. In practice, it never will be. Not as long as fallible humans are in charge of building and running the plants, at least.
Name one major accident related to nuclear power that resulted in death to those outside the operations of the plant and was not Chernobyl.
I deny mention of Chernobyl because that reactor was less robust than what comes out of my dog's anus after he eats a bowl of prunes. It was a total piece of crap staffed by an incompetent team managed by idiotic foremen and commissioned by an organization in shambles (Russia).
So go ahead, name one. I dare you.
Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people.
Some might disagree
A sane person would not believe a single word that comes out of the mouthpiece of that insane bunch. Even former Greenpeace co-founders have gotten sick of Greenpeace's anti-corporate anti-capitalist propaganda that has to do with the environment vaguely at best.
Accidents are high profile, because they hardly ever occur, and because "nuclear" is a stigmatized buzzword that everybody - subconsciously or otherwise - relates to weapons of mass destruction.
I think this might be closer to the truth.
I think this might be even closer.
Even worse, if the thieves manage to damage your credit, that is exceptionally hard to repair and will stay with you for at least seven years.
Identity theft does not stay on your credit report. If you follow the proper legal channels to ensure that the credit falsely in your name is removed from your name, a quick email to the credit bureaus will have your report fixed up in a jiffy.
Smart metering should reduce power costs and consumption, not increase it. With the current system, most of the electricity we produce is simply wasted. If the public utility has more information about usage patterns, it should be able to conserve more energy.
That's not true. The utilities know how much power is being used at any given time based on the draw from their sources. Electricity is traded on an open market. In California, that market is managed by the California Independent System Operator. Electricity is being bought and sold in real-time so the utilities can get the lowest price and the sources can get the highest. Prices change literally every millisecond and as more demand is placed on a given source, the price of power from that source goes up, triggering power to be bought from a lower-priced source. That source knows who and where is buying how much power from them and they balance their generation capacity to match it. It's a very efficient system.
On an anecdotal note, my father is a superintendent for the electrical contractor that just finished building the new California ISO headquarters. That place is huge, secure, has massive datacenters and control rooms, and has power and telecom redundancy like you wouldn't believe. It's really neat.
Guess why - they're being charged $4 or more per transaction
No they're not. They're probably being charged something along the lines of $0.30 + 3% of the transaction amount. So for a $10 lunch that would be more along the lines of $0.60. Still a pretty large chunk of change but it's nowhere near several dollars for a transaction that small.
According to this survey, 42% of Groupon SMBs would not repeat. That's quite a lot, and it's from this and cases like this story that I suspect that the Groupon-like business model will not last too long, once the fad has died.
I'd give you mod points if I had any. The article mentions one of the benefits is "getting good exposure". But it works both ways. If you have to rush to get all 300 done and do a bad job, you've just delivered a product for a lower profit margin and provided yourself with bad publicity - worst of all worlds.
I don't understand why anybody would offer such a labor-intensive service via Groupon. Groupon is great for coupons at restaurants and stores and getting exposure for your little hole-in-the-wall store that has cool things but nobody seems to have heard of. It also seems to be great for dentists given the number of ads I get by email every week for dental services. But photography? First of all, that's not really something that's usually based upon a set price. That's something that should be a negotiated price on a per-contract basis. A Groupon would be just fine for, say, $25 for $100 Off Services From Hasselhoff Photography, but $29 for a $200-value remote photoshoot in the location of your choice? That's just ridiculous.
He made a really stupid decision and now he has to eat it. That's all part of running a business. It's not Groupon's fault. But I also don't see anywhere that the photographer himself is complaining... The article doesn't mention any statement by the photographer or have any links to his website. This just seems to be some retarded commentary from the sidelines by somebody who thinks he knows what he's talking about when he says "look what happened to this guy because of Groupon omfg". This whole thing is leaking stupid out of every pore.
I think that's why they're charging people 30 bucks to manage their farm for them. Now they're making profit on the crops and public stupidity.
I suggest you try that with a phone that was purchased for Sprint (GSM) and move to Verizon (CDMA).
Sprint and Verizon are both CDMA and phones from either network work on both. I see the point you're trying to make, but try being a little more informed if you're going to be snarky.
Simply don't pay it. If they charge your credit card, report the charge as fraudulent. If they send you to collections, tell them to stuff it and file petitions with the credit reporting agencies to keep them off your records. If they sue you for it, sue them right back.
Your right, except that according to the terms you listed you don't owe the ETF if Verizon terminates the agreement either "with good cause" or otherwise.
"If you cancel a line of Service, or if we cancel it for good cause, during its contract term, you'll have to pay an early termination fee."
Huh?
Or perhaps the problem will be better solved by giving them easier access to credit
What are you proposing? Loans from the government?
- from reputable sources such as banks that don't charge ursurous amounts of interest
Banks don't charge ursurous (whatever that means) amounts of interest if you have good credit. High interest rates are there to offset high risk.
coupled with sound financial advice designed to prevent them getting into a debt spiral as a result of trying to give their children a chance to get out of the poverty trap.
You can click on this at your local library if you can't afford internet because of your debt spiral.
"They WILL eat the device charges. They have to. Declining a change in your contract and causing Verizon to cancel it is NOT "good cause" to charge an ETF." Whether the pitcher strikes the stone, or the stone the pitcher, it is bad for the pitcher. What are you going to do with a Verizon phone and no carrier to put it on?
I don't know. But given these options--Be stuck in a contract that has changed without being invalidated; Pay an ETF to get out of the contract; or Have a useless phone in your hand--which one would you choose? I'm pretty sure you're able to put Verizon phones on Sprint, by the way. It's not as easy as GSM where you can just move the SIM card over, but it's possible.
They have your credit card and a contract that says you promised to pay, and the credit card company will simply pay it and bill you. You won't have a leg to stand on when you complain.
If you are a lawyer you would know that the agreed to right to modify, signed in advance, is enforceable the vast majority of the time. Only rarely do you find a judge who with tell them they can't do it. If they were getting bitch slapped by judges as often as you seem to think, they would stop putting that in their contracts in the first place. But its still in there. Know why? Cuz it works.
I promised to pay $199.99 plus tax for my Droid X, to extend my contract for 2 years, and to be subject to an early termination fee of $350 should I cancel my service before the contract time is up. That's what I promised to pay. They didn't loan me the extra $400 of MSRP and tell me that it will be paid off over time automatically as I continue my service. I paid $199.99, and that's it.
From Customer Agreement | Verizon Wireless:
If you cancel a line of Service, or if we cancel it for good cause, during its contract term, you'll have to pay an early termination fee. If your contract term results from your purchase of an Advanced Device after November 14, 2009, your early termination fee will be $350 minus $10 for each full month of your contract term that you complete. (For a complete list of Advanced Devices, check verizonwireless.com/advanceddevices.) Otherwise, your early termination fee will be $175 minus $5 for each full month of your contract term that you complete.
Can Verizon Wireless Change This Agreement or My Service?
We may change prices or any other term of your Service or this agreement at any time,but we'll provide notice first, including written notice if you have Postpay Service. If you use your Service after the change takes effect, that means you're accepting the change. If you're a Postpay customer and a change to your Plan or this agreement has a material adverse effect on you, you can cancel the line of Service that has been affected within 60 days of receiving the notice with no early termination fee.
What Are Verizon Wireless' Rights to Limit or End Service or End this Agreement?We can, without notice, limit, suspend or end your Service or any agreement with you for any good cause, including, but not limited to: (1) if you: (a) breach this agreement; (b) resell your Service; (c) use your Service for any illegal purpose, including use that violates trade and economic sanctions and prohibitions promulgated by any U.S. governmental agency; (d) install, deploy or use any regeneration equipment or similar mechanism (for example, a repeater) to originate, amplify, enhance, retransmit or regenerate an RF signal without our permission; (e) steal from or lie to us; or, if you're a Postpay customer, (f) pay late more than once in any 12 months; (g) incur charges larger than a required deposit or billing limit, or materially in excess of your monthly access charges (even if we haven't yet billed the charges); (h) provide credit information we can't verify; or (i) are unable to pay us or go bankrupt; or (2) if you, any user of your device or any account manager on your account: (a) threaten, harass, or use vulgar and/or inappropriate language toward our representatives; (b) interfere with our operations; (c) "spam," or engage in other abusive messaging or calling; (d) modify your device from its manufacturer's specifications; or (e) use your Service in a way that negatively affects our network or other customers. We can also temporarily limit your Service for any operational or governmental reason.
They WILL eat the device charges. They have to. Declining a change in your contract and causing Verizon to cancel it is NOT "good cause" to charge an ETF.
If YOU are a lawyer you would know that there's a reason Verizon's customer agreement goe
Hmm, I would guess there would need to be at least some spot-checks that the transcription is working properly.
The only time somebody at Google listens (well, is allowed to listen) to your voicemail or recordings is when you click the red X and consent to their review.
Indeed, it would be better to live in perpetual ignorance. We can trust the Government and Corporations to rule us fairly.
If Wikileaks et al would do things the right fucking way rather than rushing things so they can be in the headlines tomorrow then it wouldn't be such a problem. Maybe we already knew where Osama was. Maybe we have known for years and have been allowing him to live without knowing we know where he lives so that he can continue to have power over his crippled and generally-useless organization. Now we were forced to kill him due to these recklessly-released documents and so his organization is leaderless. A radical organization like Al Qaeda doesn't remain leaderless for long, and now we don't know who it is or where they are, and that's a Bad Thing(TM).
and any time you challenge it, they simply terminate the contract and send you packing.
Because saying you automatically agree to any changes is illegal and they can't hold you to it. Anybody can put ANYTHING in a contract, but that doesn't mean they can enforce it. All they can do is terminate the contract, which is exactly what's being discussed here. Wireless companies cannot charge you an ETF when you decline a change to your contract. The contracts state "We (The Company) may terminate the Contract at any time for any reason" and any change to the contract that is met with your declination will cause the company to enact that clause and send you packing. Of course, they would have to eat the cost of the device as well, but that's what they'll do if the new contract terms are so important.
I would like more elaboration on what "touched the keyboard" means. It has more than one dictionary meaning, and it's very vague in this context. Like, did they touch it and press a key? Did they touch it for an extended period, typing "killall cloud"? Was it an accidental touch, or was the person an idiot who's not supposed to touch important things?
The keyboard they touched wasn't a keyboard in the conventional sense. It was a small 3"x3" yellow/black striped board with one large circular red key on it. Somebody touched that key even though the sign said "DON'T PUSH THIS." A harmless prank.
I have four WRT54GL routers running DD-wrt.
Not a damned one of them can remain stable and online for more than an hour, except when configured as a simple wireless bridge device.
Just install network traffic loggers on each machine. Do some simple math at the end of the month.
Try a WRT160N. Make sure you get a v3 (any new one should be a v3, but make sure) and follow the instructions here: WRT160Nv3 Instructions - DD-WRT Wiki and get the latest version from here: ftp://dd-wrt.com/others/eko/V24-K26/. My router's uptime is 73 days, and the last downtime was due to a power outage.
If you don't want to get a new router, do some searching on the forums. The "official" database of "official" firmware versions that you find on the front page isn't very comprehensive and isn't well-maintained. They also absolutely refuse to put up experimental, but perfectly stable, builds on it. It took me a while to find Eko's NEWD-2 builds, but I was very happy once I did. I used to have a WRT54G with DD-WRT and it crashed almost daily due to lack of memory.
...do you really think the TSA's antics have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks? Other than using the attacks as an excuse.
... are you saying they're groping everybody simply for the sake of groping everybody? It has everything to do with the 9/11 attacks, and these policies are implemented by overreaction and an attempt to garner a false sense of security by cupping everybody's balls in a physical sense before they get on an airplane. Well guess what, there's more to my body than just my balls and the terrorists want to kill the whole thing.
If you wanted a SQL server or mail server on that Windows XP, Microsoft would probably want to to upgrade to Windows 2003 and buy Exchange & MSSQL server licenses that would cost you a lot more than 275GBP.
Why would you use Exchange and MSSQL? You can get free open source mail and SQL servers for Windows. If you wanted to use Exchange and MSSQL ANYWAY, then your point is moot because that's what you would have to do ANYWAY.
And why would you use a unsupported open source SQL and mail server if the goal was to have a platform that was supported for 10+ years?
Who said anything about unsupported? MySQL is available for Windows and I'm sure there are several actively-developed open source mail servers.
Mistake != Malice.
Err, how do you accidentally collect WiFi packets on platform whose ostensible purpose is to take photographs, and transmit them back via some other means (3g most likely) entirely?
They were mapping out WiFi network locations to assist with location services. A terrestrial GPS-like system, if you will. The Street View team basically included an old experimental bit of code in their WiFi system which, unbeknownst to them, actually recorded from all categories of publicly-broadcast WiFi data. They only intended to record SSIDs and MAC addresses of access points. They had no payload data from encrypted WiFi networks (if you have a password on your network, it is encrypted) and they had absolutely no data at all from encrypted networks not broadcasting an SSID. They wanted to delete the data they recorded as soon as it was discovered, but that data was at that point recognized as evidence so deleting it would be very illegal. They were basically forced to hold onto it until authorization from authorities allowed them to rid themselves of it.
So now you understand the purpose of what they were doing and that they had made a mistake. Do you not agree that Mistake != Malice?