when ordering a new land line, always reject the touch tone option they charge extra for. for a few weeks, only pulse dialing works. every now and then, dial using touch tones. usually, they start to work after a few weeks.
like mbourgon said, it costs the phone companies more to support pulse dialing over touch tone. they just want to see if you're dumb enough to pay for touch tone first.
sunfire is owned and designed by bob carver (famous for his previous company, carver electronics until he was forced out by his investors). so whatever was true of carver is true of sunfire. that is, lots of marketing hype and gimmicky products and product names (remember sonic holography and magnetic field amplifiers?). reasonably good mid-fi quality but probably not up to true high end standards. carver's marketing always seemed rather silly to me, kind of how psychics promote themselves.
IANAL either, but as i understand it, bankruptcy court allows a company, with the permission of the court, to set aside its obligations including debt and current contracts. part of the agreement for d&m to buy replay may have been to set aside certain replay contracts such as the lifetime activation or possibly supplier agreements.
oh, and by the way, while dennon and marantz gear is reasonably good, they are not the apex of high end audio, not by a long shot.
imagine how the complexion of the media industry would change if the computer companies started buying up the media giants.
it's a sure bet that if apple bought universal music, then microsoft would want their own media company, say, viacom or disney (microsoft has eight times the market value of disney and three times that of viacom). even aol/time warner is vulnerable as a takeover target.
if apple bought a major media company then, all or a sudden, consumer electronics companies would have to pay attention to apple. if microsoft owned a major studio then consumer electronics companies would have to include microsoft software in their gadgets. ostensibly, this is the reason why sony bought columbia years back, although sony is so balkanized, that they have never really taken advantage of their position. plus sony probably gives too much power and autonomy to the sony pictures studio executives anyway.
all it would take is for each media giant to enter into a cash squeeze like vivendi universal is in right now and the hardware and software companies could start buying them up, piece by piece. not that it would necessarily happen, but it's interesting to think about.
yeah, well, microsoft would like the suit to have been about how they treated their temps like employees in that the temps got the same perks (parties, swag, and shit) as the regular employees. but it was really about how the temps were doing the same work as regular employees without getting the same benefits.
remember, microsoft and other companies are supposed to be using temps on short term/temporary projects. when they use them in place of regular employees to do everyday functions then they are first taking responsibility for the everyday operation of a company from regular employees making their positions more uncertain, and then taking advantage of temporary employees by not compensating them properly for the work they are performing.
i can just see states, suffering from low tax receipts and having this mess handed to them adopting something like a "temporay unemployment tax" and hopefully sticking it to employers.
unemployment insurance is paid for by employers. they benefit from lower premiums when they don't lay off employees. if using temporary or contract employees is a way for them to avoid paying higher unemployment insurace taxes, then it would make sense for states to try to plug the loophole.
the problem with forbes' flat tax, the problem that tipped everyone off that it was nothing more than a cynical attempt to tax the poor for the benefit of the rich, was that it would have specifically excluded investment income. so if you had a job and received a wage or salary, you paid tax on that income. but you paid nothing on income coming from dividends, interest, or capital gains.
the big gaping loophole would have had ceo's making all their money from stock grants and other clever ways of getting paid without handing over taxable cash. the wealthiest people earn all or almost all their income as investment income. the entire tax burden would have been supported by those with too little money to have investment income.
for what it's worth, this issue may not apply to the filtering devices in question simply because they don't work. they don't really help people break the law - despite their sellers' claims to the contrary. kind of like selling a rubber crowbar and claiming it can be used to break into a car when in reality it couldn't break through a sheet of tissue paper.
it may not be possible to bust the seller for promoting the illegal use of a product, but they can be busted for fraud for misrepresentation.
of course, what teevee execs may be most afraid of is teevee's inefficiency as an advertising medium. the article quoted an expert about how retention rates are low to begin with. if everyone who watched teevee switched to using tivos and never watched commercials again, and if advertisers don't see any effect in their sales, it may be a solid demonstration that teevee ads just aren't worth the money.
there are probably a couple of reasons why companies essentially turn over frequent flyer miles to the employees.
one is that they are hard to account for. frequent flyer miles would count as an asset. but they are also just scrip. how do you equate scrip with dollars? 20 miles to the dollar? 100? it's a non-cash, short term consumable asset. it's probably far easier just to ignore the whole mess.
then, there is the question on how to use the miles. exchange them for free tickets or use them for service upgrades? or buy non-airline goods and services. a lot of frequent flier programs let you accumulate miles without ever stepping on an airplane and use them to obtain goods and services other than plane tickets.
besides, most companies write up extended contracts with travel agencies to buy their airline tickets at a discount. if they start using frequent flier miles to buy tickets, it may interfere with their relationship with the travel agency.
finally, frequent flier miles have a lot of restrictions on them anyway. only certain flights and times are available and the tickets have to be requested well in advance.
"Well, yes actually. *If* they find a way to embed a secret digital code in each sheet of paper which the printer reads and authenticates before it well print."
this is actually possible. the bureau of engraving and printing does something like it with money (hold it up to the light to see the identification strip). it wouldn't take much to make a strip with a specific magnetic signature and a printer that could sense it. a printer manufacurer could easily set it up that a printer will print full resolution only when the manufacturer's paper is used.
"Hmm...but rich people tend to spend more, so they pay more tax. It's the exact same percentage of what they pay on goods/services if you're rich or poor. That's why tax theorists favor it, its FAIR. In your example, the rich person is more likely to buy a more expensive computer and pay more taxes, or buy more computers, and pay more taxes, or by a computer and a big screen TV, and pay more taxes, or buy more-expensive-crappier food and pay more taxes. As opposed to now, when the rich person just pays more income taxes (95% of the money raised from income taxes comes from people considered "rich") and gets no additional use for their money."
wealthy people would pay the same proportion of their income as taxes if they spend all their income on goods and services. sure, a wealthy person could by a more expensive computer or teevee or car. but there also are practical limits on how much a wealthy person can spend. exactly how many expensive computers or teevees can you buy and use at once?
compare one who earns $20,000 with one who earns $100,000. the lower income person spends 90% of his income on taxable goods and services. at 4% that comes to $720. the wealthy person has the same $18,000 basic living expense and maybe adds $20 or $30,000 in luxury goods. 4% of $48,000 comes to $1,920. overall tax rates compared to income are 3.6% for the low income person and 1.9% for the high income person. now how is that fair?
progressive income tax rates are increased on a marginal basis. the guy who makes $150,000 per year doesn't pay 30% of that. he pays 17% of the first $30,000 and 30% of the next $120,000.
the reason why progressive taxes are fair is because you only pay the higher tax rate on income after deductions, exemptions, credits, etc. and it makes sense that those who draw a greater benefit from society bear a greater responsibility toward it.
while i sympathize with local and state governments having trouble balancing their books, doing so through value added and use taxes are the worst way to go about it.
value added taxes are favored by (wealthy) tax theorists because they tax consumption and therefore cannot be avoided. however, they are highly subject to the condition of the economy. any economic slowdown and sales taxes drop along with consumer spending. also, they are popular with the wealthy because the tax is paid only when you spend money, and not on income.
which is their biggest problem. low income taxpayers are disproportionately taxed compared to wealthy. for someone making a hundred grand a year, the value added tax on a computer is nothing. but for someone making 20 grand a year or less, that tax becomes significant. because they are a tax on consumption, value added taxes are a direct drain on the economy - they slow down and reduce consumption and reduce the total number of transactions that can take place in an economy.
if states and local governments really have a problem with colecting value added taxes, then the true answer is to drop the value added taxes completely, rely on income and/or property taxes, and build up the infrastructure that will encourage internet and mail order businesses to set up shop in their own state.
i don't think making a recording is as cheap as a lot of readers here think. that cheap pc and cheap gear some talk about is fine, if you want to make a cheap shitty sounding recording.
a straight recording of a band in a studio can record an hour of music in a recording session or two for less than 5 grand. but most pop albums include lots of layering and pre- and post-processing. getting a top talented producer and engineer to accomplish this isn't cheap (hey, the producr's got to eat too). plus there are back up singers and musicians that have to be paid too. but it's still not nearly as expensive as the record companies say it is.
the couple hundred grand fronted to a band by the record company is supposed to be used to make the recording, and is about right for making a recording with decent production values (no comment about the quality of the music, but the sound should be decent). all the other expenses the record companies attrribute to promotion and distribution are clearly grossly inflated. for example, record contracts make provisions for 'breakage', a leftover from the days of 78 rpm records.
and the record companies have little or no incentive to keep costs down. vivendi universal owns a record company that spends money on promotion. vivendi universal also owns mtv. with the band paying the costs of promoting on mtv out of their royalties, and all the promotion money coming back to vivendi universal anyway, why should the comapny do anything to keep the promotional costs down? note that the record companies have no fiduciary responsibility to the bands they sign and carefully control how their books can be audited in the contracts they force upon the bands.
i'm sorry, but falcon's eye still doesn't look right. everyone knows that if they ever made a true 3d version of nethack is would have ascii text characters fully rendered in 3d. i'm still waiting for a 3d hethack where i'm a 3d ampersand running away from a fully rendered 'B'.
i'm sorry, i forgot to count the drink that uses all 16 ingrdients. that makes for 65,535 possible combinations. assuming that all ingredients are used in equal quantities, of course.
combine the bar monkey with one of those simon games, you know, the one with the four big light up buttons that flash in a specific order and you have to match the order or you lose. only in the drinking game, every time you match the order you have to take a drink.
or should it be anytime you miss the order you have to take a drink?
only 188 drinks? with 16 ingredients shouldn't there be a lot more potential combinations?
my boy's book of mathematics says that the number of permutations of distinguishable objects should be n!. but n! just gives the total number of permutations of 16 objects (abc is different from bac, which doesn't make sense when mixing drinks where order doesn't count) and doesn't take into account combinations of fewer than n objects.
combinations count the number of instances where order is not important.
C=n!/(n-r)!r! where r is the number of items in each combination. butn this still doesn't take into account that not all drinks use all 16 ingredients. so we need to sum up the combinations for the number of drink ingrdients r = 1 to 16.
this should come to a total of 65,534 possible drinks, including 16 that are not mixed at all.
the problem with the riaa's strategy against used cd shops is that the shops themselves don't carry pirated cds.
customer a sells a cd to the shop. shop marks up the cd 20 to 50%. then sells to customer b. customer b copies the cd at home (or several selected songs) and returns the cd. the result is that customer b gets his or her music for a couple of bucks all of which goes to the shop.
the problem for the riaa is that the shop never has an illegal cd, never has to copy them. and i sincerely doubt that used cd shops keep records of their customers. and even if they did, the riaa has no grounds to simply requisition customer lists and search their residences.
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it's good to know that all my favorite cartoon characters actually have heartbeats after all.
here's a tip i learned long ago.
when ordering a new land line, always reject the touch tone option they charge extra for. for a few weeks, only pulse dialing works. every now and then, dial using touch tones. usually, they start to work after a few weeks.
like mbourgon said, it costs the phone companies more to support pulse dialing over touch tone. they just want to see if you're dumb enough to pay for touch tone first.
right. the hot sheets have the best investigative reporters in the business.
sunfire is owned and designed by bob carver (famous for his previous company, carver electronics until he was forced out by his investors). so whatever was true of carver is true of sunfire. that is, lots of marketing hype and gimmicky products and product names (remember sonic holography and magnetic field amplifiers?). reasonably good mid-fi quality but probably not up to true high end standards. carver's marketing always seemed rather silly to me, kind of how psychics promote themselves.
IANAL either, but as i understand it, bankruptcy court allows a company, with the permission of the court, to set aside its obligations including debt and current contracts. part of the agreement for d&m to buy replay may have been to set aside certain replay contracts such as the lifetime activation or possibly supplier agreements.
oh, and by the way, while dennon and marantz gear is reasonably good, they are not the apex of high end audio, not by a long shot.
imagine how the complexion of the media industry would change if the computer companies started buying up the media giants.
it's a sure bet that if apple bought universal music, then microsoft would want their own media company, say, viacom or disney (microsoft has eight times the market value of disney and three times that of viacom). even aol/time warner is vulnerable as a takeover target.
if apple bought a major media company then, all or a sudden, consumer electronics companies would have to pay attention to apple. if microsoft owned a major studio then consumer electronics companies would have to include microsoft software in their gadgets. ostensibly, this is the reason why sony bought columbia years back, although sony is so balkanized, that they have never really taken advantage of their position. plus sony probably gives too much power and autonomy to the sony pictures studio executives anyway.
all it would take is for each media giant to enter into a cash squeeze like vivendi universal is in right now and the hardware and software companies could start buying them up, piece by piece. not that it would necessarily happen, but it's interesting to think about.
yeah, well, microsoft would like the suit to have been about how they treated their temps like employees in that the temps got the same perks (parties, swag, and shit) as the regular employees. but it was really about how the temps were doing the same work as regular employees without getting the same benefits.
remember, microsoft and other companies are supposed to be using temps on short term/temporary projects. when they use them in place of regular employees to do everyday functions then they are first taking responsibility for the everyday operation of a company from regular employees making their positions more uncertain, and then taking advantage of temporary employees by not compensating them properly for the work they are performing.
i can just see states, suffering from low tax receipts and having this mess handed to them adopting something like a "temporay unemployment tax" and hopefully sticking it to employers.
unemployment insurance is paid for by employers. they benefit from lower premiums when they don't lay off employees. if using temporary or contract employees is a way for them to avoid paying higher unemployment insurace taxes, then it would make sense for states to try to plug the loophole.
the problem with forbes' flat tax, the problem that tipped everyone off that it was nothing more than a cynical attempt to tax the poor for the benefit of the rich, was that it would have specifically excluded investment income. so if you had a job and received a wage or salary, you paid tax on that income. but you paid nothing on income coming from dividends, interest, or capital gains.
the big gaping loophole would have had ceo's making all their money from stock grants and other clever ways of getting paid without handing over taxable cash. the wealthiest people earn all or almost all their income as investment income. the entire tax burden would have been supported by those with too little money to have investment income.
anonymous loser (58627)said:
ahhh, but what does it lose in translation?
i'd like to see gigi edgley in star trek enterprise as a green oprion girl.
for what it's worth, this issue may not apply to the filtering devices in question simply because they don't work. they don't really help people break the law - despite their sellers' claims to the contrary. kind of like selling a rubber crowbar and claiming it can be used to break into a car when in reality it couldn't break through a sheet of tissue paper.
it may not be possible to bust the seller for promoting the illegal use of a product, but they can be busted for fraud for misrepresentation.
of course, what teevee execs may be most afraid of is teevee's inefficiency as an advertising medium. the article quoted an expert about how retention rates are low to begin with. if everyone who watched teevee switched to using tivos and never watched commercials again, and if advertisers don't see any effect in their sales, it may be a solid demonstration that teevee ads just aren't worth the money.
there are probably a couple of reasons why companies essentially turn over frequent flyer miles to the employees.
one is that they are hard to account for. frequent flyer miles would count as an asset. but they are also just scrip. how do you equate scrip with dollars? 20 miles to the dollar? 100? it's a non-cash, short term consumable asset. it's probably far easier just to ignore the whole mess.
then, there is the question on how to use the miles. exchange them for free tickets or use them for service upgrades? or buy non-airline goods and services. a lot of frequent flier programs let you accumulate miles without ever stepping on an airplane and use them to obtain goods and services other than plane tickets.
besides, most companies write up extended contracts with travel agencies to buy their airline tickets at a discount. if they start using frequent flier miles to buy tickets, it may interfere with their relationship with the travel agency.
finally, frequent flier miles have a lot of restrictions on them anyway. only certain flights and times are available and the tickets have to be requested well in advance.
"Well, yes actually. *If* they find a way to embed a secret digital code in each sheet of paper which the printer reads and authenticates before it well print."
this is actually possible. the bureau of engraving and printing does something like it with money (hold it up to the light to see the identification strip). it wouldn't take much to make a strip with a specific magnetic signature and a printer that could sense it. a printer manufacurer could easily set it up that a printer will print full resolution only when the manufacturer's paper is used.
you say:
"Hmm...but rich people tend to spend more, so they pay more tax. It's the exact same percentage of what they pay on goods/services if you're rich or poor. That's why tax theorists favor it, its FAIR. In your example, the rich person is more likely to buy a more expensive computer and pay more taxes, or buy more computers, and pay more taxes, or by a computer and a big screen TV, and pay more taxes, or buy more-expensive-crappier food and pay more taxes. As opposed to now, when the rich person just pays more income taxes (95% of the money raised from income taxes comes from people considered "rich") and gets no additional use for their money."
wealthy people would pay the same proportion of their income as taxes if they spend all their income on goods and services. sure, a wealthy person could by a more expensive computer or teevee or car. but there also are practical limits on how much a wealthy person can spend. exactly how many expensive computers or teevees can you buy and use at once?
compare one who earns $20,000 with one who earns $100,000. the lower income person spends 90% of his income on taxable goods and services. at 4% that comes to $720. the wealthy person has the same $18,000 basic living expense and maybe adds $20 or $30,000 in luxury goods. 4% of $48,000 comes to $1,920. overall tax rates compared to income are 3.6% for the low income person and 1.9% for the high income person. now how is that fair?
progressive income tax rates are increased on a marginal basis. the guy who makes $150,000 per year doesn't pay 30% of that. he pays 17% of the first $30,000 and 30% of the next $120,000.
the reason why progressive taxes are fair is because you only pay the higher tax rate on income after deductions, exemptions, credits, etc. and it makes sense that those who draw a greater benefit from society bear a greater responsibility toward it.
while i sympathize with local and state governments having trouble balancing their books, doing so through value added and use taxes are the worst way to go about it.
value added taxes are favored by (wealthy) tax theorists because they tax consumption and therefore cannot be avoided. however, they are highly subject to the condition of the economy. any economic slowdown and sales taxes drop along with consumer spending. also, they are popular with the wealthy because the tax is paid only when you spend money, and not on income.
which is their biggest problem. low income taxpayers are disproportionately taxed compared to wealthy. for someone making a hundred grand a year, the value added tax on a computer is nothing. but for someone making 20 grand a year or less, that tax becomes significant. because they are a tax on consumption, value added taxes are a direct drain on the economy - they slow down and reduce consumption and reduce the total number of transactions that can take place in an economy.
if states and local governments really have a problem with colecting value added taxes, then the true answer is to drop the value added taxes completely, rely on income and/or property taxes, and build up the infrastructure that will encourage internet and mail order businesses to set up shop in their own state.
i don't think making a recording is as cheap as a lot of readers here think. that cheap pc and cheap gear some talk about is fine, if you want to make a cheap shitty sounding recording.
a straight recording of a band in a studio can record an hour of music in a recording session or two for less than 5 grand. but most pop albums include lots of layering and pre- and post-processing. getting a top talented producer and engineer to accomplish this isn't cheap (hey, the producr's got to eat too). plus there are back up singers and musicians that have to be paid too. but it's still not nearly as expensive as the record companies say it is.
the couple hundred grand fronted to a band by the record company is supposed to be used to make the recording, and is about right for making a recording with decent production values (no comment about the quality of the music, but the sound should be decent). all the other expenses the record companies attrribute to promotion and distribution are clearly grossly inflated. for example, record contracts make provisions for 'breakage', a leftover from the days of 78 rpm records.
and the record companies have little or no incentive to keep costs down. vivendi universal owns a record company that spends money on promotion. vivendi universal also owns mtv. with the band paying the costs of promoting on mtv out of their royalties, and all the promotion money coming back to vivendi universal anyway, why should the comapny do anything to keep the promotional costs down? note that the record companies have no fiduciary responsibility to the bands they sign and carefully control how their books can be audited in the contracts they force upon the bands.
i'm sorry, but falcon's eye still doesn't look right. everyone knows that if they ever made a true 3d version of nethack is would have ascii text characters fully rendered in 3d. i'm still waiting for a 3d hethack where i'm a 3d ampersand running away from a fully rendered 'B'.
i'm sorry, i forgot to count the drink that uses all 16 ingrdients. that makes for 65,535 possible combinations. assuming that all ingredients are used in equal quantities, of course.
combine the bar monkey with one of those simon games, you know, the one with the four big light up buttons that flash in a specific order and you have to match the order or you lose. only in the drinking game, every time you match the order you have to take a drink.
or should it be anytime you miss the order you have to take a drink?
no, that was cyrano jones in "The Trouble With Tribbles."
only 188 drinks? with 16 ingredients shouldn't there be a lot more potential combinations?
my boy's book of mathematics says that the number of permutations of distinguishable objects should be n!. but n! just gives the total number of permutations of 16 objects (abc is different from bac, which doesn't make sense when mixing drinks where order doesn't count) and doesn't take into account combinations of fewer than n objects.
combinations count the number of instances where order is not important.
C=n!/(n-r)!r! where r is the number of items in each combination. butn this still doesn't take into account that not all drinks use all 16 ingredients. so we need to sum up the combinations for the number of drink ingrdients r = 1 to 16.
this should come to a total of 65,534 possible drinks, including 16 that are not mixed at all.
the problem with the riaa's strategy against used cd shops is that the shops themselves don't carry pirated cds.
customer a sells a cd to the shop. shop marks up the cd 20 to 50%. then sells to customer b. customer b copies the cd at home (or several selected songs) and returns the cd. the result is that customer b gets his or her music for a couple of bucks all of which goes to the shop.
the problem for the riaa is that the shop never has an illegal cd, never has to copy them. and i sincerely doubt that used cd shops keep records of their customers. and even if they did, the riaa has no grounds to simply requisition customer lists and search their residences.