A loss leader's "buying contract" is 'come on in, buy me' with the company *hoping* you buy other stuff too. A locked cell phone is a company saying "guarantee us future business and we'll save you some cash right now." The former has no manditory conditions, the latter has you signing a contract where you promise something and the carrier promises something in return.
If you borrowed a lawnmower off a friend for $20, you're trading promises. Just because you later found a store renting them out at $10 doesn't allow you to change your promise with your friend (mind you, if you ASK them, they may be ok with less money).
Now if there were *no* unlocked phones on Earth, that's one thing. But several carriers sell unlocked phones. They cost more, you might not like the plan the carrier offers, but you have a choice. If phone A is locked and has a good plan but B is unlocked with a shitty plan, if you **hate** locked phones, then B is the moral option. Unlocking phone A without the carrier's permission is selfish, wrong, and is something you promised not to do to get the discounted price.
If people don't like locked phones, don't buy them. If you don't have this option, start talking with other people like you in your area and try your best to convince the carriers to change their minds. Get the right salesperson and you'll probably succeed.
I'm *not* saying people should go to jail for this, that this is an offense that should be severely punished. I'm just saying that screwing a faceless company because you don't like your options is "not good".
$3 may be expensive, but it'll cost thousands to refit your car or tens of thousands for a new car. Once you do that, you're only guaranteed a short-term gain as alternatives such as natural gas are also increasing in price.
I won't argue about giving up a landline, but realize that this was a choice. People who go wireless have chosen to go with wireless service - if they had a truly, deeply horrible experience with locked phones, they would choose another alternative. VOIP is another choice with lower rates and AFAIK no lock-in.
The fact that people are not fighting or complaining in a way that you have noticed is not an indication that the public is unharmed by this practice nor is it indication that it should be considered acceptable.
Again, I agree - the public is being "harmed". Most people even know it, just ask people their opinion of their cell service. Locked phones are part of that but not enough for people to stop using them or to seriously demand a change. Number portability was a big enough issue with customers to gain politcal support and in several countries is now possible. Locked phones simply isn't.
re: ownership rights
I think it's a little unfair to say that you can do what you want just because you own something, but I'm still working on this idea. If you have a choice in cell phones and companies, I think it's a little selfish to go with a Sprint phone because it's cheaper (read: subsidized) then lock it and take it elsewhere. Mind you, I've broken this rule in the past - the cheaper option has a powerful pull but I'm under no illusion now that what I did was "right."
If I borrow money from the bank to buy a house, generally I have to use it for this purpose - but I get flexible repayment options, a lower rate, etc. If I borrowed money from a friend to pay my tuition and they say it *must* be for school, I *should* get smacked upside the head if I go on a pub crawl with the cash. Just because a big, faceless corporation is involved doesn't mean it's suddenly ok to screw them over.
That being said, carriers haven't been as open with customers as they should be (IMHO). I hope they get slapped upside the head for some of the crap they pull. But I'm sticking by my opinion that carriers have the *right* to make a phone locked and the majority of customers aren't angry/harmed enough to look for unlocked phones.
I've heard the same sort of story mentioned about the Bell of yesteryear but the situation today is entirely different. Customers aren't buying service from a government-sanctioned monopoly - they have several choices of major carriers and many more minor carriers to choose from. With each carrier they have several choices of phones, contracts (or not), options, etc. Even reactivating 4 year old phones is possible - worst case scenario, you have to activate with the original carrier.
Customers have been choosing the cheapest option because of a lack of understanding in the contract they've signed, laziness, sales pressure, etc, etc. But it comes down to this: customers have chosen not to care about locked/unlocked phones. If it's locked, fine, in two years they buy a new phone and repeat the cycle.
Think of it this way: if the majority of people were outraged that their phone was locked, wouldn't they do something? Yell at customer service, complain to the dealer, look into other options, talk to other friends, etc? (note: I didn't say they'd do something effective, just something)
A minority (like myself) have explored options and changed how we buy phones. The majority aren't angry enough to do this. People have choice (few 'need' to buy a cell phone) and they've decided with their wallets that the current system is good enough.
Still, I'm glad there is a minority of people who are challenging the system. I think companies should have a much more active role in making sure customers fully understand their choices and the consequences. Right now, too many care about the commissions so they push their $0 phones with 3-year contracts.
While this is definitely true, if your best support is an editorial, I'm not going to take it too seriously. A good editorial is one that provokes outrage, generating letters and drawing readers in. Research on the other hand has resulted in countless advances. They aren't perfect but are far more reliable.
Ccase in point: A few years ago, another 'researcher' pulled off a scam, linking vaccines and autism (by falsifying data). It was the first real study I ever saw linking vaccines and autism - but no one could reproduce it and the author eventually recanted. He (and his team I think) are facing legal action.
I *still* hear parents (and potential ones) swear that vaccines hurt their children and they'll never do it. For the sake of everyone involved, please be more patient in your condemnation of vaccines - a lot of lies have been spread that make this discussion difficult to have already.
Quoting an OpEd (from a recognized paper) is a good start to a discussion but many people will take what they read too seriously. Try to be as unbiased as possible and provide people with a convincing case and cite more reliable sources.
If you only have one source and you are desperate to warn the world, please state something like "after hearing one group state ___, I'm going a little more cautious and read more" instead of "___ is bad. Here is proof."
Quick FYI: Crypto isn't useful for authenticity (I guess if your key correctly decrypts a message, you can assume the source is who you think it is). They're two different sets of problems.
For example, just because I get a launch code in a message that's encrypted, it doesn't guarantee the correct officer in the chain of command sent the message. MD5/SHA and Kerberos are good for authentication, DES/AES/RSA/Caesar cypher are examples of encryption methods.
It's also true that some businesses have employees that can go to the same warez site, download the same file, and save the company thousands. Even easier, and more common, is when a company follow their licence properly (i.e.: buy 1 copy, install on 20 computers).
The majority of the companies I've worked for and have done work for have illegal software installed. Sometimes it is intentional ("just for a while to try it out..") sometimes accidental.
But to say piracy doesn't mean any money is lost is narrow-minded and completely wrong. There are many more situations that neither of us have mentioned where sometimes piracy hurts, sometimes not.
The more interesting question would involve determining the causal evaluators (i.e.: your friend) versus entities benefiting from piracy (to a lesser extent also your friend, but I'm mostly talking about the business).
I've got two XP partitions - one I use daily, one is on another partition as a "clean" copy (updates, virus scanner, not much else). According to Explorer, the drive has 1.35 GB (1,455,919,486 bytes) worth of files but occupies 1.50GB total space. Just FYI.
An XP Pro install comes in at 1.5GB, including a swap file. Even if you add another 1GB for Office 2003 and.5GB for a hibernation file, you still have room to play with.
Either MS has the world's best pattern recognition software by far (facial recognition software requires a lot of cpu work and under ideal circumstances, only accurate slightly more than 50% of the time) or they'd have to have someone sit and go through every picture ever indexed, then press a "Put this site to #1" button.
With Google indexing 8 billion pages, even spending 1/100 of a second per page would make indexing a multiple-year task and pattern rec. should take longer than that. Things like "is_site_running_IIS()" can be done far, far, far faster.
Maybe I've been trolled. Oh well. Hope someone learned something.
Yeah - that whole AIDS thing has been a real waste of resources; why bother with non-cures?
I'd give Telstra a big round of applause for at least appearing to try other options before cutting customers off. A significant minority (maybe majority?) of the customers who get cut are going to be *very* uncomfortable when they get called by Telstra. Telling people that their rough driving finally caused their car to break down isn't easy. Many CSRs will be threatened this week.
I'm only been in AU for 2 months but from what I'm told, Telstra (until the past 7 years or so) has been a very benevolent monopoly. Being from Canada, most people at least disliked Bell and Rogers (our local telephone and cable monopolies, respectively). When Telstra's customer service tanked, opinion of the company apparently changed quickly. Or maybe was expressed more often, who knows.
Either way, Telstra seems to have done the right thing. Kudos to the manager who made this decision... it must not have been easy.
Unfortunately, computers can also solve the Travelling Salesman and brute-force most forms of encryption right now. The problem is that it's really, really hard.
English has hundreds of thousands of words but we only use several thousand commonly. Let's say 10,000 words - after all, you should be exercising your vocabulary in an essay.
You can take obvious shortcuts (if I want to start a sentence with a pronoun, I only have a few dozen words to choose from) but having an essentially randomly generated paper make sense will be rare.
Computers still don't have a *solid* implementation on how to parse the English language. Writing a program that understands it well enough to synthesize large amounts of difficult subject matter is a long way off.
I wonder if Data had trouble writing essays? His poems were... well, unique.
Probably a troll, but just in case anyone else was paying attention:
Australia seems to have weather very similar to North America, but better. I'm moving to Melbourne in a few days (holycrapholycrapholycrap) and according to the weather websites I read, their summers peak around 27C and winters drop to 7C. I doubt this takes humidity and windchill into effect.
Anyone is welcome to correct me on this, but please provide a link.
I'm going to rewrite the original message with my own bias. Same proverbial guy with the same insurance application.
I just lied on an application because it'll make my rates cheaper. I know this is wrong - lying is wrong, and I know if I do, I'll get lower rates. I've read through at least SOME of this document and in several places, have seen it say "do not lie - we are checking this information. (Maybe some, all, who knows)"
And then they had the audacity to charge me a rate based on my level of risk!
Buddy, I know you don't like it - I don't either - but treating everyone as "the same" means you are rewarding smokers and drunk drivers while penalizing people who put the time in to keep their bodies in shape and drive responsibly.
You are allowed to buy insurance but you AREN'T guaranteed the cheapest rate. This is *ok*. This is a *good* thing.
If you don't like their rate, go elsewhere. If EVERYONE charges more for you, you may be a risk - otherwise, Company B would start up specializing in your type of case, where there IS no real risk but lots of money.
There are lots of other options - save the money yourself (not much of an option), find a group plan that doesn't require as much sensitive info, buy a whole-life policy, etc. Start a company up that meets your needs - that's how the Co-operators started I believe.
Insurance companies aren't out to rip you off. If you've been convicted of drunk driving, while smoking, you need to pay up. "Stupid" things like eating habits, pre-existing medicial conditions, occupation, etc all DO significantly affect risk. Risk is strongly correlated with the cost of insurance, and therefore price.
(I realize this is different than having a "buying history" with alcohol and cigarette purchases. That discussion is too complicated to fit in these small margins)
I hope people listen to you but I imagine you're in for a world of hurt.
It definately helps to be more independent when you're a contractor, but not a guarantee of success OR failure.
If we give the guy the benefit of the doubt (he has at least superficially looked into retirement, healthcare costs, etc) we could assume he's asking for additional information. Any "independent" contractor that's stupid enough to think that he's done all the research and he can't be wrong deserves a smackdown.
Even if he is relying on slashdot to do ALL his work (unlikely), this is going to be an interesting discusson for the thousands of people who are reading this thread. Many people might be considering contract work semi-seriously and this thread will give them fantastic links (and horribly wrong information) to start with.
I agree, the grandparent post was poorly delivered (and reminded me of several arrogant high-school pricks who, like all humans, are occasionally right).
But the post doesn't further the discussion and is arguably wasting diskspace and bandwidth globally. Mind you, I'll give him points for being consise and minimizing the waste. (Too bad I couldn't minimize the waste generated by this post)
I'm not sure the last time you looked into what Palm is selling but I can't recognize the company from your description.
They have at *least* 8 active models right now, only *one* of which integrates a cell phone.
Their $149US model plays MP3s, Video, supports thousands of colours, uses SD cards of at least 256MB (I've read about people using 512MB and 1GB) with support for bluetooth and wifi ALSO with an SD card. The next model up gets you a 360x360 transflective screen, 65k colours and a built in VGA camera.
They have models from under $100 to over $500 and have been reviewed as very competitive. Palms used to use 25ish MHz chips and now range between 100-400MHz ARM chips.
Palm OS has gone through *massive* revisions and a rewrite over the past couple years. Moving from the Dragonball processor to ARMs and the XScale wasn't easy.
I haven't used a recent WinCE machine but the new Palms are *immensely* more responsive than even the somewhat M-series. Response time to starting most apps was pretty close to the time it takes for a keypress to register on my screen right now. I am exaggerating, but not by too much.
Palm's also have retractible screens (just one model), Graffiti 2 is now out, and still have decent battery life (The Zire 72 is apparently an exception). Full VGA support is expected in the next batch of new models.
There is a fair bit of critism about the T5 - I haven't read any of it, wasn't interested in going that high end - but it seems like you've wrote off the company based on your expectations of a single model.
I'm not really even a Palm fan - I've used one for a few years, very sparingly. You might want to back up a little and give yourself some distance, there are several excellent Palm models and PalmOne != T5.
In terms of energy and equipment required, the H2 + O => H2O (+ energy) step is relatively 'cheap' and is what these cars do now. (All the work is done for you and you just fill your H2 tank)
The H2O (+ energy) => H2 + O step requires extra equipment and a lot of extra energy.
Even if the process was perfectly efficient, chemistry still requires you have extra energy to do the 2nd reaction. If you had that extra energy lying around, you'd probably be better off using it to run your car - saves you the extra cost/complexity of the H2 and O seperating machinery.
Not exactly a products "industry" but the major example I've read about is during the sale of a business.
One particularly memorable example was the case of a small hair-dressing salon in a medium-sized city. The owner decided to put the business up for sale, and the buyer (wisely) decided to see a lawyer, who helped draft the sales contract.
The old owner almost signed the contract but apparently had a major issue with the "you will not open a similar business within x kilometers for y years" clause. She complained it was unfair and fought it but eventually decided not to sell. (at least to the original buyer)
Reason? The owner planned on taking her best clients and start a part-time salon at her home.
There's nothing wrong with that EXCEPT that the business was more valuable with its "long time" clients. They may not necessarily stay with the company but there is a fair chance.
I'm not sure about the legality, but on the scales of fairness, a medium-term non-compete with obvious competitors in identical departments is relatively fair compared to the "we own your ass" style NCs.
IMHO, Seagate appears to have a good argument for even a low-level employee. An upper-level one is privy to far more sensitive information - I'd hate to have to deal with that situation.
If I was WD, the legality of hiring a competitors upper brass would give me nightmares for months. Still may be worth it though.
I'm not a history buff but I can't recall anything I've read about ARPAnet being created with the intention of complete access to all connected machines.
I think the majority of people - geeks included, but not to the exclusion of everyone else - think the internet, on the whole, is performing fairly reasonably. Just like in reality, when you have a small group of people working together, issues of trust are much easier to deal with compared to working with hundreds of millions of people.
Blaming "commercial interests, shitty insecure OS,..." are symptoms of having a ton of people connected. Assuming the internet would be perfect if those bad people didn't exist, there'd be a new group people didn't like: spammers, NET SENDers, etc. Once they are gone, we'd be left with people that use software we don't like, or people from a country we don't like.
Soon enough, the Internet would be compartmentalized exactly the way you fear - into groups of like-minded people instead.
The Internet isn't supposed to be utopia. It was about making resources easier to access and it does that job amazingly well, given the imperfect people using it.
IANAL but copyright doesn't mean you have no right to use a work - you just have limits. For example, photocopying a page in a textbook is legal while photocopying the entire thing isn't.
There are larger issues once you start redistributing any work though.
I was going to comment on the fact that Canadian dollars isn't real money but it looks like it is USD - ouch. Still, I'm sure he's better off than he started.
The real kicker? On the news, he announced he's going to start a career developing pornography filtering software "to protect kids" using the Internet.
You know, I don't think slashdot will ever forgive this guy...
Slashdot Mirror
A loss leader's "buying contract" is 'come on in, buy me' with the company *hoping* you buy other stuff too. A locked cell phone is a company saying "guarantee us future business and we'll save you some cash right now." The former has no manditory conditions, the latter has you signing a contract where you promise something and the carrier promises something in return.
If you borrowed a lawnmower off a friend for $20, you're trading promises. Just because you later found a store renting them out at $10 doesn't allow you to change your promise with your friend (mind you, if you ASK them, they may be ok with less money).
Now if there were *no* unlocked phones on Earth, that's one thing. But several carriers sell unlocked phones. They cost more, you might not like the plan the carrier offers, but you have a choice. If phone A is locked and has a good plan but B is unlocked with a shitty plan, if you **hate** locked phones, then B is the moral option. Unlocking phone A without the carrier's permission is selfish, wrong, and is something you promised not to do to get the discounted price.
If people don't like locked phones, don't buy them. If you don't have this option, start talking with other people like you in your area and try your best to convince the carriers to change their minds. Get the right salesperson and you'll probably succeed.
I'm *not* saying people should go to jail for this, that this is an offense that should be severely punished. I'm just saying that screwing a faceless company because you don't like your options is "not good".
I've only seen part of one episode and I liked it. The writing, acting, etc was good and I think the movie can be enjoyed by anyone.
Re: Gas
$3 may be expensive, but it'll cost thousands to refit your car or tens of thousands for a new car. Once you do that, you're only guaranteed a short-term gain as alternatives such as natural gas are also increasing in price.
I won't argue about giving up a landline, but realize that this was a choice. People who go wireless have chosen to go with wireless service - if they had a truly, deeply horrible experience with locked phones, they would choose another alternative. VOIP is another choice with lower rates and AFAIK no lock-in.
The fact that people are not fighting or complaining in a way that you have noticed is not an indication that the public is unharmed by this practice nor is it indication that it should be considered acceptable.
Again, I agree - the public is being "harmed". Most people even know it, just ask people their opinion of their cell service. Locked phones are part of that but not enough for people to stop using them or to seriously demand a change. Number portability was a big enough issue with customers to gain politcal support and in several countries is now possible. Locked phones simply isn't.
re: ownership rights
I think it's a little unfair to say that you can do what you want just because you own something, but I'm still working on this idea. If you have a choice in cell phones and companies, I think it's a little selfish to go with a Sprint phone because it's cheaper (read: subsidized) then lock it and take it elsewhere. Mind you, I've broken this rule in the past - the cheaper option has a powerful pull but I'm under no illusion now that what I did was "right."
If I borrow money from the bank to buy a house, generally I have to use it for this purpose - but I get flexible repayment options, a lower rate, etc. If I borrowed money from a friend to pay my tuition and they say it *must* be for school, I *should* get smacked upside the head if I go on a pub crawl with the cash. Just because a big, faceless corporation is involved doesn't mean it's suddenly ok to screw them over.
That being said, carriers haven't been as open with customers as they should be (IMHO). I hope they get slapped upside the head for some of the crap they pull. But I'm sticking by my opinion that carriers have the *right* to make a phone locked and the majority of customers aren't angry/harmed enough to look for unlocked phones.
I'm glad you're not my lawyer.
I've heard the same sort of story mentioned about the Bell of yesteryear but the situation today is entirely different. Customers aren't buying service from a government-sanctioned monopoly - they have several choices of major carriers and many more minor carriers to choose from. With each carrier they have several choices of phones, contracts (or not), options, etc. Even reactivating 4 year old phones is possible - worst case scenario, you have to activate with the original carrier.
Customers have been choosing the cheapest option because of a lack of understanding in the contract they've signed, laziness, sales pressure, etc, etc. But it comes down to this: customers have chosen not to care about locked/unlocked phones. If it's locked, fine, in two years they buy a new phone and repeat the cycle.
Think of it this way: if the majority of people were outraged that their phone was locked, wouldn't they do something? Yell at customer service, complain to the dealer, look into other options, talk to other friends, etc? (note: I didn't say they'd do something effective, just something)
A minority (like myself) have explored options and changed how we buy phones. The majority aren't angry enough to do this. People have choice (few 'need' to buy a cell phone) and they've decided with their wallets that the current system is good enough.
Still, I'm glad there is a minority of people who are challenging the system. I think companies should have a much more active role in making sure customers fully understand their choices and the consequences. Right now, too many care about the commissions so they push their $0 phones with 3-year contracts.
n/t
While this is definitely true, if your best support is an editorial, I'm not going to take it too seriously. A good editorial is one that provokes outrage, generating letters and drawing readers in. Research on the other hand has resulted in countless advances. They aren't perfect but are far more reliable.
Ccase in point: A few years ago, another 'researcher' pulled off a scam, linking vaccines and autism (by falsifying data). It was the first real study I ever saw linking vaccines and autism - but no one could reproduce it and the author eventually recanted. He (and his team I think) are facing legal action.
I *still* hear parents (and potential ones) swear that vaccines hurt their children and they'll never do it. For the sake of everyone involved, please be more patient in your condemnation of vaccines - a lot of lies have been spread that make this discussion difficult to have already.
Quoting an OpEd (from a recognized paper) is a good start to a discussion but many people will take what they read too seriously. Try to be as unbiased as possible and provide people with a convincing case and cite more reliable sources.
If you only have one source and you are desperate to warn the world, please state something like "after hearing one group state ___, I'm going a little more cautious and read more" instead of "___ is bad. Here is proof."
That'll teach me to write anything at 4AM.
MD5/SHA is only good for verifying a message is authentic (unchanged from the original).
Quick FYI: Crypto isn't useful for authenticity (I guess if your key correctly decrypts a message, you can assume the source is who you think it is). They're two different sets of problems.
For example, just because I get a launch code in a message that's encrypted, it doesn't guarantee the correct officer in the chain of command sent the message. MD5/SHA and Kerberos are good for authentication, DES/AES/RSA/Caesar cypher are examples of encryption methods.
This is true.
It's also true that some businesses have employees that can go to the same warez site, download the same file, and save the company thousands. Even easier, and more common, is when a company follow their licence properly (i.e.: buy 1 copy, install on 20 computers).
The majority of the companies I've worked for and have done work for have illegal software installed. Sometimes it is intentional ("just for a while to try it out..") sometimes accidental.
But to say piracy doesn't mean any money is lost is narrow-minded and completely wrong. There are many more situations that neither of us have mentioned where sometimes piracy hurts, sometimes not.
The more interesting question would involve determining the causal evaluators (i.e.: your friend) versus entities benefiting from piracy (to a lesser extent also your friend, but I'm mostly talking about the business).
Yes.
I've got two XP partitions - one I use daily, one is on another partition as a "clean" copy (updates, virus scanner, not much else). According to Explorer, the drive has 1.35 GB (1,455,919,486 bytes) worth of files but occupies 1.50GB total space. Just FYI.
An XP Pro install comes in at 1.5GB, including a swap file. Even if you add another 1GB for Office 2003 and .5GB for a hibernation file, you still have room to play with.
Unlikely.
Either MS has the world's best pattern recognition software by far (facial recognition software requires a lot of cpu work and under ideal circumstances, only accurate slightly more than 50% of the time) or they'd have to have someone sit and go through every picture ever indexed, then press a "Put this site to #1" button.
With Google indexing 8 billion pages, even spending 1/100 of a second per page would make indexing a multiple-year task and pattern rec. should take longer than that. Things like "is_site_running_IIS()" can be done far, far, far faster.
Maybe I've been trolled. Oh well. Hope someone learned something.
Yeah - that whole AIDS thing has been a real waste of resources; why bother with non-cures?
I'd give Telstra a big round of applause for at least appearing to try other options before cutting customers off. A significant minority (maybe majority?) of the customers who get cut are going to be *very* uncomfortable when they get called by Telstra. Telling people that their rough driving finally caused their car to break down isn't easy. Many CSRs will be threatened this week.
I'm only been in AU for 2 months but from what I'm told, Telstra (until the past 7 years or so) has been a very benevolent monopoly. Being from Canada, most people at least disliked Bell and Rogers (our local telephone and cable monopolies, respectively). When Telstra's customer service tanked, opinion of the company apparently changed quickly. Or maybe was expressed more often, who knows.
Either way, Telstra seems to have done the right thing. Kudos to the manager who made this decision... it must not have been easy.
You're absolutely right.
Unfortunately, computers can also solve the Travelling Salesman and brute-force most forms of encryption right now. The problem is that it's really, really hard.
English has hundreds of thousands of words but we only use several thousand commonly. Let's say 10,000 words - after all, you should be exercising your vocabulary in an essay.
You can take obvious shortcuts (if I want to start a sentence with a pronoun, I only have a few dozen words to choose from) but having an essentially randomly generated paper make sense will be rare.
Computers still don't have a *solid* implementation on how to parse the English language. Writing a program that understands it well enough to synthesize large amounts of difficult subject matter is a long way off.
I wonder if Data had trouble writing essays? His poems were... well, unique.
Probably a troll, but just in case anyone else was paying attention:
Australia seems to have weather very similar to North America, but better. I'm moving to Melbourne in a few days (holycrapholycrapholycrap) and according to the weather websites I read, their summers peak around 27C and winters drop to 7C. I doubt this takes humidity and windchill into effect.
Anyone is welcome to correct me on this, but please provide a link.
Holy crap, where to begin.
I'm going to rewrite the original message with my own bias. Same proverbial guy with the same insurance application.
I just lied on an application because it'll make my rates cheaper. I know this is wrong - lying is wrong, and I know if I do, I'll get lower rates. I've read through at least SOME of this document and in several places, have seen it say "do not lie - we are checking this information. (Maybe some, all, who knows)"
And then they had the audacity to charge me a rate based on my level of risk!
Buddy, I know you don't like it - I don't either - but treating everyone as "the same" means you are rewarding smokers and drunk drivers while penalizing people who put the time in to keep their bodies in shape and drive responsibly.
You are allowed to buy insurance but you AREN'T guaranteed the cheapest rate. This is *ok*. This is a *good* thing.
If you don't like their rate, go elsewhere. If EVERYONE charges more for you, you may be a risk - otherwise, Company B would start up specializing in your type of case, where there IS no real risk but lots of money.
There are lots of other options - save the money yourself (not much of an option), find a group plan that doesn't require as much sensitive info, buy a whole-life policy, etc. Start a company up that meets your needs - that's how the Co-operators started I believe.
Insurance companies aren't out to rip you off. If you've been convicted of drunk driving, while smoking, you need to pay up. "Stupid" things like eating habits, pre-existing medicial conditions, occupation, etc all DO significantly affect risk. Risk is strongly correlated with the cost of insurance, and therefore price.
(I realize this is different than having a "buying history" with alcohol and cigarette purchases. That discussion is too complicated to fit in these small margins)
I hope people listen to you but I imagine you're in for a world of hurt.
It definately helps to be more independent when you're a contractor, but not a guarantee of success OR failure.
If we give the guy the benefit of the doubt (he has at least superficially looked into retirement, healthcare costs, etc) we could assume he's asking for additional information. Any "independent" contractor that's stupid enough to think that he's done all the research and he can't be wrong deserves a smackdown.
Even if he is relying on slashdot to do ALL his work (unlikely), this is going to be an interesting discusson for the thousands of people who are reading this thread. Many people might be considering contract work semi-seriously and this thread will give them fantastic links (and horribly wrong information) to start with.
I agree, the grandparent post was poorly delivered (and reminded me of several arrogant high-school pricks who, like all humans, are occasionally right).
But the post doesn't further the discussion and is arguably wasting diskspace and bandwidth globally. Mind you, I'll give him points for being consise and minimizing the waste. (Too bad I couldn't minimize the waste generated by this post)
I'm not sure the last time you looked into what Palm is selling but I can't recognize the company from your description.
They have at *least* 8 active models right now, only *one* of which integrates a cell phone.
Their $149US model plays MP3s, Video, supports thousands of colours, uses SD cards of at least 256MB (I've read about people using 512MB and 1GB) with support for bluetooth and wifi ALSO with an SD card. The next model up gets you a 360x360 transflective screen, 65k colours and a built in VGA camera.
They have models from under $100 to over $500 and have been reviewed as very competitive. Palms used to use 25ish MHz chips and now range between 100-400MHz ARM chips.
Palm OS has gone through *massive* revisions and a rewrite over the past couple years. Moving from the Dragonball processor to ARMs and the XScale wasn't easy.
I haven't used a recent WinCE machine but the new Palms are *immensely* more responsive than even the somewhat M-series. Response time to starting most apps was pretty close to the time it takes for a keypress to register on my screen right now. I am exaggerating, but not by too much.
Palm's also have retractible screens (just one model), Graffiti 2 is now out, and still have decent battery life (The Zire 72 is apparently an exception). Full VGA support is expected in the next batch of new models.
There is a fair bit of critism about the T5 - I haven't read any of it, wasn't interested in going that high end - but it seems like you've wrote off the company based on your expectations of a single model.
I'm not really even a Palm fan - I've used one for a few years, very sparingly. You might want to back up a little and give yourself some distance, there are several excellent Palm models and PalmOne != T5.
In terms of energy and equipment required, the H2 + O => H2O (+ energy) step is relatively 'cheap' and is what these cars do now. (All the work is done for you and you just fill your H2 tank)
The H2O (+ energy) => H2 + O step requires extra equipment and a lot of extra energy.
Even if the process was perfectly efficient, chemistry still requires you have extra energy to do the 2nd reaction. If you had that extra energy lying around, you'd probably be better off using it to run your car - saves you the extra cost/complexity of the H2 and O seperating machinery.
Just my two bits.
Not exactly a products "industry" but the major example I've read about is during the sale of a business.
One particularly memorable example was the case of a small hair-dressing salon in a medium-sized city. The owner decided to put the business up for sale, and the buyer (wisely) decided to see a lawyer, who helped draft the sales contract.
The old owner almost signed the contract but apparently had a major issue with the "you will not open a similar business within x kilometers for y years" clause. She complained it was unfair and fought it but eventually decided not to sell. (at least to the original buyer)
Reason? The owner planned on taking her best clients and start a part-time salon at her home.
There's nothing wrong with that EXCEPT that the business was more valuable with its "long time" clients. They may not necessarily stay with the company but there is a fair chance.
I'm not sure about the legality, but on the scales of fairness, a medium-term non-compete with obvious competitors in identical departments is relatively fair compared to the "we own your ass" style NCs.
IMHO, Seagate appears to have a good argument for even a low-level employee. An upper-level one is privy to far more sensitive information - I'd hate to have to deal with that situation.
If I was WD, the legality of hiring a competitors upper brass would give me nightmares for months. Still may be worth it though.
I'm not a history buff but I can't recall anything I've read about ARPAnet being created with the intention of complete access to all connected machines.
..." are symptoms of having a ton of people connected. Assuming the internet would be perfect if those bad people didn't exist, there'd be a new group people didn't like: spammers, NET SENDers, etc. Once they are gone, we'd be left with people that use software we don't like, or people from a country we don't like.
I think the majority of people - geeks included, but not to the exclusion of everyone else - think the internet, on the whole, is performing fairly reasonably. Just like in reality, when you have a small group of people working together, issues of trust are much easier to deal with compared to working with hundreds of millions of people.
Blaming "commercial interests, shitty insecure OS,
Soon enough, the Internet would be compartmentalized exactly the way you fear - into groups of like-minded people instead.
The Internet isn't supposed to be utopia. It was about making resources easier to access and it does that job amazingly well, given the imperfect people using it.
IANAL but copyright doesn't mean you have no right to use a work - you just have limits. For example, photocopying a page in a textbook is legal while photocopying the entire thing isn't.
There are larger issues once you start redistributing any work though.
... his parents must be proud.
I was going to comment on the fact that Canadian dollars isn't real money but it looks like it is USD - ouch. Still, I'm sure he's better off than he started.
The real kicker? On the news, he announced he's going to start a career developing pornography filtering software "to protect kids" using the Internet.
You know, I don't think slashdot will ever forgive this guy...
Given that we've got 250,000meg hard drives now, about 24 months.