>>>private companies forcing rape victims to give up their rights
Nice spin, but you blatantly skipped a crucial piece of information - The rape happened in Iraq, not here at home where US laws apply. No corporation could ever get away with raping a woman on US soil, and then force her to go to arbitration. The US and State Laws would apply.
.
>>>At least I live in the EU; I can only imagine what must be occurring in Latin America or indeed the US itself.
Yeah it's like the Wild West in the US. (rolls eyes) I'm all for hating on corporations, but that doesn't mean it's okay to Lie via omission, or twisting the facts, which is what you are doing. No wonder every time I speak to a European, my compass gradually tips from the "love" to the "anger" part of the scale. The ANTI-american Hatred directed towards us is really growing tiresome (dare I say? racist?).
There must be more to this story. Why would a company bill you $30 overage protection (180 minutes( and then not use it? Makes no sense, unless you're not sharing some crucial part of the story - like maybe the minutes didn't roll over month-to-month.
>>>currency is going to be distributed a lot more thinly..
I have no idea what you're talking about. You think people benefit because now they have to spend $500 to get a business suit instead of the $5 it cost in 1910? Or ~$200/week on food instead of the ~$2 it used to cost? If you do think that's beneficial, then you're no better than the corporations.
They are two sides of the same coin. Like addition and subtraction. Or multiplication and division. What you call "inflation" is CAUSED by devaluation of the fait currency, because the Central Bank increased they money supply by approximately 100 fold.
Put another way: If they had held the money supply constant, as they did in the 1800s, then a candybar would still cost just 1 penny. A man's business suit would still be just $5. And so on.
>>>"Credits, Adjustments, and Other Charges" section is not taxes.
Uh, yes, yes they are taxes (and all it took was a google search to find this shit):
- "The Federal Universal Service pays for four programs: Lifeline/Link-Up, High-Cost, Schools and Libraries, Rural Health Care (fcc.gov) - TX Franschise Tax Recovery is a tax (www.state.tx.us) - Texas Universal Service - ditto (www.state.tx.us) - "The Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge is a charge assessed by AT&T associated with payment of government imposed fees and to recover the costs of compliance with government imposed regulatory requirements." (att.com) It includes: Federal Regulatory Fee- annual fee imposed on AT&T by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) - AT&T is required to make into the Federal TRS fund. Enhanced 911 (E911) - surcharge inposed by certain states. And so on for about ten more government-imposed items.
Man up. You strike me as the kind of person who has victim mentality. You can only be a victim if you allow yourself to be one. I've had a lot of sellers on Ebay try to scam me, but I used existing laws to screw them up the ass. I've quit companies like Comcast because they sucked, and told Bell Telephone to go shove their "modem surcharge" up their ass.
If you keep bending over, of course the companies will take advantage of you. So stop bending over. Be a man, not a geek.
>>>Blocking local governments from building the infrastructure that the phone companies don't want to build anyway.
Proof please. .
>>>Sending out zillion dollar phone bills without ever even questioning the crazy amounts.
Computers don't question. And humans don't look at these bills. It's all handled automatically, so if you get one of them, all you need to do is point-out the error and it will be corrected. I've done this several times over the years, and it's really no big deal. .
>>>Ironclad contracts that say that the company can never be wrong, never be liable,
Nullified by State and US Consumer protection laws. Consumers cannot sign-away their rights. For example if a contract says, "The Company reserves the right to murder its customer," that is obviously NOT going to hold up in court. Neither is most of the rest of the contract if it is contrary to current law. .
>>>Customer service SUCKS.
This doesn't make a company "evil". Incompetent perhaps but not evil. And we've seen what happens to companies that have lousy service (Blockbuster, Circuit City, Wards): They go bankrupt and die.
>>>Subsidizing all those "smart phones" that are worth $500 to $800 (more?) by scamming the public into accepting expensive two year contracts.
I don't see anything wrong with that. All you need to do is multiply 24 months by the rate, to see how much you will be spending, and decide whether or not it's a good bargain. Like when Dish Network installed a dish in my neighbor's house for ~$32.50 over two years. If he had to buy the dish and hire his own installer, it would be much more expensive than that. I think most of these deals SAVE customers' money, and I like them.
If you disagree, well then just sign-on with one of those pay-as-you-go companies that sell the phone and service separately. .
>>>Charging crazy rates for text. Everything that I've read says that it costs the phone company almost NOTHING to send out those text messages.
Okay. (1) Get one of those unlimited text plans instead. Mine provides 1000 for only $15 or a mere penny per text. They also have unlimited for $20 which brings the cost even lower than a penny! Not a ripoff. (2) How much do you think a text actually costs a company? Do you have a hard number for its value? I have no clue. .
>>>Accepting government funds to build infrastructure that never gets built.
Proof please. And I don't mean somebody's blog. I mean actual evidence taken from US Law. Unlike some people I've read the actual 1996 Act, and it appropriates money for *analog-to-digital phone line upgrades* not fiber or wireless. If you can prove me wrong, please do so.:-)
>>>only a tiny percentage of the money in the economy is actual paper/coin currency.
Uh. Irrelevant to the point. The point is the money, whether paper or numbers in a computer, is easily devalued because it's fiat currency. If a candybar cost 1 penny in 1910, and now costs about a dollar for the Same candybar, it's obvious the money has been devalued to 1/100th its previous value.
Put another way, if my grandfather had owned $10,000 in 1910 he'd be rich (equivalent to being a millionaire). But over time they devalued that fiat currency to where it's only half a year's rent on an apartment. The Central Bank Monopoly has stolen citizens' wealth via devaluation .
Poor guy. Those of us with our $150 or $300 Commodores and Ataris ran the fractals in gorgeous 16 or 128 colors. Perfect example of how cheaper products can be better than those $100 PCs or $3000 Apples.
I got bored with fractals quickly. The odd shapes they generated were pretty, but I found the graphix demos generated by pirate groups to be far more interesting.
I'd happily give-up superpower status if it meant no longer having lawless corporations that can get-away with killing people, or stealing money, and no legal consequences (the executives take a golden parachute & never serve jail time). .
>>>what the heck would you replace corporations with?
Proprietorships..... same thing we had before the "incorporation license" was invented. Then the owner would be directly responsible w/o any way to escape punishment.
>>>Analog SD mpeg2 compressed. I wouldn't call it a DVD quality but to each his own.
What do you think DVD is? SD that is mpeg2 compressed according to NTSC-III standards.
And while DVD means "digital" a LOT of the source material originally came from analog. For example Star Trek and other movies exist on analog film, and Star Trek TNG & DS9 & Voyager are mastered on analog videotape (betacam) that is little better than S-VHS.
Anyway I like HD but not enough to pay an extra $10 a month to rent the DVR.
>>>>>>>>In this country, 0.79 fatalities per 100 million car passenger mile..... 2.2 fatalities per 100 million train passenger miles >>>>> >>>>>How dare you post FACTS? You troll.;-) >> >>Did you read my reply? That's 2.2 deaths per *train* 100-million-miles .
No actually you said "passenger miles" which is the standard unit for measuring effects per passenger. 0.79 deaths per passenger mile would be lower than 2.2 deaths per passenger mile. The car is safer according to that stat.
If an organism can't achieve at least 80 on an Adult IQ test, I don't consider it sentient, although it may have the potential to reach that point someday (after maturing and/or several million years evolution). And yes I know the test has flaws but there has to be a standard which separates Homo sapiens from less creatures, just the same as HR Offices establish 3.0 or 3.2 for their minimum requirements for new hires.
hahahahahahahahahahaahaha! Hilarious. Look it up in a real dictionary (one with research staff, linguists, historians, etc) and your dog nor any other animal is sentient by their definition.
>>>How many slashdotters *don't* spend more than 100 bucks a month on their evil carrier overlord of choice...
I don't. My phone costs $0.00/month, and I'm billed per minute of use It's actually cheaper than my wired phone ($15). I don't use the data features, because I'm almost always sitting in front of a computer when I need net access.
>>>A fraudulent 360$ bill made me simply stop paying for those services
I hope you did not pay. So can we hear the rest of the story? What happened that they charged you fraudulently? I was charged a similar amount for roaming calls, but it was not fraudulent - it was perfectly legal.
Your story reminds me of the Verizon customer that was charged 76 dollars when it should have been 76 cents. He eventually was given a full refund, although it took a month and an embarrassing website to get it..002 cents/KB times 35896 KB used == 71.8 cents. Here's the thirty minute call edited to three minutes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2isSJKntbg
Also why don't you just switch to another carrier? One of the benefits of a free market is that Power is in the hands of the consumer to run his/her own life. Example: When Cingular/ATT increased my rate from $10 to $30/month, I just switched to VirginMobile instead. They are not evil. In fact they are quite good at helping me save money (the monthly fee is $0.00)(I only get charged when I make calls). I'd sooner be Pro-choice than no choice (government run).
>>>Dennis Kucinich is someone that can be trusted to look after the people instead of pandering to business.
Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. I saw them on television recently, discussing all the things they had in common. For example, both think the Federal Reserve (central bank) is a business monopoly that screws the customers by devaluing paper money, and should be audited at least once per decade to find out where the money is being spent, and possibly dissolved.
BTW binding arbitration doesn't mean much. Paypal tried to include that in their TOS but when they later were sued by State AGs for stealing money from customer accounts, the justice quickly nullified the clause as being in violation of consumer protection laws. He said that users cannot sign-away rights already protected by superior laws. Same applies here with the wireless carriers.
More like 5 HD and 10 SD programs per analog channel, because cable really squeezes things. Also they run a higher bitrate (about 40 Mbit/s per 6 megahertz channel).
Slashdot Mirror
>>>private companies forcing rape victims to give up their rights
Nice spin, but you blatantly skipped a crucial piece of information - The rape happened in Iraq, not here at home where US laws apply. No corporation could ever get away with raping a woman on US soil, and then force her to go to arbitration. The US and State Laws would apply.
.
>>>At least I live in the EU; I can only imagine what must be occurring in Latin America or indeed the US itself.
Yeah it's like the Wild West in the US. (rolls eyes) I'm all for hating on corporations, but that doesn't mean it's okay to Lie via omission, or twisting the facts, which is what you are doing. No wonder every time I speak to a European, my compass gradually tips from the "love" to the "anger" part of the scale. The ANTI-american Hatred directed towards us is really growing tiresome (dare I say? racist?).
^ Troll.
And no proof to back-up the little "factoid" you pulled out of someplace smelly.
There must be more to this story. Why would a company bill you $30 overage protection (180 minutes( and then not use it? Makes no sense, unless you're not sharing some crucial part of the story - like maybe the minutes didn't roll over month-to-month.
>>>currency is going to be distributed a lot more thinly..
I have no idea what you're talking about. You think people benefit because now they have to spend $500 to get a business suit instead of the $5 it cost in 1910? Or ~$200/week on food instead of the ~$2 it used to cost? If you do think that's beneficial, then you're no better than the corporations.
>>>You're confusing devaluation with inflation.
They are two sides of the same coin. Like addition and subtraction. Or multiplication and division. What you call "inflation" is CAUSED by devaluation of the fait currency, because the Central Bank increased they money supply by approximately 100 fold.
Put another way: If they had held the money supply constant, as they did in the 1800s, then a candybar would still cost just 1 penny. A man's business suit would still be just $5. And so on.
>>>"Credits, Adjustments, and Other Charges" section is not taxes.
Uh, yes, yes they are taxes (and all it took was a google search to find this shit):
- "The Federal Universal Service pays for four programs: Lifeline/Link-Up, High-Cost, Schools and Libraries, Rural Health Care (fcc.gov)
- TX Franschise Tax Recovery is a tax (www.state.tx.us)
- Texas Universal Service - ditto (www.state.tx.us)
- "The Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge is a charge assessed by AT&T associated with payment of government imposed fees and to recover the costs of compliance with government imposed regulatory requirements." (att.com) It includes: Federal Regulatory Fee- annual fee imposed on AT&T by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) - AT&T is required to make into the Federal TRS fund. Enhanced 911 (E911) - surcharge inposed by certain states. And so on for about ten more government-imposed items.
Taxes. Every one of them.
P.S.
Man up. You strike me as the kind of person who has victim mentality. You can only be a victim if you allow yourself to be one. I've had a lot of sellers on Ebay try to scam me, but I used existing laws to screw them up the ass. I've quit companies like Comcast because they sucked, and told Bell Telephone to go shove their "modem surcharge" up their ass.
If you keep bending over, of course the companies will take advantage of you. So stop bending over. Be a man, not a geek.
>>>Blocking local governments from building the infrastructure that the phone companies don't want to build anyway.
Proof please.
.
>>>Sending out zillion dollar phone bills without ever even questioning the crazy amounts.
Computers don't question. And humans don't look at these bills. It's all handled automatically, so if you get one of them, all you need to do is point-out the error and it will be corrected. I've done this several times over the years, and it's really no big deal.
.
>>>Ironclad contracts that say that the company can never be wrong, never be liable,
Nullified by State and US Consumer protection laws. Consumers cannot sign-away their rights. For example if a contract says, "The Company reserves the right to murder its customer," that is obviously NOT going to hold up in court. Neither is most of the rest of the contract if it is contrary to current law.
.
>>>Customer service SUCKS.
This doesn't make a company "evil". Incompetent perhaps but not evil. And we've seen what happens to companies that have lousy service (Blockbuster, Circuit City, Wards): They go bankrupt and die.
>>>Subsidizing all those "smart phones" that are worth $500 to $800 (more?) by scamming the public into accepting expensive two year contracts.
I don't see anything wrong with that. All you need to do is multiply 24 months by the rate, to see how much you will be spending, and decide whether or not it's a good bargain. Like when Dish Network installed a dish in my neighbor's house for ~$32.50 over two years. If he had to buy the dish and hire his own installer, it would be much more expensive than that. I think most of these deals SAVE customers' money, and I like them.
If you disagree, well then just sign-on with one of those pay-as-you-go companies that sell the phone and service separately.
.
>>>Charging crazy rates for text. Everything that I've read says that it costs the phone company almost NOTHING to send out those text messages.
Okay. (1) Get one of those unlimited text plans instead. Mine provides 1000 for only $15 or a mere penny per text. They also have unlimited for $20 which brings the cost even lower than a penny! Not a ripoff. (2) How much do you think a text actually costs a company? Do you have a hard number for its value? I have no clue.
.
>>>Accepting government funds to build infrastructure that never gets built.
Proof please. And I don't mean somebody's blog. I mean actual evidence taken from US Law. Unlike some people I've read the actual 1996 Act, and it appropriates money for *analog-to-digital phone line upgrades* not fiber or wireless. If you can prove me wrong, please do so. :-)
>>>issues that the Fed currently exists to handle
Let the Congress do it, per the Constitution, rather than a private company.
>>>Not a guy I'd vote for.
So who did you vote for? Bush? Obama?
.
>>>only a tiny percentage of the money in the economy is actual paper/coin currency.
Uh. Irrelevant to the point. The point is the money, whether paper or numbers in a computer, is easily devalued because it's fiat currency. If a candybar cost 1 penny in 1910, and now costs about a dollar for the Same candybar, it's obvious the money has been devalued to 1/100th its previous value.
Put another way, if my grandfather had owned $10,000 in 1910 he'd be rich (equivalent to being a millionaire). But over time they devalued that fiat currency to where it's only half a year's rent on an apartment. The Central Bank Monopoly has stolen citizens' wealth via devaluation
.
Correction:
>>>$1,000 PCs
Poor guy. Those of us with our $150 or $300 Commodores and Ataris ran the fractals in gorgeous 16 or 128 colors. Perfect example of how cheaper products can be better than those $100 PCs or $3000 Apples.
I got bored with fractals quickly. The odd shapes they generated were pretty, but I found the graphix demos generated by pirate groups to be far more interesting.
I'd happily give-up superpower status if it meant no longer having lawless corporations that can get-away with killing people, or stealing money, and no legal consequences (the executives take a golden parachute & never serve jail time).
.
>>>what the heck would you replace corporations with?
Proprietorships..... same thing we had before the "incorporation license" was invented. Then the owner would be directly responsible w/o any way to escape punishment.
>>>USA, for one, has a large number of first-run series, like Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and used to have Monk
Three of those are on free TV. All four are online.
Don't need to waste ~$900/year on cable.
That's my point.
.
>>>Now consider that I get exactly TWO OTA channels
Where on earth do you live??? Someplace like mid-Montana or mid-Wyoming? I've never seen a market with less than 5 stations (The Big 4 plus PBS).
>>>Analog SD mpeg2 compressed. I wouldn't call it a DVD quality but to each his own.
What do you think DVD is? SD that is mpeg2 compressed according to NTSC-III standards.
And while DVD means "digital" a LOT of the source material originally came from analog. For example Star Trek and other movies exist on analog film, and Star Trek TNG & DS9 & Voyager are mastered on analog videotape (betacam) that is little better than S-VHS.
Anyway I like HD but not enough to pay an extra $10 a month to rent the DVR.
>>>>>>>>In this country, 0.79 fatalities per 100 million car passenger mile..... 2.2 fatalities per 100 million train passenger miles ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>>How dare you post FACTS? You troll.
>>
>>Did you read my reply? That's 2.2 deaths per *train* 100-million-miles
.
No actually you said "passenger miles" which is the standard unit for measuring effects per passenger. 0.79 deaths per passenger mile would be lower than 2.2 deaths per passenger mile. The car is safer according to that stat.
No. No. No. And no.
If an organism can't achieve at least 80 on an Adult IQ test, I don't consider it sentient, although it may have the potential to reach that point someday (after maturing and/or several million years evolution). And yes I know the test has flaws but there has to be a standard which separates Homo sapiens from less creatures, just the same as HR Offices establish 3.0 or 3.2 for their minimum requirements for new hires.
I know when the damn dog jumps on me, or slobbers all over me, I automatically consider the THING to be inferior to human beings.
Hell even that Android Data has more intelligence then a damn bitch.
>>>wikipedia definition
hahahahahahahahahahaahaha! Hilarious. Look it up in a real dictionary (one with research staff, linguists, historians, etc) and your dog nor any other animal is sentient by their definition.
>>>How many slashdotters *don't* spend more than 100 bucks a month on their evil carrier overlord of choice...
I don't. My phone costs $0.00/month, and I'm billed per minute of use It's actually cheaper than my wired phone ($15).
I don't use the data features, because I'm almost always sitting in front of a computer when I need net access.
>>>A fraudulent 360$ bill made me simply stop paying for those services
I hope you did not pay. So can we hear the rest of the story? What happened that they charged you fraudulently? I was charged a similar amount for roaming calls, but it was not fraudulent - it was perfectly legal.
Your story reminds me of the Verizon customer that was charged 76 dollars when it should have been 76 cents. He eventually was given a full refund, although it took a month and an embarrassing website to get it. .002 cents/KB times 35896 KB used == 71.8 cents. Here's the thirty minute call edited to three minutes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2isSJKntbg
>>>They are all evil,
In what way they are evil? Enumerate the ways. :-)
Also why don't you just switch to another carrier? One of the benefits of a free market is that Power is in the hands of the consumer to run his/her own life. Example: When Cingular/ATT increased my rate from $10 to $30/month, I just switched to VirginMobile instead. They are not evil. In fact they are quite good at helping me save money (the monthly fee is $0.00)(I only get charged when I make calls). I'd sooner be Pro-choice than no choice (government run).
>>>Dennis Kucinich is someone that can be trusted to look after the people instead of pandering to business.
Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. I saw them on television recently, discussing all the things they had in common. For example, both think the Federal Reserve (central bank) is a business monopoly that screws the customers by devaluing paper money, and should be audited at least once per decade to find out where the money is being spent, and possibly dissolved.
BTW binding arbitration doesn't mean much. Paypal tried to include that in their TOS but when they later were sued by State AGs for stealing money from customer accounts, the justice quickly nullified the clause as being in violation of consumer protection laws. He said that users cannot sign-away rights already protected by superior laws. Same applies here with the wireless carriers.
More like 5 HD and 10 SD programs per analog channel, because cable really squeezes things.
Also they run a higher bitrate (about 40 Mbit/s per 6 megahertz channel).