KDE 3.x comes shipped with Solaris 8 or 9 on the Software Companion CD. I highly recommend installing all of this software, and you'll get a fully functional compiled version of KDE that is provided by Sun and supported by Sun. There is also a readme under your/opt/sfw folder that is placed there by the installer and tells you how to add KDE to your desktop selection at the Solaris login screen.
That Osborne guy is a real character here in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has a light show 365 days a year. His house is prominently located on a very busy street called Cantrell Rd. Right now, he has a gigantic american flag in full red, white and blue, with 50 stars on it, and at the top, it says "GOD BLESS AMERICA AND GEORGE W.". On his daughter's lawn, next door, there is another american flag with an eagle on top. The lights on the wings alternate off and on so it looks like the eagle is flapping it's wings.
As I recall, a few years ago, there were so many accidents out in front of his house from people rubbernecking as they drove by that the city sued him and he had to take all the Christmas lights down. They let him leave the american flags up though; they weren't as distracting.
I guess the guy is really wealthy. He invented Tylenol #3 or some other such pharmeceutical.
Personally, I think he's a redneck that got too much money and doesn't know how to spend it other than putting up a godawful display of wealth and tacky extravagance. It's like he's the king of the trailer park and everyone else should just bask in his christmas light glory... sheesh.
I was able to download and play the test file with MPlayer and Linux.
I was also able to download and play the test file on my Mac in Windows Media Player 9 for Mac. This proves nothing because the test file has no DRM on it. I hope a lot of Mac and Linux users aren't foolish enough to try to buy any songs, because if you delve deep enough into their FAQs you'll find the following information:
Can I play music from Walmart.com Music Downloads on my Macintosh(R) computer?
No. Music Downloads from Walmart.com are not compatible with any Macintosh computer. The music that you download requires Digital Rights Management 9 (DRM 9) software, which is not compatible with the Macintosh operating system.
This means No, Mplayer on Linux won't work either because it doesn't support DRM.
Re:My NOC is 66 square feet,3TB of traffic
on
Build Your Own NOC
·
· Score: 1
Bashed out a window so a fan can circulate air, installed 4 of the cheap open frame racks, use a OpenBSD firewall and all of our servers run FreeBSD.
That is a great use of resources and I commend you on your ability to setup a low cost and inexpensive data center, but there's a reason why a large company would never do it that way:
Risk.
The thing is, I bet you're a brilliant sysadmin and probably setup that OpenBSD firewall and all of those FreeBSD boxes yourself. You probably know how to route IP in your sleep and rarely need help with anything. This is great because you've now done the work of 5 regular sysadmins and 10 vendor support people all on your own.... But what happens if you step in front of a bus tomorrow?
Your company is out of business. Where can they get support on an OpenBSD firewall? Is there a vendor they can call that will fix the custom virtual hosting application you wrote for the FreeBSD webservers?
The reason why big companies spend 100 times what you spend is because they have to have contingency plans. If the one fan burns up and all of your servers burn up, you'll kick yourself for not having a backup AC unit. If some of their key personnel quit and leave for better pastures, they have to be able to train someone to take their place. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on vendor support contracts just to make sure this happens.
While your solution is admirable for is cost effectiveness and real-world usefulness, when it all comes down to it, YOU are the single point of failure.
Before everyone sings the praises of Flextronics, keep this in mind:
Flextronics also makes the famous XBox for Microsoft in their Guadalahara Mexico facility. I just listened to a special on NPR about globalization and NAFTA and an economist was saying that without NAFTA the XBox would cost $400.
Your Cisco routers would probably cost more too, but I'm not sure if the cheap prices are worth it for the loss of US jobs.
My guess is that it's not TRUE support (ie You can't call up and ask how to align your margins just so). It's more likely that this is just "Put the CD in the tray, click this, then that, etc."
What the hell are you basing this on? Sun is providing true support, whatever the hell that means. If you have a question about any feature in the product, even if the person you're talking with on the phone doesn't know the answer, he can escalate it all the way to the guy that developed that feature if necessary, since he also works for Sun.
Is this not full support? Is there some other type of support you were thinking of when you wrote that like a personal assistant that will come over to your house and put your coffee mug in your coffee mug holder (CD-ROM tray) for you?
Sun does have a call center in India, but their largest call centers are in Broomfield, CO, and Burlington, MA. The call center in India is primarily located there in order to provide better 3rd shift support (due to the time differences, more engineers are available there during the nights here).
StarOffice is Sun's product, designed for businesses; OpenOffice is what individuals use at home (why pay when there's no real difference?).
Actually, do you remember when Sun first bought StarOffice and was giving it away for free? I think this was right around StarOffice 5.1 era. Anyway, Sun found that a lot of corporate IT managers wouldn't trust a product that was free, so they decided to start charging for it.
They didn't do it just to be greedy. The funny thing was, Sun wanted to give StarOffice away just to strengthen the Sun brand and attract more people to Solaris and Sun servers. You can blame the cost of StarOffice on idiot CIOs that don't trust a free product.
This is probably why Sun will sell a ton of the Java Desktop System licenses, because corporate IT just doesn't trust anything that doesn't cost money. Idiots...
Sun is payrolling SCO by paying that IP license and has always distrusted linux.
Don't spread this kind of FUD. Sun has been paying AT&T and now SCO for their Unix license for years now. So has IBM, HP, and every other Unix vendor. Sure they are giving money to SCO like every other SCO customer, but they have no control over who SCO decides to sue.
To be fair though, there have been several Linux companies (Redhat and SUSE most prominent) that have offered support contracts.
Suse and Redhat have never offered onsite support. Sun has an international support organization that encompasses multiple "Solutions Centers" for telephone support, as well as Field Engineers (hardware) and System Support Engineers (software) covering most populated parts of the world. This means all 50 states and most 1st and 2nd world countries.
Also, Sun's "Solutions Centers" and onsite support networks are designed to provide 24/7 support, with multiple locations (major phone support located in Burlington, MA, Broomfield, CO, and India) which allow them to cover the 24 hour day better due to time differences.
I'm not sure what type of support Redhat and Suse offer, but I can guarantee you it's not nearly as good as Sun's.
I agree completely. I've been a Network Engineer, System Administrator, and a Security Administrator at different companies I've worked at in the past. For two smaller (under 500 employees) I was all three of these roles. While it sounds like this guy has been burned one too many times by incompetent admins (no backups? That guy ought to get fired) these policies are in place for a reason. Having worked as a development administrator for ~50 Java developers, I can speak from first hand experience that not all developers should be trusted with root on a server, much less their local workstation. I've seen any number of the following problems:
1. Developer hoses a server by doing something he can't remember as root while deploying code. He's not the one that has to spend 8 hours reinstalling the OS, then restoring from backups, then redeploying the code.
2. Developer hoses his personal workstation by installing some non work-related software on it. His code is a critical part of the project. Again, he's not the one that has to spend all day rebuilding his laptop and reinstalling all of the necessary dev tools and applications on it. Most developers personal workstations are too complex to use a simple Ghost image, as they have more apps than just Windows XP and Office XP. Some are cool and will install all of their own apps, but usually the ones that are stupid enough to blow up their personal workstation or laptop every other week are the same ones that require personal hand-holding just to install apps like MS Office or JBuilder or something.
3. Developers go to any length to bypass firewalls and corporate security just because they don't want the hassle of "authenticating" or fitting through some ACL. They get a heavy-handed manager on their side that forces you to open the firewall wide open just because they don't know what port their app uses and they just "want it to work". You try to warn their manager about the security implications, but they are more concerned about meeting deadlines and the developer is using the excuse that this firewall issue has cost him two weeks of work, when it's really because his lazy ass hasn't been working, he's been "telecommuting" which really means he stays home with the wife and kids and does jack shit.
3a. After opening the firewall wide open due to some management mandate, one of your primary competitors hacks into your CVS server and checks out the entire code base (this really happened), due to CVS being available outside the firewall and some boneheaded developer putting * in his.rhosts file because he couldn't get rlogin to work.
While the vast majority of developers I've had the experience of working with have been very capable and talented people, the dot.bomb phenomenon created quite a few that had no business whatsoever working in the computer industry, much less developing software. As in any case, a few bad apples ruin the whole bunch, and although its fun working for a smaller company where there aren't so many policies in place, it's only fun for a little while until some idiot screws things up so bad that you have to put those policies in place.
I have an account at TCF that I use for a Visa debit card and the odd small check. (I'm not suicidal enough to run a debit card against a live checking account.) I find the interesting thing there that holds can take my balance into a theoretical negative state, charges will not be assessed until the actual (paid out) balance goes negative. I've had -200 balances a few times due to hotels buffering space into the authorization, but it all cleared out with no NSF charges.
Interesting. Your bank must have a good policy in that authorizations don't cause NSF charges like mine do. Maybe I should switch banks.
(Not defending the bank, I think they're wong, but for such a large income I wouldn't think you'd need to cut it so close to zero before payday).
Agreed. You must have better discipline than I do. I let it accumulate, than a new toy comes along that I must have (latest one was the 15" G4 PowerBook) and then it goes back to 0.
Actually I think I'll get overdraft protection. They charge interest on it, but it's only a few cents a day which I don't mind paying as long as it's only a small amount. My time spent calling them and reversing fees is worth more than the few cents it will cost me if I have to use it.
Thank heaven for VISA. I did get *all* my money back (had to let the bank take the pitiful excuse for a refund that the company issued).
Actually, that's not the way a chargeback works. The merchants don't normally receive their money from the bank for about 90 days or so. Anything that is charged back simply comes directly out of the merchant's account. If a merchant gets too many chargebacks in a short amount of time, the bank cancels their merchant account.
Chargebacks are a very useful and powerful tool that consumers have to use against fraudulent merchants. But in the end, the bank never loses money. They always make tons. Imagine how much money Visa/MC/Amex must be making by taking 3-5% of every purchase in transaction fees.
How about my bank? TCF here in Minnesota. I *pay* for their advanced online banking service (it's just like any other free service I have had before but it shows all the transactions immediately unlike their free version which just shows a balance). I started noticing that I was being charged for using out of network ATMs when I wasn't using them. I had four $6 charges in a six week period. I had to call them each time and get them removed.
Tell me about it. I use USBank's Free Checking account, and although it's good for the most part, pays interest, plus cash back on my Visa Check Card purchases, it really sucks when it comes to overdraft charges.
You see, I've never actually drawn my account negative, but I've actually had to have over 10 charges reversed. It's happened to me twice now, and this is the basic scenario:
I go out to a restaurant with a big group of friends and we end up running up a couple hundred dollar tab. No big deal, at the end of the night we give them our cards and the waiter supposedly splits the checks. The problem starts when the waiter incorrectly punches in the entire total (+ 20% gratuity) into their credit card machine. This generates what's called an "authorization", which doesn't actually take money out of your account, but does hold it so that others can't take it.
Ok, so the actual amount I pay for the restaurant is only $50 or so (my meal), but they just authorized $250 on my check card, a couple of days before payday, so now all the other small charges I use in the next two days cause me to get dinged by overdraft charges. Keep in mind that my account has not gone negative at any point in time. After a few days, my paycheck is direct deposited and the bogus authorization clears itself off my account.
Now, I have to call my bank, wait on hold for 20 minutes, then explain to a CSR why they need to reverse all of those overdraft fees. They usually tell me the standard answer first that they refuse to reverse them. I tell them bullshit, give me a manager, and I have to explain the story all over again to the manager.
Finally, they reverse the fees, and send me on my merry way, until it happened to me a second time within 1 month. This time I am pissed and I demand that they quit charging me overdraft fees when my account has never gone negative. They refuse to do this due to bank policy and say that every time this happens, I just have to call them and get the fees reversed. I've spoken with managers and nothing gets done.
The frustrating thing is that I'm one of their best customers. I usually keep a few grand in the bank and I move over $100,000 through that account a year. I made about $250 cash back on my Visa Check Card last year so they're making a fortune in merchant fees off of me. They shouldn't be pissing me off like this.
Does anyone know of a way I can keep the bank from wasting my valuable time? I just can't stand having to call them all the time and have them treat me like a deadbeat who bounces checks when I never do.
"I could carefully compare these 7 or 8 other online services, popping up like dot-bomb zombie clones, all of whom have exactly the same price, and try to figure out which is best AND will still be in business five years from now...or I could just go with iTunes as both the cool AND obvious choice."
Why does your logic sound to me exactly like the average American voter's logic in the next presidential election (right before they vote for Bush)?
Yes, you can waive your right to a speedy trial (in the Federal court system). It happens all the time when the defense needs time to go review evidence and build a case.
Slashdot Mirror
KDE 3.x comes shipped with Solaris 8 or 9 on the Software Companion CD. I highly recommend installing all of this software, and you'll get a fully functional compiled version of KDE that is provided by Sun and supported by Sun. There is also a readme under your /opt/sfw folder that is placed there by the installer and tells you how to add KDE to your desktop selection at the Solaris login screen.
That Osborne guy is a real character here in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has a light show 365 days a year. His house is prominently located on a very busy street called Cantrell Rd. Right now, he has a gigantic american flag in full red, white and blue, with 50 stars on it, and at the top, it says "GOD BLESS AMERICA AND GEORGE W.". On his daughter's lawn, next door, there is another american flag with an eagle on top. The lights on the wings alternate off and on so it looks like the eagle is flapping it's wings.
As I recall, a few years ago, there were so many accidents out in front of his house from people rubbernecking as they drove by that the city sued him and he had to take all the Christmas lights down. They let him leave the american flags up though; they weren't as distracting.
I guess the guy is really wealthy. He invented Tylenol #3 or some other such pharmeceutical.
Personally, I think he's a redneck that got too much money and doesn't know how to spend it other than putting up a godawful display of wealth and tacky extravagance. It's like he's the king of the trailer park and everyone else should just bask in his christmas light glory... sheesh.
Sorry bro... The submitter of this article should have done a little better research. At least you only lost 88 cents.
I was able to download and play the test file with MPlayer and Linux.
I was also able to download and play the test file on my Mac in Windows Media Player 9 for Mac. This proves nothing because the test file has no DRM on it. I hope a lot of Mac and Linux users aren't foolish enough to try to buy any songs, because if you delve deep enough into their FAQs you'll find the following information:
Can I play music from Walmart.com Music Downloads on my Macintosh(R) computer?
No. Music Downloads from Walmart.com are not compatible with any Macintosh computer. The music that you download requires Digital Rights Management 9 (DRM 9) software, which is not compatible with the Macintosh operating system.
This means No, Mplayer on Linux won't work either because it doesn't support DRM.
Bashed out a window so a fan can circulate air, installed 4 of the cheap open frame racks, use a OpenBSD firewall and all of our servers run FreeBSD.
... But what happens if you step in front of a bus tomorrow?
That is a great use of resources and I commend you on your ability to setup a low cost and inexpensive data center, but there's a reason why a large company would never do it that way:
Risk.
The thing is, I bet you're a brilliant sysadmin and probably setup that OpenBSD firewall and all of those FreeBSD boxes yourself. You probably know how to route IP in your sleep and rarely need help with anything. This is great because you've now done the work of 5 regular sysadmins and 10 vendor support people all on your own.
Your company is out of business. Where can they get support on an OpenBSD firewall? Is there a vendor they can call that will fix the custom virtual hosting application you wrote for the FreeBSD webservers?
The reason why big companies spend 100 times what you spend is because they have to have contingency plans. If the one fan burns up and all of your servers burn up, you'll kick yourself for not having a backup AC unit. If some of their key personnel quit and leave for better pastures, they have to be able to train someone to take their place. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on vendor support contracts just to make sure this happens.
While your solution is admirable for is cost effectiveness and real-world usefulness, when it all comes down to it, YOU are the single point of failure.
Can you believe it that was OpenOffice.org in the screenshot, and not Sun's own StarOffice.
Sun makes both StarOffice and OpenOffice so your argument is pointless.
Pot... Kettle.... "Black!"
I agree with you completely. I was just reporting what the so-called "economist" or "economic expert" on NPR was reporting.
Before everyone sings the praises of Flextronics, keep this in mind:
Flextronics also makes the famous XBox for Microsoft in their Guadalahara Mexico facility. I just listened to a special on NPR about globalization and NAFTA and an economist was saying that without NAFTA the XBox would cost $400.
Your Cisco routers would probably cost more too, but I'm not sure if the cheap prices are worth it for the loss of US jobs.
My guess is that it's not TRUE support (ie You can't call up and ask how to align your margins just so).
It's more likely that this is just "Put the CD in the tray, click this, then that, etc."
What the hell are you basing this on? Sun is providing true support, whatever the hell that means. If you have a question about any feature in the product, even if the person you're talking with on the phone doesn't know the answer, he can escalate it all the way to the guy that developed that feature if necessary, since he also works for Sun.
Is this not full support? Is there some other type of support you were thinking of when you wrote that like a personal assistant that will come over to your house and put your coffee mug in your coffee mug holder (CD-ROM tray) for you?
Sun does have a call center in India, but their largest call centers are in Broomfield, CO, and Burlington, MA. The call center in India is primarily located there in order to provide better 3rd shift support (due to the time differences, more engineers are available there during the nights here).
StarOffice is Sun's product, designed for businesses; OpenOffice is what individuals use at home (why pay when there's no real difference?).
Actually, do you remember when Sun first bought StarOffice and was giving it away for free? I think this was right around StarOffice 5.1 era. Anyway, Sun found that a lot of corporate IT managers wouldn't trust a product that was free, so they decided to start charging for it.
They didn't do it just to be greedy. The funny thing was, Sun wanted to give StarOffice away just to strengthen the Sun brand and attract more people to Solaris and Sun servers. You can blame the cost of StarOffice on idiot CIOs that don't trust a free product.
This is probably why Sun will sell a ton of the Java Desktop System licenses, because corporate IT just doesn't trust anything that doesn't cost money. Idiots...
If they had millions of custom VB apps running on there desktops they probably wouldn't be looking at switching to Linux.
For a minimal amount of work they could have those custom VB apps running in Wine on their Linux desktops.
Sun is payrolling SCO by paying that IP license and has always distrusted linux.
Don't spread this kind of FUD. Sun has been paying AT&T and now SCO for their Unix license for years now. So has IBM, HP, and every other Unix vendor. Sure they are giving money to SCO like every other SCO customer, but they have no control over who SCO decides to sue.
To be fair though, there have been several Linux companies (Redhat and SUSE most prominent) that have offered support contracts.
Suse and Redhat have never offered onsite support. Sun has an international support organization that encompasses multiple "Solutions Centers" for telephone support, as well as Field Engineers (hardware) and System Support Engineers (software) covering most populated parts of the world. This means all 50 states and most 1st and 2nd world countries.
Also, Sun's "Solutions Centers" and onsite support networks are designed to provide 24/7 support, with multiple locations (major phone support located in Burlington, MA, Broomfield, CO, and India) which allow them to cover the 24 hour day better due to time differences.
I'm not sure what type of support Redhat and Suse offer, but I can guarantee you it's not nearly as good as Sun's.
We're a cancer?
.rhosts file because he couldn't get rlogin to work.
I agree completely. I've been a Network Engineer, System Administrator, and a Security Administrator at different companies I've worked at in the past. For two smaller (under 500 employees) I was all three of these roles. While it sounds like this guy has been burned one too many times by incompetent admins (no backups? That guy ought to get fired) these policies are in place for a reason. Having worked as a development administrator for ~50 Java developers, I can speak from first hand experience that not all developers should be trusted with root on a server, much less their local workstation. I've seen any number of the following problems:
1. Developer hoses a server by doing something he can't remember as root while deploying code. He's not the one that has to spend 8 hours reinstalling the OS, then restoring from backups, then redeploying the code.
2. Developer hoses his personal workstation by installing some non work-related software on it. His code is a critical part of the project. Again, he's not the one that has to spend all day rebuilding his laptop and reinstalling all of the necessary dev tools and applications on it. Most developers personal workstations are too complex to use a simple Ghost image, as they have more apps than just Windows XP and Office XP. Some are cool and will install all of their own apps, but usually the ones that are stupid enough to blow up their personal workstation or laptop every other week are the same ones that require personal hand-holding just to install apps like MS Office or JBuilder or something.
3. Developers go to any length to bypass firewalls and corporate security just because they don't want the hassle of "authenticating" or fitting through some ACL. They get a heavy-handed manager on their side that forces you to open the firewall wide open just because they don't know what port their app uses and they just "want it to work". You try to warn their manager about the security implications, but they are more concerned about meeting deadlines and the developer is using the excuse that this firewall issue has cost him two weeks of work, when it's really because his lazy ass hasn't been working, he's been "telecommuting" which really means he stays home with the wife and kids and does jack shit.
3a. After opening the firewall wide open due to some management mandate, one of your primary competitors hacks into your CVS server and checks out the entire code base (this really happened), due to CVS being available outside the firewall and some boneheaded developer putting * in his
While the vast majority of developers I've had the experience of working with have been very capable and talented people, the dot.bomb phenomenon created quite a few that had no business whatsoever working in the computer industry, much less developing software. As in any case, a few bad apples ruin the whole bunch, and although its fun working for a smaller company where there aren't so many policies in place, it's only fun for a little while until some idiot screws things up so bad that you have to put those policies in place.
I have an account at TCF that I use for a Visa debit card and the odd small check. (I'm not suicidal enough to run a debit card against a live checking account.) I find the interesting thing there that holds can take my balance into a theoretical negative state, charges will not be assessed until the actual (paid out) balance goes negative. I've had -200 balances a few times due to hotels buffering space into the authorization, but it all cleared out with no NSF charges.
Interesting. Your bank must have a good policy in that authorizations don't cause NSF charges like mine do. Maybe I should switch banks.
(Not defending the bank, I think they're wong, but for such a large income I wouldn't think you'd need to cut it so close to zero before payday).
Agreed. You must have better discipline than I do. I let it accumulate, than a new toy comes along that I must have (latest one was the 15" G4 PowerBook) and then it goes back to 0.
Actually I think I'll get overdraft protection. They charge interest on it, but it's only a few cents a day which I don't mind paying as long as it's only a small amount. My time spent calling them and reversing fees is worth more than the few cents it will cost me if I have to use it.
Thank heaven for VISA. I did get *all* my money back (had to let the bank take the pitiful excuse for a refund that the company issued).
Actually, that's not the way a chargeback works. The merchants don't normally receive their money from the bank for about 90 days or so. Anything that is charged back simply comes directly out of the merchant's account. If a merchant gets too many chargebacks in a short amount of time, the bank cancels their merchant account.
Chargebacks are a very useful and powerful tool that consumers have to use against fraudulent merchants. But in the end, the bank never loses money. They always make tons. Imagine how much money Visa/MC/Amex must be making by taking 3-5% of every purchase in transaction fees.
How about my bank? TCF here in Minnesota. I *pay* for their advanced online banking service (it's just like any other free service I have had before but it shows all the transactions immediately unlike their free version which just shows a balance). I started noticing that I was being charged for using out of network ATMs when I wasn't using them. I had four $6 charges in a six week period. I had to call them each time and get them removed.
Tell me about it. I use USBank's Free Checking account, and although it's good for the most part, pays interest, plus cash back on my Visa Check Card purchases, it really sucks when it comes to overdraft charges.
You see, I've never actually drawn my account negative, but I've actually had to have over 10 charges reversed. It's happened to me twice now, and this is the basic scenario:
I go out to a restaurant with a big group of friends and we end up running up a couple hundred dollar tab. No big deal, at the end of the night we give them our cards and the waiter supposedly splits the checks. The problem starts when the waiter incorrectly punches in the entire total (+ 20% gratuity) into their credit card machine. This generates what's called an "authorization", which doesn't actually take money out of your account, but does hold it so that others can't take it.
Ok, so the actual amount I pay for the restaurant is only $50 or so (my meal), but they just authorized $250 on my check card, a couple of days before payday, so now all the other small charges I use in the next two days cause me to get dinged by overdraft charges. Keep in mind that my account has not gone negative at any point in time. After a few days, my paycheck is direct deposited and the bogus authorization clears itself off my account.
Now, I have to call my bank, wait on hold for 20 minutes, then explain to a CSR why they need to reverse all of those overdraft fees. They usually tell me the standard answer first that they refuse to reverse them. I tell them bullshit, give me a manager, and I have to explain the story all over again to the manager.
Finally, they reverse the fees, and send me on my merry way, until it happened to me a second time within 1 month. This time I am pissed and I demand that they quit charging me overdraft fees when my account has never gone negative. They refuse to do this due to bank policy and say that every time this happens, I just have to call them and get the fees reversed. I've spoken with managers and nothing gets done.
The frustrating thing is that I'm one of their best customers. I usually keep a few grand in the bank and I move over $100,000 through that account a year. I made about $250 cash back on my Visa Check Card last year so they're making a fortune in merchant fees off of me. They shouldn't be pissing me off like this.
Does anyone know of a way I can keep the bank from wasting my valuable time? I just can't stand having to call them all the time and have them treat me like a deadbeat who bounces checks when I never do.
"I could carefully compare these 7 or 8 other online services, popping up like dot-bomb zombie clones, all of whom have exactly the same price, and try to figure out which is best AND will still be in business five years from now...or I could just go with iTunes as both the cool AND obvious choice."
Why does your logic sound to me exactly like the average American voter's logic in the next presidential election (right before they vote for Bush)?
No, I think they're just taking a cue from the good 'ol U.S. Federal government...
Ba' dum' ching!
New vigilante hacking opportunity:
For a fun exercise, INSERT each of the legislators that voted for this legislation into the database and watch general fun/chaos/disorder ensue.
Yes, you can waive your right to a speedy trial (in the Federal court system). It happens all the time when the defense needs time to go review evidence and build a case.
T-Mobile is the only one that offers unlimited
service, to my knowledge, in the U.S.
Not true. Sprint PCS Vision has several "all you can eat" data plans. It's only about $5 extra a month for unlimited data.