A company that has thousands of complaints about not paying rebates run by what amounts to a bunch of criminals (false advertising, bait and switch tactics, changing people's order on them without their consent, etc, etc) decides to sue over something as stupid as this.
Apple, please don't settle. Make these wannabe guidos suffer.
TigerDirect is among (the?) the worst out there in terms of customer service. Their return policies are a joke, and their customer hostile attitude is disgusting. They need to fucking die.
An beta (alpha?) I tested a while back used 1.2 gb of swap file and 90% of physical memory (1gb iirc) on boot. Slow. As. All. Fuck. You'd think it would run a bit faster on a 2400xp.
That said, I know it is a beta, but damn, I was not impressed.
Actually TV downloads are often much higher quality than broadcast ntsc. Virtually all shows are encoded at 624x352 (south park, simpsons, etc being exceptions) and are much clearer than whatever you'd get from your cable provider. Some shows are done as 960x528 with 5.1 sound, and you can find episodes in full 1080p glory on usenet and other places. File sizes are ~350, ~700 and ~4.3gb (holy shit!) respectively. To put it in perspective, you're likely to get better than DVD quality episodes off the net.
And you hit the nail on the head - the TV companies are lobbying really hard to stick with the deadline. I'm not sure how much they have spent on lobbyists, but I'm sure it is the best money anyone has ever spent on bribes. 70 million * $100+ is a fair bit of money. Sure, everyone takes a cut, but it is pretty hard to split 7 billion and piss someone off.
By the way, none of these electronics will be made in the USA, although I'm sure the Chinese will appreciate the jobs. Oh, the "90 day warranty" units (i.e. Chinese lowest bidder shit) will likely push the 70 million number to a bit more than that.
(On the other hand, (and this would be delicious irony) this could conceivably be the biggest fuckup in consumer electronics history which could potentially shift the average American's view of Chinese electronics to where it belongs and start a backlash which might actually get some units manufactured in the usa)
As for "how" the consumer rejects this "improvement" (oh goodie, we get DRM too!), I can think of no better way than a high powered rifle fired at the antenna. Once you hit the boonies, people shoot up power transformers, etc on a pretty regular basis. All these folks need is some beer, ammo and motivation;)
Bullshit. The main reason for doing this is to force 70 million americans to go out and buy some $100+ part to allow them to keep on getting TV.
You're a fucking moron if you think this isn't about money (Gee, who the fuck is lobbying? The people that make the TVs and decoder boxes? SHOCKING!) or believe that this move will save your precious airwaves (which, ignoramus, have pretty much already been allocated (sure, no formal auction thus far, but it doesn't take a genius to see who will be buying what and that the public's only benefit will be a couple billion in revenue), and are thus in the category of "not fucking yours anymore"). Oh, yeah, we get all sorts of goodies like DRM in this forced change.
Not to troll, but... Thousands? The sticker price for the set is $500. I'm not saying that there aren't incidental costs, etc, but really, even paying an actor $10,000 for an hour long interview is just the cost of a dozen sets. I'm pretty sure that Bruce Boxleitner isn't getting ten grand for an hours work either. And yes, the actors get screwed, no surprise there.
Your boss probably would think different if he was the only one within 300 miles allowed to install air conditioners. Comcast doesn't have to care about losing the "geek" customers because the only alternative is dialup in most areas. If Verizon's new fiber to the home thing works out, Comcast might have something to worry about, but right now, there really isn't any competition.
Then again, the "contract" that you have with a credit card company can be changed with only 14 days notice from them. Not only minor changes, but they could pretty much re-write it from the ground up and make it very customer hostile. There doesn't have to be a reason for it either, someone just needs to say "meh, lets fuck some of our customers."
You owed them 4 grand at 0% interest? In two weeks it could be 40%, and by some magic, it will not only apply to new purchases, etc, but on money that you've already borrowed. The nice new banruptcy bill that your whore government voted in allows them to act with impunity.
Contract of adhesion? Sure, you might be legally right, but can you afford the lawyers to prove it?
Actually, it would probably cause the store a bunch of problems, which would, in turn affect the company, but chargebacks are great for hurting retailers, not manufacturers.
Well, subscribing to one isn't too bad, but the fact of the matter is in a couple days you'll be somewhere else and you'll have to get onto a competitor's network if you want access.
My point is that if you have to drive around looking for a hotspot that your month long password works with, you might as well just look for something that is free via nodedb or something. There are a ton of free APs out there. Sure, they might not be as obvious as a starbucks, but if you're not downtown, finding a starbucks can take a while if you're in a new place.
Not to go too far off topic with this on you, but blood sausage is great stuff. Fry it up with a ton of oil and it is damn good stuff. Of course, I bought half a pound of vinegar flavored headcheese today (meat jello with meat chunks for the uninformed), so I might be a bit biased towards the neglected foods.
Nothing. I "worked" at TaxCut last year (to not use quotes would imply that after 10am everyone in my cube wasn't so shitfaced that they had trouble walking to the cafeteria for food, let alone actually go through any work). Interesting times.
Every $8/hour agent has access to every return e-filed by HR Block (not just taxcut) - since 1999 at the click of the mouse. No oversight whatsoever and turnover was very high because the job quite frankly sucked for the PC phone people. They constantly had at least 3 classes of 40 people training because "shockingly" 75%+ would leave by the end of the first week on the phones.
I've heard that they have since changed to where every agent doesn't have access to the entire return, but "just" the social, address, home / work / cell phones, amount of refund (from which you can pretty much guess the income), their first 5 w2s, the date submitted, estimated date that the refund would arrive, spouses ssn, etc.
The only reason that a ton of tax data didn't get used is because most of the people working there were stoned off their asses virtually 24-7 and really couldn't care less about ordering up a couple credit cards in such and such person's name, or letting burglars know that someone at such and such address who works at such and such place just got a $15,000 refund and that they probably have a ton of new shit that could be looted. If organized crime - or even a couple theives spread around the country - got in on it, they could of have made a ton of money. It would be weeks before the cops caught on - if ever. If someone wanted to, they could even start work there using a fake identity, there was no background check to speak of afaik.
I know this extends a little bit beyond the scope of your original question, but I'm sure that the situation is identical for the other tax programs.
The national sales tax has nothing to do with third party tax preperation services. Actually, it does. As put forth in HR 25, the national sales tax would replace the income tax. Right. And the income tax will go away after we finish paying for that war...
You know, that is a nice idea, but all you're going to get done is to have a federal sales tax put on everything. Income taxes? Yeah, you'll still pay them./bitter, I know, but I don't think that is too unrealistic.
Not necessarily, polls are essentially useless if you play around with the target audience.
Ignoring the fact that the sample size of 2,500 for the entire usa is a fucking joke, if you call a bunch of white trash in TN, and you'll probablt get the results of this poll.
Besides, you can run a poll 20, 50 or a hundred times until you get a result that you like.
Of course, some group will use this as a rallying cry to put forth some bill to prevent personal information from being put on the net, and some politican who apparantly was drunk off his ass during stats class (amongst others) will vote for it.
If you're colorblind, you're not flying except as a passenger. Granted, if you are, you probably are partially color blind, and can probably pass a special eye exam and get a SODA.
http://www.leftseat.com/baggish.htm
Now, if you do that, and get your commercial et al rating, just know that your carreer opportunities are basically equivalent to that of a black pilot in the mid 70's. (even now the ratios are pretty skewed) I'm not trying to troll by that either. If you do get hired by someone, it will probably be a carrier flying freight in Alaska.
I really like yi.org It is run by one guy afaik, but he's really quick to answer any questions / fix any problems, etc. It is a bit expensive, but it is nice not having to deal with tier one support people getting paid minimum wage.
I think there is a "jesus christ this is soooo slow compared to work" factor somewhere in there, as well as a "goddamnit, every time I pick up the phone I hear bzzzzefasftsschreech" factor. I also wouldn't say it is a majority of the folks out there that download music, etc, but their group does suck up a ton of bandwidth.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you expect from a company who doesn't pay rebates?
A company that has thousands of complaints about not paying rebates run by what amounts to a bunch of criminals (false advertising, bait and switch tactics, changing people's order on them without their consent, etc, etc) decides to sue over something as stupid as this.
Apple, please don't settle. Make these wannabe guidos suffer.
TigerDirect is among (the?) the worst out there in terms of customer service. Their return policies are a joke, and their customer hostile attitude is disgusting.
They need to fucking die.
Exactly. Tvtorrents is down now :( /pours out a 40
Know any other good sites?
An beta (alpha?) I tested a while back used 1.2 gb of swap file and 90% of physical memory (1gb iirc) on boot.
Slow. As. All. Fuck.
You'd think it would run a bit faster on a 2400xp.
That said, I know it is a beta, but damn, I was not impressed.
Actually TV downloads are often much higher quality than broadcast ntsc. Virtually all shows are encoded at 624x352 (south park, simpsons, etc being exceptions) and are much clearer than whatever you'd get from your cable provider.
;)
Some shows are done as 960x528 with 5.1 sound, and you can find episodes in full 1080p glory on usenet and other places. File sizes are ~350, ~700 and ~4.3gb (holy shit!) respectively.
To put it in perspective, you're likely to get better than DVD quality episodes off the net.
And you hit the nail on the head - the TV companies are lobbying really hard to stick with the deadline. I'm not sure how much they have spent on lobbyists, but I'm sure it is the best money anyone has ever spent on bribes. 70 million * $100+ is a fair bit of money. Sure, everyone takes a cut, but it is pretty hard to split 7 billion and piss someone off.
By the way, none of these electronics will be made in the USA, although I'm sure the Chinese will appreciate the jobs. Oh, the "90 day warranty" units (i.e. Chinese lowest bidder shit) will likely push the 70 million number to a bit more than that.
(On the other hand, (and this would be delicious irony) this could conceivably be the biggest fuckup in consumer electronics history which could potentially shift the average American's view of Chinese electronics to where it belongs and start a backlash which might actually get some units manufactured in the usa)
As for "how" the consumer rejects this "improvement" (oh goodie, we get DRM too!), I can think of no better way than a high powered rifle fired at the antenna. Once you hit the boonies, people shoot up power transformers, etc on a pretty regular basis. All these folks need is some beer, ammo and motivation
Bullshit. The main reason for doing this is to force 70 million americans to go out and buy some $100+ part to allow them to keep on getting TV.
You're a fucking moron if you think this isn't about money (Gee, who the fuck is lobbying? The people that make the TVs and decoder boxes? SHOCKING!) or believe that this move will save your precious airwaves (which, ignoramus, have pretty much already been allocated (sure, no formal auction thus far, but it doesn't take a genius to see who will be buying what and that the public's only benefit will be a couple billion in revenue), and are thus in the category of "not fucking yours anymore").
Oh, yeah, we get all sorts of goodies like DRM in this forced change.
Not to troll, but...
Thousands? The sticker price for the set is $500.
I'm not saying that there aren't incidental costs, etc, but really, even paying an actor $10,000 for an hour long interview is just the cost of a dozen sets.
I'm pretty sure that Bruce Boxleitner isn't getting ten grand for an hours work either.
And yes, the actors get screwed, no surprise there.
Well, if you pay your CEO and board of directors salaries of a couple million a year it isn't terribly difficult to lose money.
Not that I disagree, but damn...
Perhaps someone should read a little less Nietzsche.
I'm guessing that it has something to do with them not having to support the spare Cisco 12000 you have kicking around.
Your boss probably would think different if he was the only one within 300 miles allowed to install air conditioners.
Comcast doesn't have to care about losing the "geek" customers because the only alternative is dialup in most areas.
If Verizon's new fiber to the home thing works out, Comcast might have something to worry about, but right now, there really isn't any competition.
Then again, the "contract" that you have with a credit card company can be changed with only 14 days notice from them. Not only minor changes, but they could pretty much re-write it from the ground up and make it very customer hostile. There doesn't have to be a reason for it either, someone just needs to say "meh, lets fuck some of our customers."
You owed them 4 grand at 0% interest? In two weeks it could be 40%, and by some magic, it will not only apply to new purchases, etc, but on money that you've already borrowed. The nice new banruptcy bill that your whore government voted in allows them to act with impunity.
Contract of adhesion? Sure, you might be legally right, but can you afford the lawyers to prove it?
Actually, it would probably cause the store a bunch of problems, which would, in turn affect the company, but chargebacks are great for hurting retailers, not manufacturers.
Well, subscribing to one isn't too bad, but the fact of the matter is in a couple days you'll be somewhere else and you'll have to get onto a competitor's network if you want access.
My point is that if you have to drive around looking for a hotspot that your month long password works with, you might as well just look for something that is free via nodedb or something.
There are a ton of free APs out there. Sure, they might not be as obvious as a starbucks, but if you're not downtown, finding a starbucks can take a while if you're in a new place.
Yeah, but that would *gasp* mean working together with a competitor.
Not to go too far off topic with this on you, but blood sausage is great stuff. Fry it up with a ton of oil and it is damn good stuff.
Of course, I bought half a pound of vinegar flavored headcheese today (meat jello with meat chunks for the uninformed), so I might be a bit biased towards the neglected foods.
So, what you're saying is that you got a SODA and had the restriction removed ;)
Nothing. I "worked" at TaxCut last year (to not use quotes would imply that after 10am everyone in my cube wasn't so shitfaced that they had trouble walking to the cafeteria for food, let alone actually go through any work). Interesting times.
Every $8/hour agent has access to every return e-filed by HR Block (not just taxcut) - since 1999 at the click of the mouse. No oversight whatsoever and turnover was very high because the job quite frankly sucked for the PC phone people. They constantly had at least 3 classes of 40 people training because "shockingly" 75%+ would leave by the end of the first week on the phones.
I've heard that they have since changed to where every agent doesn't have access to the entire return, but "just" the social, address, home / work / cell phones, amount of refund (from which you can pretty much guess the income), their first 5 w2s, the date submitted, estimated date that the refund would arrive, spouses ssn, etc.
The only reason that a ton of tax data didn't get used is because most of the people working there were stoned off their asses virtually 24-7 and really couldn't care less about ordering up a couple credit cards in such and such person's name, or letting burglars know that someone at such and such address who works at such and such place just got a $15,000 refund and that they probably have a ton of new shit that could be looted.
If organized crime - or even a couple theives spread around the country - got in on it, they could of have made a ton of money. It would be weeks before the cops caught on - if ever. If someone wanted to, they could even start work there using a fake identity, there was no background check to speak of afaik.
I know this extends a little bit beyond the scope of your original question, but I'm sure that the situation is identical for the other tax programs.
The national sales tax has nothing to do with third party tax preperation services.
Actually, it does. As put forth in HR 25, the national sales tax would replace the income tax.
Right. And the income tax will go away after we finish paying for that war...
You know, that is a nice idea, but all you're going to get done is to have a federal sales tax put on everything. Income taxes? Yeah, you'll still pay them. /bitter, I know, but I don't think that is too unrealistic.
Not necessarily, polls are essentially useless if you play around with the target audience.
Ignoring the fact that the sample size of 2,500 for the entire usa is a fucking joke, if you call a bunch of white trash in TN, and you'll probablt get the results of this poll.
Besides, you can run a poll 20, 50 or a hundred times until you get a result that you like.
Of course, some group will use this as a rallying cry to put forth some bill to prevent personal information from being put on the net, and some politican who apparantly was drunk off his ass during stats class (amongst others) will vote for it.
If you're colorblind, you're not flying except as a passenger.
Granted, if you are, you probably are partially color blind, and can probably pass a special eye exam and get a SODA.
http://www.leftseat.com/baggish.htm
Now, if you do that, and get your commercial et al rating, just know that your carreer opportunities are basically equivalent to that of a black pilot in the mid 70's. (even now the ratios are pretty skewed)
I'm not trying to troll by that either. If you do get hired by someone, it will probably be a carrier flying freight in Alaska.
I really like yi.org
It is run by one guy afaik, but he's really quick to answer any questions / fix any problems, etc.
It is a bit expensive, but it is nice not having to deal with tier one support people getting paid minimum wage.
I think there is a "jesus christ this is soooo slow compared to work" factor somewhere in there, as well as a "goddamnit, every time I pick up the phone I hear bzzzzefasftsschreech" factor.
I also wouldn't say it is a majority of the folks out there that download music, etc, but their group does suck up a ton of bandwidth.
If you want to, you can always hit the terminal, or even boot up to a console on the mac. Not sure why you'd want to, but the ability is there.