It had fuck all to do with the IRS, either, considering this guy wasn't a US citizen. He wasn't even Polish, he was a Ukrainian living in Poland.
As to why the US government is involved at all, if you don't know the answer to that then you just haven't been paying attention.
1. Non-US citizens can violate US tax laws. 2. You'd really have to be "not paying attention" to know that countries routinely attempt to extradite and prosecute people for committing violations of the prosecuting country's law.
It's not fraudulent, and it's not deceptive. They're offering you unlimited usage for August. They've made no promises or commitments of any sort for any period after that. If they said "unlimited usage, for as long as you want to be a customer at $x/month," that would be a problem. They didn't. When McDonalds offers to sell you a cheeseburger for $1, they're not making some sort of commitment that they will sell you cheeseburgers for $1 for as long as you care to buy them - they're offering to sell you this cheeseburger for $1.
I don't think you understand the definition of unlimited either....
Sure I do. There is no cap on how much you use during the period I've paid for. You can use 1GB or 200GB, and pay the same rate. Once that period is up, however, Verizon's under no obligation to sign up for another period on the same terms. "Unlimited" doesn't mean "unlimited, with a guarantee for the same terms, forever."
Rental car companies offer unlimited mileage on their rentals. If you consistently rent from Hertz, and drive WAY more than the average, such that they're losing money on you as a customer, they're entirely within their rights in saying "we decline to take further reservations from you."
That's why we have truth in advertising laws -- if you lease someone a car with "unlimited mileage" included, you can't charge them extra (or take back their car) when they put 300,000 miles on it in a year. Unlimited has a very clear meaning.
You can, however, decide that, once their lease is up, that you won't lease them another car.
It IS unlimited. You can use as much as you want in the period you've paid for. How much you use does affect whether they decide they want to offer you an unlimited plan next month. Separate months, separate deals.
Add all that money together, and you're talking peanuts in the overall scheme of things for a company of Verizon's size. Verizon's CEO made around $20 million last year. The top 100 people in the company combined made maybe $100 million (probably less). Go ahead and double that, just to have an additional buffer. So, you're talking $200 million. Verizon spent around $18 billion on network improvements last year, plus another $10 billion on spectrum. So, take all the costs you say should be spent differently, and you could increase the network investment spend by less than one percent.
Remember, these are out of contract customers. Every month is a new deal. They're offering you unlimited use in August. If you go over 100GB, they won't renew your unlimited deal for September. So, August is accurately described as unlimited.
If you want unlimited, there are two carriers that offer it (TMobile and Sprint). Verizon's no longer choosing to do so. Don't see what that means there's a market failure here.
At the very least, failure to use working capital correctly (maintaining / growing the business, by buying the equipment that allows them to keep / expand their dominance in their current area) is a failure of corporate duty, and a reason for someone to be fired.
Spending lots of excess money on capital equipment to add capacity to serve customers who don't pay you nearly enough to cover the investment you have to make to serve them is definitely a failure of corporate duty.
They're not walking out of a contract mid-way. These are overwhelmingly out of contract customers. Every month is a new deal, and Verizon's under no obligation to renew the deal for another month.
There may still be a very few under contract customers with unlimited and using over 100GB/month. In that case, so long as Verizon waives any ETF charges, so the customer is free to leave cost-free, Verizon's also in good shape.
Summary quotes the Birkenstock CEO as saying "The Amazon marketplace, which operates as an "open market,” creates an environment where we experience unacceptable business practices which we believe jeopardize our brand." It leaves out a later sentence in the same paragraph, which it probably at least as much of an issue as the counterfeiting problem: "It also includes a constant stream of unidentifiable unauthorized sellers who show a blatant disregard for our pricing policies."
Birkenstock wants all dealers to sell at full list - stores were selling on Amazon at a discount, and undercutting other dealers, who were complaining to Birkenstock.
What is awesome about Qwickster is that is that their stock price was around $300 when they announced they were splitting off the business that was bringing in the most revenue and had the highest profit margin and it crashed to around $50.
They haven't recovered much since, yet somehow Hastings never got fired for sheer arrogance and stupidity. This newest round of idiocy dropped their stock over 12% today, yet the moron remains.
Netflix did a 7 for 1 stock split last year. A $300 stock price in 2011 equates to a $43 share price today. Even with today's drop, the stock's double what it was before they announced Qwikster.
If you're going to accuse someone of "arrogance and stupidity," and call him a "moron," it might behoove you to get your basic facts right.
Very true. The manufacturers of security X-ray machines actually include false positive images in the software to keep the person looking at the screen alert.
it is already evident that the rate of fatalities using this mode is already a 35% improvement over non-autopilot users. (1 fatality in 130 million miles driven vs. 1 in 96 million)
Is this an apples-to-apples comparison? I would imagine that autopilot is much more heavily used on highways than on surface streets. So, if the fatality rate on highways per mile is lower than for surface streets, it wouldn't be an entirely fair comparison.
I genuinely don't know the answer to this, couldn't find any data close at hand...
I'm entirely willing to believe that Teslas on autopilot get into accidents that their human drivers would have avoided. I'm also very confident that Teslas on autopilot avoid some accidents that their human drivers would have caused/been involved in.
Question is, which number is higher? If Teslas on autopilot are involved in fewer accidents per mile traveled (adjusted, as much as possible, for type of driving) than human drivers, then autopilot should remain. If the Tesla accident rate is higher, then it should be disabled.
Hulu is free. Hulu Plus is $8/month, and has a lot more content than Hulu (more shows and more episodes of shows). The shows have ads. Hulu Plus without ads is $12/month, has the same content as Hulu Plus, but without ads (in almost all cases - a few shows have a single ad at the beginning and the end, but it's only a handful).
Change of control provisions aren't at all uncommon in contracts. This is an unusually punitive one, but I really doubt that a court would judge it to be a unconscionable, since it's not like Yahoo didn't have competent counsel.
As a heads-up, Evangelical in Germany doesn't mean the same thing as in the US. Evangelical is a literal translation of the German name for the Lutherans.
It's not clear what the contents of the database were, though. With 50k records, it can't have been a personnel database, no way Baton Rouge has anything like 50k cops.
Why do cops get trials where a judge decides? How can an average citizen get those privileges?
Generally, defendants can waive their right to a trial by jury, and have their case heard just by the judge (a "bench trial"). Technically, the prosecution has to consent, but it almost always does, since to decline to do so is opening up grounds for an appeal.
Defendants usually go for bench trials when their lawyers believe that the law is on their side, but the defendant isn't sympathetic.
Congress DID make the law. The statute limits the prohibition to "persons." There's longstanding legal precedent that referring to a "person" does not include the Federal Government, unless specifically indicated. The statute makes no such indication. If Congress had wanted to include the Federal Government among the limited parties, it should have said so.
Question is, how much is privacy in a certain area worth to you? I get 2% cash back by using a credit card. I get much bigger discounts by using a frequent shopper card at the grocery store. If I used cash, I would pay a lot more for my food, and I don't find the fact that the grocery store knows what I buy on an ongoing basis to be particularly intrusive.
Think of it this way - would you let Walmart put a microphone in your living room that records everything that's said? Probably not. Would you do it if they paid you $5,000/day? Most people would in a second.
Slashdot Mirror
It had fuck all to do with the IRS, either, considering this guy wasn't a US citizen. He wasn't even Polish, he was a Ukrainian living in Poland.
As to why the US government is involved at all, if you don't know the answer to that then you just haven't been paying attention.
1. Non-US citizens can violate US tax laws.
2. You'd really have to be "not paying attention" to know that countries routinely attempt to extradite and prosecute people for committing violations of the prosecuting country's law.
It's not fraudulent, and it's not deceptive. They're offering you unlimited usage for August. They've made no promises or commitments of any sort for any period after that. If they said "unlimited usage, for as long as you want to be a customer at $x/month," that would be a problem. They didn't. When McDonalds offers to sell you a cheeseburger for $1, they're not making some sort of commitment that they will sell you cheeseburgers for $1 for as long as you care to buy them - they're offering to sell you this cheeseburger for $1.
I don't think you understand the definition of unlimited either....
Sure I do. There is no cap on how much you use during the period I've paid for. You can use 1GB or 200GB, and pay the same rate. Once that period is up, however, Verizon's under no obligation to sign up for another period on the same terms. "Unlimited" doesn't mean "unlimited, with a guarantee for the same terms, forever."
Rental car companies offer unlimited mileage on their rentals. If you consistently rent from Hertz, and drive WAY more than the average, such that they're losing money on you as a customer, they're entirely within their rights in saying "we decline to take further reservations from you."
Yeah, but that's a 24x7 usage rate. Typical usage per sub is around 2-2.5GB/month. So, these are customers using 40-50x the average.
That's why we have truth in advertising laws -- if you lease someone a car with "unlimited mileage" included, you can't charge them extra (or take back their car) when they put 300,000 miles on it in a year. Unlimited has a very clear meaning.
You can, however, decide that, once their lease is up, that you won't lease them another car.
It IS unlimited. You can use as much as you want in the period you've paid for. How much you use does affect whether they decide they want to offer you an unlimited plan next month. Separate months, separate deals.
Add all that money together, and you're talking peanuts in the overall scheme of things for a company of Verizon's size. Verizon's CEO made around $20 million last year. The top 100 people in the company combined made maybe $100 million (probably less). Go ahead and double that, just to have an additional buffer. So, you're talking $200 million. Verizon spent around $18 billion on network improvements last year, plus another $10 billion on spectrum. So, take all the costs you say should be spent differently, and you could increase the network investment spend by less than one percent.
Remember, these are out of contract customers. Every month is a new deal. They're offering you unlimited use in August. If you go over 100GB, they won't renew your unlimited deal for September. So, August is accurately described as unlimited.
If you want unlimited, there are two carriers that offer it (TMobile and Sprint). Verizon's no longer choosing to do so. Don't see what that means there's a market failure here.
At the very least, failure to use working capital correctly (maintaining / growing the business, by buying the equipment that allows them to keep / expand their dominance in their current area) is a failure of corporate duty, and a reason for someone to be fired.
Spending lots of excess money on capital equipment to add capacity to serve customers who don't pay you nearly enough to cover the investment you have to make to serve them is definitely a failure of corporate duty.
They're not walking out of a contract mid-way. These are overwhelmingly out of contract customers. Every month is a new deal, and Verizon's under no obligation to renew the deal for another month.
There may still be a very few under contract customers with unlimited and using over 100GB/month. In that case, so long as Verizon waives any ETF charges, so the customer is free to leave cost-free, Verizon's also in good shape.
Summary quotes the Birkenstock CEO as saying "The Amazon marketplace, which operates as an "open market,” creates an environment where we experience unacceptable business practices which we believe jeopardize our brand." It leaves out a later sentence in the same paragraph, which it probably at least as much of an issue as the counterfeiting problem: "It also includes a constant stream of unidentifiable unauthorized sellers who show a blatant disregard for our pricing policies."
Birkenstock wants all dealers to sell at full list - stores were selling on Amazon at a discount, and undercutting other dealers, who were complaining to Birkenstock.
What is awesome about Qwickster is that is that their stock price was around $300 when they announced they were splitting off the business that was bringing in the most revenue and had the highest profit margin and it crashed to around $50.
They haven't recovered much since, yet somehow Hastings never got fired for sheer arrogance and stupidity. This newest round of idiocy dropped their stock over 12% today, yet the moron remains.
Netflix did a 7 for 1 stock split last year. A $300 stock price in 2011 equates to a $43 share price today. Even with today's drop, the stock's double what it was before they announced Qwikster.
If you're going to accuse someone of "arrogance and stupidity," and call him a "moron," it might behoove you to get your basic facts right.
Very true. The manufacturers of security X-ray machines actually include false positive images in the software to keep the person looking at the screen alert.
Agreed, since insurance company costs are very closely correlated to accidents and fatalities.
The IIHS doesn't do all that crash-test rating and advocacy work just to be nice.
it is already evident that the rate of fatalities using this mode is already a 35% improvement over non-autopilot users. (1 fatality in 130 million miles driven vs. 1 in 96 million)
Is this an apples-to-apples comparison? I would imagine that autopilot is much more heavily used on highways than on surface streets. So, if the fatality rate on highways per mile is lower than for surface streets, it wouldn't be an entirely fair comparison.
I genuinely don't know the answer to this, couldn't find any data close at hand...
I'm entirely willing to believe that Teslas on autopilot get into accidents that their human drivers would have avoided. I'm also very confident that Teslas on autopilot avoid some accidents that their human drivers would have caused/been involved in.
Question is, which number is higher? If Teslas on autopilot are involved in fewer accidents per mile traveled (adjusted, as much as possible, for type of driving) than human drivers, then autopilot should remain. If the Tesla accident rate is higher, then it should be disabled.
Hulu is free.
Hulu Plus is $8/month, and has a lot more content than Hulu (more shows and more episodes of shows). The shows have ads.
Hulu Plus without ads is $12/month, has the same content as Hulu Plus, but without ads (in almost all cases - a few shows have a single ad at the beginning and the end, but it's only a handful).
Change of control provisions aren't at all uncommon in contracts. This is an unusually punitive one, but I really doubt that a court would judge it to be a unconscionable, since it's not like Yahoo didn't have competent counsel.
As a heads-up, Evangelical in Germany doesn't mean the same thing as in the US. Evangelical is a literal translation of the German name for the Lutherans.
It's not clear what the contents of the database were, though. With 50k records, it can't have been a personnel database, no way Baton Rouge has anything like 50k cops.
Why do cops get trials where a judge decides? How can an average citizen get those privileges?
Generally, defendants can waive their right to a trial by jury, and have their case heard just by the judge (a "bench trial"). Technically, the prosecution has to consent, but it almost always does, since to decline to do so is opening up grounds for an appeal.
Defendants usually go for bench trials when their lawyers believe that the law is on their side, but the defendant isn't sympathetic.
Congress DID make the law. The statute limits the prohibition to "persons." There's longstanding legal precedent that referring to a "person" does not include the Federal Government, unless specifically indicated. The statute makes no such indication. If Congress had wanted to include the Federal Government among the limited parties, it should have said so.
Question is, how much is privacy in a certain area worth to you? I get 2% cash back by using a credit card. I get much bigger discounts by using a frequent shopper card at the grocery store. If I used cash, I would pay a lot more for my food, and I don't find the fact that the grocery store knows what I buy on an ongoing basis to be particularly intrusive.
Think of it this way - would you let Walmart put a microphone in your living room that records everything that's said? Probably not. Would you do it if they paid you $5,000/day? Most people would in a second.
No, they don't. Where are you getting the idea that this app requires connecting a bank account? You input a credit card or debit card number.