"everyone paying less than $400 for 1.5Mbit should not complain about cost cutting measures".
It doesn't work that way in any other field.
Should I not complain about problems with my car because I paid less for it than I would have paid for a Bentley? Should I not complain about the poor construction of my house because I paid less for it than I would have a mansion?
Sure, I could buy the Aston Martin of internet connections and cruise in style, but I expect my Hyundai to get me where I want to go, without surprises like getting shut out because Hyundai is billing Disney World for graciously permitting me to drive my car there and therefore deserves half of Disney's revenue.
Haw, most ISPs I know of around here charge businesses out the nose and if you're buying DSL or Cable for your company, it's still oversubscribed and offered without a SLA. The sole reason to pay more is because you're a business and it's unfair that someone might make money off of someone's technology and not give it to them.
If you want real dedicated bandwidth with a real promise to keep the internet turned on, you get a T-1 connection or better, and it starts around $400 for 1.5Mbit with installation fees depending on location. And then, you're usually just getting a line to your local phone company so you're still at the mercy of whatever your phone company decides to do to your contract "subject to change without notice" (just ask TekSavvy).
Both green and red lights need timers. It'll tell people when they need to be ready to stop, and once they've stopped, it'll give them something to do other than fall asleep while they're waiting for the light to turn green again.
Does it matter? Those events were catalytic in creating the biosphere of today. If today's biosphere is valuable, we owe it to those events.
If today's biosphere is valuable and it took millions of years to make it that way since the last "event", then if we cause another such "event", tomorrow's biosphere won't be quite so valuable to us.
That would be against the very foundation of our country and the concept of state sovereignty, and would have far reaching consequences as it would instantly give the federal government direct control over *every* aspect of your life.
Sorry, we've already lost that battle in the War on (Some) Drugs. If what you plant in your backyard is a matter of interstate commerce, so is what Comcast plants in your backyard.
For instance, they are supposed to compare your signature on the charge slip to the signature on the back of the card
That's a nice idea, but whoever stole the card has the signature to study, and you're asking some highschooler to perform handwriting analysis to see how close of a match it is. Not to mention the proliferation of those digitizer tablets that turn your signature into something like a solid block of pixels.
I suspect, though, that given the relative frequency of a mugger taking one credit card from one person and hackers taking ten million+ card numbers from a company, focusing on the signature isn't productive (especially when it's trivial to write any number you want to a magstrip with whatever signature you want on it, which is why many stores have you hand over the card so they can type the last 4 digits stamped on the face of it).
As a merchant myself, what's needed is for the transaction clearinghouses to get off their asses and come up with a public key system. I don't do any recurring charges so I discard the entire CC number after a charge, but none of the processors that I'm aware of has any way for me to submit encrypted CC numbers if I needed to keep them around for a subscription (or to save them so people don't have to re-enter them every time). The best I could do is encrypt them here and hope the employees with the keys don't get any ideas. If I could store an encrypted string of "ccn-merchant#" and submit that to the processor every month, then I could be certain of the security of the numbers in my control.
For ID theft in general, we need to enforce the existing ban on the use of social security numbers for identification, and to force banks and other institutions to come up with their own way of identifying people that doesn't pretend that only one person in the whole world knows your nine digit number despite the fact that you're giving it out left and right.
While I'm on a roll, bonus points if banks implement separate deposit and withdrawal account numbers so that I don't have to give potentially untrustworthy employees in the HR division my real account number for direct deposit.
Second, please differentiate "publishing" from hiring a production company to make you a television spot and then paying television stations to carry your spot?
In this case, the television station would be publishing it, and an individual person (say, the CEO) would have to pay the television station (from their own pocket).
The idea was just off-the-cuff, it's nowhere near developed enough for me to be certain it's even workable, much less does what I want in every situation.
Actually, the mother (or someone claiming to be her) started posting on the comments there (didn't her lawyer tell her to keep her mouth shut?) and according to that person, the son left the account logged in.
We could separate out those corporations who are publishers and give them freedom of the press without resorting to a blanket grant of absolute free speech powers to all corporations.
In such a publishing-based regime, if the president of the Teamsters Union wanted to push Candidate X, then "the Teamsters Union" could either print and distribute their own flyers (aka "publishing") or "the president of the Teamsters Union" could pay (from his own pocket) someone else to publish it for him.
Hell, I'm waiting to see their heads explode when Chinese corporations start flooding the airwaves with ads for their liberal picks. Bill Clinton's fundraising antics were peanuts compared to what this decision has enabled.
Of course, the REAL issue is that free speech has meant anonymous political speech for centuries now, a proud American tradition dating back to "Publius" at the least. Now that corporations explicitly have the right to free speech, all laws requiring corporations to identify themselves in their political advertisements are theoretically unconstitutional, based on numerous SCOTUS rulings protecting the right to anonymous speech. Nobody will know that the ads are being paid for by Chinese corporations.
Or perhaps its all a setup so that the Supreme Court can overturn those long held precedents protecting anonymous speech. Abandoning the Constitution for the sake of political expediency seems to be the hallmark of the current court, whether it's about property seizure or pot grown in your backyard, and eliminating the right to anonymous speech would be incredibly expedient to any liberal or conservative government.
Individuals can be subject to harassment and threats of harm that a manufactured legal entity, such as a corporation, is not exposed to.
Name one such threat. Blacklisting is no different than boycotting, and I'm sure abortion clinics can tell you all about threats of harm.
The right to anonymous speech is not a natural right like the right to free speech
The concept of "natural rights" generally only applies when you try to tell someone "you cannot do X", not when we're talking about forcing people to do something. Whichever version of "natural rights" you're considering here makes no distinction between a letter that was signed with your name versus a letter you forgot to sign versus a letter signed "A Concerned Citizen".
This doesn't deny corporations from running ads, they just have to do it on their own, and out in the open
Why out in the open? The Supreme Court has held for a very long time now that the right to free speech means the right to anonymous speech, especially political speech. Having explicitly granted corporations the right to free speech means that they no longer can be required to identify themselves, especially with regards to political speech.
AND that is why it won't ever be implemented.
That was what the recent infamous ruling had been about: organizations running ads on their own (corporate) dime.
Actually, box-checking is a great way of making sure everything on the list gets done (when you have a way to check to make sure that whoever is checking the boxes is actually doing the work and not just taking 30 seconds to fill in the blanks).
The problems arise when the checklist is put together by people without a clue and/or has no mechanism for updating it in a timely manner. The checklist ends up missing important things that never get added or having extra checkboxes that don't fit the goal of the list and distract the user from actual issues.
Committees are the classic example of the former ("all of us is dumber than any of us"), laws are the classic example of the latter. When they both get together, expect a checklist that fails to solve last year's problems.
If people don't like the actions of a corporation they have the right not to fucking buy that corporations products
So if a heavy machinery company opened a factory next door to you and dumped their waste hydraulic fluid in your garden you'll stop buying their bulldozers?
Or are you one of those who believes in guilt by association?
If I own a tiger and it gets out and bites some kid's arm off, I'm held responsible for that. Why should it be any different if I own a corporation that bites some kid's arm off? Obviously, my share of the guilt would be proportional to my share of the corporation.
Personally, I think the correct answer to holding corporations responsible is to force them to pay their fines by selling new stock until they've sold enough stock to raise the money for the fine. If they fail to do so by the time the stock becomes worthless, then the company is liquidated and its assets used to pay the fine. That would get the investors' attentions in a hurry, without having to retune the justice system to figure out what 1/10000000000th of a manslaughter charge means. It also means that fines would become a deterrent even for large companies who would otherwise pay the fine out of "petty cash".
also hurts activist investors
Such investors are only called "activist" because the current system is broken. If investors were required to be responsible for the corporations they own, they'd all either be broke or be "activist".
Slashdot Mirror
"everyone paying less than $400 for 1.5Mbit should not complain about cost cutting measures".
It doesn't work that way in any other field.
Should I not complain about problems with my car because I paid less for it than I would have paid for a Bentley? Should I not complain about the poor construction of my house because I paid less for it than I would have a mansion?
Sure, I could buy the Aston Martin of internet connections and cruise in style, but I expect my Hyundai to get me where I want to go, without surprises like getting shut out because Hyundai is billing Disney World for graciously permitting me to drive my car there and therefore deserves half of Disney's revenue.
They're "Business" deals in most ISPs I know of.
Haw, most ISPs I know of around here charge businesses out the nose and if you're buying DSL or Cable for your company, it's still oversubscribed and offered without a SLA. The sole reason to pay more is because you're a business and it's unfair that someone might make money off of someone's technology and not give it to them.
If you want real dedicated bandwidth with a real promise to keep the internet turned on, you get a T-1 connection or better, and it starts around $400 for 1.5Mbit with installation fees depending on location. And then, you're usually just getting a line to your local phone company so you're still at the mercy of whatever your phone company decides to do to your contract "subject to change without notice" (just ask TekSavvy).
and, coincidentally, Spanish exclamations and interrogatories
Good point. Figure out how to type an upside-down tilde and we'll go with it~
Both green and red lights need timers. It'll tell people when they need to be ready to stop, and once they've stopped, it'll give them something to do other than fall asleep while they're waiting for the light to turn green again.
Does it matter? Those events were catalytic in creating the biosphere of today. If today's biosphere is valuable, we owe it to those events.
If today's biosphere is valuable and it took millions of years to make it that way since the last "event", then if we cause another such "event", tomorrow's biosphere won't be quite so valuable to us.
Wait, so she was talking on the phone and punching the keypad?
Press 1 to report an accident...
If you can be replaced by an Indian code monkey, you don't deserve to have an IT job.
Anyone can be replaced by an Indian code monkey, it just takes management more interested in the upcoming quarterly than in quality.
That would be against the very foundation of our country and the concept of state sovereignty, and would have far reaching consequences as it would instantly give the federal government direct control over *every* aspect of your life.
Sorry, we've already lost that battle in the War on (Some) Drugs. If what you plant in your backyard is a matter of interstate commerce, so is what Comcast plants in your backyard.
I found this site that has Chinese and Korean lists in several formats
For instance, they are supposed to compare your signature on the charge slip to the signature on the back of the card
That's a nice idea, but whoever stole the card has the signature to study, and you're asking some highschooler to perform handwriting analysis to see how close of a match it is. Not to mention the proliferation of those digitizer tablets that turn your signature into something like a solid block of pixels.
I suspect, though, that given the relative frequency of a mugger taking one credit card from one person and hackers taking ten million+ card numbers from a company, focusing on the signature isn't productive (especially when it's trivial to write any number you want to a magstrip with whatever signature you want on it, which is why many stores have you hand over the card so they can type the last 4 digits stamped on the face of it).
As a merchant myself, what's needed is for the transaction clearinghouses to get off their asses and come up with a public key system. I don't do any recurring charges so I discard the entire CC number after a charge, but none of the processors that I'm aware of has any way for me to submit encrypted CC numbers if I needed to keep them around for a subscription (or to save them so people don't have to re-enter them every time). The best I could do is encrypt them here and hope the employees with the keys don't get any ideas. If I could store an encrypted string of "ccn-merchant#" and submit that to the processor every month, then I could be certain of the security of the numbers in my control.
For ID theft in general, we need to enforce the existing ban on the use of social security numbers for identification, and to force banks and other institutions to come up with their own way of identifying people that doesn't pretend that only one person in the whole world knows your nine digit number despite the fact that you're giving it out left and right.
While I'm on a roll, bonus points if banks implement separate deposit and withdrawal account numbers so that I don't have to give potentially untrustworthy employees in the HR division my real account number for direct deposit.
then pay for it.
If you sell me an "up to" 1mbps connection, then I've paid for up to 1mbps. If you want to sell me a 250MB/mo connection, go right ahead and do that.
Don't sell me an "up to" 1mbps connection then come along and claim that its actually 250MB/mo and send your sockpuppets to demand that I pay more.
Second, please differentiate "publishing" from hiring a production company to make you a television spot and then paying television stations to carry your spot?
In this case, the television station would be publishing it, and an individual person (say, the CEO) would have to pay the television station (from their own pocket).
The idea was just off-the-cuff, it's nowhere near developed enough for me to be certain it's even workable, much less does what I want in every situation.
the mother actually hacked into his account
Actually, the mother (or someone claiming to be her) started posting on the comments there (didn't her lawyer tell her to keep her mouth shut?) and according to that person, the son left the account logged in.
Meh, they're just after the exposure.
Maybe this lawsuit will be just a flash in the pan.
You don't think restricting the power of the government is "constitutionally conservative?"
Granting government the power to create people is the opposite of "restricting the power of government"
It's not all or nothing.
We could separate out those corporations who are publishers and give them freedom of the press without resorting to a blanket grant of absolute free speech powers to all corporations.
In such a publishing-based regime, if the president of the Teamsters Union wanted to push Candidate X, then "the Teamsters Union" could either print and distribute their own flyers (aka "publishing") or "the president of the Teamsters Union" could pay (from his own pocket) someone else to publish it for him.
Hell, I'm waiting to see their heads explode when Chinese corporations start flooding the airwaves with ads for their liberal picks. Bill Clinton's fundraising antics were peanuts compared to what this decision has enabled.
Of course, the REAL issue is that free speech has meant anonymous political speech for centuries now, a proud American tradition dating back to "Publius" at the least. Now that corporations explicitly have the right to free speech, all laws requiring corporations to identify themselves in their political advertisements are theoretically unconstitutional, based on numerous SCOTUS rulings protecting the right to anonymous speech. Nobody will know that the ads are being paid for by Chinese corporations.
Or perhaps its all a setup so that the Supreme Court can overturn those long held precedents protecting anonymous speech. Abandoning the Constitution for the sake of political expediency seems to be the hallmark of the current court, whether it's about property seizure or pot grown in your backyard, and eliminating the right to anonymous speech would be incredibly expedient to any liberal or conservative government.
Individuals can be subject to harassment and threats of harm that a manufactured legal entity, such as a corporation, is not exposed to.
Name one such threat. Blacklisting is no different than boycotting, and I'm sure abortion clinics can tell you all about threats of harm.
The right to anonymous speech is not a natural right like the right to free speech
The concept of "natural rights" generally only applies when you try to tell someone "you cannot do X", not when we're talking about forcing people to do something. Whichever version of "natural rights" you're considering here makes no distinction between a letter that was signed with your name versus a letter you forgot to sign versus a letter signed "A Concerned Citizen".
In a free market, if their product is crap, you don't buy it.
Hey, it works for the Amish, it should work for everyone else too!
I know, you could really show that telco and go back to dial-up!
Well, I guess there's always smoke signals...
2) ISPs will be formed with the specific selling point of having no traffic shaping/filtering/prioritizing.
Sort of like how Teksavvy promised not to throttle traffic like Bell Canada was... oh wait! Bell Canada throttled Teksavvy's traffic for them!
I don't think you understand how all of these networks connect together to become Teh Intarwebs.
This doesn't deny corporations from running ads, they just have to do it on their own, and out in the open
Why out in the open? The Supreme Court has held for a very long time now that the right to free speech means the right to anonymous speech, especially political speech. Having explicitly granted corporations the right to free speech means that they no longer can be required to identify themselves, especially with regards to political speech.
AND that is why it won't ever be implemented.
That was what the recent infamous ruling had been about: organizations running ads on their own (corporate) dime.
Actually, box-checking is a great way of making sure everything on the list gets done (when you have a way to check to make sure that whoever is checking the boxes is actually doing the work and not just taking 30 seconds to fill in the blanks).
The problems arise when the checklist is put together by people without a clue and/or has no mechanism for updating it in a timely manner. The checklist ends up missing important things that never get added or having extra checkboxes that don't fit the goal of the list and distract the user from actual issues.
Committees are the classic example of the former ("all of us is dumber than any of us"), laws are the classic example of the latter. When they both get together, expect a checklist that fails to solve last year's problems.
cannot verify a system whose cycles are larger than a human life span
That's what record-keeping is for.
If people don't like the actions of a corporation they have the right not to fucking buy that corporations products
So if a heavy machinery company opened a factory next door to you and dumped their waste hydraulic fluid in your garden you'll stop buying their bulldozers?
Or are you one of those who believes in guilt by association?
If I own a tiger and it gets out and bites some kid's arm off, I'm held responsible for that. Why should it be any different if I own a corporation that bites some kid's arm off? Obviously, my share of the guilt would be proportional to my share of the corporation.
Personally, I think the correct answer to holding corporations responsible is to force them to pay their fines by selling new stock until they've sold enough stock to raise the money for the fine. If they fail to do so by the time the stock becomes worthless, then the company is liquidated and its assets used to pay the fine. That would get the investors' attentions in a hurry, without having to retune the justice system to figure out what 1/10000000000th of a manslaughter charge means. It also means that fines would become a deterrent even for large companies who would otherwise pay the fine out of "petty cash".
also hurts activist investors
Such investors are only called "activist" because the current system is broken. If investors were required to be responsible for the corporations they own, they'd all either be broke or be "activist".