Sure seems like what has traditionally been called a "cost of living" raise. 10.7% in other industries, on the other hand, sounds pretty good. But 4.1 is by no means anything to jump up and down about.
I think it's vastly superior to Mandrake if starting with it from out-of-the-box, and Synaptic is pretty slick, at least as good as URPMI. However, if you've been running Mandrake for a while and have it tweaked to your liking, there's no reason to switch streams now unless having the latest and greatest versions of stuff from one consistent source ready-made for you is that important. Last I knew it was still on the 2.4 kernel series too, in the stable branch.
Ok, how about the fact that this completely negates their "security by obscurity" model by publicizing security issues that don't have a fix? Sure, these only go to paying customers, but unless these issuse have an NDA, they're going to get out.
You make a lot of claims, O' Anonymous One, but you fail to specify which ones you feel are baseless and general. Not that you'll read this, because you'll never find it again.
You have to realize that the last thing a customer with a billing error in their favor is going to do is call the cellphone company. Judging the quality of a product or service from a large corporation based on your experiences as a customer service representative is usually very narrow-minded, because you only get to hear about the bad experiences and not the good.
I'm not defending the company here, because for all I know they ARE scam artists, but I'm just pointing out that I've found the cynicism of my co-workers (and sometimes mine, as a customer service rep in various industries for 4 years) is to generally be exaggerated or even at times unwarranted.
You would expect to have a credit check if you were getting a loan or a credit card at a bank, right?
Well, for the insurance company, the first few years is like giving you a loan. For an automobile, you're getting anywhere from 20k - 1 million in liability coverage generally, so they want to know if A) you're going to have a catastrophic loss tomorrow, which a correlation has been found between poor credit and more claims, and B) they want to know if you're going to pay your premiums. One of the most common things for a customer to do is to start a policy, make the first payment (as low as the insurance company will allow), and then never make another payment. They have their proof of insurance for 6 months, so they'll just hold on to that until it expires and then go somewhere else and repeat. It's not going to be valid after a month or whatever, but unless a cop checks the computer, nobody will know the difference. It's fairly expensive to start an insurance policy (at least, compared to renewing one), so these type of customers (and there are a LOT) lose money for the insurance company. These customers also tend to have bad credit.
Again, this is something that, to my knowledge, is only used in the initial underwriting process. You may not agree, and I don't necessarily agree, but if you stay with one company you're not going to have to have it done again.
Yes but for every customer like you, there's a lot that get into a bunch of accidents and then get cancelled, so the insurance company lost money on them and has to make money on you.
If you sold your car the day before and market dictated that the price would be $880, the insurance company is not going to pay you $1500. That's not indemnity. Auto insurance policies, with the exception of classic car policies, pay actual cash value (which basically amounts to regional resale value in most cases), not replacement value (you paid $2000/you get $2000). Otherwise, every time somebody got tired of a car, they'd wreck it, total it, take the check and buy a new one. Then premiums would be driven up even higher, etc.
Read some of my other posts in this thread if you care to learn more. Insurance is not out to get you but it's not a system where you pay $5 and get $10 back either. You will pay more than you ever get back, but you will never have to pay a catastrophic amount out of pocket. It's like Rent-to-Own for car accidents.
Insurance is different than DVD's in that rates are regulated at the state government level. Price fixing is nigh-impossible because the state would shut them down.
As far as not paying the claim due to speeding - they can only do that if it's in the contract as an exclusion. Right now, I've never seen a policy by a major company with an exclusion for speeding. However, a basic principle of insurance states that insurance must not pay out for INTENTIONAL losses. I think it would be hard for even the best lawyer to argue that someone going 1.2 MPH over the limit intentionally caused an accident, but I'm sure it's been used when people are driving 20 or higher over. Or there's no skid marks or evidence of braking, that's a common one.
Read your insurance contract. If you don't like it, switch companies. Be aware that the more things you include or the fewer things excluded (depending on the coverage), the more you're going to pay.
State Farm is the largest insurance company in the country with something like 15 million policy holders. I worked for a company that wasn't even half as big, and they didn't do up-to-the-minute underwriting. In fact, they can't - your policy is a contract that, barring certain exceptions, can't be cancelled or changed until renewal.
When an insurance company is losing money, they tighten up the underwriting and raise the rates. The bottom line is that any claim is an instance where they had to pay money to you - that's what insurance is for, but obviously the company is going to prefer customers that don't file claims, or file less claims. In hard times, the definiton of "less claims" gets much stricter.
They didn't "screw" you any more than you'd be "screwing" them if you chose to take your business elsewhere. Insurance companies have the choice (within set guidelines) to do business with a customer or not.
I am no longer an active insurance man. Even when I was, I'd recommend all family and friends to rate-shop at least once a year, if not every six months. The reason is because while State Farm could be having bad times in one area, Progressive could be having a favorable claims climate and GEICO could be doing even better, or maybe there's some local upstart agent with a lot of cash in the bank trying to build a book of business. The principle of insurance is the exact opposite of that of the stock market, but the fundamentals are the same - know the strength of your company and factors that affect it. If your company is in the red for a quarter or a year, it's probably a good sign that rate increases or tigher underwriting coming soon.
Ridiculous. IAAIA, but you don't need to be to understand that what you've said totally misinterprets the economics of an insurance company.
What you've said would be like telling a 45-year old man, living a comfortable middle-class lifestyle with $1 million in an IRA or 401k that he should cash it out and blow it on a big house, car, and vacation because he obviously doesn't need the money - he's living well now. Fact is, he IS going to need that money someday when he retires. And that money in the bank for the insurance company is what is used to pay claims and achieve gains from investments to keep prices at the level they are.
If you're bored sometime, check out the financial data for your insurance company. You'll be surprised to find out that, almost guaranteed, they pay more in claims than they take in premiums. The difference, hopefully, is made up by investment gains. When it's not, that's when you see an insurance company having losses. Considering that insurance fraud is a multi-billion dollar per year industry, that must mean the legitimate claims paid are a lot higher than that, right? So a rough guess would be that $8 billion in the bank is enough to pay for a year's worth of claims (both legit and otherwise) if they stopped taking payments today. I don't feel a year's cushion is unreasonable, especially when they have consider catastrophes (like for instance, two hurricanes in one year).
Plus, if the insurance rates really were too high, the states would crack down on the companies - property/casualty insurance is HIGHLY regulated by each individual state (especially a certain few like OH, MA, and NJ), and in most states any sort of price change or contract change has to be submitted for approval to the State Insurance Commissioner before the change can be implemented. The commissioner reviews the change, market conditions, and the financial health of the company and can veto it on the basis of "no, this is an unreasonably high price" or "no, this price is too low and raises the risk that you could become insolvent".
I'm not saying that the insurance industry is perfect - not by any means. However, don't judge a book solely by the amount of cash it has in the bank.
I don't know, but if I needed this service, I'd probably still have my cable internet at home for all my downloading and stuff. This is just going to let me conduct my business activities anywhere.
Not exactly. Twenty years ago, ATT was THE phone company, encompassing what Verizon, SBC, Qwest, etc., are today. When they were split up, all those companies could only do local phone service, and ATT was the long distance company.
Now everything's been all jumbled up, and everybody can do everything. So this incarnation of ATT is more like MCI or Sprint than it is Qwest or Verizon.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure seems like what has traditionally been called a "cost of living" raise. 10.7% in other industries, on the other hand, sounds pretty good. But 4.1 is by no means anything to jump up and down about.
What about air hockey?
I think that link has been posted before here and I can never get any of the torrents to connect. Can anyone help me find a working torrent for these?
Or 3.11 for Workgroups ;)
Seems like your rants are pitting speculation against speculation. Care to provide some examples?
I think it's vastly superior to Mandrake if starting with it from out-of-the-box, and Synaptic is pretty slick, at least as good as URPMI. However, if you've been running Mandrake for a while and have it tweaked to your liking, there's no reason to switch streams now unless having the latest and greatest versions of stuff from one consistent source ready-made for you is that important. Last I knew it was still on the 2.4 kernel series too, in the stable branch.
Texstar has his own distro now :)
http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/index.html
Well, I'm saying it's bad. An NDA for OS security issues that affect all customers? That's pretty shitty.
Ok, how about the fact that this completely negates their "security by obscurity" model by publicizing security issues that don't have a fix? Sure, these only go to paying customers, but unless these issuse have an NDA, they're going to get out.
Maybe it finally reached Valinor, and Manwe is turning it back.
Yeah, I'm a geek.
You make a lot of claims, O' Anonymous One, but you fail to specify which ones you feel are baseless and general. Not that you'll read this, because you'll never find it again.
Oh, and http://www.kenrockwell.com/sigma/sd10.htm
That's 10.2 divided by 3, sorry.
Who's using it unlawfully?
You have to realize that the last thing a customer with a billing error in their favor is going to do is call the cellphone company. Judging the quality of a product or service from a large corporation based on your experiences as a customer service representative is usually very narrow-minded, because you only get to hear about the bad experiences and not the good.
I'm not defending the company here, because for all I know they ARE scam artists, but I'm just pointing out that I've found the cynicism of my co-workers (and sometimes mine, as a customer service rep in various industries for 4 years) is to generally be exaggerated or even at times unwarranted.
You would expect to have a credit check if you were getting a loan or a credit card at a bank, right?
Well, for the insurance company, the first few years is like giving you a loan. For an automobile, you're getting anywhere from 20k - 1 million in liability coverage generally, so they want to know if A) you're going to have a catastrophic loss tomorrow, which a correlation has been found between poor credit and more claims, and B) they want to know if you're going to pay your premiums. One of the most common things for a customer to do is to start a policy, make the first payment (as low as the insurance company will allow), and then never make another payment. They have their proof of insurance for 6 months, so they'll just hold on to that until it expires and then go somewhere else and repeat. It's not going to be valid after a month or whatever, but unless a cop checks the computer, nobody will know the difference. It's fairly expensive to start an insurance policy (at least, compared to renewing one), so these type of customers (and there are a LOT) lose money for the insurance company. These customers also tend to have bad credit.
Again, this is something that, to my knowledge, is only used in the initial underwriting process. You may not agree, and I don't necessarily agree, but if you stay with one company you're not going to have to have it done again.
Yes but for every customer like you, there's a lot that get into a bunch of accidents and then get cancelled, so the insurance company lost money on them and has to make money on you.
Principle of Indemnity: learn it.
If you sold your car the day before and market dictated that the price would be $880, the insurance company is not going to pay you $1500. That's not indemnity. Auto insurance policies, with the exception of classic car policies, pay actual cash value (which basically amounts to regional resale value in most cases), not replacement value (you paid $2000/you get $2000). Otherwise, every time somebody got tired of a car, they'd wreck it, total it, take the check and buy a new one. Then premiums would be driven up even higher, etc.
Read some of my other posts in this thread if you care to learn more. Insurance is not out to get you but it's not a system where you pay $5 and get $10 back either. You will pay more than you ever get back, but you will never have to pay a catastrophic amount out of pocket. It's like Rent-to-Own for car accidents.
Hmmm, sounds like inflation. Houses don't cost 15 grand anymore either!
Insurance is different than DVD's in that rates are regulated at the state government level. Price fixing is nigh-impossible because the state would shut them down.
As far as not paying the claim due to speeding - they can only do that if it's in the contract as an exclusion. Right now, I've never seen a policy by a major company with an exclusion for speeding. However, a basic principle of insurance states that insurance must not pay out for INTENTIONAL losses. I think it would be hard for even the best lawyer to argue that someone going 1.2 MPH over the limit intentionally caused an accident, but I'm sure it's been used when people are driving 20 or higher over. Or there's no skid marks or evidence of braking, that's a common one.
Read your insurance contract. If you don't like it, switch companies. Be aware that the more things you include or the fewer things excluded (depending on the coverage), the more you're going to pay.
He didn't say it did.
State Farm is the largest insurance company in the country with something like 15 million policy holders. I worked for a company that wasn't even half as big, and they didn't do up-to-the-minute underwriting. In fact, they can't - your policy is a contract that, barring certain exceptions, can't be cancelled or changed until renewal.
When an insurance company is losing money, they tighten up the underwriting and raise the rates. The bottom line is that any claim is an instance where they had to pay money to you - that's what insurance is for, but obviously the company is going to prefer customers that don't file claims, or file less claims. In hard times, the definiton of "less claims" gets much stricter.
They didn't "screw" you any more than you'd be "screwing" them if you chose to take your business elsewhere. Insurance companies have the choice (within set guidelines) to do business with a customer or not.
I am no longer an active insurance man. Even when I was, I'd recommend all family and friends to rate-shop at least once a year, if not every six months. The reason is because while State Farm could be having bad times in one area, Progressive could be having a favorable claims climate and GEICO could be doing even better, or maybe there's some local upstart agent with a lot of cash in the bank trying to build a book of business. The principle of insurance is the exact opposite of that of the stock market, but the fundamentals are the same - know the strength of your company and factors that affect it. If your company is in the red for a quarter or a year, it's probably a good sign that rate increases or tigher underwriting coming soon.
Ridiculous. IAAIA, but you don't need to be to understand that what you've said totally misinterprets the economics of an insurance company.
What you've said would be like telling a 45-year old man, living a comfortable middle-class lifestyle with $1 million in an IRA or 401k that he should cash it out and blow it on a big house, car, and vacation because he obviously doesn't need the money - he's living well now. Fact is, he IS going to need that money someday when he retires. And that money in the bank for the insurance company is what is used to pay claims and achieve gains from investments to keep prices at the level they are.
If you're bored sometime, check out the financial data for your insurance company. You'll be surprised to find out that, almost guaranteed, they pay more in claims than they take in premiums. The difference, hopefully, is made up by investment gains. When it's not, that's when you see an insurance company having losses. Considering that insurance fraud is a multi-billion dollar per year industry, that must mean the legitimate claims paid are a lot higher than that, right? So a rough guess would be that $8 billion in the bank is enough to pay for a year's worth of claims (both legit and otherwise) if they stopped taking payments today. I don't feel a year's cushion is unreasonable, especially when they have consider catastrophes (like for instance, two hurricanes in one year).
Plus, if the insurance rates really were too high, the states would crack down on the companies - property/casualty insurance is HIGHLY regulated by each individual state (especially a certain few like OH, MA, and NJ), and in most states any sort of price change or contract change has to be submitted for approval to the State Insurance Commissioner before the change can be implemented. The commissioner reviews the change, market conditions, and the financial health of the company and can veto it on the basis of "no, this is an unreasonably high price" or "no, this price is too low and raises the risk that you could become insolvent".
I'm not saying that the insurance industry is perfect - not by any means. However, don't judge a book solely by the amount of cash it has in the bank.
That's pretty much like moving out of the frying pan and into the shithouse, isn't it?
I don't know, but if I needed this service, I'd probably still have my cable internet at home for all my downloading and stuff. This is just going to let me conduct my business activities anywhere.
Not exactly. Twenty years ago, ATT was THE phone company, encompassing what Verizon, SBC, Qwest, etc., are today. When they were split up, all those companies could only do local phone service, and ATT was the long distance company.
Now everything's been all jumbled up, and everybody can do everything. So this incarnation of ATT is more like MCI or Sprint than it is Qwest or Verizon.