It seems like more Americans participated in this than they did in the last presidential election
Huh?
According to CNN, over 101 Million people cast votes for a major party candidate in the 2000 election. However, only 50 million people registered for the Do-Not-Call list.
Telemarketers are not allowed to call cellular phones.
You are correct, but most telemarketers rarely if ever check to make sure that your phone number is indeed a cell phone. This is especially true if your cell phone is your primary phone. At least most modern cell phone plans include Caller-ID as a standard feature. I just disregard all calls that don't have a number associated with them or that come from a number I don't recognize.
One new aspect of telecrapping that I find really disgusting is now the telecrappers will leave recorded messages for you if you don't pick up. So even when I go to check my messages, I am still wasting minutes I paid for to listen to their spew. I wonder if there is a way to simply cut off callers without picking up (and incurring the per-minute loss) and without sending them to voicemail?
You are aware, Congress, that you can't legislate the advace of technology right?
Sure you can. When President Kennedy was sworn into office in 1961, he set a goal for the end of the decade that we would "send a man to the moon and bring him safely back to Earth."
Why not just have your land line call forward to your cell phone, and tell people to call your land line number?
The major problem with this is that in many areas of the USA, the local telegraph company calling areas are so small that your cell phone number may end up being an expensive intra-LATA call from your landline phone. If this is the case and you enable call forwarding from your landline to your cell phone, then you will have to pay the per-minute toll charges for every incoming call to your cell phone.
(although maybe you should ask authors about whether book publishers are any less tyranical than RIAA, MPAA)
Based on all the books I have read, I would say that most publishers are more lenient. If you look at the copyrights for the books, there are quite a few (I don't know if it is a majority) books with the copyright still being held by the author, even though a major publisher printed the book. No record companies will ever allow any of their signed artists to ever own any of their work once they sell it over the recording industry.
I just started my school's master's program and just one of my books last semester was over $100 ($80 - used).
I totally understand. When I ran into that problem when I started my Master's Degree, I solved it by ordering most of my books from www.ecampus.com. They are a totally unethical company, but they did have cheap books. Walmart's website also has a linke for textbooks as well.
If you are a foreign student studying in the USA, or if you are good friends with some, have them try and snag you the international versions of the textbooks you need. They are still in English and contain all the text of the USA version of the book, but the physical book is a little smaller and usually softcover. They are perfectly legal retail copies of the book which usually sell for less than half of the cost in the USA.
Re:It was only a matter of time...
on
HavenCo In Trouble?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
they will host everything not forbidden by Sealand's law
The only problem is that Sealand's Law is whatever their "Crown Prince" says it is. As quoted from the linked article:
During an interview with the BBC, the family said it would readily "turn customer information over to the authorities if there was any serious problem with our stuff," Lackey said
So no matter what the AUP may say, the real "terms of service," like the law in general in Sealand, is whatever their "ruling family" says it is. Companies like stable governments. They do not want to take risks dealing with governments that change the way they do business in a rapid manner. With this latest change, Sealand has become no different than any other jurisdiction in which internet service is offered. As a result, they can only compete on price, and with cheaper prices and more reliable service elsewhere, companies will skip over Sealand.
Also from the article:
Lackey... said another problem was the Sealand family's tinkering with the network connection
No company will want anything to do with any government touching their connectivity in such an arbitrary manner, especially when they are paying a premium for Internet Access whose claim to fame is that they "don't do that." Another thing Lackey mentioned was Sealand's attempt to tax its customers. That is another example of a bait-and-switch tactic which will drive away existing business and scare away future customers.
Both of your analogies are completely flawed and without merit. The reason is that in your analogies, a bi-directional communication is established
Nope... the parent poster said he is entitled to do anything he wants to any signal entering his house. If I apply that condition to what I am doing, then "anything I want" to do with that signal can include bi-directional communications using said signal.
If you are beaming your signals into my property, my house, my body, my kids, etc, I will damn well do what I please with them!
Lets say I pull over next to your house and park in a public street. I fire up my laptop and pick up your open wireless access point and I use your Internet connection because the signals from your access point bleed into my car (and maybe I will even do mean nasty things with your connection as well). Is this OK too? Sure you may not pay extra for me to leech your service, but is it right for me to even be on your private network at all?
I almost have a duty to intercept them and decode them and make sure they are not harmful in anyway.
What if you had used WEP and I cracked it and got onto your network, would this still be OK in your book? Say I rigged my cordless phone to use the base station in your house because the signals from your base station can reach into my car. Would it be OK for me to use your phone service simply because those signals pass into my car?
I just goes to show how the "innocent until proven guilty" thing has been silently pushed out of the courts. DirecTV is accusing people of committing crimes with little more than a packing slip. That's hardly the sole evidence they need to prove that someone's stealing signal. The burden of proof is on them.
Actually, there is no "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to civil lawsuits in the USA. The US Constitution only guarantees the "innocent until proven guilty" right in criminal cases. The reasoning was that it was only in a criminal case that the defendant could be put to death, so the state would have to go out of its way to prove guilt.
A civil suit is completely the opposite. If you are the defendant in such a suit, you must prove that the plaintiff is wrong, often at your own expense, which is why its just much easier to settle. Defendants in such lawsuits also do not get the benefit of Fifth Amendment protections against testifying against oneself. The O.J. Simpson civil trial is the best example of this. The only reason he lost that case was because he would have to prove that he did not kill his wife and her friend. Contrast this to his criminal murder case, in which the State had to prove that he indeed committed the murders without being able to compel him to testify.
You're wrong...nobody can be denied access to EMERGENCY healthcare and hospitals (all) are only obliged to get the person stable before the person is involuntary discharged.
You've clearly never had to deal with American hospitals as a poor, uninsured person. I have many close friends who have, with me at their side. I know exactly what happened. They were not thrown out. They were given the treatment they needed or they were charged what they could afford. In many cases, the doctors volunteered their services.
Your other point, that all hospitals are required to render aid, is also wrong. Completely private hospitals in the USA are under no legal obligation whatsoever to render aid to anyone that they don't want to.
You only have a better healthcare system for those with private insurance, dumb ass!
You must be from outside of the USA to make such an uninformed statement. While that is true in foreign countries, it is not at all true in this country. No poor person can be kicked out of a publically funded hospital (and there are many). No person can be denied access to the latest and greatest medical gadgetry because they cannot pay if they go to a publically funded hospital. Name one instance in the USA where someone who could not pay has died because they were denied care.
And since you are totally clueless, let me enlighten you. Many of the people who have no insurance are rich people who can afford to pay for things out of pocket. Simply not having insurance in the USA does not mean you cannot get quality healthcare.
Now let's look at the rest of the world. Take Canada, for instance. Sure, everything is free there, but why do so many of their rich people come here for healthcare? Why do so many rich people from other countries come here? I have many relatives abroad, who are taxed up the ass to pay for their state run commie healthcare, but they insist on paying for private insurance there as well. Why, you may ask? Its simple, their public system sucks, and their private system is better.
The US Government also spends a bigger portion of GDP on healthcare than countries with socialized healthcare such as Canada, too.
Which is why we have a much better healthcare system than every other country. If you don't believe me, then ask the health systems in other countries why they send their sickest people to the USA for treatment.
President Walter Mondale. (There's a reason he only carried Minnesota and D.C.)
Actually, as a result of the 2002 election in which he volunteered to run for Paul Wellstone's US Senate seat, Walter Mondale is now famous for being the only person to have lost a state-wide election in every single US state.
To put this in perspective, this is about as hard to accomplish as getting a 0 on the SAT!:)
If the language barrier interfere's with that, why are they bothering to even release it?
Going back to my example with Chrysler, Lee Iacocca said that there was no economic incentive to localize their products to Japan because they weren't selling enough vehicles, even though the reason they weren't selling enough vehicles was because they were not localized. Essentially, it looks as if Microsoft is "selling more of the wrong thing" (Iacocca's words) before they have an incentive "to start selling the right thing."
But then again, do a lot of Japanese people understand English? My guess once again is that they don't, and as a result they won't care for games that are English-only just as most Americans wouldn't buy Japanese products that weren't localized for this country. Japanese industries (cars being the most obvious example) swept the markets here because they sold the customers what they wanted. They knew they weren't going to make it in the USA if they did otherwise. I don't understand why Microsoft is taking the opposite approach in Japan and expecting it to work. Maybe they just are not used to playing in a competitive market.
They made the mistake of going into Japan with out many Japanese games, hoping that localized Western games would be enough to drive the market.
It wouldn't be the first time an American company made that mistake. I remember watching an old 60 Minutes interview in which former Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca was complaining about how their cars were not selling in Japan. Aside from the fact that Chrysler continues to be at the bottom of the list in terms of quality, Iacocca explained that they didn't bother to localize the cars they sold there at the time (that may have changed now). The cars included:
Steering wheels on the left even though in Japan the steering wheel is on the right
Manuals printed in English
Speedometers and odometers which use miles even though Japan uses the metric system
I'm not sure what kind of TV system they use in Japan... I doubt its NTSC... or if its not, are NTSC TVs easy to get there? If Microsoft thinks this is going to work... past evidence will prove otherwise:)
you just have to allow the entity you are talking about a chance to reply
This sounds a lot like the old "Fairness Doctrine" that was applied to US radio broadcasts prior to 1988. That rule said that if you broadcasted X hours of programming with a certain point of view, you also had to broadcast X hours of programming with an opposing point of view. The main problem with this was that in many situations, one of the sets of programs was a ratings loser and hence a major money loser, so the radio stations would not broadcast either. Some people have even argued that this practice stiffled peoples' expression of controversial opinions on the radio.
Aren't you supposed to only be charged for outgoing messages?
If you're a Cingular subscriber (which I am) and you don't get a plan that includes a given number of text messages, then you pay 10 cents for each incoming and outgoing message, which can be sent to you via email just like any other spam, so if this started happening to me, I would have no choice but to cancel messaging on my phone.
If you cancel messaging, you will still receive messages, but you won't pay for them.
How on earth did you come up with "The average employer pays about $1.35 to $1.50 per $1.00 that the employee receives"?
A typo, that's how. LOL. I should have said "for every" and not "per." As for the numbers though, I worked for a small company and that's how things were done there. I saw it and that is how I know.
No it's not - a savings account is for frequent transactions. It is definitely not an investment vehicle.
I'll agree with you that a savings account isn't ideal for investment, no one is going to retire with that money. However, if you roll that money into a mutual fund, COD or other type of investment and you try to withdraw you will encur some major penalities, tax and otherwise. A savings account doesn't have these problems. And wouldn't a checking account be more suited to frequent transactions?
If you have 6 months worth of living expenses saved up ($15,000+ for me), just sitting in an account somewhere, "just in case," then you're an idiot.
But that's exactly the whole point of a savings account. Keeping that kind of money in the bank even if you're raking in cash is definitely not stupid. It will earn a fairly decent amount of interest before you need to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like more Americans participated in this than they did in the last presidential election
Huh?
According to CNN, over 101 Million people cast votes for a major party candidate in the 2000 election. However, only 50 million people registered for the Do-Not-Call list.
Telemarketers are not allowed to call cellular phones.
You are correct, but most telemarketers rarely if ever check to make sure that your phone number is indeed a cell phone. This is especially true if your cell phone is your primary phone. At least most modern cell phone plans include Caller-ID as a standard feature. I just disregard all calls that don't have a number associated with them or that come from a number I don't recognize.
One new aspect of telecrapping that I find really disgusting is now the telecrappers will leave recorded messages for you if you don't pick up. So even when I go to check my messages, I am still wasting minutes I paid for to listen to their spew. I wonder if there is a way to simply cut off callers without picking up (and incurring the per-minute loss) and without sending them to voicemail?
You are aware, Congress, that you can't legislate the advace of technology right?
Sure you can. When President Kennedy was sworn into office in 1961, he set a goal for the end of the decade that we would "send a man to the moon and bring him safely back to Earth."
- Up his arm
- Down his legs to earth
- Up *my* legs to crotch
Nothing but net!
Why not just have your land line call forward to your cell phone, and tell people to call your land line number?
The major problem with this is that in many areas of the USA, the local telegraph company calling areas are so small that your cell phone number may end up being an expensive intra-LATA call from your landline phone. If this is the case and you enable call forwarding from your landline to your cell phone, then you will have to pay the per-minute toll charges for every incoming call to your cell phone.
Linux and communism have a lot in common with each other, in terms of their ideals of shared ownership.
Bullshit, unlike communism, Linux actually works.
(although maybe you should ask authors about whether book publishers are any less tyranical than RIAA, MPAA)
Based on all the books I have read, I would say that most publishers are more lenient. If you look at the copyrights for the books, there are quite a few (I don't know if it is a majority) books with the copyright still being held by the author, even though a major publisher printed the book. No record companies will ever allow any of their signed artists to ever own any of their work once they sell it over the recording industry.
I just started my school's master's program and just one of my books last semester was over $100 ($80 - used).
I totally understand. When I ran into that problem when I started my Master's Degree, I solved it by ordering most of my books from www.ecampus.com. They are a totally unethical company, but they did have cheap books. Walmart's website also has a linke for textbooks as well.
If you are a foreign student studying in the USA, or if you are good friends with some, have them try and snag you the international versions of the textbooks you need. They are still in English and contain all the text of the USA version of the book, but the physical book is a little smaller and usually softcover. They are perfectly legal retail copies of the book which usually sell for less than half of the cost in the USA.
they will host everything not forbidden by Sealand's law
The only problem is that Sealand's Law is whatever their "Crown Prince" says it is. As quoted from the linked article:
So no matter what the AUP may say, the real "terms of service," like the law in general in Sealand, is whatever their "ruling family" says it is. Companies like stable governments. They do not want to take risks dealing with governments that change the way they do business in a rapid manner. With this latest change, Sealand has become no different than any other jurisdiction in which internet service is offered. As a result, they can only compete on price, and with cheaper prices and more reliable service elsewhere, companies will skip over Sealand.Also from the article:
No company will want anything to do with any government touching their connectivity in such an arbitrary manner, especially when they are paying a premium for Internet Access whose claim to fame is that they "don't do that." Another thing Lackey mentioned was Sealand's attempt to tax its customers. That is another example of a bait-and-switch tactic which will drive away existing business and scare away future customers.
Heretic was fun times. Hexen was fantastic too.
The funniest parts of those games was when you tried to type a cheat from DOOM and the exact opposite happened :)
Trying to cheat? NOW YOU DIE!!!!
Both of your analogies are completely flawed and without merit. The reason is that in your analogies, a bi-directional communication is established
Nope... the parent poster said he is entitled to do anything he wants to any signal entering his house. If I apply that condition to what I am doing, then "anything I want" to do with that signal can include bi-directional communications using said signal.
Insightful????
If you are beaming your signals into my property, my house, my body, my kids, etc, I will damn well do what I please with them!
Lets say I pull over next to your house and park in a public street. I fire up my laptop and pick up your open wireless access point and I use your Internet connection because the signals from your access point bleed into my car (and maybe I will even do mean nasty things with your connection as well). Is this OK too? Sure you may not pay extra for me to leech your service, but is it right for me to even be on your private network at all?
I almost have a duty to intercept them and decode them and make sure they are not harmful in anyway.
What if you had used WEP and I cracked it and got onto your network, would this still be OK in your book? Say I rigged my cordless phone to use the base station in your house because the signals from your base station can reach into my car. Would it be OK for me to use your phone service simply because those signals pass into my car?
I just goes to show how the "innocent until proven guilty" thing has been silently pushed out of the courts. DirecTV is accusing people of committing crimes with little more than a packing slip. That's hardly the sole evidence they need to prove that someone's stealing signal. The burden of proof is on them.
Actually, there is no "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to civil lawsuits in the USA. The US Constitution only guarantees the "innocent until proven guilty" right in criminal cases. The reasoning was that it was only in a criminal case that the defendant could be put to death, so the state would have to go out of its way to prove guilt.
A civil suit is completely the opposite. If you are the defendant in such a suit, you must prove that the plaintiff is wrong, often at your own expense, which is why its just much easier to settle. Defendants in such lawsuits also do not get the benefit of Fifth Amendment protections against testifying against oneself. The O.J. Simpson civil trial is the best example of this. The only reason he lost that case was because he would have to prove that he did not kill his wife and her friend. Contrast this to his criminal murder case, in which the State had to prove that he indeed committed the murders without being able to compel him to testify.
You're wrong...nobody can be denied access to EMERGENCY healthcare and hospitals (all) are only obliged to get the person stable before the person is involuntary discharged.
You've clearly never had to deal with American hospitals as a poor, uninsured person. I have many close friends who have, with me at their side. I know exactly what happened. They were not thrown out. They were given the treatment they needed or they were charged what they could afford. In many cases, the doctors volunteered their services.
Your other point, that all hospitals are required to render aid, is also wrong. Completely private hospitals in the USA are under no legal obligation whatsoever to render aid to anyone that they don't want to.
You only have a better healthcare system for those with private insurance, dumb ass!
You must be from outside of the USA to make such an uninformed statement. While that is true in foreign countries, it is not at all true in this country. No poor person can be kicked out of a publically funded hospital (and there are many). No person can be denied access to the latest and greatest medical gadgetry because they cannot pay if they go to a publically funded hospital. Name one instance in the USA where someone who could not pay has died because they were denied care.
And since you are totally clueless, let me enlighten you. Many of the people who have no insurance are rich people who can afford to pay for things out of pocket. Simply not having insurance in the USA does not mean you cannot get quality healthcare.
Now let's look at the rest of the world. Take Canada, for instance. Sure, everything is free there, but why do so many of their rich people come here for healthcare? Why do so many rich people from other countries come here? I have many relatives abroad, who are taxed up the ass to pay for their state run commie healthcare, but they insist on paying for private insurance there as well. Why, you may ask? Its simple, their public system sucks, and their private system is better.
The US Government also spends a bigger portion of GDP on healthcare than countries with socialized healthcare such as Canada, too.
Which is why we have a much better healthcare system than every other country. If you don't believe me, then ask the health systems in other countries why they send their sickest people to the USA for treatment.Kids go to school hungry...
Bullshit. Poor people in the USA are more likely to be overweight than to be starving to death.
President Walter Mondale. (There's a reason he only carried Minnesota and D.C.)
Actually, as a result of the 2002 election in which he volunteered to run for Paul Wellstone's US Senate seat, Walter Mondale is now famous for being the only person to have lost a state-wide election in every single US state.
To put this in perspective, this is about as hard to accomplish as getting a 0 on the SAT! :)
If the language barrier interfere's with that, why are they bothering to even release it?
Going back to my example with Chrysler, Lee Iacocca said that there was no economic incentive to localize their products to Japan because they weren't selling enough vehicles, even though the reason they weren't selling enough vehicles was because they were not localized. Essentially, it looks as if Microsoft is "selling more of the wrong thing" (Iacocca's words) before they have an incentive "to start selling the right thing."
But then again, do a lot of Japanese people understand English? My guess once again is that they don't, and as a result they won't care for games that are English-only just as most Americans wouldn't buy Japanese products that weren't localized for this country. Japanese industries (cars being the most obvious example) swept the markets here because they sold the customers what they wanted. They knew they weren't going to make it in the USA if they did otherwise. I don't understand why Microsoft is taking the opposite approach in Japan and expecting it to work. Maybe they just are not used to playing in a competitive market.
They made the mistake of going into Japan with out many Japanese games, hoping that localized Western games would be enough to drive the market.
It wouldn't be the first time an American company made that mistake. I remember watching an old 60 Minutes interview in which former Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca was complaining about how their cars were not selling in Japan. Aside from the fact that Chrysler continues to be at the bottom of the list in terms of quality, Iacocca explained that they didn't bother to localize the cars they sold there at the time (that may have changed now). The cars included:
I'm not sure what kind of TV system they use in Japan... I doubt its NTSC... or if its not, are NTSC TVs easy to get there? If Microsoft thinks this is going to work... past evidence will prove otherwise :)
you just have to allow the entity you are talking about a chance to reply
This sounds a lot like the old "Fairness Doctrine" that was applied to US radio broadcasts prior to 1988. That rule said that if you broadcasted X hours of programming with a certain point of view, you also had to broadcast X hours of programming with an opposing point of view. The main problem with this was that in many situations, one of the sets of programs was a ratings loser and hence a major money loser, so the radio stations would not broadcast either. Some people have even argued that this practice stiffled peoples' expression of controversial opinions on the radio.
Aren't you supposed to only be charged for outgoing messages?
If you're a Cingular subscriber (which I am) and you don't get a plan that includes a given number of text messages, then you pay 10 cents for each incoming and outgoing message, which can be sent to you via email just like any other spam, so if this started happening to me, I would have no choice but to cancel messaging on my phone.
If you cancel messaging, you will still receive messages, but you won't pay for them.
How on earth did you come up with "The average employer pays about $1.35 to $1.50 per $1.00 that the employee receives"?
A typo, that's how. LOL. I should have said "for every" and not "per." As for the numbers though, I worked for a small company and that's how things were done there. I saw it and that is how I know.
No it's not - a savings account is for frequent transactions. It is definitely not an investment vehicle.
I'll agree with you that a savings account isn't ideal for investment, no one is going to retire with that money. However, if you roll that money into a mutual fund, COD or other type of investment and you try to withdraw you will encur some major penalities, tax and otherwise. A savings account doesn't have these problems. And wouldn't a checking account be more suited to frequent transactions?
If you have 6 months worth of living expenses saved up ($15,000+ for me), just sitting in an account somewhere, "just in case," then you're an idiot.
But that's exactly the whole point of a savings account. Keeping that kind of money in the bank even if you're raking in cash is definitely not stupid. It will earn a fairly decent amount of interest before you need to use it.
That's what a line of credit is for
LOL! With no job? That's rich! (pun intended)