It goes beyond that, even. With a traditional cell phone contract, your bill doesn't change once you pay off the phone, because you never actually pay off the phone, because you aren't financing it; instead, the plan price is increased to subsidize the phone price, so you actually keep paying for the phone, even after it's been paid for several times over. With the finance agreement, once you pay off the phone, you stop paying for the phone.
The crux of the issue is, T-Mobile used to offer both options. You could choose a traditional 2 year contract and subsidized handset, which was priced competitively against offerings from the other "big 3" carriers. It actually worked out to your advantage if you wanted a shiny new flagship handset every two years.
They also offered a less expensive month-to-month option, with no handset subsidies. This existed before T-Mobile started calling themselves an "un-carrier" and removed the contract plans.
As I pointed out in my original post (now modded into oblivion, likely by T-Mobile shills), if you already own your phone outright, there are cheaper places to bring it to. As an example, I pay $35/mo with absolutely no bullshit fees or taxes, for unlimited talk, unlimited text and 2.5GB of high-speed data (with the typical unusably slow throttled "unlimited data", thereafter). On T-Mobile, their nearest comparable plan (3GB) would cost $60/mo and they'd tack on all the fees and taxes, too.
Let's ignore the taxes and assume a flat $25/mo price difference. With the money I'm saving by being on Cricket instead of T-Mobile, in 2 years, I've saved a total of $600. Using the iPhone as an example ($650 full retail price), the typical contract subsidy is $450. There's more than enough profit in T-Mobile's pricing to give you a handset upgrade every two years and still keep $150 more profit than Cricket. T-Mobile just uses clever marketing to trick you into thinking you're already getting the best deal possible!
No it's not the same as the traditional cell phone contract. With the traditional cell phone contract, whether I buy an $800 iPhone or a $100 cheap Android phone, I would still owe the same termination fee. With t-mobile, I pay the cost of the phone and I'm done.
Then you fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Here's T-Mobile's old terms:
$200 if termination occurs with more than 180 days remaining on your term; $100 if termination occurs with 91 to 180 days remaining on your term; $50 if termination occurs with 31 to 90 days remaining on your term; and the lesser of $50 or your monthly recurring charges (including any applicable taxes and fees) if termination occurs in the last 30 days of your term.
Unless you were signing a contract for a dumbphone or an entry-level low-end smartphone, you generally came out financially ahead over paying full retail price for a flagship handset, even if you left the carrier immediately after signing up.
What if you actually wanted a cheap phone? Well, here's the kicker - T-Mobile always allowed you to establish month-to-month service if you brought your own phone (or purchased one outright). All they've done as the "un-carrier", is put a positive marketing spin on eliminating discounted handsets. In other words, providing less consumer choice.
Congratulations, you fell for T-Mobile's newspeak. Their "un-carrier" initiative basically meant taking everything people hate about wireless service, making it slightly worse and giving it a new name. They don't do contracts with those evil pro-rated early termination fees, no sir-ree! Now it's a finance agreement, which is totally not the same thing as a contract! Of course, they did get a slap on the wrist for being a bit misleading in that regard. However, they're still getting away with advertising "unlimited data" on all of their plans, when it's abundantly clear that the throttled data speed is completely unusable, once you've used up your high speed allotment.
Here's a few suggestions:
Check your data usage settings on your iPhone. Don't allow app updates over cellular data. Apps can also individually have their background data turned off. If you use Facebook, set it to not auto-load videos over cellular data.
Complain to the FTC. They recently went after Straight Talk for offering "unlimited" plans that aren't, and T-Mobile's throttle speed is so slow, it's essentially no different than being cut off completely.
Consider switching to Cricket (now owned by AT&T). You can get a 5GB plan for what you're paying T-Mobile and it runs on AT&T's far superior network.
Lastly, do the math and see if it's just worth the extra few bucks a month to upgrade to the real unlimited plan. If your time is valuable, it might simply make more sense to cough up the dough, rather than hunting open WiFi hotspots and carefully monitoring your cellular data usage every month.
It sounds like you're describing what it's like to browse the Internet on the older iDevices which have 512MB of RAM. If you're dead-set on sticking to iOS, it's time to open your wallet up and make a generous donation to Apple. Or, as suggested by the rest of the peanut gallery, switch to Android.
For me, opening cell companies to reasonably priced data (by jumping in at the right time and locking in with AT&T) is what Apple did to open the market.
At the time, Sprint actually offered unlimited EVDO data (they called it "Power Vision", back then) as a $10/mo add-on. They even had a 500 minute plan as part of their "SERO" offering for $30/mo which even included unlimited data. I had Sprint back then, and while EVDO speeds are a sad joke today, they absolutely smoked the EDGE speeds the iPhone got on AT&T's GSM network. Also, no one was using it back then to post pictures of their lunch and watch Justin Bieber videos, so the data speeds were relatively consistent. Sprint's phones, on the other hand, were fucking awful.
What Apple bought to the market was a smartphone that people actually enjoyed using. But, by popularizing smartphones among the masses, they've opened a Pandora's box of data usage that has truly made $10 unlimited, unthrottled data, a relic of the past.
If you don't mind all the caveats of having phone service that only works when you're in range of a WiFi hotspot, Freedompop offers exactly the same thing, nationwide, for $5/mo.
And as others have said, if you don't mind hotspot hunting when you want data, you can easily find unlimited talk & text plans on real cellular networks for under $30/mo. Heck, pony up the extra $5/mo for the $35/mo plan and Cricket (which is now a national carrier owned by AT&T) will throw in 1GB of data.
Leave it to cable companies to be even more clueless than Ma Bell...
Ting's à la carte pricing is fine for light users, but the average smartphone addicted millennial, it's a certified ripoff. But yeah, Google is entering a crowded marketplace. Just by themselves, Sprint and T-Mobile have quite a few of their own virtual carriers. Sprint has Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile. T-Mobile has MetroPCS, GoSmart Mobile, and they've also partnered with Walmart for Family Mobile and Target for BrightSpot Mobile.
Then you've got the big daddy of MVNOs, América Móvil. They already resell competitively priced wireless service from all 4 national carriers. You might be more familiar with them as Tracfone, Safelink, Net10, Simple Mobile, Page Plus Cellular, Telcel América and Straight Talk.
Until Google actually starts building their own network, don't expect a huge industry shake-up. In the cellular industry, the networks are gold and you know the golden rule...
There's all kinds of services people can offer without pesky government interference! Meal sharing could be the next killer app. Why pay restaurant prices when you can just search for a family with an extra chair at their dinner table?
It's like when your furnace goes out and you find some self-proclaimed handyman on Craigslist to fix it. Licensed, bonded, insured? Hah, those are just extra costs that would be passed on to you. You're saving a bundle and carbon monoxide poisoning is probably just some B.S. made up by those government brown nosing "legit" guys who charge higher prices!
For most people, gift buying breaks down into three categories:
1. People you're willing to splurge for. Close family, offspring, significant other, etc. Since these are the people you interact with the most, not being clued in to what they wanted for a gift is an epic fail. No gift guide is going to help you here.
2. Good friends, extended family. These people are the reason gift cards were invented. Sure, some people may argue that it's not personal enough, but screw that. Everybody loves a free meal at a restaurant or a few free app downloads.
3. Cow-orkers, that guy you added on Facebook and can't remember why, your kid's teachers and anyone else you're giving gifts to as a matter of obligatory holiday procedure. These people get shit from the bargain bins at your local drug store (while you're there buying gift cards).
You could also always change your faith to one that doesn't celebrate holidays involving gift giving. That's probably cheaper, too.
When she grows up, she might be an artist, a counselor, or an HR professional. She almost certainly won't be a princess, though, so don't worry about that.
Or she might get knocked up in highschool and drop out. Kids don't always turn out the way you plan and being a good parent means encouraging your kids to succeed and still loving them even when they fall flat on their ass.
It's also a bit hypocritical when geeky/nerdy parents act all shocked and shaken when their offspring would rather go out and interact with other kids than stay at home and play with a chemistry set. Hint: it's just as bad being the stereotypical jock father who smashes in his son's door because the kid prefers reading over sports.
I've hated cursive with a passion, ever since I was forced to learn it in public school. I could never manage legibility at anything remotely resembling a decent writing speed, so half the time I couldn't even decipher my own notes. I had absolutely no trouble picking up typing and at 12 years old, I could easily type faster than any of my classmates could write. The only problem was, this was still the dark ages and the school staff felt that allowing me to use a portable word processor would be an unfair advantage over other students and that I deserved bad grades due to my inferior handwriting ability.
We don't teach kids to chisel on stone tablets or write on slates, so I see absolutely no reason why cursive can't also be relegated to the past. Good riddance.
They're quoting CmdrTaco, who used those exact words to describe the original iPod upon it's announcement. Damn kids these days....
You have to remember, Apple eventually decided to release iPods with support for Windows. Will they release a "Watch" that works with Android? Probably not.
Seriously, just buy a good CRT. Stop fooling around with all this line doubler crap
This.
Fancy upscalers and scaling filters can make retro games look (debatably) better on modern displays and maybe for some people that is good enough. But it's hard to beat a Craigslist CRT for an authentic classic gaming experience. Thankfully, there's still plenty of 'em that haven't been dropped off roofs, used for target practice or shipped to the third world for "recycling".
Eventually when the cheap used CRT supply dries up, with luck we'll all have cheap 4k OLED displays and CRT emulation won't look like such a steaming pile of dog shit.
I mean say what you want about their current products, but their entire deal has been putting software on devices that for the vast bulk of users doesn't suck.
His problem is that he is on T-Mobile.
On AT&T, Verizon or Sprint, he could've just signed a contract and gotten an iPhone 5C for free* (so-called) during various promotions. Thanks to T-Mobile's spin campaign of "We eliminated contracts because the public is too stupid to realize a finance agreement is still a contract", purchasing a phone from them means financing or coughing up the full cost of the phone. Hence, you have the current situation where T-Mobile's service is only cost competitive against the other big 3 carriers if you buy a cheap phone or happen to already own a phone that is compatible with their network.
While the threat of a 51% attack may be blown out of proportion (a pool sells their cut of the coins that are mined and it is in their best interest that the coin remain as valuable as possible - attacking a coin would be counterproductive), some altcoin developers have stated that they will change their coin's proof-of-work algorithm if ASICs are developed for it. Vertcoin and Execoin's developers have both stated they'll do whatever it takes to keep ASICs out.
Most of the speculation that fuels the pump-and-dump world of altcoins is based on the belief that Bitcoin may not end up being the cryptocoin that average people use to buy pizza, pay their bills, etc.
Isn't the chargeback potential a risk under paypal not found for bitcoin? When someone gets paid the charge can be reversed at any time per Paypal's discretion. Thieves will buy bitcoins all the time on ebay with stolen paypal accounts and than the seller will be out all the money when paypal reverses the transaction. Additionally, isn't paypals security polices also a risk for the user unlike with bitcoin where you can trust the mathematics and network which is immune from many traditional attack vectors?
Yes, chargebacks are a potential fraud risk for business owners. As a customer, though, being able to perform a chargeback is an important safeguard against a seller that doesn't make good on their part of a transaction.
While having your bank/credit card information on file at PayPal is also a potential security risk, it's still significantly less of a risk than trusting every business you allow to directly process your credit card.
Bitcoin does solve the issue of being able to electronically pay people you may not trust, but so does PayPal. Bitcoin transactions are slow to confirm, you have no protection as a buyer to perform a chargeback (for example, you buy tickets for a concert that turn out to be counterfeit) and the price of Bitcoin is extremely unstable. Bitcoin also is not really free of transaction fees, either. You will pay a fee to an exchange when buying Bitcoin with fiat.
Bitcoin's deflationary design also makes it lousy as a currency, since why would you use it to buy two pizzas today when that same amount a few years from now might buy you a Tesla Model S?
Cryptocurrency probably does have a place in the future of commerce, but it will probably be something that addresses Bitcoin's serious shortcomings.
There's no intelligent debate to be had, or a debate at all. It's just the government violating the highest law of the land, and people who give a shit trying to stop them. They had no moral high ground since the beginning.
The point is, if the situation is dire and serious, the message should be as well. Think about it for a second, if someone on here posted "Don't buy an iPhone because Apple wants to lick your balls!" it would be moderated as troll in the blink of an eye. It works for Southpark because the objective is to get you to laugh. When you're pointing out an injustice being committed by the government, you should be trying to get people to think.
Southpark has already done plenty of political satire peppered with dick and fart jokes. If Snowden doesn't want to come across as a tinfoil hat loonie, he should probably tone down the juvenile humor a notch. It's frequently said that those who resort to insults do so because they can't hold an intelligent debate.
Not only does the iPhone have the frequency bands the asker wants, but it is one of the easiest phones to purchase completely unlocked and off-contract in the USA (so long as you purchase direct from Apple). Most other contract-free phones here are still sold locked to the carrier, and generally require several months of paid service before the carrier will provide an unlock code.
Other less expensive options for a world phone would be Google's Nexus 5 or Motorola's Moto G (if you don't absolutely need LTE).
Considering all the above, I'm convinced that it makes much more sense to put solar on rooftops.
We're not even remotely close to running out of places to install PV panels, where they'll never see the business end of a vehicle tire. PVs are presently just too damn expensive, even when you're not engineering them to withstand being constantly run over.
The news story here is really that fools are still being parted from their money.
We've learned that in the U.S., over $160 billion is lost each year in lost productivity from people sitting in traffic due to road maintenance.
No, it's time that would've been spent at home scratching your ass. Tesla pulls this same crap too in their marketing, by claiming your time spent pumping gas is wasted income. Your time is only worth something if you actually would've spent that time earning money. Why else do you think we call it "free time"?
Road delays do waste fuel, but that's more easily solved with improved vehicle technologies, rather than expensive pie-in-the-sky tech roads.
Slashdot Mirror
It goes beyond that, even. With a traditional cell phone contract, your bill doesn't change once you pay off the phone, because you never actually pay off the phone, because you aren't financing it; instead, the plan price is increased to subsidize the phone price, so you actually keep paying for the phone, even after it's been paid for several times over. With the finance agreement, once you pay off the phone, you stop paying for the phone.
The crux of the issue is, T-Mobile used to offer both options. You could choose a traditional 2 year contract and subsidized handset, which was priced competitively against offerings from the other "big 3" carriers. It actually worked out to your advantage if you wanted a shiny new flagship handset every two years.
They also offered a less expensive month-to-month option, with no handset subsidies. This existed before T-Mobile started calling themselves an "un-carrier" and removed the contract plans.
As I pointed out in my original post (now modded into oblivion, likely by T-Mobile shills), if you already own your phone outright, there are cheaper places to bring it to. As an example, I pay $35/mo with absolutely no bullshit fees or taxes, for unlimited talk, unlimited text and 2.5GB of high-speed data (with the typical unusably slow throttled "unlimited data", thereafter). On T-Mobile, their nearest comparable plan (3GB) would cost $60/mo and they'd tack on all the fees and taxes, too.
Let's ignore the taxes and assume a flat $25/mo price difference. With the money I'm saving by being on Cricket instead of T-Mobile, in 2 years, I've saved a total of $600. Using the iPhone as an example ($650 full retail price), the typical contract subsidy is $450. There's more than enough profit in T-Mobile's pricing to give you a handset upgrade every two years and still keep $150 more profit than Cricket. T-Mobile just uses clever marketing to trick you into thinking you're already getting the best deal possible!
You're an un-customer to the un-carrier.
No it's not the same as the traditional cell phone contract. With the traditional cell phone contract, whether I buy an $800 iPhone or a $100 cheap Android phone, I would still owe the same termination fee. With t-mobile, I pay the cost of the phone and I'm done.
Then you fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Here's T-Mobile's old terms:
$200 if termination occurs with more than 180 days remaining on your term; $100 if termination occurs with 91 to 180 days remaining on your term; $50 if termination occurs with 31 to 90 days remaining on your term; and the lesser of $50 or your monthly recurring charges (including any applicable taxes and fees) if termination occurs in the last 30 days of your term.
Unless you were signing a contract for a dumbphone or an entry-level low-end smartphone, you generally came out financially ahead over paying full retail price for a flagship handset, even if you left the carrier immediately after signing up.
What if you actually wanted a cheap phone? Well, here's the kicker - T-Mobile always allowed you to establish month-to-month service if you brought your own phone (or purchased one outright). All they've done as the "un-carrier", is put a positive marketing spin on eliminating discounted handsets. In other words, providing less consumer choice.
Congratulations, you fell for T-Mobile's newspeak. Their "un-carrier" initiative basically meant taking everything people hate about wireless service, making it slightly worse and giving it a new name. They don't do contracts with those evil pro-rated early termination fees, no sir-ree! Now it's a finance agreement, which is totally not the same thing as a contract! Of course, they did get a slap on the wrist for being a bit misleading in that regard. However, they're still getting away with advertising "unlimited data" on all of their plans, when it's abundantly clear that the throttled data speed is completely unusable, once you've used up your high speed allotment.
Here's a few suggestions:
Check your data usage settings on your iPhone. Don't allow app updates over cellular data. Apps can also individually have their background data turned off. If you use Facebook, set it to not auto-load videos over cellular data.
Complain to the FTC. They recently went after Straight Talk for offering "unlimited" plans that aren't, and T-Mobile's throttle speed is so slow, it's essentially no different than being cut off completely.
Consider switching to Cricket (now owned by AT&T). You can get a 5GB plan for what you're paying T-Mobile and it runs on AT&T's far superior network.
Lastly, do the math and see if it's just worth the extra few bucks a month to upgrade to the real unlimited plan. If your time is valuable, it might simply make more sense to cough up the dough, rather than hunting open WiFi hotspots and carefully monitoring your cellular data usage every month.
It sounds like you're describing what it's like to browse the Internet on the older iDevices which have 512MB of RAM. If you're dead-set on sticking to iOS, it's time to open your wallet up and make a generous donation to Apple. Or, as suggested by the rest of the peanut gallery, switch to Android.
For me, opening cell companies to reasonably priced data (by jumping in at the right time and locking in with AT&T) is what Apple did to open the market.
At the time, Sprint actually offered unlimited EVDO data (they called it "Power Vision", back then) as a $10/mo add-on. They even had a 500 minute plan as part of their "SERO" offering for $30/mo which even included unlimited data. I had Sprint back then, and while EVDO speeds are a sad joke today, they absolutely smoked the EDGE speeds the iPhone got on AT&T's GSM network. Also, no one was using it back then to post pictures of their lunch and watch Justin Bieber videos, so the data speeds were relatively consistent. Sprint's phones, on the other hand, were fucking awful.
What Apple bought to the market was a smartphone that people actually enjoyed using. But, by popularizing smartphones among the masses, they've opened a Pandora's box of data usage that has truly made $10 unlimited, unthrottled data, a relic of the past.
If you don't mind all the caveats of having phone service that only works when you're in range of a WiFi hotspot, Freedompop offers exactly the same thing, nationwide, for $5/mo.
And as others have said, if you don't mind hotspot hunting when you want data, you can easily find unlimited talk & text plans on real cellular networks for under $30/mo. Heck, pony up the extra $5/mo for the $35/mo plan and Cricket (which is now a national carrier owned by AT&T) will throw in 1GB of data.
Leave it to cable companies to be even more clueless than Ma Bell...
They have an excellent selection of 3-button mice at Circuit City. What, don't you have a time machine?
Ting's à la carte pricing is fine for light users, but the average smartphone addicted millennial, it's a certified ripoff. But yeah, Google is entering a crowded marketplace. Just by themselves, Sprint and T-Mobile have quite a few of their own virtual carriers. Sprint has Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile. T-Mobile has MetroPCS, GoSmart Mobile, and they've also partnered with Walmart for Family Mobile and Target for BrightSpot Mobile.
Then you've got the big daddy of MVNOs, América Móvil. They already resell competitively priced wireless service from all 4 national carriers. You might be more familiar with them as Tracfone, Safelink, Net10, Simple Mobile, Page Plus Cellular, Telcel América and Straight Talk.
Until Google actually starts building their own network, don't expect a huge industry shake-up. In the cellular industry, the networks are gold and you know the golden rule...
There's all kinds of services people can offer without pesky government interference! Meal sharing could be the next killer app. Why pay restaurant prices when you can just search for a family with an extra chair at their dinner table?
It's like when your furnace goes out and you find some self-proclaimed handyman on Craigslist to fix it. Licensed, bonded, insured? Hah, those are just extra costs that would be passed on to you. You're saving a bundle and carbon monoxide poisoning is probably just some B.S. made up by those government brown nosing "legit" guys who charge higher prices!
...for Whitehouse.gov as a platform to spur/enact popular initiatives?
0 for 15,000?
The cell phone unlocking petition actually accomplished something. Then again, the government has never really liked phone companies.
For most people, gift buying breaks down into three categories:
1. People you're willing to splurge for. Close family, offspring, significant other, etc. Since these are the people you interact with the most, not being clued in to what they wanted for a gift is an epic fail. No gift guide is going to help you here.
2. Good friends, extended family. These people are the reason gift cards were invented. Sure, some people may argue that it's not personal enough, but screw that. Everybody loves a free meal at a restaurant or a few free app downloads.
3. Cow-orkers, that guy you added on Facebook and can't remember why, your kid's teachers and anyone else you're giving gifts to as a matter of obligatory holiday procedure. These people get shit from the bargain bins at your local drug store (while you're there buying gift cards).
You could also always change your faith to one that doesn't celebrate holidays involving gift giving. That's probably cheaper, too.
When she grows up, she might be an artist, a counselor, or an HR professional. She almost certainly won't be a princess, though, so don't worry about that.
Or she might get knocked up in highschool and drop out. Kids don't always turn out the way you plan and being a good parent means encouraging your kids to succeed and still loving them even when they fall flat on their ass.
It's also a bit hypocritical when geeky/nerdy parents act all shocked and shaken when their offspring would rather go out and interact with other kids than stay at home and play with a chemistry set. Hint: it's just as bad being the stereotypical jock father who smashes in his son's door because the kid prefers reading over sports.
I've hated cursive with a passion, ever since I was forced to learn it in public school. I could never manage legibility at anything remotely resembling a decent writing speed, so half the time I couldn't even decipher my own notes. I had absolutely no trouble picking up typing and at 12 years old, I could easily type faster than any of my classmates could write. The only problem was, this was still the dark ages and the school staff felt that allowing me to use a portable word processor would be an unfair advantage over other students and that I deserved bad grades due to my inferior handwriting ability.
We don't teach kids to chisel on stone tablets or write on slates, so I see absolutely no reason why cursive can't also be relegated to the past. Good riddance.
They're quoting CmdrTaco, who used those exact words to describe the original iPod upon it's announcement. Damn kids these days....
You have to remember, Apple eventually decided to release iPods with support for Windows. Will they release a "Watch" that works with Android? Probably not.
Seriously, just buy a good CRT. Stop fooling around with all this line doubler crap
This.
Fancy upscalers and scaling filters can make retro games look (debatably) better on modern displays and maybe for some people that is good enough. But it's hard to beat a Craigslist CRT for an authentic classic gaming experience. Thankfully, there's still plenty of 'em that haven't been dropped off roofs, used for target practice or shipped to the third world for "recycling".
Eventually when the cheap used CRT supply dries up, with luck we'll all have cheap 4k OLED displays and CRT emulation won't look like such a steaming pile of dog shit.
I mean say what you want about their current products, but their entire deal has been putting software on devices that for the vast bulk of users doesn't suck.
His problem is that he is on T-Mobile.
On AT&T, Verizon or Sprint, he could've just signed a contract and gotten an iPhone 5C for free* (so-called) during various promotions. Thanks to T-Mobile's spin campaign of "We eliminated contracts because the public is too stupid to realize a finance agreement is still a contract", purchasing a phone from them means financing or coughing up the full cost of the phone. Hence, you have the current situation where T-Mobile's service is only cost competitive against the other big 3 carriers if you buy a cheap phone or happen to already own a phone that is compatible with their network.
While the threat of a 51% attack may be blown out of proportion (a pool sells their cut of the coins that are mined and it is in their best interest that the coin remain as valuable as possible - attacking a coin would be counterproductive), some altcoin developers have stated that they will change their coin's proof-of-work algorithm if ASICs are developed for it. Vertcoin and Execoin's developers have both stated they'll do whatever it takes to keep ASICs out.
Most of the speculation that fuels the pump-and-dump world of altcoins is based on the belief that Bitcoin may not end up being the cryptocoin that average people use to buy pizza, pay their bills, etc.
Isn't the chargeback potential a risk under paypal not found for bitcoin? When someone gets paid the charge can be reversed at any time per Paypal's discretion. Thieves will buy bitcoins all the time on ebay with stolen paypal accounts and than the seller will be out all the money when paypal reverses the transaction. Additionally, isn't paypals security polices also a risk for the user unlike with bitcoin where you can trust the mathematics and network which is immune from many traditional attack vectors?
Yes, chargebacks are a potential fraud risk for business owners. As a customer, though, being able to perform a chargeback is an important safeguard against a seller that doesn't make good on their part of a transaction.
While having your bank/credit card information on file at PayPal is also a potential security risk, it's still significantly less of a risk than trusting every business you allow to directly process your credit card.
Bitcoin does solve the issue of being able to electronically pay people you may not trust, but so does PayPal. Bitcoin transactions are slow to confirm, you have no protection as a buyer to perform a chargeback (for example, you buy tickets for a concert that turn out to be counterfeit) and the price of Bitcoin is extremely unstable. Bitcoin also is not really free of transaction fees, either. You will pay a fee to an exchange when buying Bitcoin with fiat.
Bitcoin's deflationary design also makes it lousy as a currency, since why would you use it to buy two pizzas today when that same amount a few years from now might buy you a Tesla Model S?
Cryptocurrency probably does have a place in the future of commerce, but it will probably be something that addresses Bitcoin's serious shortcomings.
There's no intelligent debate to be had, or a debate at all. It's just the government violating the highest law of the land, and people who give a shit trying to stop them. They had no moral high ground since the beginning.
The point is, if the situation is dire and serious, the message should be as well. Think about it for a second, if someone on here posted "Don't buy an iPhone because Apple wants to lick your balls!" it would be moderated as troll in the blink of an eye. It works for Southpark because the objective is to get you to laugh. When you're pointing out an injustice being committed by the government, you should be trying to get people to think.
Southpark has already done plenty of political satire peppered with dick and fart jokes. If Snowden doesn't want to come across as a tinfoil hat loonie, he should probably tone down the juvenile humor a notch. It's frequently said that those who resort to insults do so because they can't hold an intelligent debate.
I'm eagerly awaiting the day when all communication on the internet can be done either via cat pictures or quoting memes
we're getting closer and closer.
You're welcome.
Not only does the iPhone have the frequency bands the asker wants, but it is one of the easiest phones to purchase completely unlocked and off-contract in the USA (so long as you purchase direct from Apple). Most other contract-free phones here are still sold locked to the carrier, and generally require several months of paid service before the carrier will provide an unlock code.
Other less expensive options for a world phone would be Google's Nexus 5 or Motorola's Moto G (if you don't absolutely need LTE).
Considering all the above, I'm convinced that it makes much more sense to put solar on rooftops.
We're not even remotely close to running out of places to install PV panels, where they'll never see the business end of a vehicle tire. PVs are presently just too damn expensive, even when you're not engineering them to withstand being constantly run over.
The news story here is really that fools are still being parted from their money.
We've learned that in the U.S., over $160 billion is lost each year in lost productivity from people sitting in traffic due to road maintenance.
No, it's time that would've been spent at home scratching your ass. Tesla pulls this same crap too in their marketing, by claiming your time spent pumping gas is wasted income. Your time is only worth something if you actually would've spent that time earning money. Why else do you think we call it "free time"?
Road delays do waste fuel, but that's more easily solved with improved vehicle technologies, rather than expensive pie-in-the-sky tech roads.