As long as I am only taxed in one state. Last year I was taxed in 2 states because my residence was listed in one and I worked in the other. But now that I want to file a refund to get that money back in one or the other, neither will want to give me anything back.
Except for the fact that after coming out of a deep sleep, it takes me like 20 minutes to focus my eyes on something as bright as the screen on my phone. Hurts like hell too.
There's an easier (and much healthier) solution to falling asleep: exercise. Normally I don't go to sleep until around midnight and wakeup around 9. However, if I spend a long day working (physical work, moving stuff around, etc) my lights are out by 10 and I sleep till around 9 again.
A rigorous exercise regime towards the evening will help a lot. After work, sometime before dinner, run or swim a couple miles as fast as possible and lift a ton of weight. Then go home, eat a good meal to help your body repair over night, and you'll go to sleep really fast. And the effects carry over to the next day a little bit. So if you exercise every other day, you'll still have an easier time going to sleep on the inbetween days.
That's the job of the individual service providers. Comcast can be a provider if they want too, but that cost is the same for anyone else, so it doesn't count here.
I used to have an apartment serviced by Comcast. I wanted internet only because the only TV I had was a little 10" that I would never watch anything on. It just had a VCR built in, so if I needed to check a tape or something. My computer had a DVD player and a 19" monitor. It was $57/month for internet or $40/month for internet if you paid for $10/month for cable. After all the fees it was pretty much the same cost, but the internet was $2 or $3 cheaper. So as far as I was concerned, I ended up paying $55/month or so for internet only - seems like WAY too much to me. Unforunately I couldn't get anything else there, and I needed internet.
But the cable companies recoup their initial installation costs after the first couple years of service. Why do they need to do that for all eternity? After 20 years, they've probably made back 100x the cost of the initial installation. How about we even have the government pay for the lines then? The cable companies can install them, the government pays them 2x the cost of installation so that they make a profit, and then everyone gets access to them? The cable companies should be happy with that right? Because that is one of their core complaints... cost of the initial installation, right?
Wrong... they would make a truckload more money off their monoply than being paid for installation. And they'll fight tooth and nail to protect their monopoly.
Except that the incentive to expand doesn't really exist. If the cable companies want to get more business, they just hike rates (like I see every 6 months or so on my bill). They don't expand into rural areas, they just expand where shitloads of cash are to be made. See that new subdivision going up 5 miles out of town? Well, let's run a new line over there so we can collect tons of service fees. What about all the people along the way on side roads off the main run? Ah, forget them, we can't make as much money off them. That's exactly what happens all over the place. They aren't spreading service to more rural areas, they just follow the population density wherever it goes. If competition existed whereby anyone could expand the network to get new subscribers, but had to allow everyone to access their new runs after 3 years or so, expansion would be rampant.
I totally agree with the companies needing to recoup their costs from installation, and perhaps I looked over this point in my original comment. But the companies recoup their costs extremely quickly, within the first couple years of service in a particular area. Regulations should be in place that once a company recoups its costs (plus some incentive bonus), the lines should be opened up to other companies. I know in my area, where cable has been around for over 15 years and internet for nearly 10 years, that the cable companies recouped their costs a long time ago. Now, they are just raping the public and bringing in truckloads of dough for practically nothing.
I don't have a problem with people making smart investments, but when fast internet access is as important as it is today, allowing a company to corner citizens into buying their services is wrong. The internet is as vital to many citizens today as is a water or power source.
The cable lines should be public domain after the company makes enough money off them initially, or once the government reimburses the company for their installation.
I would agree with you except for the fact that the cable companies recoup the initial investment extremely quickly. Say you decide to open service up down a new road. You already have service at the start of the road (where it intersects another major road) and you just need to tap into that service, add a repeater maybe, run the lines down the road, to each individual house, and reconfigure the central location for these new accounts. Say the new road is 5 miles long and each house on the road has 200 feet of frontage (fairly distant spacing... a country road or something). That would be 132 houses per side, 264 house total. Since the company is the monopoly in town, everyone has no choice but to go with them. Let's say 90% sign up for service and the other 10% just suffer in the stone age. That is 238 subscribers total. Let's say they all get internet and basic cable (many would expand on the basic cable I bet). At $40/month for internet and $40/month for basic cable, that's $80/month (forget fees, taxes, box rental, modem rental, installation cost, etc for now).
A crew of 3 or 4 guys could run the 5 mile stretch of lines in a week, and hookup any repeaters, etc. Say $52000/year salaries, that's $1000/week... $4000 install cost for 4 guys. Multiply x2 for benefits, etc $8000 total in labor.
Material and installation cost is $5000 per 1/4 mile * 20 1/4miles = $100000.
Another 4 guys for the central office configuration = $8000.
We're at $116000 right now... Add another $20000 for repeaters, extra central office equipment, etc. Still only at $136000.
Double that number just for the hell of it... $272000, now we're $50000 over the revenue.
That's only 1.2 years to recoup costs. Let's say my numbers are way off, let's double that number of years... that's less than 2.5 years. Add another 0.5 years for safe measure... And the cable companies will recoup their costs (and then some) in under 3 years. Yet, they've maintained monopolies in many areas for much longer than that. I know in my particular area, Comcast (formerly TimeWarner, formerly Mediaone, formerly RoadRunner, etc) has maintained a monopoly on cable for at least 15 years, and internet (until some recent DSL offerings) for at least 10 years. I think they recouped their costs a long fucking time ago.
I think the previous reply made a good point. We should separate the maintenance of the equipment and the supplier of the service. The equipment should really be government property (just as most roads are), and they should pay someone to upkeep the equipment (hell, it can be Comcast for all I care). And then, the individual citizens should pay someone for the service, and any company can have access to the lines and provide the service.
About every 6 months or so I receive a nice little notice in the mail (with my bill) from Comcast telling me that rates are increasing by a couple bucks to "improve service". My fucking ass...
The FCC is supposedly there to help the public out by regulating phones, internet, RF, etc... Why would they appeal this sort of thing? It should be blatently obvious to anyone that opening up cable lines to outside companies is in the public interest (even if the cable companies gripe and do a half-ass job at it). I mean, sure, they can defend themselves in the first suit just to defend themselves. But why appeal it? This is ridiculous. The operation of the cable companies as monopolies is obvious... with their erroneous fees here and there, their slow service, the whole "wait 60 days until you get service again", bundling services so you can't get internet unless you have cable, etc, etc. None of this stuff would be as bad as it currently is if there was true competition, because they would be out of business at the drop of a hat! I think the FCC positions need to be elected or something, so at least there is SOME pressure to serve the public interest.
Anyone think this sounds familiar to the whole Rambus deal? Where Rambus was trying to push RDRAM to be the next standard... while secretly patenting it behind everyone's backs. I knew an engineer/manager who worked for Rambus during that period. Once he figured out what was going on and that upper management wouldn't change their minds about being dicks, he quit.
Sure, but what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Now it's up to the defense to prove that he didn't do the crime? Instead of the prosecution proving that he did do the crime? Somethings wrong there.
What are they going to do with your picture? Wave it in front of the camera at a murder victim's front door?
Finger prints are a bit easier, but probably not as bad, because errors in trying to plant a finger print are easier to detect.
DNA? Uh, how about just throw it wherever you want and it'll make someone look completely guilty? The only problem I can see with DNA is having enough of the sample to prove it originated from somewhere. But even if no sample was kept, only the electronic DNA record, evidence can be covered up and a particular sample can be claimed to have matched a particular DNA record. Law enforcement does this shit all the time. Need proof? Look at the number of people proven innocent since the introduction of DNA evidence... Or just look at the number of people wrongfully imprisoned overall - proven innocent at a later date by any class of evidence whatsoever.
But the larger problem is what minimal amount of evidence the public (jury) is willing to base their opinion upon. I was in California temporarily and talked to some permanent residents of the state who were typical juror candidates (towards the end of last year, in the midst of the trial, before a verdict had been reached). And the 4 or 5 people I talked to all agreed that they would convict Peterson based upon the following facts: 1) An affair while his wife was pregnant. 2) He went out on a boat on Christmas day in the same area that the body washed ashore. Scary eh? I tried to probe them as to why they felt this was sufficient evidence and they claimed things such as "intuition"; that he just seemed like such a shifty and immoral character that the only explanation for those two facts must have been that he murdered his wife.
How long can this really last? Bandwidth costs money. Servers cost money. Power costs money. Admins need to eat. I think it's a good idea, but just wondering where the funds are going to come from.
Actually the 6000 year old Earth started out as a gross misunderstanding among a few prominent christian figureheads. It spread out from there. If you consult analytical christians, they agree that the 6000 year old idea is a misunderstanding.
This shows that you know nothing about evolution. You are just a cheerleader for the theory because "it sounds cool".
Simple fact is that even the proponents of the theory, that do the actual work to further develop the theory, readily admit the existence of numerous holes and "leaps of faith" in its current state.
Seriously, go read up a little bit before you parade your ignorance around here.
Actually, modern astronomy, physics, and geology don't conflict with prevailing theology as much as you may be lead to believe (or the science-inclined masses may be lead to believe). As for the theory of evolution... it has so many problems that anyone trying to use it as a basis for an argument is akin to religious fundies anyhow. I'm not saying that evolution won't be proven in the future... but in it's current state it is nothing more than a fringe idea with a cult-like following.
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As long as I am only taxed in one state. Last year I was taxed in 2 states because my residence was listed in one and I worked in the other. But now that I want to file a refund to get that money back in one or the other, neither will want to give me anything back.
"And at 11 pounds (less if they create a mini-version), the impact on the mass budget is not too bad."
Heh. Try telling that to a subsystem manager from whom you are trying to steal 11 pounds.
So in exchange for bringing breakfast to your mom every morning, she lets you live in the basement? How cruel.
Except for the fact that after coming out of a deep sleep, it takes me like 20 minutes to focus my eyes on something as bright as the screen on my phone. Hurts like hell too.
There's an easier (and much healthier) solution to falling asleep: exercise. Normally I don't go to sleep until around midnight and wakeup around 9. However, if I spend a long day working (physical work, moving stuff around, etc) my lights are out by 10 and I sleep till around 9 again.
A rigorous exercise regime towards the evening will help a lot. After work, sometime before dinner, run or swim a couple miles as fast as possible and lift a ton of weight. Then go home, eat a good meal to help your body repair over night, and you'll go to sleep really fast. And the effects carry over to the next day a little bit. So if you exercise every other day, you'll still have an easier time going to sleep on the inbetween days.
Biological hack, lol. Very true though :)
That's the job of the individual service providers. Comcast can be a provider if they want too, but that cost is the same for anyone else, so it doesn't count here.
I'd like to see a 200 pound ostrich lay an egg the size of a Volkswagen.
I used to have an apartment serviced by Comcast. I wanted internet only because the only TV I had was a little 10" that I would never watch anything on. It just had a VCR built in, so if I needed to check a tape or something. My computer had a DVD player and a 19" monitor. It was $57/month for internet or $40/month for internet if you paid for $10/month for cable. After all the fees it was pretty much the same cost, but the internet was $2 or $3 cheaper. So as far as I was concerned, I ended up paying $55/month or so for internet only - seems like WAY too much to me. Unforunately I couldn't get anything else there, and I needed internet.
But the cable companies recoup their initial installation costs after the first couple years of service. Why do they need to do that for all eternity? After 20 years, they've probably made back 100x the cost of the initial installation. How about we even have the government pay for the lines then? The cable companies can install them, the government pays them 2x the cost of installation so that they make a profit, and then everyone gets access to them? The cable companies should be happy with that right? Because that is one of their core complaints ... cost of the initial installation, right?
... they would make a truckload more money off their monoply than being paid for installation. And they'll fight tooth and nail to protect their monopoly.
Wrong
Except that the incentive to expand doesn't really exist. If the cable companies want to get more business, they just hike rates (like I see every 6 months or so on my bill). They don't expand into rural areas, they just expand where shitloads of cash are to be made. See that new subdivision going up 5 miles out of town? Well, let's run a new line over there so we can collect tons of service fees. What about all the people along the way on side roads off the main run? Ah, forget them, we can't make as much money off them. That's exactly what happens all over the place. They aren't spreading service to more rural areas, they just follow the population density wherever it goes. If competition existed whereby anyone could expand the network to get new subscribers, but had to allow everyone to access their new runs after 3 years or so, expansion would be rampant.
I totally agree with the companies needing to recoup their costs from installation, and perhaps I looked over this point in my original comment. But the companies recoup their costs extremely quickly, within the first couple years of service in a particular area. Regulations should be in place that once a company recoups its costs (plus some incentive bonus), the lines should be opened up to other companies. I know in my area, where cable has been around for over 15 years and internet for nearly 10 years, that the cable companies recouped their costs a long time ago. Now, they are just raping the public and bringing in truckloads of dough for practically nothing. I don't have a problem with people making smart investments, but when fast internet access is as important as it is today, allowing a company to corner citizens into buying their services is wrong. The internet is as vital to many citizens today as is a water or power source. The cable lines should be public domain after the company makes enough money off them initially, or once the government reimburses the company for their installation.
I would agree with you except for the fact that the cable companies recoup the initial investment extremely quickly. Say you decide to open service up down a new road. You already have service at the start of the road (where it intersects another major road) and you just need to tap into that service, add a repeater maybe, run the lines down the road, to each individual house, and reconfigure the central location for these new accounts. Say the new road is 5 miles long and each house on the road has 200 feet of frontage (fairly distant spacing ... a country road or something). That would be 132 houses per side, 264 house total. Since the company is the monopoly in town, everyone has no choice but to go with them. Let's say 90% sign up for service and the other 10% just suffer in the stone age. That is 238 subscribers total. Let's say they all get internet and basic cable (many would expand on the basic cable I bet). At $40/month for internet and $40/month for basic cable, that's $80/month (forget fees, taxes, box rental, modem rental, installation cost, etc for now).
... $4000 install cost for 4 guys. Multiply x2 for benefits, etc $8000 total in labor.
$80/month * 12 months = $960/year
$960/year * 238 subscribers = $228480 / year
A crew of 3 or 4 guys could run the 5 mile stretch of lines in a week, and hookup any repeaters, etc. Say $52000/year salaries, that's $1000/week
Material and installation cost is $5000 per 1/4 mile * 20 1/4miles = $100000.
Another 4 guys for the central office configuration = $8000.
We're at $116000 right now... Add another $20000 for repeaters, extra central office equipment, etc. Still only at $136000.
Double that number just for the hell of it... $272000, now we're $50000 over the revenue.
That's only 1.2 years to recoup costs. Let's say my numbers are way off, let's double that number of years... that's less than 2.5 years. Add another 0.5 years for safe measure... And the cable companies will recoup their costs (and then some) in under 3 years. Yet, they've maintained monopolies in many areas for much longer than that. I know in my particular area, Comcast (formerly TimeWarner, formerly Mediaone, formerly RoadRunner, etc) has maintained a monopoly on cable for at least 15 years, and internet (until some recent DSL offerings) for at least 10 years. I think they recouped their costs a long fucking time ago.
I think the previous reply made a good point. We should separate the maintenance of the equipment and the supplier of the service. The equipment should really be government property (just as most roads are), and they should pay someone to upkeep the equipment (hell, it can be Comcast for all I care). And then, the individual citizens should pay someone for the service, and any company can have access to the lines and provide the service.
About every 6 months or so I receive a nice little notice in the mail (with my bill) from Comcast telling me that rates are increasing by a couple bucks to "improve service". My fucking ass...
The FCC is supposedly there to help the public out by regulating phones, internet, RF, etc ... Why would they appeal this sort of thing? It should be blatently obvious to anyone that opening up cable lines to outside companies is in the public interest (even if the cable companies gripe and do a half-ass job at it). I mean, sure, they can defend themselves in the first suit just to defend themselves. But why appeal it? This is ridiculous. The operation of the cable companies as monopolies is obvious ... with their erroneous fees here and there, their slow service, the whole "wait 60 days until you get service again", bundling services so you can't get internet unless you have cable, etc, etc. None of this stuff would be as bad as it currently is if there was true competition, because they would be out of business at the drop of a hat! I think the FCC positions need to be elected or something, so at least there is SOME pressure to serve the public interest.
Anyone think this sounds familiar to the whole Rambus deal? Where Rambus was trying to push RDRAM to be the next standard ... while secretly patenting it behind everyone's backs. I knew an engineer/manager who worked for Rambus during that period. Once he figured out what was going on and that upper management wouldn't change their minds about being dicks, he quit.
Sure, but what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Now it's up to the defense to prove that he didn't do the crime? Instead of the prosecution proving that he did do the crime? Somethings wrong there.
What are they going to do with your picture? Wave it in front of the camera at a murder victim's front door?
... Or just look at the number of people wrongfully imprisoned overall - proven innocent at a later date by any class of evidence whatsoever.
Finger prints are a bit easier, but probably not as bad, because errors in trying to plant a finger print are easier to detect.
DNA? Uh, how about just throw it wherever you want and it'll make someone look completely guilty? The only problem I can see with DNA is having enough of the sample to prove it originated from somewhere. But even if no sample was kept, only the electronic DNA record, evidence can be covered up and a particular sample can be claimed to have matched a particular DNA record. Law enforcement does this shit all the time. Need proof? Look at the number of people proven innocent since the introduction of DNA evidence
But the larger problem is what minimal amount of evidence the public (jury) is willing to base their opinion upon. I was in California temporarily and talked to some permanent residents of the state who were typical juror candidates (towards the end of last year, in the midst of the trial, before a verdict had been reached). And the 4 or 5 people I talked to all agreed that they would convict Peterson based upon the following facts: 1) An affair while his wife was pregnant. 2) He went out on a boat on Christmas day in the same area that the body washed ashore. Scary eh? I tried to probe them as to why they felt this was sufficient evidence and they claimed things such as "intuition"; that he just seemed like such a shifty and immoral character that the only explanation for those two facts must have been that he murdered his wife.
How long can this really last? Bandwidth costs money. Servers cost money. Power costs money. Admins need to eat. I think it's a good idea, but just wondering where the funds are going to come from.
Actually the 6000 year old Earth started out as a gross misunderstanding among a few prominent christian figureheads. It spread out from there. If you consult analytical christians, they agree that the 6000 year old idea is a misunderstanding.
lmao
This shows that you know nothing about evolution. You are just a cheerleader for the theory because "it sounds cool".
Simple fact is that even the proponents of the theory, that do the actual work to further develop the theory, readily admit the existence of numerous holes and "leaps of faith" in its current state.
Seriously, go read up a little bit before you parade your ignorance around here.
Mercury switches... yummy.
Except a heliocentric solar system has been proven. Evolution has not.
Actually, modern astronomy, physics, and geology don't conflict with prevailing theology as much as you may be lead to believe (or the science-inclined masses may be lead to believe). As for the theory of evolution ... it has so many problems that anyone trying to use it as a basis for an argument is akin to religious fundies anyhow. I'm not saying that evolution won't be proven in the future ... but in it's current state it is nothing more than a fringe idea with a cult-like following.
I'm sorry, your comment is inane. Please try again and say something useful.