Not if they offered to honor the original contract terms for the duration of the contract and terminate it immediately upon its completion. Just like credit cards: terms have changed, you either accept them or you live out your existing contract as specified with no further changes allowed.
It's probably much more emotional than financial. The small percentage of lawyers who are really successful are unlikely to give up very lucrative practice to become judges. But every judge has the experience of being a lawyer before he's a judge, and will tend to bias decisions in such a way as to protect the prerogatives of the legal profession above all others. (There's even a whole book about this, though I've not read it.)
You don't understand what "monopoly" means. Natural monopolies are things that involve serious disruption to construct - distribution of power, water, sewer, natural gas, cable television, and copper/fiber all fall into that category. Cellular service, generally, doesn't involve tearing up the streets or running a bunch more wires overhead. And even when there's a natural monopoly in distribution, there's not necessarily a natural monopoly in production (although the accounting is really hard).
The question is not whether free markets allocate resources efficiently (and fwiw, all resources are scarce). They do. They're really good at that. In fact, that's all they do. The question is whether or not you have a sufficiently free market for it to work. Given the barriers to entry in the mobile phone market - some of which the government has put up, some of which are natural consequences of the nationwide market in mobile service - it could go either way. Yes, it's really hard to get in, and Verizon and AT&T really kill you on price. Sprint has tried to compete on price and is dying. You can get excellent service at much lower rates through MVNO's and regional carriers, but then you're stuck with older phones and smaller service areas. The regulation that appears to have worked best in Europe was mandating device interoperability among carriers, but that's a regulation aimed squarely at improving the freedom of the marketplace.
In all the years of the US government-Ma Bell partnership, they never showed any interest in making things cheap for consumers. Why would you expect that to change now? Americans have the world's largest free roaming area, and we pay for it.
But the iPhone isn't more expensive to the consumer, just to Verizon. The 4S goes for $199 on contract, while the top-of-the-line Android phone usually goes for $299 on contract (currently only the RAZR MAXX, but in the past it's included several others).
Read your link again, and skip to the second graph. You'll notice that the biggest piece of the pie belongs to the iPad. Android actually appears to use a bit more than the iPhone. And those are web hits - not megabytes. I download 50+ MB podcasts directly to my Android phone over the cellular data connection, but that only generates one web page hit...
Charge the car at home and at work, like your smartphone
The problem with charging at work is that charging everyone's car during peak electric demand hours is a terrible idea. Cars should be charged in the middle of the night with cheaper electricity, not dumped on the grid just as the day starts heating up.
Watch a rugby hard-hits clip vs one from football. What you see is a lot more body-to-body contact and a lot fewer hits that directly involve the head. Among other things, notice what your list of injuries doesn't include: broken fingers from hands that get trapped between helmets during impact. Your injuries are nearly all twisting and pushing injuries, not impact injuries.
I would really like for the National Academic Decathlon to receive more attention than high school sports.
Here's a hint: most people can't get the answers right on Jeopardy, let alone Academic Decathlon. By contrast, sports can be understood at a rudimentary level even by dumb people. The potential audience is immensely larger, and so there's a lot more money in it. Would you pay $100 to watch the AcaDec national finals in person? I sure wouldn't.
Difference being, of course, that on the internet you're in no physical danger and almost certainly won't lose more than what you gave the guy - he won't tell his buddies in the next block to carjack you.
Unless I don't want to mount my phone from some ugly-ass mount that has wires running to it from the lighter sockets. I've got GPS on my phone, and it's better than nothing, and I do love the Google Nav for getting to unfamiliar places when I'm traveling. I prefer the view I get with a bigger nav screen than a phone offers, though, and on my next trip I'm probably going to take my wife's little Garmin. I'd love to plug my iPad in and have it be my GPS unit, but then there's the mounting issue again...
I'd be quite happy to have standard DIN or double DIN spaces and harnesses on every car so that head units can be replaced at will, with climate controls separate. I'd also like a space in which a screen of some sort can be mounted - and unlike with TV's, there are practical limits to the size of screen that can be placed in a car, so it's not like you're going to have a constantly expanding device there.
And why? Because your employer is invested in you having as little time to yourself as possible where you could be productive in any way that does not benefit the corporation.
You really think there's a giant conspiracy whose goal is to keep people from being productive outside work hours? What are you high on?
The fifteen-minute grace period is what is in question here. Parent enters password to enable app purchase. Parent hands device to child without ever divulging the password. Child spends real money on fake money for up to fifteen minutes with the only potential block being to eliminate all in-app purchases with a three-menus-deep option detailed on page 146 of the manual. And iTunes Allowance only works if your child has a separate iTunes account - not if they're using your account on your device.
Assuming that you're at least 20, yes, the anesthetic pharmacopoeia has changed rather significantly. Versus thirty years ago, it's radically different. It's been stable for about a decade, though.
The duration of an anesthetic using modern meds does not much determine how long it takes you to recover. What you experienced is a return of memory-generating ability after your sedating dose of benzodiazepines wore off before you actually left the center.
Slashdot Mirror
Not if they offered to honor the original contract terms for the duration of the contract and terminate it immediately upon its completion. Just like credit cards: terms have changed, you either accept them or you live out your existing contract as specified with no further changes allowed.
It's probably much more emotional than financial. The small percentage of lawyers who are really successful are unlikely to give up very lucrative practice to become judges. But every judge has the experience of being a lawyer before he's a judge, and will tend to bias decisions in such a way as to protect the prerogatives of the legal profession above all others. (There's even a whole book about this, though I've not read it.)
You don't understand what "monopoly" means. Natural monopolies are things that involve serious disruption to construct - distribution of power, water, sewer, natural gas, cable television, and copper/fiber all fall into that category. Cellular service, generally, doesn't involve tearing up the streets or running a bunch more wires overhead. And even when there's a natural monopoly in distribution, there's not necessarily a natural monopoly in production (although the accounting is really hard).
The question is not whether free markets allocate resources efficiently (and fwiw, all resources are scarce). They do. They're really good at that. In fact, that's all they do. The question is whether or not you have a sufficiently free market for it to work. Given the barriers to entry in the mobile phone market - some of which the government has put up, some of which are natural consequences of the nationwide market in mobile service - it could go either way. Yes, it's really hard to get in, and Verizon and AT&T really kill you on price. Sprint has tried to compete on price and is dying. You can get excellent service at much lower rates through MVNO's and regional carriers, but then you're stuck with older phones and smaller service areas. The regulation that appears to have worked best in Europe was mandating device interoperability among carriers, but that's a regulation aimed squarely at improving the freedom of the marketplace.
In all the years of the US government-Ma Bell partnership, they never showed any interest in making things cheap for consumers. Why would you expect that to change now? Americans have the world's largest free roaming area, and we pay for it.
travel down an alternate lane until the very last minute and cut over
This is actually optimal use of the road and should be encouraged. Read Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic.
But the iPhone isn't more expensive to the consumer, just to Verizon. The 4S goes for $199 on contract, while the top-of-the-line Android phone usually goes for $299 on contract (currently only the RAZR MAXX, but in the past it's included several others).
Read your link again, and skip to the second graph. You'll notice that the biggest piece of the pie belongs to the iPad. Android actually appears to use a bit more than the iPhone. And those are web hits - not megabytes. I download 50+ MB podcasts directly to my Android phone over the cellular data connection, but that only generates one web page hit...
Maybe when 25 or 50% of all commuter vehicles are electric we will have to worry about grid load
I suspect it won't even need to be that high, but I'm planning for the future.
they don't need the same infrastructure that a regular gas station does
Yes, they need a completely different set of infrastructure. Starting with having an electric substation very close by...
Charge the car at home and at work, like your smartphone
The problem with charging at work is that charging everyone's car during peak electric demand hours is a terrible idea. Cars should be charged in the middle of the night with cheaper electricity, not dumped on the grid just as the day starts heating up.
Watch a rugby hard-hits clip vs one from football. What you see is a lot more body-to-body contact and a lot fewer hits that directly involve the head. Among other things, notice what your list of injuries doesn't include: broken fingers from hands that get trapped between helmets during impact. Your injuries are nearly all twisting and pushing injuries, not impact injuries.
Tackle is a lot more fun, though.
I would really like for the National Academic Decathlon to receive more attention than high school sports.
Here's a hint: most people can't get the answers right on Jeopardy, let alone Academic Decathlon. By contrast, sports can be understood at a rudimentary level even by dumb people. The potential audience is immensely larger, and so there's a lot more money in it. Would you pay $100 to watch the AcaDec national finals in person? I sure wouldn't.
Considering these are frequently relatively wealthy people with good health care, that should say something.
They're well-off in their twenties. Most piss it away pretty fast, though. And all the steroids can't be good for them.
The most interesting solution I have seen suggested is to remove all the pads - people can't bear to hit each other as hard without all that gear.
"Dialing" a phone number is another good one.
Difference being, of course, that on the internet you're in no physical danger and almost certainly won't lose more than what you gave the guy - he won't tell his buddies in the next block to carjack you.
Unless I don't want to mount my phone from some ugly-ass mount that has wires running to it from the lighter sockets. I've got GPS on my phone, and it's better than nothing, and I do love the Google Nav for getting to unfamiliar places when I'm traveling. I prefer the view I get with a bigger nav screen than a phone offers, though, and on my next trip I'm probably going to take my wife's little Garmin. I'd love to plug my iPad in and have it be my GPS unit, but then there's the mounting issue again...
I'd be quite happy to have standard DIN or double DIN spaces and harnesses on every car so that head units can be replaced at will, with climate controls separate. I'd also like a space in which a screen of some sort can be mounted - and unlike with TV's, there are practical limits to the size of screen that can be placed in a car, so it's not like you're going to have a constantly expanding device there.
And why? Because your employer is invested in you having as little time to yourself as possible where you could be productive in any way that does not benefit the corporation.
You really think there's a giant conspiracy whose goal is to keep people from being productive outside work hours? What are you high on?
The fifteen-minute grace period is what is in question here. Parent enters password to enable app purchase. Parent hands device to child without ever divulging the password. Child spends real money on fake money for up to fifteen minutes with the only potential block being to eliminate all in-app purchases with a three-menus-deep option detailed on page 146 of the manual. And iTunes Allowance only works if your child has a separate iTunes account - not if they're using your account on your device.
Produce a lite version that specifically says that it only includes demo data.
Why didn't you just charge $2 for the app and include one free in-app purchase of your choice?
It does so... now. It didn't in the past, which is presumably when this occurred.
Assuming that you're at least 20, yes, the anesthetic pharmacopoeia has changed rather significantly. Versus thirty years ago, it's radically different. It's been stable for about a decade, though.
The duration of an anesthetic using modern meds does not much determine how long it takes you to recover. What you experienced is a return of memory-generating ability after your sedating dose of benzodiazepines wore off before you actually left the center.
they shot something in my spine that made me unconscious instantly
No, they gave you some Versed before they gave you your spinal anesthetic. You were conscious, you just don't remember it.