What I'm really waiting for is a phone that can switch between cellular networks and voip over wifi, along with some sort of back-end to enable those handoffs.
I'd like a nice, small, low power consumption bridge which could go between ED-VO and wifi. Then I could just keep it in my car, and use a wifi phone exclusively.
$80/mo was plenty for Ricochet to turn a profit, if they'd had [enough] users.
Well sure, but $80/month is enough for the cell phone companies to turn a profit even with just a few dozen users.
Operating costs for a cellular network are absurdly high compared to Ricochet.
If you haven't already built the network, and you're not already operating it anyway.
Parent poster, I'd really like you to explain the "essentially no additional operating costs" comment regarding cellular networks. Costs scale with user numbers? That's just the opposite of my understanding, that the site and the rent and the circuits are a fixed cost, no matter how many users are on the site. At some point a busy site will outgrow a single T1 and need more, but that's comparatively rare. The cost for one user per tower, or a dozen users per tower, is exactly the same.
Am I the parent poster? Because what you said is essentially what I meant by there being "essentially no additional operating costs". Of course, this is only true to a limit. You can't have 1000 people on a single cell phone tower and expect good bandwidth.
WTF? If you want to run a website, pay $3/month or whatever to get a hosting service. There's absolutely no need to drive up the costs for everyone just so a few people can run websites from home.
That's fine and dandy for rural or suburban use, but once you get into dense urban environments, it's very hard to put enough bits per second per square meter to satisfy the userbase, with this technology.
The moral of the story? Don't live downtown.
More like, if you're downtown, don't use EV-DO. You'd be much better off with a wifi solution in an extremely dense urban environment. If this becomes a real problem, I'm sure there will be dual wifi/somekindofcellphonetechnology card which can automatically switch between the two networks, if there aren't already.
It was called Ricochet...and no, it didn't succeed, because they charged too much for the all-you-can eat plan. How much, you ask? $80.00 per month.
And even $80.00 a month wasn't enough for Ricochet to be able to do it at a profit. The cell phone companies are in a much better position here. They could handle one or two users per cell phone tower with essentially no additional operating costs. As the number of users ramps up, so will their operating costs, but they still don't have anywhere near the costs of Ricochet, because they've already built and need to maintain all the towers.
The difference between Ricochet and the phone companies is that the phone companies can afford to run the service for decades before reaching the critical mass that would be required for a standalone wifi company to be profitable. Ricochet would have been successful eventually, if they had the capital to take a loss over the many years it takes to build a critical mass. But they didn't have that much capital to begin with (even the phone companies and railroads couldn't do it without government help), and when the dot com bubble burst so did Ricochet's hope of getting enough additional funding to reach profitability.
Wireless internet access, at least without P2P mesh networking, is a natural monopoly, and Verizon is a monopoly.
What benefits do I get with 3G over wireless/wifi access?
As was said by someone else, the benefit is that it's available over a much wider area. I'm using EV-DO right now from home, and there isn't a wifi access point I can find to do that.
So you're saying that it would, for example, be okay for the school to allow access to Christian chats but not Jewish ones?
No, I'm not saying that. But the establishment of religion clause is phrased (and has been interpreted) much differently from the free speech clause. For example, censorship of school newspapers was considered Constitutional in Hazelwood School District et al. v. Kuhlmeier et al. But I don't think the ruling would have been the same if the school had censored Christian articles but not Jewish ones. There's also the fact that the restriction you presented was based on content, while a restriction banning IRC is content-neutral.
That is clearly insane, and thus we must assume that just because the laptops are the schools, does not mean they can put any restrictions they wish on them, but must instead follow the constitution.
Clearly they must follow the Constitution. And clearly they cannot put any restrictions they want on the use of the laptops. But it's also clear they can put some restrictions on the use of the laptops.
The government is only allowed to put as much restriction is needed on public property, like in your crazy courthouse one.
There are different standards depending on the restriction, but I'm fairly sure necessity isn't even the strictest standard.
However, I see nothing that would allow them to infringe students right of association and speech by forbidding students from using email at home, via webmail. It's exactly like any other web page the student is allowed to visit, except the student can...speak! It's a fairly clear constitutional violation, delibrately restricting speech.
I think you make a good argument, and I'm no longer convinced the school isn't violating the students rights here. It's a tricky issue though, as those who wrote the Constitution likely didn't anticipate that we'd be using government money to buy laptops for students who could then take those laptops home and use them to play games.
Of course, the Constitution also didn't anticipate that we'd be applying the First Amendment to the states via the Fourteenth, which wasn't even created at the time. Now that I'm reminded that the First Amendment doesn't directly apply to state run schools, I think I'd have to say that the school can limit the use of IRC on or using school property.
If you're entering a building you're not authorized to, but are doing so by unlocking the door with the key to the building, is it trespassing? Is it breaking and entering if you aren't *breaking* to enter?
Actually, yes, it is. In fact, it's breaking and entering even if the door is unlocked. Breaking and entering is "the criminal act of entering a residence or other enclosed property through the slightest amount of force (even pushing open a door), without authorization." The key is that it's an enclosed property, and it's obvious that you're not supposed to be inside it, as opposed to just cutting across someone's lawn, or swimming in a pool with a "no trespassing" sign.
A public school is not someone's private residence.
But we're not talking about what the student may do inside the public school, we're talking about what they may do with the school's computer. I'm not the one who brought up the analogy of private residences, anyway, maybe I should have just rejected it rather than trying to correct it.
In general, people have full 1st Amendment rights in public facilities.
Your free speech rights in a public building are generally not the same as your rights in a public park. If you entered a public courtroom while court was in session and started reciting the declaration of independence, you'd be arrested.
Students have some too, but there are limits due to the fact that they re minors and that the school has to impose some restrictions in order to function as a school. Even so, courts have upheld some free speech rights for minor students.
Yes, it's the school's property, but it's been legally assigned to the student.
The title remains with the school, but possession is transferred to the student. It's a bailment.
Exactly what rights do you have or not have with a machine that you've been allowed to take home?
Well, you clearly only have the rights which were given to you under the terms of the agreement. But now that I think about it, one could probably argue that any violation of the agreement is not in fact a trespass but merely a breach of contract. Unfortunately, I think there is quite a bit of precedent with regard to computer trespass which would go against this, but most of it is probably related to situations where there is no actual transfer of possession.
Instead of breaking and entering, it'd be more like entering your own legally-leased apartment through the window rather than the door. Sure, the apartment management may not like it, and may eventually kick you out (aka take away the laptop) if you keep that up, but there no way in hell you could be charged with breaking and entering into your own apartment.
Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be charged with trespass either. I think there's an argument that what the students did was not computer trespass, but just a simple breach of contract, but if you're going to create an analogy between computer trespass and physical trespass, then entering a password would rise to the level of breaking and entering, in my opinion.
Not necessarily even that. Simple trespass is a violation. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor. Of course, breaking and entering (which is probably more analagous), is a felony.
No, the right to freedom of speech ends at the front door to someone else's private residence. These laptops are owned by the school, and it's not a violation of freedom of speech for the owner of property to restrict what someone can do with that property. If my boss tells me that I can't read porn on the company computer, is that a violation of my freedom of speech?
This seems roughly the equivalent of doodling in a textbook (in eraseable pencil) and sharing a Maxim magazine around in the halls.
While we're making analogies, I'd say it's closer to removing a post-it note which covering up a woman's breasts in a biology textbook (in violation of school policy, of course).
When I was in high school I convinced my Mom to get free internet access through the local college. It was part of the usage terms that no one else was supposed to use the access, so I guess I was a felon just for doing that. Then I figured out that the public_html directory was accessible through the anonymous FTP server, and that's where I got caught. I guess that'd be a second felony computer trespass charge there.
As it turns out I didn't get in any trouble, and though the account was disabled my Mom even was able to get it reinstated after sitting down with the head of the computer services department and promising that any time she logged on and used the service she would be the one physically typing on the keyboard. So I got my internet access back, but had to be more careful from then on.
About a year later someone in my local calling area came out with this nifty pay service called PPP.
But hey, I could have been a felon. Or, maybe I am a felon? What's the statute of limitations for computer trespass, anyway?
They didn't teach it in my Constitutional Law court. In fact, they taught just the opposite, that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the job of the Supreme Court is to enforce the Constitution.
They are the last and final word on constitutionality. We all must uphold the constitution, but only they can tell you what exactly to uphold, by interpreting individual cases.
Anyone can tell me anything, and it's not like if the court says something you can't ignore it. The courts don't have armies after all.
If they declare tommorrow that the first amendment means that speech is not free, their word is final. There is no one else to appeal to; not another court, not Congress, not the President.
What does that even mean? They certainly can't order another branch to infringe my freedom of speech. Well, they could do it, but that doesn't mean the other branch would have to follow the order. There are still schools out there that are under court orders from the 60s to desegregate. A Supreme Court ruling is fairly meaningless if the other two branches of government don't want to follow it. Supreme Court rulings, much like the Constitution itself, are merely documents. If the Supreme Court ruling is repugnant to the Constitution, then it is the Constitution which must be followed, and not the Supreme Court ruling.
You're a funny character. Can I get away with robbing you, as long as I don't say that I'm robbing you?
Are you really stooping to this level of argument?
No, I was responding to something you said, that "If the court puts it on paper that they refuse to do that anymore, then they have rewritten [the Constitution] as surely as if they went to the national archives with a pencil eraser."
Yes, there's software on your Mac, but it's not where the profit margin is. It's not where the money comes from. The hardware is where the profit margin is.
Why, because you say so? Since the software can be created essentially for free once it's been developed, I'd think that's precisely where the profit margin is.
The difference between the what it costs Apple to build a box and what they sell it for is where Apple makes its money.
But they don't sell boxes without software, so what method are you using to allocate which part of the sale goes to hardware and which goes to software?
They aren't selling copies of Mac OS X to make money.
Surely making money has something to do with it, otherwise they'd open source the software and sell those copies at cost.
If they were, they'd try to maximise sales of Mac OS X by making it run on PCs.
I believe that's eventually what they're going to do. But it's not as easy as just snapping one's fingers and doing it, and if they do it there will be ongoing costs involved.
Ultimately I think it is incredibly stupid for them not to do one or the other (either open source the OS or make the OS run on generic PCs). It is incredibly expensive to create a proprietary operating system, and the revenues of a niche desktop player just aren't going to be enough. Fortunately for Apple, the switch to the Intel platform is going to make it easier for them either way. If they decide to focus on hardware, they can stop spending so much money making software and rely on Windows, Linux, and the newly open sourced OS-X. And if they decide to focus on software they just need to turn off the DRM and increase the driver support.
They are selling hardware boxes to make money.
But if they were only selling hardware boxes to make money, then they would give away their software for free. Even if they were afraid someone might port it to different hardware, they could still release binaries under a license which allows copying, but not modification.
In order to be able to sell the boxes, they have Mac OS X. It's why people buy the boxes. So they use the profit they get from selling boxes to improve the OS.
So let me get this straight. They sell software, to make profits, so they can make better software. Isn't this exactly what any software company does?
Maybe we should take a step back. The original question was where Apple's money comes from. Apple's money comes from hardware sales.
We've already been over that one. Since most of the hardware they sell contains software, you can't separate the two income streams. The peripherals that Apple sells without software accounts for less than 15% of Apple's net sales.
If Apple stopped making Mac hardware, half of their revenue would disappear.
And if they stopped making software, all of their revenue would disappear. But allowing Dell (for example) to install OS-X on their systems wouldn't be the same as not making hardware at all. Apple does make some really good (but relatively expensive) hardware, and they're going to profitable in this business with or without forcing OSX users to use Mac software. In fact, allowing those who can't afford Macs to still run Mac software on generic PCs will probably increase the number of people buying Mac hardware, due to the increased compatibility as well as ease of upgrades. If the poor college student can buy a generic PC with OSX for college, when she graduates and starts earning a nice salary maybe she'll upgrade to a Mac.
If Apple were to replace that lost revenue using software sales, they'd have to sell 10 times as many OS licenses than they do now.
They wouldn't have to replace all the lost revenue, because they wouldn't have to buy materials to make the hardware, nor would they need to pay people to put the hardware together. Their costs would go down dramatically. Of course, no one is suggesting they completely drop their hardware business. I'm just arguing that Apple is a software company too.
what we need is a law passed that requires companies to remove the SSAN from their databases
Umm, how would your employer give you a W-2 at the end of the year if they don't have your social security number? Or does SSAN stand for something else?
Does an insurance company just hand over money without checking to see if the claim is legit?
Health insurance companies do it all the time. And no insurance company is going to be able to catch 100% of insurance fraud. And it's not like the government just hands over unemployment compensation without checking to see if the claim is legit. They do perform some checking, though like any system that doesn't mean there aren't people successfully scamming them.
There's another difference between a private system and a government one. With a private system, the goal is to pay as little as possible without regard to the welfare of the insured. With the government you don't have that conflict of interest (though you do have others).
I work for my states unemployment compenstation dept.
I work for an accountant, so I've seen this from the other side of things.
Many people make the mistake of beleiving unemployment comes from taxes they pay. This is not true, it comes from the unemployment insurance that company pays, so you are absolutely correct, if the fake company didn't pay into unemployment you cannot receive any benefits.
Moreover, if a person who worked for you filed for unemployment, your unemployment taxes will go up specifically to pay for that person's compensation. Just how much of their compensation you have to pay depends on how long you've been an employer, how much you've already paid into the system, etc., but it can be as high as 50% of the person's salary.
We have a database of every legitimate employer you have worked for because they are required to provide that information. In most cases, every question you answer during unemployment is already known by the system, it's just being confirmed and verified.
It's only recently that the state of Florida has started requiring reporting of new hires (federal law mandated it in 1996 but the state was pretty lax about it even after that), and there are probably many businesses which don't comply 100%. Plus, this information is given to a different department, the one that handles wage garnishment for child support payments. I suppose it's different here in Florida, because we don't have any state income taxes, so the government doesn't get the individual data on the W-2 reports.
In any case, I've seen quite a few times that a company has received a notice of money due for unemployment compensation, and it turns out the company has never heard of the person at all. In this case we send a letter back to the state and within a month or two it's all cleared up - presumably that person doesn't get any further unemployment compensation, and might even wind up with a fraud investigation (if it wasn't accidental). If they've already cashed the checks, and were careful not to leave too much of a trail, they might even get away with it. "Do it for 100 Social Security numbers and you've made a quick $1.04 million" is probably an exaggeration, but there probably are some people who've gotten away with it.
This entire article is bogus, at least from the standpoint of my state. There is no way this type of fraud could happen. There are cases of unemployment fraud, but what this article is describing I would say is not a real issue.
I can see how a small employer who does their own books might miss something like this and just pay the tax. In fact, it might be even more likely if the company has hired someone incompetant to handle tax issues, they might just assume the letter is correct and pay the tax from the corporation's account. You probably live in a state which has income taxes, so the state government already has this information. But at least in Florida, this would probably be something possible to do. Even if Florida checked the person in the new hire reports database, these could be filed online by the thief.
It's potentially worth documenting anyway, if they're going to fire you you can point out that it's illegal and essentially settle with them--but at that point relations are going to be SOUR, so it's probably only a stopgap to keep you working while you job hunt.
More importantly though, it's something to use in your defense if the company tries to say they fired you for cause and you don't deserve unemployment compensation. Suing a company for wrongful termination is really hard. Unless I had a really good case and could convince a lawyer to take it on a contingency basis I probably wouldn't do it. But getting them to pay up to 50% of your salary in unemployment compensation while you look for a new job is much more realistic.
There's no whistleblower protection at goals and expectations setting time.
And in order to sue a company for firing you you're going to have to take a big risk that you won't spend a bunch of money on a lawsuit and still lose. If you're going to go the route of refusing to commit copyright infringement, and you can't live off unemployment compensation for a few months while trying to get another job, then you better start looking for another employer.
Really, if you're not working under a contract, and you can't live off unemployment compensation for a few months, then you should be looking for another employer anyway (and/or lowering your expenses and saving up money in case something does happen). It's really easy for an at-will employee to get fired, and it's really hard for one to win a wrongful termination lawsuit.
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What I'm really waiting for is a phone that can switch between cellular networks and voip over wifi, along with some sort of back-end to enable those handoffs.
I'd like a nice, small, low power consumption bridge which could go between ED-VO and wifi. Then I could just keep it in my car, and use a wifi phone exclusively.
$80/mo was plenty for Ricochet to turn a profit, if they'd had [enough] users.
Well sure, but $80/month is enough for the cell phone companies to turn a profit even with just a few dozen users.
Operating costs for a cellular network are absurdly high compared to Ricochet.
If you haven't already built the network, and you're not already operating it anyway.
Parent poster, I'd really like you to explain the "essentially no additional operating costs" comment regarding cellular networks. Costs scale with user numbers? That's just the opposite of my understanding, that the site and the rent and the circuits are a fixed cost, no matter how many users are on the site. At some point a busy site will outgrow a single T1 and need more, but that's comparatively rare. The cost for one user per tower, or a dozen users per tower, is exactly the same.
Am I the parent poster? Because what you said is essentially what I meant by there being "essentially no additional operating costs". Of course, this is only true to a limit. You can't have 1000 people on a single cell phone tower and expect good bandwidth.
WTF? If you want to run a website, pay $3/month or whatever to get a hosting service. There's absolutely no need to drive up the costs for everyone just so a few people can run websites from home.
That's fine and dandy for rural or suburban use, but once you get into dense urban environments, it's very hard to put enough bits per second per square meter to satisfy the userbase, with this technology.
The moral of the story? Don't live downtown.
More like, if you're downtown, don't use EV-DO. You'd be much better off with a wifi solution in an extremely dense urban environment. If this becomes a real problem, I'm sure there will be dual wifi/somekindofcellphonetechnology card which can automatically switch between the two networks, if there aren't already.
It was called Ricochet...and no, it didn't succeed, because they charged too much for the all-you-can eat plan. How much, you ask? $80.00 per month.
And even $80.00 a month wasn't enough for Ricochet to be able to do it at a profit. The cell phone companies are in a much better position here. They could handle one or two users per cell phone tower with essentially no additional operating costs. As the number of users ramps up, so will their operating costs, but they still don't have anywhere near the costs of Ricochet, because they've already built and need to maintain all the towers.
The difference between Ricochet and the phone companies is that the phone companies can afford to run the service for decades before reaching the critical mass that would be required for a standalone wifi company to be profitable. Ricochet would have been successful eventually, if they had the capital to take a loss over the many years it takes to build a critical mass. But they didn't have that much capital to begin with (even the phone companies and railroads couldn't do it without government help), and when the dot com bubble burst so did Ricochet's hope of getting enough additional funding to reach profitability.
Wireless internet access, at least without P2P mesh networking, is a natural monopoly, and Verizon is a monopoly.
What benefits do I get with 3G over wireless/wifi access?
As was said by someone else, the benefit is that it's available over a much wider area. I'm using EV-DO right now from home, and there isn't a wifi access point I can find to do that.
So you're saying that it would, for example, be okay for the school to allow access to Christian chats but not Jewish ones?
No, I'm not saying that. But the establishment of religion clause is phrased (and has been interpreted) much differently from the free speech clause. For example, censorship of school newspapers was considered Constitutional in Hazelwood School District et al. v. Kuhlmeier et al. But I don't think the ruling would have been the same if the school had censored Christian articles but not Jewish ones. There's also the fact that the restriction you presented was based on content, while a restriction banning IRC is content-neutral.
That is clearly insane, and thus we must assume that just because the laptops are the schools, does not mean they can put any restrictions they wish on them, but must instead follow the constitution.
Clearly they must follow the Constitution. And clearly they cannot put any restrictions they want on the use of the laptops. But it's also clear they can put some restrictions on the use of the laptops.
The government is only allowed to put as much restriction is needed on public property, like in your crazy courthouse one.
There are different standards depending on the restriction, but I'm fairly sure necessity isn't even the strictest standard.
However, I see nothing that would allow them to infringe students right of association and speech by forbidding students from using email at home, via webmail. It's exactly like any other web page the student is allowed to visit, except the student can...speak! It's a fairly clear constitutional violation, delibrately restricting speech.
I think you make a good argument, and I'm no longer convinced the school isn't violating the students rights here. It's a tricky issue though, as those who wrote the Constitution likely didn't anticipate that we'd be using government money to buy laptops for students who could then take those laptops home and use them to play games.
Of course, the Constitution also didn't anticipate that we'd be applying the First Amendment to the states via the Fourteenth, which wasn't even created at the time. Now that I'm reminded that the First Amendment doesn't directly apply to state run schools, I think I'd have to say that the school can limit the use of IRC on or using school property.
If you're entering a building you're not authorized to, but are doing so by unlocking the door with the key to the building, is it trespassing? Is it breaking and entering if you aren't *breaking* to enter?
Actually, yes, it is. In fact, it's breaking and entering even if the door is unlocked. Breaking and entering is "the criminal act of entering a residence or other enclosed property through the slightest amount of force (even pushing open a door), without authorization." The key is that it's an enclosed property, and it's obvious that you're not supposed to be inside it, as opposed to just cutting across someone's lawn, or swimming in a pool with a "no trespassing" sign.
A public school is not someone's private residence.
But we're not talking about what the student may do inside the public school, we're talking about what they may do with the school's computer. I'm not the one who brought up the analogy of private residences, anyway, maybe I should have just rejected it rather than trying to correct it.
In general, people have full 1st Amendment rights in public facilities.
Your free speech rights in a public building are generally not the same as your rights in a public park. If you entered a public courtroom while court was in session and started reciting the declaration of independence, you'd be arrested.
Students have some too, but there are limits due to the fact that they re minors and that the school has to impose some restrictions in order to function as a school. Even so, courts have upheld some free speech rights for minor students.
This is very true.
Yes, it's the school's property, but it's been legally assigned to the student.
The title remains with the school, but possession is transferred to the student. It's a bailment.
Exactly what rights do you have or not have with a machine that you've been allowed to take home?
Well, you clearly only have the rights which were given to you under the terms of the agreement. But now that I think about it, one could probably argue that any violation of the agreement is not in fact a trespass but merely a breach of contract. Unfortunately, I think there is quite a bit of precedent with regard to computer trespass which would go against this, but most of it is probably related to situations where there is no actual transfer of possession.
Instead of breaking and entering, it'd be more like entering your own legally-leased apartment through the window rather than the door. Sure, the apartment management may not like it, and may eventually kick you out (aka take away the laptop) if you keep that up, but there no way in hell you could be charged with breaking and entering into your own apartment.
Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be charged with trespass either. I think there's an argument that what the students did was not computer trespass, but just a simple breach of contract, but if you're going to create an analogy between computer trespass and physical trespass, then entering a password would rise to the level of breaking and entering, in my opinion.
That's interesting. I wonder how you explain the multitude of First Amendment cases that have been won by students and their parents.
Physical trespass is a MISDEMEANOR.
Not necessarily even that. Simple trespass is a violation. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor. Of course, breaking and entering (which is probably more analagous), is a felony.
No, the right to freedom of speech ends at the front door to someone else's private residence. These laptops are owned by the school, and it's not a violation of freedom of speech for the owner of property to restrict what someone can do with that property. If my boss tells me that I can't read porn on the company computer, is that a violation of my freedom of speech?
If you want to mess around or do anything 'cool' with a computer, DO IT AT HOME.
Isn't that's where these students were when they accessed the illegal parts of the laptop?
This seems roughly the equivalent of doodling in a textbook (in eraseable pencil) and sharing a Maxim magazine around in the halls.
While we're making analogies, I'd say it's closer to removing a post-it note which covering up a woman's breasts in a biology textbook (in violation of school policy, of course).
It seems to me that this is a violation of the Constitutional rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association.
I'm sure the restriction only applies to what the student does with school equipment.
When I was in high school I convinced my Mom to get free internet access through the local college. It was part of the usage terms that no one else was supposed to use the access, so I guess I was a felon just for doing that. Then I figured out that the public_html directory was accessible through the anonymous FTP server, and that's where I got caught. I guess that'd be a second felony computer trespass charge there.
As it turns out I didn't get in any trouble, and though the account was disabled my Mom even was able to get it reinstated after sitting down with the head of the computer services department and promising that any time she logged on and used the service she would be the one physically typing on the keyboard. So I got my internet access back, but had to be more careful from then on.
About a year later someone in my local calling area came out with this nifty pay service called PPP.
But hey, I could have been a felon. Or, maybe I am a felon? What's the statute of limitations for computer trespass, anyway?
Do they not teach this in school anymore?
They didn't teach it in my Constitutional Law court. In fact, they taught just the opposite, that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the job of the Supreme Court is to enforce the Constitution.
They are the last and final word on constitutionality. We all must uphold the constitution, but only they can tell you what exactly to uphold, by interpreting individual cases.
Anyone can tell me anything, and it's not like if the court says something you can't ignore it. The courts don't have armies after all.
If they declare tommorrow that the first amendment means that speech is not free, their word is final. There is no one else to appeal to; not another court, not Congress, not the President.
What does that even mean? They certainly can't order another branch to infringe my freedom of speech. Well, they could do it, but that doesn't mean the other branch would have to follow the order. There are still schools out there that are under court orders from the 60s to desegregate. A Supreme Court ruling is fairly meaningless if the other two branches of government don't want to follow it. Supreme Court rulings, much like the Constitution itself, are merely documents. If the Supreme Court ruling is repugnant to the Constitution, then it is the Constitution which must be followed, and not the Supreme Court ruling.
You're a funny character. Can I get away with robbing you, as long as I don't say that I'm robbing you?
Are you really stooping to this level of argument?
No, I was responding to something you said, that "If the court puts it on paper that they refuse to do that anymore, then they have rewritten [the Constitution] as surely as if they went to the national archives with a pencil eraser."
Yes, there's software on your Mac, but it's not where the profit margin is. It's not where the money comes from. The hardware is where the profit margin is.
Why, because you say so? Since the software can be created essentially for free once it's been developed, I'd think that's precisely where the profit margin is.
The difference between the what it costs Apple to build a box and what they sell it for is where Apple makes its money.
But they don't sell boxes without software, so what method are you using to allocate which part of the sale goes to hardware and which goes to software?
They aren't selling copies of Mac OS X to make money.
Surely making money has something to do with it, otherwise they'd open source the software and sell those copies at cost.
If they were, they'd try to maximise sales of Mac OS X by making it run on PCs.
I believe that's eventually what they're going to do. But it's not as easy as just snapping one's fingers and doing it, and if they do it there will be ongoing costs involved.
Ultimately I think it is incredibly stupid for them not to do one or the other (either open source the OS or make the OS run on generic PCs). It is incredibly expensive to create a proprietary operating system, and the revenues of a niche desktop player just aren't going to be enough. Fortunately for Apple, the switch to the Intel platform is going to make it easier for them either way. If they decide to focus on hardware, they can stop spending so much money making software and rely on Windows, Linux, and the newly open sourced OS-X. And if they decide to focus on software they just need to turn off the DRM and increase the driver support.
They are selling hardware boxes to make money.
But if they were only selling hardware boxes to make money, then they would give away their software for free. Even if they were afraid someone might port it to different hardware, they could still release binaries under a license which allows copying, but not modification.
In order to be able to sell the boxes, they have Mac OS X. It's why people buy the boxes. So they use the profit they get from selling boxes to improve the OS.
So let me get this straight. They sell software, to make profits, so they can make better software. Isn't this exactly what any software company does?
Maybe we should take a step back. The original question was where Apple's money comes from. Apple's money comes from hardware sales.
We've already been over that one. Since most of the hardware they sell contains software, you can't separate the two income streams. The peripherals that Apple sells without software accounts for less than 15% of Apple's net sales.
If Apple stopped making Mac hardware, half of their revenue would disappear.
And if they stopped making software, all of their revenue would disappear. But allowing Dell (for example) to install OS-X on their systems wouldn't be the same as not making hardware at all. Apple does make some really good (but relatively expensive) hardware, and they're going to profitable in this business with or without forcing OSX users to use Mac software. In fact, allowing those who can't afford Macs to still run Mac software on generic PCs will probably increase the number of people buying Mac hardware, due to the increased compatibility as well as ease of upgrades. If the poor college student can buy a generic PC with OSX for college, when she graduates and starts earning a nice salary maybe she'll upgrade to a Mac.
If Apple were to replace that lost revenue using software sales, they'd have to sell 10 times as many OS licenses than they do now.
They wouldn't have to replace all the lost revenue, because they wouldn't have to buy materials to make the hardware, nor would they need to pay people to put the hardware together. Their costs would go down dramatically. Of course, no one is suggesting they completely drop their hardware business. I'm just arguing that Apple is a software company too.
Buy 10,000 shares of Google.
what we need is a law passed that requires companies to remove the SSAN from their databases
Umm, how would your employer give you a W-2 at the end of the year if they don't have your social security number? Or does SSAN stand for something else?
Does an insurance company just hand over money without checking to see if the claim is legit?
Health insurance companies do it all the time. And no insurance company is going to be able to catch 100% of insurance fraud. And it's not like the government just hands over unemployment compensation without checking to see if the claim is legit. They do perform some checking, though like any system that doesn't mean there aren't people successfully scamming them.
There's another difference between a private system and a government one. With a private system, the goal is to pay as little as possible without regard to the welfare of the insured. With the government you don't have that conflict of interest (though you do have others).
I work for my states unemployment compenstation dept.
I work for an accountant, so I've seen this from the other side of things.
Many people make the mistake of beleiving unemployment comes from taxes they pay. This is not true, it comes from the unemployment insurance that company pays, so you are absolutely correct, if the fake company didn't pay into unemployment you cannot receive any benefits.
Moreover, if a person who worked for you filed for unemployment, your unemployment taxes will go up specifically to pay for that person's compensation. Just how much of their compensation you have to pay depends on how long you've been an employer, how much you've already paid into the system, etc., but it can be as high as 50% of the person's salary.
We have a database of every legitimate employer you have worked for because they are required to provide that information. In most cases, every question you answer during unemployment is already known by the system, it's just being confirmed and verified.
It's only recently that the state of Florida has started requiring reporting of new hires (federal law mandated it in 1996 but the state was pretty lax about it even after that), and there are probably many businesses which don't comply 100%. Plus, this information is given to a different department, the one that handles wage garnishment for child support payments. I suppose it's different here in Florida, because we don't have any state income taxes, so the government doesn't get the individual data on the W-2 reports.
In any case, I've seen quite a few times that a company has received a notice of money due for unemployment compensation, and it turns out the company has never heard of the person at all. In this case we send a letter back to the state and within a month or two it's all cleared up - presumably that person doesn't get any further unemployment compensation, and might even wind up with a fraud investigation (if it wasn't accidental). If they've already cashed the checks, and were careful not to leave too much of a trail, they might even get away with it. "Do it for 100 Social Security numbers and you've made a quick $1.04 million" is probably an exaggeration, but there probably are some people who've gotten away with it.
This entire article is bogus, at least from the standpoint of my state. There is no way this type of fraud could happen. There are cases of unemployment fraud, but what this article is describing I would say is not a real issue.
I can see how a small employer who does their own books might miss something like this and just pay the tax. In fact, it might be even more likely if the company has hired someone incompetant to handle tax issues, they might just assume the letter is correct and pay the tax from the corporation's account. You probably live in a state which has income taxes, so the state government already has this information. But at least in Florida, this would probably be something possible to do. Even if Florida checked the person in the new hire reports database, these could be filed online by the thief.
It's potentially worth documenting anyway, if they're going to fire you you can point out that it's illegal and essentially settle with them--but at that point relations are going to be SOUR, so it's probably only a stopgap to keep you working while you job hunt.
More importantly though, it's something to use in your defense if the company tries to say they fired you for cause and you don't deserve unemployment compensation. Suing a company for wrongful termination is really hard. Unless I had a really good case and could convince a lawyer to take it on a contingency basis I probably wouldn't do it. But getting them to pay up to 50% of your salary in unemployment compensation while you look for a new job is much more realistic.
There's no whistleblower protection at goals and expectations setting time.
And in order to sue a company for firing you you're going to have to take a big risk that you won't spend a bunch of money on a lawsuit and still lose. If you're going to go the route of refusing to commit copyright infringement, and you can't live off unemployment compensation for a few months while trying to get another job, then you better start looking for another employer.
Really, if you're not working under a contract, and you can't live off unemployment compensation for a few months, then you should be looking for another employer anyway (and/or lowering your expenses and saving up money in case something does happen). It's really easy for an at-will employee to get fired, and it's really hard for one to win a wrongful termination lawsuit.