I read through the comments on this topic and there was a lot of noise about "I am under no contract to view ads from your site."
BE VERY CAREFUL here. Pay close attention to terms of service from now on, because this may very well be the next step:
3) You agree to view advertisements online from Verizon's affiliates and partners. Any measures taken to:
a) Prevent loading pop-up or banner advertisements
b) Prevent the creation of "cookies" on your computer
c) Otherwise prevent the delivery of advertising content approved by Verizon shall be construed as breech of this agreement, and may be prosecuted as theft of services.
This is not an actual excerpt, but something that might find its way into terms of service if we don't all pay VERY CLOSE ATTENTION...
The government goes to great lengths to shield computers they use. The CIA has equipment that can indeed snoop what's being displayed on your monitor, and also pick up your keystrokes from emissions from your keyboard cable. None of it is rocket science. It's all based on the simple principle that a current on the surface of a wire has a very predictable radiated field.
They are able to tell what radio station you're listening to by picking up local oscillator to RF leakage in the mixer stage of your receiver. A radio receiver has a variable local oscillator that is mixed with the incoming RF. That LO is mixed with the RF to produce a signal at both the sum and difference of the LO and RF. The sum is discarded (filtered) and the difference continues down through an IF filter (at 455kHz). Depending on the frequency of the LO, a certain station will end up at 455kHz in the IF stage.
In any mixer, there is leakage from the LO input to both the RF and the IF ports (this is, incidentally, how cops can tell you have a radar detector, they listen for the LO frequency leaking out to the antenna port). So, the billboard has a receiver that can tell what your local oscillator is tuned to and decide what to display based on that.
In a field of 100 cars, the billboard receives the most spectral power on the LO frequency that most of the cars are tuned to (since it all simply adds), so the billboard can also know which radio station most of the cars in the field of view are tuned to, and make a decision based on that.
I'm not disputing that at all! I agree that it's idiotic to pull crap like this - their rationale was that by giving, say, 5 years notice, everyone was just going to rush to Best Buy to get a new HDTV...
Of course, we all know why the FCC did this - to try to legislate the bubble even bigger...
Dude, i could have registered a simlar domain and put up a comparable web page within a matter of hours. I hope they really exist.
Wouldnt it be great if the submit email address was forwarded to someone's ex girlfriend? Thats the ultimate form of revenge...
1) Register domain name.
2) Put up web page advertising some kind of anti-spam database.
3) Forward all email sent to the submit address to someone you dont like.
4) Get slashdotted.
Is this really necessary? I mean, come on, how hard is it to find spam for research? Most people get more spam than their Hotmail inbox can handle just for signing up for the account. All a researcher has to do is start clicking the "Remove Me" link in those emails and he or she will have more spam than he or she knows what to do with!
Combine that with posting to some anti-spam newsgroups with their real email address, and bingo boingo, all the spam in the world will come right to them.
This site also creates a problem in that only the spam posted to that site might be used for research. There might be millions of spam emails overlooked because they don't make it onto that site. Think of those poor spammers that won't get filtered:)
A bank cannot simply take all of its checking accounts and use that money to write a 30-year mortgage or even a 5-year car loan. Any investment in a bank that is liquid (i.e. the customer can just write a check and it's gone), must be kept in liquid investments that can be cashed out literally within hours. A bank can't turn those checking accounts into investments that yield a whole lot more than they're paying out because of the liquidity issue.
Banks can use a certain percentage of liquid receipts to write longer term investments, but they also must, by law, keep a certain amount of liquid on hand, and also a certain amount of cash sitting in the safe, not making any money. So, my friend, if you have $100,000 sitting in your checking account making 1.5%, yes the bank is going to make money on it, but probably not that much. They have to turn it around and make quite a bit more than that when they consider the cost of keeping a bunch of money on hand making ZERO percent. However, a bank might make a commission as high as 2% of the value of the loan plus maybe 0.25% of the interest rate for selling the sales-lead to an affiliate mortgage company (any bank workers care to chime in here?). Bob Jones goes and buys a $400k McMansion in the suburbs, and that's $8k instantly plus 30 or 40 years of steady interest payments, all backed by security on the property - certainly a better investment than not knowing how long Mr. Jones' money is going to be sitting in his liquid checking account.
There is a LOT of value tied into getting people's money into long-term *SECURED* investments. That spells "CERTAINTY" for the bank, which is incredibly important. So, it's not a "few measley bucks" that they're concerned about. It's the ability to tell their investors that "YES, this money will be there for sure, and it is backed by intrinsically valued collateral" rather than "Well, we have all these checking accounts..."
Good point, I concede this one for sure. I also don't have tons of money, but have good credit. The point I really meant to make was that once you make one mistake, you get beaten down.. Once you have bad credit, it's almost impossible to dig yourself out without doing something drastic. Counseling services can help, but only if you make enough money to pay the negotiated payments...
I know a couple who live in one of those 5000 square foot McMansions and can't afford to buy a mattress for their kid to sleep on (the kid sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor).
There was a link a long time ago to an article about CRM - I believe it was on one of those anti-ChexSystems websites... I wish I still had the link, but I couldn't find it this morning when I was posting my last article.
Point by Point
on
Add-Ons Add Up
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· Score: 5, Informative
And "since there is only so much space and weight an aircraft can accommodate," there's "an additional fee for passengers who require more than the average."
Yet, do they charge less for customers who use less than average? I think not.
Sprint decided to charge some of its PCS wireless customers -- primarily those with poor credit ratings who were on a special price plan -- $3 when they wanted to speak to a customer-service representative.
The less money you have, the more expensive everything is for you. The more expensive everything is for you, the less money you have. Now even insurance companies charge you more if you have less-than-perfect credit. Cell phone companies charge you more. Land utility companies charge you more. I've even seen surcharges on Apartments, Hotels, and Rental Cars for less-than-perfect credit.
a state-mandated $10 at Boston's Logan Airport helps fund the city's new convention center
This is a privately levied tax! Amazing! Basically, a for-profit piublicly run private venture (convention centers are all for-profit, and have nothing to do with the public good, hence they are private) taxing people who don't even have the right to vote in that area.
Dollar Rent a Car slapped on a $1.84 daily "peak-season" fee -- "leaf-peeping season," you know.
Why don't they use their GPS tracking to detect when renters drive the cars on popular leaf-peeping routes and charge the fee that way? It'd be like being able to put a private virtual toll anywhere! They already do this to detect when customers leave the "allowed" area, and charge them heftily if they do...
Meanwhile, for the privilege of paying a credit card bill over the phone, Citigroup charges $9.95.
How can it possibly be legal to charge someone for paying their debt to you?! Oh wait, it's free if they mail in a check, so the creditor can hold onto it until it's late, then charge more fees... You're basically paying for the proof that you paid on time.
It has launched a preferred-guest program that,.... to any customer who signs up. And the cost of signing up is also free....
customers who sign up for this preferred service tend to spend 25 percent more than the average guest
Doesn't sound very "free" does it?
How do they do it?
There is software out there called "Customer Relationship Management" (CRM) software that many banks, insurers, and utility companies are using to target fees and customer services. There are several ways this is accomplished using the profitability score, the risk score, and the opportunity score:
1) When you call customer service, you punch in your account number. The computer looks your account up and if you're a "good" customer (i.e. profitable), you get bumped to the head of the queue. If not, you wait.. and wait.... and wait..
2) The computer periodically measures the profitability of your account. If you are a very profitable customer, it may reduce or relax fees on your accounts.
3) If you start to pile up money in your bank account, the computer will sell your personal information to places like mortgage lenders, car lenders, and other high-dollar financing brokers to start trying to separate you from that money.
4) If your average balances start to decline, down go your scores and up go your fees!
5) Use all of your cell phone minutes every month without going over, and all three of your scores drop and you'll never get decent customer service. Some cell phone companies are even working on technology that will decrease the likelihood of your call being dropped depending on your profitability score; when there is contention between customers on a crowded cell. Say there is a full cell, and a highly-profitable customer drives into it - the software will determine which unprofitable customers can be dropped so that the profitable customer doesn't get dropped.
6) If a bank is taken over, this software determines which accounts the suitor keeps, and which ones are sold off to other subprime banks (probably with higher fees).
7) Pay off that credit card balance every month, and you'll start to see your interest rate drop gradually in order to encourage you to carry a balance (I know for a fact Capital One does this. I have a card and for every month I pay my balance in full, my daily rate drops by a few ten-thousandths of a percent). Conversesly, you may also see 'participation' fees levied against you if you don't ever pay interest.
8) You may also see 'participation' fees if you don't use your card for a number of consecutive billing cycles.
9) Call customer service frequently? Maybe you better think twice about that
10) Paying $4 to use a teller at your bank? Profitable customers don't have to. (i.e. you have your mortgage with them)
Exercise some critical thinking skills and I'm sure you can see where people you do business with will look for opportunities to measure your profitability. Once you can see where they are trying to manipulate you, you can turn it around and begin to manipulate the system in your favor.
There is still frequency overlap if you use 4 channels... they're just assuming that the spatial parameters will guarantee that adjacent channels won't interfere.. They're basically banking on the APs being far enough apart to cause little or no interference. Of course, in order to set up the "4 AP" system, you'd have to perform a site survey, which would include numerical modeling of the structure of your building, site measurements of field strength at various locations, and in all, a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of engineering...
Besides, if you want that many people on your network, 802.11b is not appropriate given it's slow link speed. I don't think 802.11b was ever meant to be the only netfrastructure in a commercial setting. My company uses it for conference rooms so the "important people" can bring their laptops in to waste everyones' time with presentations about schedules and upcoming meetings.:)
Putting any more than about 10 people on a wireless network in a "we're trying to do actual work" setting is suicide... oh wait, this guy was with a startup, they probably just use it to play Quake...
I get up at 3:30AM to run 10k before going to work at 5... every day:) I should have a nice view that morning!
The last Leonid shower I saw was in 1998 while I was doing some work at the Woodbury Research Facility... It was quite a good show and since this place is in rural Georgia, it was extremely dark... I tried looking at last year's shower, but the light situation in suburban Philly is horrible..
One other fun thing that I've found to look at is occultation around the edge of the moon. On occasion, mountains on the moon obscure stars passing near the horizon for a few minutes. With a small scope, it's really cool to watch them disappear and reappear along the edge. You can find occultations listen in Astronomy Magazine...
I am writing today to ask you to co-sponsor Rep. Boucher & Doolittle's Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, H.R. 5544). I believe that recent movements in copyright law have unfairly plagued the rights of consumers with respect to their ownership of digital media.
Specifically, the DMCRA would require producers of digital media to label any media that has been copy protected or otherwise crippled in a way that would make that media unusable in certain devices, such as personal computers, automotive stereo equipment, and other consumer devices. I believe that consumers have the right to informed consent with respect to purchases of digital media.
The DMCRA would also codify the right of the consumer to make fair-use copies of any media they own. For example, a consumer who purchases a CD should be explicitly allowed and encouraged by law to make copies of that information for use in his/her automobile, portable diskless audio player, or other device that may not be able to access that information on its native media.
I also wish to convey and affirm my belief that it is absolutely wrong to make copies of information for the purpose of avoiding paying for it. Supporting this law is not supporting theft of intellectual property. It is unfortunate that those who would use tools such as personal computers and peer-to-peer networks to steal information have brought about the changes in copyright law that have stripped the rights of law-abiding consumers. It should be solemnly noted that personal computers don't cause people to steal music just as peer-to-peer networks are not the cause of piracy. We have seen many new and innovative technologies that have a perfectly legitimate use in society, destroyed by the idea that it is appropriate to punish everyone for the crimes of a select few who choose to misuse those technologies.
There are other benefits to the DMCRA, both for consumers and our society as a whole, and I emplore you to study this document for all of its merits. I hope you will co-sponsor the DMCRA and show your support for the public's rights in digital media. Thank you for your time.
Keeping track of your total tax expenditures is not at all difficult. Most taxes have a bill or a form that must be filled out. But, for taxes where you aren't told explicitly how much you paid, you have to ask. This applies to things like Gasoline Tax and Heating Oil tax and so on. But, it's simple, in the course of daily life, keep your receipts! When you get home at night, write down your taxes in a ledger. At the end of the year, tally it all up.
You'll spend a while just to find out what some taxes are (like fuel and oil), and whether or not some charges you pay on things like utilities are indeed taxes. What you consider to be a tax is completely up to you. Some might consider the FCC line charge on a phone line to be a tax, but others may not.
Unfortunately, I have not spent the time to come up with a "streamlined" way of doing it. Making this a daily 10 minute task is probably the easiest. Keeping a spreadsheet (paper or electronic) with a column for each tax is appropriate - as you pay new taxes, you simply add new columns.
Pay careful attention to the method you use to be sure you don't count a tax twice, or not at all. Do not use your withholding to compute your income tax - use the actual figure from your tax return in the spring.
Ask the gas station attendant to break down how much of your fuel purchase went to various taxes. They are usually willing to help you out if they're not too busy.
On your utility bills, include any taxes, or charges levied by any government, whether federal or local. Those are taxes in my book.
When you pay tolls, always ask for a receipt. I use EZ-Pass so it's simple for me to keep track of them.
When you buy things online, be sure you notice whether or not you were charged sales or other taxes. If you buy something from abcxyz.com, and they have a business entity in your state, they are required to collect tax for that state.
I'm not going to publish my exact figures because god only knows what someone might be able to infer from that information. But, I urge you to try this yourself for just one month, and you'll be horrified at how much you actually pay in taxes. Just be judicious and pay attention and you won't miss any of them.
Here's an interesting mental exercise on income taxes:
All people involved are in the 28% tax bracket and are just regular schmucks like you and me
1) Person A pays waitress B $1.00 as a tip 2) Waitress B then pays Person C that $1.00 to wash her windows 3) Person C then pays Person D that same $1.00 to do something else and so on and so forth until 25) person Y pays person Z to cut her toenails 26) person Z pays person A that $1.00 to jump in place for 4 minutes
26 transactions, all taxable - the IRS would collect $7.28 on that $1.00 that floated around if it felt it was worth the time...
Last year, I grossed $58,624, of which I paid $39,675 (67.7%) in taxes. I tracked and accumulated totals for the following taxes:
Federal Income Tax Pennsylvania State Income Tax Social Security Tax Unemployment Tax Medicare Tax PA State Sales Tax PA State Gasoline Tax Gasoline Taxes in Other States (Maryland, Delaware, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, New Jersey, New York) Home Heating Oil Tax Federal Gasoline Tax Federal, State, and Local Utility Taxes
FCC Line Charges on my Phone
Taxes on my Cell Phones
Taxes on my DSL Line
Excise taxes on Electricity, Gas, and Water Upper Dublin Township Wage Tax Sales Taxes in other States (Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) PA State Turnpike Tax (Tolls) Tolls in other states (Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Ohio) Georgia Automobile Ad Valorem Tax (Property Tax) PA Automobile Lease Tax
These reflect itemized taxes that I was made aware of on receipts or was able to find explicit information on. This list does NOT include hidden taxes rolled into the cost of items purchased, leased, or rented, by the merchant (like the property tax on the house I'm renting).
We're all being taxed into oblivion, and nobody cares enough to do anything about it. Of course, part of the problem is that there are no checks and balances in government. We have a government that is completely out of control - there are too many layers of abstraction - too many levels of government (Federal, State, County, Township, Locale) that have the authority to levy fees and taxes. We've basically been suckered into communism without even realizing it.
Voters need to understand the most politicians are lawyers, and therefore liars, and will not do anything that is not self-serving of the government from which they derive their power.
I made my computer go fast. It has a big wing on it, and lots of stickers. Stickers make a computer go fast. I put 2 extra fans in it because fans also make computers go fast. I get lots more FPS now. The window helps me play games faster. The RF from the computer makes my fingers faster. That's good. Painting my computer race yellow makes my FPS go up. I can frag more l0z3r5 that way. The blinking rope lights let me know when I frag some 1337-w4nn483 l0z3r.
And the wonder why their stock is in the toilet. They spend all of their credibility appeasing the script-kiddie-gamer crowd...
BART: But I have 52 million shares! What's 52 million times zero?
They had better get their act together before the repo man comes for their soul patches.
I'm not such a big fan of Dar Williams. She tries too hard to be a pop star... It's a shame that Richard and Lucy more or less won't have anything to do with her anymore... Cry3 was a good album..
What this has to do with fair use is that the big labels, by making these copy protected CD's, are trying to snuff out your Fair Use Right to make copies for your own personal use. What it might lead to is CDs only working in hardware that is approved/endorsed by the big labels... which could be even worse.
However, that said, and having just read through Title 17 of the US code (17CFR1.107), there isn't anything there that explicitly states that you can make copies for your personal use. However, it doesn't exclude it. The wording is actually very vague, even as legalese goes.
Something else interesting I found: That felt-tip pen hack for defeating the copy protection might be a violation under 17CFR1201...
I don't live life locked in my bedroom surfing the internet:) There are lots of local coffee houses, small concert halls, local newspapers (not the big city issues, but the smaller independent papers), Aware Records... you just have to look around at the local level. There's a lot more there than you think. Just understand that if you look online, on TV, in the big city newspapers, or any large media outlet, all you're going to see are the artists that the big labels want to make money off of. Or, you can google for Independent Record Labels...
Ok, first of all, the law of technology is that for every protection technology that is invented, there are quickly numerous ways to defeat that technology. This one was taken out with a 20-cent Sharpie if I remember correctly.
Second of all, only the big labels with lots of money are going to copy protect their CDs. It's not like the copy protection they're implementing is FREE. It was invented by someone who no doubt patented it and is licensing it to the CD makers (which, consequently, raises the price of CDs).
Personally, I don't care if Britney Spears CDs are copy protected - nor CDs from other no-talent hacks who claim to be artists. Also, I think this protection scheme could be a great instrument in the downfall of such crappy music[sic]. Afterall, teenagers are probably the biggest pirates of this stuff, and it's not like they have money to buy the CDs if they can't copy them, so it can only result in less proliferation of this garbage. Eeeeeexcellent.
There's lots of great music to be had out there, and you can have it without giving up your Fair Use Rights.
Slashdot Mirror
I read through the comments on this topic and there was a lot of noise about "I am under no contract to view ads from your site."
BE VERY CAREFUL here. Pay close attention to terms of service from now on, because this may very well be the next step:
3) You agree to view advertisements online from Verizon's affiliates and partners. Any measures taken to:
a) Prevent loading pop-up or banner advertisements
b) Prevent the creation of "cookies" on your computer
c) Otherwise prevent the delivery of advertising content approved by Verizon
shall be construed as breech of this agreement, and may be prosecuted as theft of services.
This is not an actual excerpt, but something that might find its way into terms of service if we don't all pay VERY CLOSE ATTENTION...
They are able to tell what radio station you're listening to by picking up local oscillator to RF leakage in the mixer stage of your receiver. A radio receiver has a variable local oscillator that is mixed with the incoming RF. That LO is mixed with the RF to produce a signal at both the sum and difference of the LO and RF. The sum is discarded (filtered) and the difference continues down through an IF filter (at 455kHz). Depending on the frequency of the LO, a certain station will end up at 455kHz in the IF stage.
In any mixer, there is leakage from the LO input to both the RF and the IF ports (this is, incidentally, how cops can tell you have a radar detector, they listen for the LO frequency leaking out to the antenna port). So, the billboard has a receiver that can tell what your local oscillator is tuned to and decide what to display based on that.
In a field of 100 cars, the billboard receives the most spectral power on the LO frequency that most of the cars are tuned to (since it all simply adds), so the billboard can also know which radio station most of the cars in the field of view are tuned to, and make a decision based on that.
Of course, we all know why the FCC did this - to try to legislate the bubble even bigger...
Offtopic, I know, but:
Yes you can - look at HDTV. No more analog TV after, what's it now, 2006?
I'll trade you my 1997 "Penile Enlargement" rookie card^H^H^H^Hspam for it... this one is the original!
Don't forget...
5) ???
6) PROFIT!
Combine that with posting to some anti-spam newsgroups with their real email address, and bingo boingo, all the spam in the world will come right to them.
This site also creates a problem in that only the spam posted to that site might be used for research. There might be millions of spam emails overlooked because they don't make it onto that site. Think of those poor spammers that won't get filtered :)
Won't someone please think of the children!?!?
...that this contract is made public right after we get our doors blown off by a japanese supercomputer in the top 500....
BIG BANKER IS WATCHING
A bank cannot simply take all of its checking accounts and use that money to write a 30-year mortgage or even a 5-year car loan. Any investment in a bank that is liquid (i.e. the customer can just write a check and it's gone), must be kept in liquid investments that can be cashed out literally within hours. A bank can't turn those checking accounts into investments that yield a whole lot more than they're paying out because of the liquidity issue.
Banks can use a certain percentage of liquid receipts to write longer term investments, but they also must, by law, keep a certain amount of liquid on hand, and also a certain amount of cash sitting in the safe, not making any money. So, my friend, if you have $100,000 sitting in your checking account making 1.5%, yes the bank is going to make money on it, but probably not that much. They have to turn it around and make quite a bit more than that when they consider the cost of keeping a bunch of money on hand making ZERO percent. However, a bank might make a commission as high as 2% of the value of the loan plus maybe 0.25% of the interest rate for selling the sales-lead to an affiliate mortgage company (any bank workers care to chime in here?). Bob Jones goes and buys a $400k McMansion in the suburbs, and that's $8k instantly plus 30 or 40 years of steady interest payments, all backed by security on the property - certainly a better investment than not knowing how long Mr. Jones' money is going to be sitting in his liquid checking account.
There is a LOT of value tied into getting people's money into long-term *SECURED* investments. That spells "CERTAINTY" for the bank, which is incredibly important. So, it's not a "few measley bucks" that they're concerned about. It's the ability to tell their investors that "YES, this money will be there for sure, and it is backed by intrinsically valued collateral" rather than "Well, we have all these checking accounts..."
I know a couple who live in one of those 5000 square foot McMansions and can't afford to buy a mattress for their kid to sleep on (the kid sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor).
There was a link a long time ago to an article about CRM - I believe it was on one of those anti-ChexSystems websites... I wish I still had the link, but I couldn't find it this morning when I was posting my last article.
Yet, do they charge less for customers who use less than average? I think not.
Sprint decided to charge some of its PCS wireless customers -- primarily those with poor credit ratings who were on a special price plan -- $3 when they wanted to speak to a customer-service representative.
The less money you have, the more expensive everything is for you. The more expensive everything is for you, the less money you have. Now even insurance companies charge you more if you have less-than-perfect credit. Cell phone companies charge you more. Land utility companies charge you more. I've even seen surcharges on Apartments, Hotels, and Rental Cars for less-than-perfect credit.
a state-mandated $10 at Boston's Logan Airport helps fund the city's new convention center
This is a privately levied tax! Amazing! Basically, a for-profit piublicly run private venture (convention centers are all for-profit, and have nothing to do with the public good, hence they are private) taxing people who don't even have the right to vote in that area.
Dollar Rent a Car slapped on a $1.84 daily "peak-season" fee -- "leaf-peeping season," you know.
Why don't they use their GPS tracking to detect when renters drive the cars on popular leaf-peeping routes and charge the fee that way? It'd be like being able to put a private virtual toll anywhere! They already do this to detect when customers leave the "allowed" area, and charge them heftily if they do...
Meanwhile, for the privilege of paying a credit card bill over the phone, Citigroup charges $9.95.
How can it possibly be legal to charge someone for paying their debt to you?! Oh wait, it's free if they mail in a check, so the creditor can hold onto it until it's late, then charge more fees... You're basically paying for the proof that you paid on time.
It has launched a preferred-guest program that,.... to any customer who signs up. And the cost of signing up is also free....
customers who sign up for this preferred service tend to spend 25 percent more than the average guest
Doesn't sound very "free" does it?
How do they do it?
There is software out there called "Customer Relationship Management" (CRM) software that many banks, insurers, and utility companies are using to target fees and customer services. There are several ways this is accomplished using the profitability score, the risk score, and the opportunity score:
1) When you call customer service, you punch in your account number. The computer looks your account up and if you're a "good" customer (i.e. profitable), you get bumped to the head of the queue. If not, you wait.. and wait.... and wait..
2) The computer periodically measures the profitability of your account. If you are a very profitable customer, it may reduce or relax fees on your accounts.
3) If you start to pile up money in your bank account, the computer will sell your personal information to places like mortgage lenders, car lenders, and other high-dollar financing brokers to start trying to separate you from that money.
4) If your average balances start to decline, down go your scores and up go your fees!
5) Use all of your cell phone minutes every month without going over, and all three of your scores drop and you'll never get decent customer service. Some cell phone companies are even working on technology that will decrease the likelihood of your call being dropped depending on your profitability score; when there is contention between customers on a crowded cell. Say there is a full cell, and a highly-profitable customer drives into it - the software will determine which unprofitable customers can be dropped so that the profitable customer doesn't get dropped.
6) If a bank is taken over, this software determines which accounts the suitor keeps, and which ones are sold off to other subprime banks (probably with higher fees).
7) Pay off that credit card balance every month, and you'll start to see your interest rate drop gradually in order to encourage you to carry a balance (I know for a fact Capital One does this. I have a card and for every month I pay my balance in full, my daily rate drops by a few ten-thousandths of a percent). Conversesly, you may also see 'participation' fees levied against you if you don't ever pay interest.
8) You may also see 'participation' fees if you don't use your card for a number of consecutive billing cycles.
9) Call customer service frequently? Maybe you better think twice about that
10) Paying $4 to use a teller at your bank? Profitable customers don't have to. (i.e. you have your mortgage with them)
Exercise some critical thinking skills and I'm sure you can see where people you do business with will look for opportunities to measure your profitability. Once you can see where they are trying to manipulate you, you can turn it around and begin to manipulate the system in your favor.
Alright humor aside :), I think this would be perfect to people who either
:)
1. dont have a car to transport that stuff,
2. dont have time to shop (sorry, but playing everquest doesnt count
Don't forget:
3. Don't mind eating pre-melted ice cream
4. Like brown lettuce
5. only eat scrambled eggs anyway
Way-to-go Webvan-Atlanta....
Besides, if you want that many people on your network, 802.11b is not appropriate given it's slow link speed. I don't think 802.11b was ever meant to be the only netfrastructure in a commercial setting. My company uses it for conference rooms so the "important people" can bring their laptops in to waste everyones' time with presentations about schedules and upcoming meetings. :)
Putting any more than about 10 people on a wireless network in a "we're trying to do actual work" setting is suicide... oh wait, this guy was with a startup, they probably just use it to play Quake...
The last Leonid shower I saw was in 1998 while I was doing some work at the Woodbury Research Facility... It was quite a good show and since this place is in rural Georgia, it was extremely dark... I tried looking at last year's shower, but the light situation in suburban Philly is horrible..
One other fun thing that I've found to look at is occultation around the edge of the moon. On occasion, mountains on the moon obscure stars passing near the horizon for a few minutes. With a small scope, it's really cool to watch them disappear and reappear along the edge. You can find occultations listen in Astronomy Magazine...
Happy Viewing...
Ahhh thanks for the correction. I haven't sent it anywhere yet, so it's not too late to change it. Thanks! :)
I am writing today to ask you to co-sponsor Rep. Boucher &
Doolittle's Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, H.R. 5544).
I believe that recent movements in copyright law have unfairly plagued
the rights of consumers with respect to their ownership of digital
media.
Specifically, the DMCRA would require producers of digital media to
label any media that has been copy protected or otherwise crippled
in a way that would make that media unusable in certain devices, such
as personal computers, automotive stereo equipment, and other consumer
devices. I believe that consumers have the right to informed consent
with respect to purchases of digital media.
The DMCRA would also codify the right of the consumer to make fair-use
copies of any media they own. For example, a consumer who purchases a
CD should be explicitly allowed and encouraged by law to make copies of
that information for use in his/her automobile, portable diskless audio player,
or other device that may not be able to access that information on its
native media.
I also wish to convey and affirm my belief that it is absolutely wrong
to make copies of information for the purpose of avoiding paying for it.
Supporting this law is not supporting theft of intellectual property. It
is unfortunate that those who would use tools such as personal computers
and peer-to-peer networks to steal information have brought about the
changes in copyright law that have stripped the rights of law-abiding
consumers. It should be solemnly noted that personal computers don't
cause people to steal music just as peer-to-peer networks are not the cause
of piracy. We have seen many new and innovative technologies that have
a perfectly legitimate use in society, destroyed by the idea that it is
appropriate to punish everyone for the crimes of a select few who choose
to misuse those technologies.
There are other benefits to the DMCRA, both for consumers and our society
as a whole, and I emplore you to study this document for all of its merits.
I hope you will co-sponsor the DMCRA and show your support for the
public's rights in digital media. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Keeping track of your total tax expenditures is not at all difficult. Most taxes have a bill or a form that must be filled out. But, for taxes where you aren't told explicitly how much you paid, you have to ask. This applies to things like Gasoline Tax and Heating Oil tax and so on. But, it's simple, in the course of daily life, keep your receipts! When you get home at night, write down your taxes in a ledger. At the end of the year, tally it all up.
You'll spend a while just to find out what some taxes are (like fuel and oil), and whether or not some charges you pay on things like utilities are indeed taxes. What you consider to be a tax is completely up to you. Some might consider the FCC line charge on a phone line to be a tax, but others may not.
Unfortunately, I have not spent the time to come up with a "streamlined" way of doing it. Making this a daily 10 minute task is probably the easiest. Keeping a spreadsheet (paper or electronic) with a column for each tax is appropriate - as you pay new taxes, you simply add new columns.
Pay careful attention to the method you use to be sure you don't count a tax twice, or not at all. Do not use your withholding to compute your income tax - use the actual figure from your tax return in the spring.
Ask the gas station attendant to break down how much of your fuel purchase went to various taxes. They are usually willing to help you out if they're not too busy.
On your utility bills, include any taxes, or charges levied by any government, whether federal or local. Those are taxes in my book.
When you pay tolls, always ask for a receipt. I use EZ-Pass so it's simple for me to keep track of them.
When you buy things online, be sure you notice whether or not you were charged sales or other taxes. If you buy something from abcxyz.com, and they have a business entity in your state, they are required to collect tax for that state.
I'm not going to publish my exact figures because god only knows what someone might be able to infer from that information. But, I urge you to try this yourself for just one month, and you'll be horrified at how much you actually pay in taxes. Just be judicious and pay attention and you won't miss any of them.
Here's an interesting mental exercise on income taxes:
All people involved are in the 28% tax bracket and are just regular schmucks like you and me
1) Person A pays waitress B $1.00 as a tip
2) Waitress B then pays Person C that $1.00 to wash her windows
3) Person C then pays Person D that same $1.00 to do something else
and so on and so forth until
25) person Y pays person Z to cut her toenails
26) person Z pays person A that $1.00 to jump in place for 4 minutes
26 transactions, all taxable - the IRS would collect $7.28 on that $1.00 that floated around if it felt it was worth the time...
I think your 50% is way too low.
Last year, I grossed $58,624, of which I paid $39,675 (67.7%) in taxes. I tracked and accumulated totals for the following taxes:
Federal Income Tax
Pennsylvania State Income Tax
Social Security Tax
Unemployment Tax
Medicare Tax
PA State Sales Tax
PA State Gasoline Tax
Gasoline Taxes in Other States (Maryland, Delaware, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, New Jersey, New York)
Home Heating Oil Tax
Federal Gasoline Tax
Federal, State, and Local Utility Taxes
FCC Line Charges on my Phone
Taxes on my Cell Phones
Taxes on my DSL Line
Excise taxes on Electricity, Gas, and Water
Upper Dublin Township Wage Tax
Sales Taxes in other States (Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina)
PA State Turnpike Tax (Tolls)
Tolls in other states (Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Ohio)
Georgia Automobile Ad Valorem Tax (Property Tax)
PA Automobile Lease Tax
These reflect itemized taxes that I was made aware of on receipts or was able to find explicit information on. This list does NOT include hidden taxes rolled into the cost of items purchased, leased, or rented, by the merchant (like the property tax on the house I'm renting).
We're all being taxed into oblivion, and nobody cares enough to do anything about it. Of course, part of the problem is that there are no checks and balances in government. We have a government that is completely out of control - there are too many layers of abstraction - too many levels of government (Federal, State, County, Township, Locale) that have the authority to levy fees and taxes. We've basically been suckered into communism without even realizing it.
Voters need to understand the most politicians are lawyers, and therefore liars, and will not do anything that is not self-serving of the government from which they derive their power.
And the wonder why their stock is in the toilet. They spend all of their credibility appeasing the script-kiddie-gamer crowd...
BART: But I have 52 million shares! What's 52 million times zero?
They had better get their act together before the repo man comes for their soul patches.
Hit the Eject button... just don't call technical support when your cupholder breaks :)
Aware Records
Sorry about that!
What this has to do with fair use is that the big labels, by making these copy protected CD's, are trying to snuff out your Fair Use Right to make copies for your own personal use. What it might lead to is CDs only working in hardware that is approved/endorsed by the big labels... which could be even worse.
However, that said, and having just read through Title 17 of the US code (17CFR1.107), there isn't anything there that explicitly states that you can make copies for your personal use. However, it doesn't exclude it. The wording is actually very vague, even as legalese goes.
Something else interesting I found: That felt-tip pen hack for defeating the copy protection might be a violation under 17CFR1201...
Hope this helps...
Second of all, only the big labels with lots of money are going to copy protect their CDs. It's not like the copy protection they're implementing is FREE. It was invented by someone who no doubt patented it and is licensing it to the CD makers (which, consequently, raises the price of CDs).
Personally, I don't care if Britney Spears CDs are copy protected - nor CDs from other no-talent hacks who claim to be artists. Also, I think this protection scheme could be a great instrument in the downfall of such crappy music[sic]. Afterall, teenagers are probably the biggest pirates of this stuff, and it's not like they have money to buy the CDs if they can't copy them, so it can only result in less proliferation of this garbage. Eeeeeexcellent.
There's lots of great music to be had out there, and you can have it without giving up your Fair Use Rights.
- Richard Shindell
- Edie Carey
- Lucy Kaplansky
- Dispatch
- Rockwell Church
- Erin Mckeown
Just to name a few...