Sure, that's now, but wait to see what happens when everyone reaches their mid 30's. The classmate who left college immediately or studied for a Masters degree will be limited to project management positions. Of course, there are the options of setting up your own company or becoming a contractor. The people who stayed on (or came back) to study for a Ph.D. will more than likely be able to get the technical director/architect/core technology development positions.
Many universities prefer graduates with several years of real-world experience before accepting them for Master degree courses. Similarly for Ph.D's. That's been my strategy - get as much real world experience as possible, then study for the Ph.D when there was a downturn in the market.
Well, I don't know about the US or Canada, but over in the UK, we have natural gas powered central heating systems. One of the side-products of North Sea oil extraction is natural gases such as methane. Some bright spark discovered that when producing petrol (or gasoline), this gas was made and could be piped to houses. With a small boiler and an emergency shut-off valve for safety, it is possible to heat an entire house in this way. Even the old tenement housing have gas pipes running through the buildings, and these pipes are still in use.
Here's an interesting quote from M. Derrick Jr., chairman of the board of Pepco Holdings Inc:
When a reporter showed him sample pages of Gorman's findings, he exhaled sharply.
"This is why CEOs of major power companies don't sleep well these days," Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist.
I wonder if things would have been any different if he had chosen to map the power grid instead of fibre-optics instead.
Now that's interesting. I hope the law means I can't set the minimum end user price the licensee may charge.
If I want to license the software for free and set the price for 0.00, and allow the licensee to charge for services, that's legal?
A copyright gives the owner the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, or license his work. See 106 of the act. The owner also receives the exclusive right to produce or license derivatives of his or her work. See 201(d) of the act. Limited exceptions to this exclusivity exist for types of "fair use", such as book reviews. See 107 of the act. To be covered by copyright a work must be original and in a concrete "medium of expression." See 102 of the act. Under current law, works are covered whether or not a copyright notice is attached and whether or not the work is registered. Most countries have also accepted the Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works.
Article 9 specifically states:
(1) Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall have the exclusive right of authorizing the reproduction of these works, in any manner or form.
(2) It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.
(3) Any sound or visual recording shall be considered as a reproduction for the purposes of this Convention.
Article 12
Authors of literary or artistic works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing adaptations, arrangements and other alterations of their works.
Practical examples: The copyright owner can set the price of the object being protected. Many university research projects release their source code on condition that the authors names remain on the files or that a credit is given somewhere within a derivative application.
The Opensource organisation have an evolution chart. This is a simplifed version from the UNIX timeline history. Bang up to date as well (July 31st is the most recent update).
It's in a similar style to those civilisation charts that nearly every History teacher has pinned on the wall. Looks like one civilisation is about to become extinct.
It will probably become more difficult for Joe Coder to just submit a patch to fix a bug. At worst, a lengthy background check will become required to verify that he hasn't worked on something similar for a corporation. At best, he'll have to complete some paperwork before he gains committer status.
Such situations are covered by NDA's (Non-Disclosure Agreements) and NCA's (Non-Compete Agreements). Fortunately, the latter are illegal in Europe and California, and maybe in other states as well. If the latter are valid, the corporate entity has to state how long before the employee cannot work on similar projects.
Even before the SCO lawsuit, there was always the danger of accidently infringing on existing copyrights and software patents, which the OSS community have been successful in avoiding. Corporations are free to inspect the Linux source code at any time and point out any infringements. In that case a workaround will be made.
The only exception to this is SCO, who refuse to state the exact nature of infringement. If everyone knew what this was, a replacement would be implemented simply by identifying the problem being solved, what existing solutions existed in the public domain, a comparison of their relative merits in terms of performance and size, and this would become a non-issue.
Undoubtably, SCO's management are extremely cheesed off that a solution that their engineers developed wasn't considered worth patenting or licensing, only to see it become a foundation stone of multi-processor Linux systems. If there are genuine IP claims, this lawsuit should be over the licensing agreement with IBM, and not the world in general.
If I'm going on holiday, then a book bought at the airport bookshop is far more convenient than a PDA. I'll still be able to read it on the flight and take it with me to the hotel swimming pool/beach. With a PDA or laptop, I probably won't be able to use it on the plane, while at the beach I'd be too concerned about it being stolen, buried in the sand, soaked by rain/drinks/the large guy jumping into the swimming pool/the little kids splashing about learning to swim, to really feel relaxed. Having any of these things happen to a $10 book is an acceptable risk. Similarly, when attending a conference I'd prefer to have a hardcopy of the paper than the author is presenting. If a cheap CD-ROM reader/LCD display with long-lasting life came along, then I would change my mind and say E-books would be a good idea.
If I'm learning technical stuff at home or in the office, then saving as much space as possible is definitely a good thing. I'd prefer not to have to lumber a large book back and forth between office and home. If I need the information from a book, then I can either buy it brand new, second-hand, or borrow it from the library, copy the relevant pages and then sell or return it. Photocopying has the disadvantage of creating as much paper as was copied. Scanning the book electronically allows me to create my own virtual bookshelf, and make backups onto CD-ROM whenever required. Having the all the relevant chapters on a single CD-ROM is no bad thing. I would consider buying a technical book electronically, if it were possible.
My preferences are based entirely on how much space is available, and how safe the surroundings are.
Evil Megalomaniac "Yes Mr Bond, Once I have control of the world's supply of Bagel Bits I will be rich beyond measure".
Mr Bond: "Ah, yes, but there is one thing you forget. Every Bagel Bit has a RFID tag on it. You can't make a billion bagel bits disappear into thin air without people noticing. The discard wrappers will give you away".
Evil Megalomaniac: "Darn!"
I second that (at least for Windows). I've lost count of the number of times that I've lost a CD-RW because the target file was smaller than the amount of free space left, but greater than the amount of free-space minus the amount of file system space required. And even when there is enough free space, and I wait for all write processes to complete, there is still a chance that the CD will end up corrupted.
The CD-burner seems to require a grace period of 2-3 minutes for all write requests to be truly completed. I suspect Windows caches the file system in memory or something similar.
...Secret service agents announce that they have smashed an inter-dimensional money laundering ring. Said Agent Bubba Peace "This was a particular difficult case to solve. Large amounts of money were disappearing from credit card and bank accounts across the country. We managed to trace the transactions to the registration of new characters in a MMPORG. Even then, it was difficult to trace down the culprits. We sent in elvin rangers to follow the couriers. Unfortunately, in most cases they were either leprechauns or water nymphs. The minute we tried to approach them they'd disappear into thin air. Even with a helm of brilliance and a blindfold it was hard to track them down. Typically they were armed with Wands of Digging and just jumped down the nearest trapdoor when approached. Fortunately, we had a breakthrough when one accidently stepped onto a magic trap and turned into a large cat. With the offer of a several food rations, this individual quickly changed sides and was able to drop us a few clues. We eventually managed to trace the mastermind down to a player nicknamed "Croesus" known to live in a place called Fort Ludios. Initially we assumed this was a location out in the desert and informed the BATF. However, they weren't much help as we soon discovered this guy was actually hiding out in a deep underground complex in the game itself. It took our agents several weeks of intensive training in order to develop the skills to survive in this hostile environment, but the pay-off was well worth it. Eventually, we had a large enough team to make our way down and find the magic portal. We weren't too surprised to find that the area was heavily defended. Fortunately, our agents were heavily armed with +5 black dragon scale mail,+5 shields of reflection and fireproof +4 levitation boots, along with rings of conflict and wands of teleportation. With a well planned strategy, we didn't have a single casualty. The outer defences were soon defeated and we managed to get a map of the area. Much to our surprise, we found out there were large dragons patrolling the area, but they were no match for our armanents. But this guy "Croesus" was much smarter that your average drug dealer/money launderer. Access to the fortress was defended by both a moat, and a concealed entrance. We considered several ways of forcing our way in. Taking into account the dangers of electric eels and the occasional Kraken, we decided to knock the door down with a Wand of Striking. This obviously took the occupants by surprise, and caused mass panic. We also noticed that several bottles of unknown substances were thrown in our direction, but as we had blessed unicorn horns, they had no effect. While separated from the occupants by the moat, we chose to wait until the fighting died down before entering. We didn't have to wait too long however, and entered the main room. It was obvious that Croesus was extremely pissed off, and that he was going to give up peacefully. Several times, he tried to flee the scene by reading several Scrolls of Teleportation, but a mysterious force prevented him from leaving. Before we could even read a Scroll of Identity, he attempted to fire several wands at members of our team. Fortunately, the ray bounced harmlessly off and he only succeeded in injuring himself. Seeing a opportunity to bring this conflict to a quick end, one of our agents managed to fire a wand of sleep. Within seconds, Croesus was motionless and the area was secured. An intensive search of the area revealed a large secret vault containing laundered money. This too was booby-trapped with mines. However, we were able to recover all of the stolen money and return it to the rightful owners. We also managed to trace down the real world Croesus. He is currently serving time in a small room with a magic-proof floor and walls, and with no access to keys,lock-picks, scrolls, wands or rings of teleportation.
Even in the Dungeons of Doom, federal law still applies."
SCO announced that they would be attempting to shut down all network servers allowing users to download Linux patches and updates free of charge. They also mentioned that they would be offering a subscription service where users could download updates for $1 per file, and that they would also be resorting to legal action in order to make university network administrators disclose the names of students running illegal Linux systems on campus.
Looking back at recent history, I found this list compiled from various technology news reports...
January 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Hitachi June 2000 Rambus settles lawsuit against Hitachi August 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Infineon August 2000 Micron files patent infringement lawsuit against Rambus August 2000 Hyundai files patent infringement lawsuit against Rambus Sept. 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Micron and Hyundai (Hynix) May 2001 Rambus lawsuit against Infineon dismissed, fined US $3.5 million August 2001 Rambus faces class-action lawsuit for fraud
Some definitions:
A. Capitalist - Somebody who is rich, when everyone around them is poor
B. Socialist - Somebody who is poor, when everyone around them is rich
C. Communist - Somebody who is poor, when
everyone around them is poor
One use for a digital camera is time-lapse photography. Given that you want a sequence to play back at 30 frames/second, and you want a sequence that runs for at least 1 minute, if not more, you want to take at least 1800 frames. For digital video purposes, you want a resolution of at least 640x480x24 uncompressed. That's just under 2 Gigabytes. Sure you can use a webcam, but that requires taking a PC along with you.
So really, there isn't any limit on how much memory a camera could use.
They're gambling that I don't get sick. They're proving a service
Right, they are "gambling", but like a casino, they want to make sure that the odds are in their favour. When you take out an insurance policy, you are betting that the event will happen. The insurance company is taking bets from hundreds of people in the knowledge that the event is only likely to happen to a few people. So the lost bets from all the punters, pay off the few winners and give the casino a small profit. With the insurance company, all the policies from the customers, pay off the few claimants, and give the company a small profit.
Now, add in genetic testing, and suddenly you can see some of the cards before they have been dealt. Current testing can't predict with 100% accuracy what will happen in the future, but gives each party an idea which way the money will go. This is the equivalent of card-counting in a casino and see how popular that is with
management.
The last thing an insurance company wants is a certain bet. A good example is taking out private unemployment insurance. There was once a guy who was notified one week in advance that he was about to be made redundant. He immediately called the insurance company for advice. They requested that he provide written details of the event in writing and they would send a claim form. Instead, they sent a letter in the post informing him that his policy was cancelled. While he was in employment, the small print stated either party could cancel the agreement with 3 days notice. If he had waited until being made redundant they would have paid out. Medical insurance companies aren't going to be any different.
I dunno, but I remember the fun I had when building a small FM transmitter using the a
Mykit(?) electronics kit.
Or even more fun, when some neighbours on the opposite street from us bought a cheap wireless intercom system that used FM...
Except for long distance telemarketers working for ATT.
One improvement I would like to make, would be to hear the sound of a large object hitting the iris of a SG-1's Stargate whenever a phone call was rejected.
A couple of quotes I once heard...
"You never know you're limits until you've failed".
"If at first you don't succeed, destroy the evidence that you ever tried, and try something else instead"
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, that's now, but wait to see what happens when everyone reaches their mid 30's. The classmate who left college immediately or studied for a Masters degree will be limited to project management positions. Of course, there are the options of setting up your own company or becoming a contractor. The people who stayed on (or came back) to study for a Ph.D. will more than likely be able to get the technical director/architect/core technology development positions. Many universities prefer graduates with several years of real-world experience before accepting them for Master degree courses. Similarly for Ph.D's. That's been my strategy - get as much real world experience as possible, then study for the Ph.D when there was a downturn in the market.
There's a place in the UK similar to what you have described. It's called Mole Manor. Located in Gloucestershire, it was documented in several web pages. I saw the documentary on TV once, and I thought it was really cool to live like a hobbit. In case you're interested in looking for the opportunity to buy an underground house in the UK, there's adedicated property guide. Interestingly Mole Manor was valued at 950,000 pounds (around 1.4 million dollars) about a year ago.
There is also an underground log cabin in Idaho. Could this be similar to the place you described.
Well, I don't know about the US or Canada, but over in the UK, we have natural gas powered central heating systems. One of the side-products of North Sea oil extraction is natural gases such as methane. Some bright spark discovered that when producing petrol (or gasoline), this gas was made and could be piped to houses. With a small boiler and an emergency shut-off valve for safety, it is possible to heat an entire house in this way. Even the old tenement housing have gas pipes running through the buildings, and these pipes are still in use.
The actual article was written by Sean Gorman of George Mason university as part of his Ph.D. thesis. It was covered by many networks
Despardes
MSNBC>
Here's an interesting quote from M. Derrick Jr., chairman of the board of Pepco Holdings Inc: When a reporter showed him sample pages of Gorman's findings, he exhaled sharply. "This is why CEOs of major power companies don't sleep well these days," Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist.
I wonder if things would have been any different if he had chosen to map the power grid instead of fibre-optics instead.
Now that's interesting. I hope the law means I can't set the minimum end user price the licensee may charge. If I want to license the software for free and set the price for 0.00, and allow the licensee to charge for services, that's legal?
From the Legal Law Institute
A copyright gives the owner the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, or license his work. See 106 of the act. The owner also receives the exclusive right to produce or license derivatives of his or her work. See 201(d) of the act. Limited exceptions to this exclusivity exist for types of "fair use", such as book reviews. See 107 of the act. To be covered by copyright a work must be original and in a concrete "medium of expression." See 102 of the act. Under current law, works are covered whether or not a copyright notice is attached and whether or not the work is registered.
Most countries have also accepted the Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works.
Article 9 specifically states:
(1) Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall have the exclusive right of authorizing the reproduction of these works, in any manner or form.
(2) It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.
(3) Any sound or visual recording shall be considered as a reproduction for the purposes of this Convention.
Article 12
Authors of literary or artistic works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing adaptations, arrangements and other alterations of their works.
Practical examples: The copyright owner can set the price of the object being protected. Many university research projects release their source code on condition that the authors names remain on the files or that a credit is given somewhere within a derivative application.
You only need duct tape for multi-monitor displays.
The Opensource organisation have an evolution chart. This is a simplifed version from the UNIX timeline history. Bang up to date as well (July 31st is the most recent update). It's in a similar style to those civilisation charts that nearly every History teacher has pinned on the wall. Looks like one civilisation is about to become extinct.
It will probably become more difficult for Joe Coder to just submit a patch to fix a bug. At worst, a lengthy background check will become required to verify that he hasn't worked on something similar for a corporation. At best, he'll have to complete some paperwork before he gains committer status.
Such situations are covered by NDA's (Non-Disclosure Agreements) and NCA's (Non-Compete Agreements). Fortunately, the latter are illegal in Europe and California, and maybe in other states as well. If the latter are valid, the corporate entity has to state how long before the employee cannot work on similar projects.
Even before the SCO lawsuit, there was always the danger of accidently infringing on existing copyrights and software patents, which the OSS community have been successful in avoiding. Corporations are free to inspect the Linux source code at any time and point out any infringements. In that case a workaround will be made.
The only exception to this is SCO, who refuse to state the exact nature of infringement. If everyone knew what this was, a replacement would be implemented simply by identifying the problem being solved, what existing solutions existed in the public domain, a comparison of their relative merits in terms of performance and size, and this would become a non-issue.
Undoubtably, SCO's management are extremely cheesed off that a solution that their engineers developed wasn't considered worth patenting or licensing, only to see it become a foundation stone of multi-processor Linux systems. If there are genuine IP claims, this lawsuit should be over the licensing agreement with IBM, and not the world in general.
Well, I can see two sides of this argument.
If I'm going on holiday, then a book bought at the airport bookshop is far more convenient than a PDA. I'll still be able to read it on the flight and take it with me to the hotel swimming pool/beach. With a PDA or laptop, I probably won't be able to use it on the plane, while at the beach I'd be too concerned about it being stolen, buried in the sand, soaked by rain/drinks/the large guy jumping into the swimming pool/the little kids splashing about learning to swim, to really feel relaxed. Having any of these things happen to a $10 book is an acceptable risk. Similarly, when attending a conference I'd prefer to have a hardcopy of the paper than the author is presenting. If a cheap CD-ROM reader/LCD display with long-lasting life came along, then I would change my mind and say E-books would be a good idea.
If I'm learning technical stuff at home or in the office, then saving as much space as possible is definitely a good thing. I'd prefer not to have to lumber a large book back and forth between office and home. If I need the information from a book, then I can either buy it brand new, second-hand, or borrow it from the library, copy the relevant pages and then sell or return it. Photocopying has the disadvantage of creating as much paper as was copied. Scanning the book electronically allows me to create my own virtual bookshelf, and make backups onto CD-ROM whenever required. Having the all the relevant chapters on a single CD-ROM is no bad thing. I would consider buying a technical book electronically, if it were possible.
My preferences are based entirely on how much space is available, and how safe the surroundings are.
Oddly enough, there is conspiracy theory that believes that the Universal Product Codes have the number 666 encoded in them.
Evil Megalomaniac "Yes Mr Bond, Once I have control of the world's supply of Bagel Bits I will be rich beyond measure". Mr Bond: "Ah, yes, but there is one thing you forget. Every Bagel Bit has a RFID tag on it. You can't make a billion bagel bits disappear into thin air without people noticing. The discard wrappers will give you away". Evil Megalomaniac: "Darn!"
I second that (at least for Windows). I've lost count of the number of times that I've lost a CD-RW because the target file was smaller than the amount of free space left, but greater than the amount of free-space minus the amount of file system space required. And even when there is enough free space, and I wait for all write processes to complete, there is still a chance that the CD will end up corrupted. The CD-burner seems to require a grace period of 2-3 minutes for all write requests to be truly completed. I suspect Windows caches the file system in memory or something similar.
...Secret service agents announce that they have smashed an inter-dimensional money laundering ring. Said Agent Bubba Peace "This was a particular difficult case to solve. Large amounts of money were disappearing from credit card and bank accounts across the country. We managed to trace the transactions to the registration of new characters in a MMPORG. Even then, it was difficult to trace down the culprits. We sent in elvin rangers to follow the couriers. Unfortunately, in most cases they were either leprechauns or water nymphs. The minute we tried to approach them they'd disappear into thin air. Even with a helm of brilliance and a blindfold it was hard to track them down. Typically they were armed with Wands of Digging and just jumped down the nearest trapdoor when approached. Fortunately, we had a breakthrough when one accidently stepped onto a magic trap and turned into a large cat. With the offer of a several food rations, this individual quickly changed sides and was able to drop us a few clues. We eventually managed to trace the mastermind down to a player nicknamed "Croesus" known to live in a place called Fort Ludios. Initially we assumed this was a location out in the desert and informed the BATF. However, they weren't much help as we soon discovered this guy was actually hiding out in a deep underground complex in the game itself. It took our agents several weeks of intensive training in order to develop the skills to survive in this hostile environment, but the pay-off was well worth it. Eventually, we had a large enough team to make our way down and find the magic portal. We weren't too surprised to find that the area was heavily defended. Fortunately, our agents were heavily armed with +5 black dragon scale mail,+5 shields of reflection and fireproof +4 levitation boots, along with rings of conflict and wands of teleportation. With a well planned strategy, we didn't have a single casualty. The outer defences were soon defeated and we managed to get a map of the area. Much to our surprise, we found out there were large dragons patrolling the area, but they were no match for our armanents. But this guy "Croesus" was much smarter that your average drug dealer/money launderer. Access to the fortress was defended by both a moat, and a concealed entrance. We considered several ways of forcing our way in. Taking into account the dangers of electric eels and the occasional Kraken, we decided to knock the door down with a Wand of Striking. This obviously took the occupants by surprise, and caused mass panic. We also noticed that several bottles of unknown substances were thrown in our direction, but as we had blessed unicorn horns, they had no effect. While separated from the occupants by the moat, we chose to wait until the fighting died down before entering. We didn't have to wait too long however, and entered the main room. It was obvious that Croesus was extremely pissed off, and that he was going to give up peacefully. Several times, he tried to flee the scene by reading several Scrolls of Teleportation, but a mysterious force prevented him from leaving. Before we could even read a Scroll of Identity, he attempted to fire several wands at members of our team. Fortunately, the ray bounced harmlessly off and he only succeeded in injuring himself. Seeing a opportunity to bring this conflict to a quick end, one of our agents managed to fire a wand of sleep. Within seconds, Croesus was motionless and the area was secured. An intensive search of the area revealed a large secret vault containing laundered money. This too was booby-trapped with mines. However, we were able to recover all of the stolen money and return it to the rightful owners. We also managed to trace down the real world Croesus. He is currently serving time in a small room with a magic-proof floor and walls, and with no access to keys,lock-picks, scrolls, wands or rings of teleportation.
Even in the Dungeons of Doom, federal law still applies."
SCO announced that they would be attempting to shut down all network servers allowing users to download Linux patches and updates free of charge. They also mentioned that they would be offering a subscription service where users could download updates for $1 per file, and that they would also be resorting to legal action in order to make university network administrators disclose the names of students running illegal Linux systems on campus.
The Japanese did try something similar in World War II. They tried using paper balloons to carry incendiary bombs across the Pacific using the jet stream. Crazy idea, but a few bombs did get through.
Looking back at recent history, I found this list compiled from various technology news reports...
January 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Hitachi
June 2000 Rambus settles lawsuit against Hitachi
August 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Infineon
August 2000 Micron files patent infringement lawsuit against Rambus
August 2000 Hyundai files patent infringement lawsuit against Rambus
Sept. 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Micron and Hyundai (Hynix)
May 2001 Rambus lawsuit against Infineon dismissed, fined US $3.5 million
August 2001 Rambus faces class-action lawsuit for fraud
Some definitions: A. Capitalist - Somebody who is rich, when everyone around them is poor B. Socialist - Somebody who is poor, when everyone around them is rich C. Communist - Somebody who is poor, when everyone around them is poor
One use for a digital camera is time-lapse photography. Given that you want a sequence to play back at 30 frames/second, and you want a sequence that runs for at least 1 minute, if not more, you want to take at least 1800 frames. For digital video purposes, you want a resolution of at least 640x480x24 uncompressed. That's just under 2 Gigabytes. Sure you can use a webcam, but that requires taking a PC along with you. So really, there isn't any limit on how much memory a camera could use.
They're gambling that I don't get sick. They're proving a service
Right, they are "gambling", but like a casino, they want to make sure that the odds are in their favour. When you take out an insurance policy, you are betting that the event will happen. The insurance company is taking bets from hundreds of people in the knowledge that the event is only likely to happen to a few people. So the lost bets from all the punters, pay off the few winners and give the casino a small profit. With the insurance company, all the policies from the customers, pay off the few claimants, and give the company a small profit.
Now, add in genetic testing, and suddenly you can see some of the cards before they have been dealt. Current testing can't predict with 100% accuracy what will happen in the future, but gives each party an idea which way the money will go. This is the equivalent of card-counting in a casino and see how popular that is with management.
The last thing an insurance company wants is a certain bet. A good example is taking out private unemployment insurance. There was once a guy who was notified one week in advance that he was about to be made redundant. He immediately called the insurance company for advice. They requested that he provide written details of the event in writing and they would send a claim form. Instead, they sent a letter in the post informing him that his policy was cancelled. While he was in employment, the small print stated either party could cancel the agreement with 3 days notice. If he had waited until being made redundant they would have paid out. Medical insurance companies aren't going to be any different.
I dunno, but I remember the fun I had when building a small FM transmitter using the a Mykit(?) electronics kit. Or even more fun, when some neighbours on the opposite street from us bought a cheap wireless intercom system that used FM...
The official term used is called Dynamic pricing. Here is a link to the story about Amazon after they were caught out.
Anonymous Phone Call Rejection also works.
Except for long distance telemarketers working for ATT.
One improvement I would like to make, would be to hear the sound of a large object hitting the iris of a SG-1's Stargate whenever a phone call was rejected.
A couple of quotes I once heard... "You never know you're limits until you've failed". "If at first you don't succeed, destroy the evidence that you ever tried, and try something else instead"
On the bright side, at least Links the cat doesn't try and kill every mouse he sees...