If the replacement policy covers up to the initial purchase price, that ~$400 insurance could be converted into an EOL upgrade ("planned catastrophe") and be very well worth it.
Unless they've changed something recently, the Best Buy "Performance Service Plan" works exactly as you describe. My family has had a string of such "catastrophes" (which, believe it or not, were almost all actually unplanned!), beginning with a refurbished Packard Bell 486 and ending (so far) with a 20" iMac Core Duo. Of course, with each iteration you have to buy a new service plan, but with my family's "bad" luck it's been worth it (of course, our luck may change now that we've stopped buying crappy brands).
My question is, when you buy a top of the line system are you treated the same way?
Yes. I bought a $2000 Thinkpad and had to call up Lenovo and bitch at them (making the point that the particular laptop I bought didn't have an optical drive, and lying that I didn't own an external one, and so I couldn't make my own recovery discs) before they'd send me the free ones that, by all rights, should have been in the box in the first place.
Microsoft aught to remember how fast Netscape, Visicalc, WordPerfect, ccMail, and a long road kill list lost to monopolistic competition.
What are you talking about? In most of those cases (and maybe all; I don't know what ccMail is), Microsoft did the killing! Of course Microsoft remembers it!
Besides, none of those things were operating systems. The ecosystem that's grown up around Windows makes it much harder to dislodge.
Well I would think that in the interest of having 'checks and balances', in practice rather than theory, that is what ought to happen.
I'm wiling to make an even stronger statement: FUCK "national security!" If we, as a nation, have to make a choice between "national security" and checks and balances, then we're just damn well going to have to be "insecure!"
It's "-esque" instead of "esc," "brass tacks" instead of "brass tax," and "into" instead of "in to" (in the last sentence). I'm sorry to have to correct you, but it pained me to read those in an otherwise-intelligent post.
Not to mention that the act itself of attempting to write out the RAM to some kind of log would change it, unless you had some sort of custom hardware! Somebody needs to go all Morbo-like on the judge: computers do not work that way!
Personally, if I were to relocate somewhere, the very first thing I'd check is broadband availability.
Yeah, just like the guy in TFA did. But then the ISP said "oh wait, it's not actually available after all" only after he was moved in, and he was screwed.
Telecom companies lie. They tell you that they can provide service when you ask, send a technician out to hook it up, then suddenly change their mind only when the technician realizes that the cable ended half a mile down the road.
You can't get that technician come out until after you actually order the service, and you can't actually order the service until after you buy the property. So what the fuck do you suggest people do instead?!
The point is that they're a fucking government-regulated monopoly! That means it's not entirely "their" business to modify! Instead, they should be required by the government to modify "their" business on his behalf because that's what they agreed to when they accepted the government subsidies (including right-of-way) in the first place!
Which part of that, exactly, are you too fucking stupid to understand?
All the new companies were MS certified partners, so it was in their best interest to vote the way they did.
Bullshit! Do you know just how bad OOXML is? It's so bad that the only way even Microsoft can benefit from it is by using it as a tool to prop up its monopoly. Hell, I'm not even convinced it's in Microsoft's best interests to be pushing OOXML -- its monopoly might be better served by MS Office implementing ODF, since MS Office still has great mindshare and interface advantages over OpenOffice.
Microsoft's tactic of pushing OOXML is like trying to gain territory via nuclear war: sure, they might get the territory in the end, but it'll be radioactive and worthless.
Well, I don't know. Wikipedia has this to say about it:
In the U.S., the relationship between the sheriff and other police departments varies widely from state to state, and indeed in some states from county to county. In the northeastern U.S., the sheriff's duties have been greatly reduced with the advent of state-level law enforcement agencies, especially the state police and local agencies such as the county police.
Sheriff offices may coexist with other county level law enforcement agencies such as the County police, County park police, county detectives etc.
I think that in my county, the sheriff department deals with guarding the prison, serving warrants, and acting as bailiffs in court, while the police department does everything else. (Incidentally, the sheriff's deputy that I mentioned was apparently on his way home; he said he'd been serving warrants all day and that he was a former prison guard.)
Don't be daft. It's more like you come into my store and offer me $0.01 for a case of beer, and I refuse, and you walk out of the store with the beer anyway.
No, it's more like he walks into your store and offers you $0.01 for a case of beer, you refuse, a passing police officer reminds you that the $0.01/case price is fixed by law and declared to be fair, and he walks out of the store with the beer.
You can't just name your own terms/price
AllOfMP3 didn't! The Russian government named its price, and AllOfMP3 complied.
Conversely, the RIAA would have a rather hard time going after allofMP3 for copyright infringement...
...and that's exactly the way it should be, since AllOfMP3 wasn't committing it, according to Russian law -- which, incidentally, is the only law that matters in this discussion, whether you like it or not!
Why did the IFPI refuse royalties from ROMS? Could be many reasons. Maybe the terms were not to IFPI's liking, and ROMS would not budge.
ROMS is backed by the sovereignty of the Russian Government. The only influence IFPI could have to get royalties is the influence the Russian Government, as a sovereign nation, allows it to have. Therefore, it's not in IFPI's power to decide what royalties it wants; it either takes what ROMS offers or it can go pound sand.
IFPI should be happy; Russia would be perfectly within its rights to declare everything produced by the publishers IFPI represents as Public Domain. In many places, copyright isn't considered to be a natural right, you know. For example, in the United States it's a construct of government that exists only for the specific purpose of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts." In Russia, it might be the same; I don't know. But in any case, aside from international treaties -- which Russia, as a sovereign nation, can obey or disobey as it sees fit -- the IFPI is entirely at the mercy of Russian copyright law.
If the IFPI wants a better deal, the only thing it can do is try to convince Russian citizens to change the law. And that's exactly how it should be!
Yep, we've got county police, city police, and county sheriffs. In fact, if you happen to be driving down the highway within a city, you might be in no less than four jurisdictions: all of the above, plus the state highway patrol!
I could have sworn I saw the "don't go after people unless they're going more than 10 mph over" provision when I got a speeding ticket and checked a year or so ago. However, when I checked again, I couldn't find it. That doesn't mean it wasn't there, though, because I remember it being in the same code section as the "downhill grade" and "distance within change" exceptions you mention, and I couldn't find them either.
Both of these guys were local (i.e., county). It's just that one was from the county police department and the other was from the county sheriff's department.
Even at broadcast bitrates, you're talking about 87 hours of video. The downloader would have to be spending one day a week doing nothing but watching it...
Internet connections are generally per-household, not per-person. Assume a family of four, and you're suddenly talking about 5 hours per person, per week, or one hour per day on weekdays only.
Besides, even if it were only one person, this is America -- 20+ hours of TV per person, per week, is average! It's "only" a couple of hours per day, you know. That barely even covers prime-time sitcoms, let alone football and NASCAR on weekends.
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Eh, it's got about double the GFlops of Deep Blue...
Yeah, I know; I was just trying to keep the modifications to his analogy to a minimum. At any rate, thanks.
Unless they've changed something recently, the Best Buy "Performance Service Plan" works exactly as you describe. My family has had a string of such "catastrophes" (which, believe it or not, were almost all actually unplanned!), beginning with a refurbished Packard Bell 486 and ending (so far) with a 20" iMac Core Duo. Of course, with each iteration you have to buy a new service plan, but with my family's "bad" luck it's been worth it (of course, our luck may change now that we've stopped buying crappy brands).
Yes. I bought a $2000 Thinkpad and had to call up Lenovo and bitch at them (making the point that the particular laptop I bought didn't have an optical drive, and lying that I didn't own an external one, and so I couldn't make my own recovery discs) before they'd send me the free ones that, by all rights, should have been in the box in the first place.
What are you talking about? In most of those cases (and maybe all; I don't know what ccMail is), Microsoft did the killing! Of course Microsoft remembers it!
Besides, none of those things were operating systems. The ecosystem that's grown up around Windows makes it much harder to dislodge.
I'm wiling to make an even stronger statement: FUCK "national security!" If we, as a nation, have to make a choice between "national security" and checks and balances, then we're just damn well going to have to be "insecure!"
It's "-esque" instead of "esc," "brass tacks" instead of "brass tax," and "into" instead of "in to" (in the last sentence). I'm sorry to have to correct you, but it pained me to read those in an otherwise-intelligent post.
It's like an underwater bamalance.
Not to mention that the act itself of attempting to write out the RAM to some kind of log would change it, unless you had some sort of custom hardware! Somebody needs to go all Morbo-like on the judge: computers do not work that way!
Yeah, just like the guy in TFA did. But then the ISP said "oh wait, it's not actually available after all" only after he was moved in, and he was screwed.
Sure, that applies to Canada, but what do you do when nobody but the telco has right-of-way access to install that "dark fiber" in the first place?
Telecom companies lie. They tell you that they can provide service when you ask, send a technician out to hook it up, then suddenly change their mind only when the technician realizes that the cable ended half a mile down the road.
You can't get that technician come out until after you actually order the service, and you can't actually order the service until after you buy the property. So what the fuck do you suggest people do instead?!
The point is that they're a fucking government-regulated monopoly! That means it's not entirely "their" business to modify! Instead, they should be required by the government to modify "their" business on his behalf because that's what they agreed to when they accepted the government subsidies (including right-of-way) in the first place!
Which part of that, exactly, are you too fucking stupid to understand?
That, or he didn't want to really be a schmuck by waiting 11 months and shutting down his business in the meantime while waiting for cable.
I don't care what Directway claims; satellite doesn't count as broadband!
Bullshit! Do you know just how bad OOXML is? It's so bad that the only way even Microsoft can benefit from it is by using it as a tool to prop up its monopoly. Hell, I'm not even convinced it's in Microsoft's best interests to be pushing OOXML -- its monopoly might be better served by MS Office implementing ODF, since MS Office still has great mindshare and interface advantages over OpenOffice.
Microsoft's tactic of pushing OOXML is like trying to gain territory via nuclear war: sure, they might get the territory in the end, but it'll be radioactive and worthless.
Ah-ha! So I wasn't imagining it! : ) I'm going to have to write that down for future reference...
Well, I don't know. Wikipedia has this to say about it:
I think that in my county, the sheriff department deals with guarding the prison, serving warrants, and acting as bailiffs in court, while the police department does everything else. (Incidentally, the sheriff's deputy that I mentioned was apparently on his way home; he said he'd been serving warrants all day and that he was a former prison guard.)
No, it's more like he walks into your store and offers you $0.01 for a case of beer, you refuse, a passing police officer reminds you that the $0.01/case price is fixed by law and declared to be fair , and he walks out of the store with the beer.
AllOfMP3 didn't! The Russian government named its price, and AllOfMP3 complied.
...and that's exactly the way it should be, since AllOfMP3 wasn't committing it, according to Russian law -- which, incidentally, is the only law that matters in this discussion, whether you like it or not!
ROMS is backed by the sovereignty of the Russian Government. The only influence IFPI could have to get royalties is the influence the Russian Government, as a sovereign nation, allows it to have. Therefore, it's not in IFPI's power to decide what royalties it wants; it either takes what ROMS offers or it can go pound sand.
IFPI should be happy; Russia would be perfectly within its rights to declare everything produced by the publishers IFPI represents as Public Domain. In many places, copyright isn't considered to be a natural right, you know. For example, in the United States it's a construct of government that exists only for the specific purpose of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts." In Russia, it might be the same; I don't know. But in any case, aside from international treaties -- which Russia, as a sovereign nation, can obey or disobey as it sees fit -- the IFPI is entirely at the mercy of Russian copyright law.
If the IFPI wants a better deal, the only thing it can do is try to convince Russian citizens to change the law. And that's exactly how it should be!
Yeah, but they didn't invent it. IIRC, Apple did that.
Yep, we've got county police, city police, and county sheriffs. In fact, if you happen to be driving down the highway within a city, you might be in no less than four jurisdictions: all of the above, plus the state highway patrol!
I could have sworn I saw the "don't go after people unless they're going more than 10 mph over" provision when I got a speeding ticket and checked a year or so ago. However, when I checked again, I couldn't find it. That doesn't mean it wasn't there, though, because I remember it being in the same code section as the "downhill grade" and "distance within change" exceptions you mention, and I couldn't find them either.
Both of these guys were local (i.e., county). It's just that one was from the county police department and the other was from the county sheriff's department.
Internet connections are generally per-household, not per-person. Assume a family of four, and you're suddenly talking about 5 hours per person, per week, or one hour per day on weekdays only.
Besides, even if it were only one person, this is America -- 20+ hours of TV per person, per week, is average! It's "only" a couple of hours per day, you know. That barely even covers prime-time sitcoms, let alone football and NASCAR on weekends.