You have a point with cable, but airlines decreased their fares dramatically under deregulation. Unless you are flying to a small town, that is. In fact, fierce competition on the big city routes is mainly why it is so difficult to make any long term profit in the airline business.
When you go to their online store, will they have simulated sound effects of kids crying, video games, awful country music, and in store pages all playing through your speakers? You know, so that you get the genuine Wal-Mart experience. Now they just need to find a way to simulate that horrible smell of cheap plastic shoes.
I don't know why stores even accept checks any more. They slow down the line, the risk of fraud is high (especially if the person is from out of state - good luck getting your money if it bounces). Also, the personal information issue concerns the store: who's liable if an employee takes the information from someone's check and misuses it? Considering how few sales would be lost without the ability to take checks, it doesn't seem worth it. Checks are a very outdated means of payment, and I can't even think of the last time I wrote one.
If you write checks, you give up your privacy anyway. Your check contains your name, address, phone number, bank name and routing number, your account number, your social security number (sometimes). If I had to pay by check, the last thing I'd be concerned about is the fact that someone could find out that I bought twinkies and milk at the same time.
Would this be a bad thing for the rest of us? We could just firewall connections to/from this new monster ISP and put a stop to almost all spam and viruses.
Even considering Microsoft's relationship with the current justice department, I seriously doubt this merger would be approved. What would happen when the new version of Windows would only set up an internet connection through an approved MS/AOL online service?
I for one would not complain about this policy in the slightest. I'd enjoy not being able to do any work whatsoever without development tools. As soon as someone else decided I could do my work again, then I would. Or to drive a point home, I could type code in Word.
I love how so many companies are concerned about those scary camera phones. Like anyone wants to see pictures inside their boring offices. If someone wanted to commit industrial espionage, I can think of many available methods that would be more effective and easier to use than a camera phone. How about photocopiers, scanners, email, FTP? Some people seriously overestimate their importance to others.
Let me guess, the company will next start bitching about the increased number of personal calls on company phones. Some people will just never be pleased. For those of you who say that nobody should have a personal life at work, any employees you have who have kids will be out the door (hey, maybe that was the idea in the first place).
Jesus Christ I have never seen something so worthless in my life. I knew sitefinder was crap, but I thought it might at least have basic search capabilities. All it has is stupid crap to sell to people who started using the internet just yesterday. Verisign is no better than affiliate marketers who spam Google with their link farms.
Most patent lawyers come from some sort of technical background. A lot of them are former engineers that got sick of being like Dilbert. Some of them do go into it just for the money, but its actually a very hard field to get into since you must have a law and technical background in order to have a realistic shot at getting hired.
This is too little too late, even if it is well intentioned. There are enough bad patents out there to make a fortune for the owners for the next 20 years. Worse, the patent litigation process is so expensive for defendants that they often settle even knowing that the plantiff could never prevail in court. Not too many small companies have $1 million, which can be necessary to spend on a patent defense. So even with reforms, it will still be just as possible to bully small firms with patent barratry as a business model. Until it is more realistic for someone to defend themselves against bogus patent claims, new laws about what you can patent won't do much good.
If you're ideas were implemented, instead of people sitting on ideas until that million dollar buyout, they would just not come up with them in the first place. Sure, people would still have ideas, but they wouldn't put a lot of time and money into researching something truely unique and revolutionary, if there were no possibility of a big payout. Its not that they are too lazy or greedy, its that it takes a lot of cash to research something like cancer drugs and if nobody can make money off of it, nobody will invest in the research, and no new drugs will be produced. Are you still convinced this is a good idea?
This is one of the best practical explainations of the free market I have ever heard. Something does not have to be essential, or even all that useful for someone to buy it. The item (or service) has to have some PERCEIVED value. Why would someone spend thousands on a Rolex when a Timex will get the job done for less? Because they perceive the Rolex to be worth more.
Are Clear Channel and Ticketmaster by chance owned by the same people? They seem to operate almost side by side to completely control the concert/venue industry.
This doesn't really make much difference. If your business is incorporated, but you are the only shareholder, then the business is still yours and could be split in the event of divorce. If you only owned 25% of a business and got a divorce, then your wife could conceivably get 12.5% of it. A corporation can always help smooth out legal issues involving a business, but it cannot make your business immune from the usual estate laws.
What I love seeing even more than this is the sites where people put in "copy protection code". The old disable right click java script, which some very naive people think will actually protect their images.
I'd rather be wrongfully sued than have private gestapos be able to raid my home and take my stuff, all without a court order. Then, to get my stuff back, I'm sure I'd have to sue them. Constitutional protections really are a good thing, and because of these protections this type of law has never been proposed in the U.S. and I highly doubt it ever will be.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a point with cable, but airlines decreased their fares dramatically under deregulation. Unless you are flying to a small town, that is. In fact, fierce competition on the big city routes is mainly why it is so difficult to make any long term profit in the airline business.
When you go to their online store, will they have simulated sound effects of kids crying, video games, awful country music, and in store pages all playing through your speakers? You know, so that you get the genuine Wal-Mart experience. Now they just need to find a way to simulate that horrible smell of cheap plastic shoes.
I don't know why stores even accept checks any more. They slow down the line, the risk of fraud is high (especially if the person is from out of state - good luck getting your money if it bounces). Also, the personal information issue concerns the store: who's liable if an employee takes the information from someone's check and misuses it? Considering how few sales would be lost without the ability to take checks, it doesn't seem worth it. Checks are a very outdated means of payment, and I can't even think of the last time I wrote one.
If you write checks, you give up your privacy anyway. Your check contains your name, address, phone number, bank name and routing number, your account number, your social security number (sometimes). If I had to pay by check, the last thing I'd be concerned about is the fact that someone could find out that I bought twinkies and milk at the same time.
Have you sent this letter to EV1 yet?
Anybody remember parameterized programming about 15 years ago that was supposed to replace the need for programmers? Gotta love how that worked out.
Surely someone out there has patented this "business method". How long until Rackshack gets sued for it?
Would this be a bad thing for the rest of us? We could just firewall connections to/from this new monster ISP and put a stop to almost all spam and viruses.
Even considering Microsoft's relationship with the current justice department, I seriously doubt this merger would be approved. What would happen when the new version of Windows would only set up an internet connection through an approved MS/AOL online service?
I for one would not complain about this policy in the slightest. I'd enjoy not being able to do any work whatsoever without development tools. As soon as someone else decided I could do my work again, then I would. Or to drive a point home, I could type code in Word.
Do you work for a defense contractor or is your company management that seriously deluded as to how important their operations are?
I love how so many companies are concerned about those scary camera phones. Like anyone wants to see pictures inside their boring offices. If someone wanted to commit industrial espionage, I can think of many available methods that would be more effective and easier to use than a camera phone. How about photocopiers, scanners, email, FTP? Some people seriously overestimate their importance to others.
On a related note, trojan'd Windows machines being used as spamming zombies up 25% as well. Do we really want everyone on the internet?
Let me guess, the company will next start bitching about the increased number of personal calls on company phones. Some people will just never be pleased. For those of you who say that nobody should have a personal life at work, any employees you have who have kids will be out the door (hey, maybe that was the idea in the first place).
I'd like to see this guy's credit card bills. How else could he afford to pay for all this crap?
Jesus Christ I have never seen something so worthless in my life. I knew sitefinder was crap, but I thought it might at least have basic search capabilities. All it has is stupid crap to sell to people who started using the internet just yesterday. Verisign is no better than affiliate marketers who spam Google with their link farms.
Most patent lawyers come from some sort of technical background. A lot of them are former engineers that got sick of being like Dilbert. Some of them do go into it just for the money, but its actually a very hard field to get into since you must have a law and technical background in order to have a realistic shot at getting hired.
This is too little too late, even if it is well intentioned. There are enough bad patents out there to make a fortune for the owners for the next 20 years. Worse, the patent litigation process is so expensive for defendants that they often settle even knowing that the plantiff could never prevail in court. Not too many small companies have $1 million, which can be necessary to spend on a patent defense. So even with reforms, it will still be just as possible to bully small firms with patent barratry as a business model. Until it is more realistic for someone to defend themselves against bogus patent claims, new laws about what you can patent won't do much good.
If you're ideas were implemented, instead of people sitting on ideas until that million dollar buyout, they would just not come up with them in the first place. Sure, people would still have ideas, but they wouldn't put a lot of time and money into researching something truely unique and revolutionary, if there were no possibility of a big payout. Its not that they are too lazy or greedy, its that it takes a lot of cash to research something like cancer drugs and if nobody can make money off of it, nobody will invest in the research, and no new drugs will be produced. Are you still convinced this is a good idea?
This is one of the best practical explainations of the free market I have ever heard. Something does not have to be essential, or even all that useful for someone to buy it. The item (or service) has to have some PERCEIVED value. Why would someone spend thousands on a Rolex when a Timex will get the job done for less? Because they perceive the Rolex to be worth more.
Are Clear Channel and Ticketmaster by chance owned by the same people? They seem to operate almost side by side to completely control the concert/venue industry.
This doesn't really make much difference. If your business is incorporated, but you are the only shareholder, then the business is still yours and could be split in the event of divorce. If you only owned 25% of a business and got a divorce, then your wife could conceivably get 12.5% of it. A corporation can always help smooth out legal issues involving a business, but it cannot make your business immune from the usual estate laws.
I wonder how you spell "First Post" in Japanese?
What I love seeing even more than this is the sites where people put in "copy protection code". The old disable right click java script, which some very naive people think will actually protect their images.
I'd rather be wrongfully sued than have private gestapos be able to raid my home and take my stuff, all without a court order. Then, to get my stuff back, I'm sure I'd have to sue them. Constitutional protections really are a good thing, and because of these protections this type of law has never been proposed in the U.S. and I highly doubt it ever will be.