Most insurance required states allow the posting of a bond in lieu of insurance. In the state of Ohio, I think it's a $30,000 bond that has to be on deposit with the state.
In ohio, if you get busted for driving without insurance, they require you to take a bonded policy out which is more or less a bond someone else pays and gives the state notice of who it's intended for. If you don't pay your insurance premium for any reason and they cancel you, your license automatically gets revoked. On the other hand, it's very difficult to purchase a bond like that unless you have actually been in trouble for no insurance. There are some advantages to the bond and some disadvantages too. The advantage is that you are covered no matter what car you drive or if the owner has insurance or not. The disadvantage is that 30k isn't much money and life threatening injuries plus propert damage could easily outweigh that sum of money.1
Let me try this one more time. I think we are talking past each other to look at the big picture but in fact, we are starring out separate windows on the opposite side of the house. First, of all, I understand that you won't get your maximum speed. I also understand that they sell you speeds up to a certain limit. Now, to quote your post,
Go look at your ISP contract. Heck, go look at the advertisements. AT&T's Pro DSL Packages is listed as:
Downstream Speed: Up to 3.0 Mbps Upstream Speed: Up to 512 Kbps
So when the ISP purposely locks my speeds to below 3.0Mbps down and to less then 512Kpbd up, to lets say 2.0 down and 256 up, am I getting speeds up to 3.0Mbps? Of course the answer to that is no, I'm not getting speeds up to a any number higher then what they are limiting me to. The facts that my speeds might be effected by anything other then the ISP doesn't matter because that's a best effort up to. But when the ISP itself decides that I shouldn't get speeds up to 3.0Mbps, then I'm not capable of those speeds because of an action taken by the people who sold me the 3.0Mbpd service.
Now the question is, did they sell me a up to 3.0Mbps service or did they sell me an up to 1.0Mbps service when they are busy and a 3.0Mbps when they aren't. If it was the later, I would think someone would have pointed me to the advertisment or contract stipulation that says the ISP reserved the right to limit the speeds to below what they advertise and in fact make your up to speed less then what was represented on your service level.
If this was an investment firm firm seeking venture capitol and I invested with them under the promise of a potential 20% payout, there are a number of reasons why I wouldn't receive a 20% return on my investment. If any of those reasons are because of the investment firms direct actions to specifically limit my payout, Fraud has been committed and a bunch of laws are broken. You see, when the risk is ordinary and part of the game, it is something I am willing to assume by investing in the game. When the risk is a direct manipulation by the people I invested with, it become criminal. I'm not sure why ISPs get a pass when they advertise one thing and provide another. And yes, up to 3.0Mbps is entirely different then the ISP limiting me to 1.0Mbps because then I'm only capable of up to 1.0Mbps. There are two Mbps that I am missing in the up to possibilities because they purposely limited what speed I can get up to.
This is 100% legal and expected. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with this. There are other consumer protection laws and regulations that are involved. Gross overselling of the pipe such that the average consumer will never see their max rate is likely something the BBB and FCC should be involved in, but it is not in the realm of Net Neutrality.
Actually, once we are on the same page, I think you will agree with me that it is illegal and net neutrality has everything to do with it. Even with the up to language, if the ISP limits any traffic to below the speeds they sold you or sold you the potential to receive, lets stick with the 3 meg, then regardless of any other network conditions present that could limit your speeds, you simple are not capable of ever achieving the up to limit because of an action the ISP specifically took to stop it.
Now this runs along with net neutrality because if they can limit VoIP or P2P traffic to below 3 Mbps, then you as a customer simple do not get the agreed upon 3 megs or even the up to 3 megs possibility. If you received what you paid for and the ISP was barred from purposely limiting traffic to below the speeds they sold you, then it would be impossible for them to limit any other tech or sites or push preferences to theirs. You would have the same experience regardless of efforts by an ISP to limit them because they have to give you the opportunity to get the speeds they agree to sell y
I agree with the work speaks for itself but I find it Ironic that your posting it under the name windows NT.
Anyways, why not just make sure the hole in the tire is the one where it mounts on to the rim. Then you don't have to worry about making things right. Quality products eventually sell themselves.
I purchased a bedroom suit from a national furniture store located in my area about 15 years ago. Anyways, I spent something around $2000 on it and after they delivered it, I noticed that there was a crack in the leg on one of the dressers and the brass inlays were coming undone on two of the pieces. I phoned them up and complained, they sent a guy out to "glue it back together". I felt so robbed, I just dropped 2 grand (which was a lot to me then) and all I got was patched up junk. I have never stepped foot back into the store since then. Quality products and services will sell themselves. Give the tire to someone else who is willing to tarnish their name when selling it. Just make sure the the only holes in the tire are where it mounts in the rim and you put air in it.
I think his point was that immigrants don't retain the local heritage and customs more then the population will shrink.
It's this entire history and culture thing that we encourage immigrants to retain when they move to a new nation. But you can't expect the immigrants to know and honor the local customs and traditions that have been in place for centuries. What will happen is the European cultures will be displaced by foreign cultures imported with the immigrants. Generally on a small scale this is actually a good thing because you can take whatever is better and improve your society. But on a large scale, it's all too possible to lose the good things in the flood or replacements.
I understand your position, and I think you are correct, but, if you look at the fine print of your ISP contract, you'll see that they aren't (for the most part) garunteeing you a minimum speed, or a % of time at the maximum speed. All they are selling you is a connection with a maximum speed.
To go with a car analogy: You buy a ferrari from a local dealership that just happens to own the toll road you drive on every day. They tell you that the ferrari can do 200 MPH like its cool. And sure enough, one morning at 4AM you get out onto that toll road and wind it up to 200MPH.
4 hours later, you're heading in to work at rush hour. Your car is still capable of going 200 MPH, but there are 80,000 other people trying to use that same road and everyone is stuck goig 55MPH. Now, you could try weaving through traffic to maintain a 65+ MPH speed, but since that causes issues for other drivers (and likely an accident) the owner of the road sets the speed limit to 55MPH during the day.
First, I have to ask, are they really selling you a connection with a maximum speed when they limit it. I'll get a little more into it when I attempt to address the car analogy but for the time that the bandwidth is throttles by the ISP, is that maximum connection the same as I was sold or not? I don't think it matters over the time they aren't limiting it as much as when the ISP takes actions to limit it.
Now with the car. Great analogy except you described a scenario where normal traffic congestion limited the speed you could go. To make it fit with ISP throttling, imagine that when you took it out at 4am and wound her up, that you discovered the dealership put a device on the car that wouldn't let it go past 70MPH even though they said 200MPH as a selling point.
This is where I see the problem. If conditions restrict your movement, that's just how traffic is. If it gets so bad, people either look for a new service or pester the ISP to fix it. When the dealership or the ISP does so by limiting the speeds to below what they advertised when you took the service out, they are purposely shorting what they sold. It may seem trivial or necessary to you but does that make the deception right? So assume that an ISP oversells their bandwidth 70:1. They start throttling the speeds to below the advertised speeds and then notice that if everyone was limited to 2 megs instead of the 6 megs as advertised, they could over sell by another 50 subscribers. So now your 6 meg lines are only 2 megs because they want to sell the same thing they sold you to 120 people instead of just 70. SO the reality of the question might be, would you pay $40 a month for a 2 meg connection when you can have a 5 or 6 meg connection for the same price. And why is it that is you would go for the faster connection for the same price, would you be willing to allow the ISP to substitute the slower speeds at their discretion? Obviously you made a choice to spend your hard earned money on the faster speeds right?
Net Neutrality to me doesn't matter for the peek time throttling so much as it matters for unfair technical and business practices that allow ISPs and their partners to destroy small business and inventive software at the push of a button.
I think the entire premise behind net neutrality revolves around the customer getting what they paid for. If you host a website I might be interested in and pay your bandwidth fees and all, then if your hosting service is at least as fast as my internet service, I should be able to access your site at the fastest speeds our computers would negotiate for the transfer. Why? Because that is what we paid for. Now, the way they destroy small businesses and inventive software is by limiting your site's speeds to something that would encourage me to look at the services offered by the ISP or someone who paid the ISP a bounty.
The entire premise of net neutrality can simply be implemented by not allowi
Well, actually it isn't just all the people claiming that the US economy is sound that are claiming coal is irreplaceable. It's all the little people who got shafted when gas prices went sky high in 2006 and caused everything else to jump in costs. I mean food jumped, electricity and natural gas jumped, of course home heating oils jumped, almost everything that got trucked to the stores jumped and you would be hard pressed to find one product that's availible to the public that isn't effected by the price of oil at all.
Anyways, when energy costs are high, it strains the poor in particular. When the gas prices jumped to $4.00 or more a gallon, many people's disposable income disappeared, people barely hanging on ended up losing their homes, cars or whatever else, people who were sound ended up barely hanging on and it basically knocked everyone down a thread or two. But worse yet, it started the collapse in the economy rolling. Now there were more problems then energy prices but what they did was stress the system by removing disposable income from a good portion of society which in turn magnified all of the other problems and made them fail. When food jumps 15% in 2 years because of energy costs, when your homes electricity jumps 10-20 percent, when your drive to and from work without all the other running around costs double, you find that no one or not enough people will buy the unnecessary things, and when you look at the profits from the sales, more of them went to energy costs instead of paying workers and keeping them employed.
I hope you can see the cycle there. IF we replaced coal with something that is twice as expensive, there are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to afford it. Imagine your electric bill and most likely your gas and water bill doubling. Imagine the supermarkets and retail stores who's electric bills doubled, they will only increase their prices to cover the costs. So if you can imagine that, then imagine how much extra a gallon of milk or a pair of socks or whatever would cost you. If you think it would be nothing, then your just not looking at it right or are somehow detached from everyone else' reality.
Well, no not really or not all the time. I just saw a time warner commercial that said a specific speed. In fact, from the time warner site itself, you see specific claims to the speed. On that page, I see no reference to up to. However, when I looked at Verizon's speed offerings, it did say "up to".
If they hide the "up to" in the fine print, then it really is the same as I'm claiming anyways. they are representing one thing and selling something else.
A rotating laser leveling system like the dewalt uses dual lasers with a 600 feet range and rotates faster then the camera can recover. I was thinking of a way to widen the beam on a vertical axis to flood the cameras I first attempted to insert a filter but lacked any that could readily be used without modification. I then attempted to mount mirrors at various angles but the beam was too narrow.
Then a friend came around with a cop who took him to my house after his car was broken down and stranded on the road. The police have cameras now that read license plate numbers and they can press a single button and it retrieve registration information from it. Anyways, his video display went blank when he pulled in the drive and asked me what I was doing. I said rigging an automatic gate opener and attempted to claim I wanted to open a gate and the garage doors when I entered the drive way plus maybe turn a few light on.
The cop then told me that it was illegal to mount lasers like that to a car. It's covered under the radar jammer laws in which a cop uses laser radar. He also mentioned that it blinded his cameras in the cruiser which is what attracted him to me. He was cool with it but warned me that I could be in some trouble. I mention this because if you do attempt to do it, keep in mind that it might already be illegal in your area and if everyone else is without it, it isn't going to be hard for a cop around you to figure out you have something like that. Especially at night when you can't see them coming.
On the other hand, if you do get something figured out, let me know because I'm still interested. I just don't want a ticket or jail time over it.
I understand why they do it, what I don't get is how limiting my connection to less then what was advertised isn't bait and switch or false advertising or deceptive advertising or breach of contract.
I'm trying to think of a car analogy but I guess I have to go with a restaurant one. Now look at this from the customer perspective and not the providers. Imagine a Pizza joint that sells 16 inch large pizzas and claims each large has one pound of toppings. Now every Friday and Saturday, they get a ton of orders, lets say 5 times the normal amounts. Now if they didn't order more food in preparation of this, would it be ok to you if the pizza shop started making your large 16 inch pizza at a size of 12 or 13 inches with half the toppings for the same price while still representing them as 16 inches with one pound of toppings?
I think I know the answer to that so you don't need to address it. It's most likely no, it isn't ok. But that seems to be what is happening with the ISP, they advertise X speed and always on. When it is either not always on or a lower speed, you as a customer are not getting what was represented to you when you placed your order or continued your order.
Now I don't have a problem with the ISP taking a gamble that not everyone will be using the service at once. I also don't have a problem with the ISP's network slowing down slightly because more people decided to be on line at the same time. Where I have the problem is when the ISP purposely takes steps to make sure you are not getting what you paid for when purchasing the service. The ISP has a choice to make, they can gradually increase their bandwidth until there isn't a noticeable slowdown or they can represent slower connections speeds to those they wish to limit but they need to make this known before doing it so you as the customer are not paying for something you didn't receive.
Insurance companies operate on a very similar if not the same principle. They take payments from lots of people under the expectation that not everyone will be filing a claim at once. They then take the money and attempt to invest it to make more money. Hurricane Katrina brought this to light when several insurance companies almost folded because of the amount of claims were more then they brought in. However, they aren't allow to say your $200,000 home owners policy will only be worth $50,000 because we over sold out coverage. They can't say even though you you have paid in the system for the last 10 years with no claims, we aren't going to cover your automobile accident because we over sold our coverage and don't have the resources. They can't say that your mothers $50,000 term life will only pay out $100 because too many people died at once. Well, they can't say that and remain in business that is, so why are ISP's allowed to do the same?
At 70:1, they wouldn't need to increase their capacity to a 1:1 ratio, but if it is a problem at 70:1, then they need to decrease their speeds or increase their capacity to bring it down to a more respectable 25:1 or perhaps even a 50:1 ratio. And if the customer is going to get less, then they need to advertise that fact so people can make an informed decision when purchasing the service. It may be that the advertised speeds are the way they are just so they can compete with a DSL offering or something. Now if in reality, the network can support a 3 meg connection but DSL is offered at 5 megs so they jacked up the speeds to compete but limit people behind the scenes to 3 megs, wouldn't that be deceptive?
You see, the problem I have isn't the technical requirements of the service, it's how it is represented when clearly they aren't going to deliver what was advertised or even make an attempt at it. Instead, they are purposely attempting to deliver something less then what was advertised. And when they purposely do it, to me at lease, that shows an intent to decieve the customer they are selling services to. It doesn't seem any different then the people who prey on old ladies by contracting work to
I guess the point I was attempting to make was that they sell the service by advertising both upload and down load combined so that a 5 meg DSL connection may be actually a 4 meg down and 1 meg up giving a total of 5 megs. But they advertise this as always on so when they over sell their connections, normal traffic can slow it down. However, the problem I get into is where the company itself changes the 5 megs to 3 megs or slower or caps the total bandwidth. It seems to be different then the services they represent when selling me the connection service.
This is a problem with Net Neutrality and why I don't understand that it isn't already there by law. If I have the 5 meg connection as outlines above, the ISP shouldn't be able to limit that for any reason. Now if Google or Yahoo want to strike a deal with the ISP that gives me a 10 meg connection when visiting their sites, then that is above and beyond what I paid for when taking the service out. If my ISP wants to give me less then an always on 5 meg connection as they advertised (4 down and 1 up) because Google or Yahoo refused to pay an additional fee, then My ISP is misrepresenting the product they sold me and should be held accountable according to existing laws. I think this was the stand Micheal Powell took as the head of the FCC when he said it was ok to work out deals as long as the customer got what they paid for and wasn't cheated. Of course that doesn't address third party networks slowing the transmissions down in which case they should be severed from the peering agreements and have to contract a paid for connection in addition to covering their own infrastructure.
I guess I'm way off topic now. Anyways, I liken it to a restaurant advertising on the menu a quarter pound hamburger. Of course that is weight before cooking but when they have more guests/customers then they do hamburger, it doesn't give them the right to change the recipe and sell 2 ounce hamburgers as quarter pounders just to ensure they can collect the same amount of money from everyone that came in without buying additional meat.
Are you serious? Have you never noticed how fizzy drinks lose there fizz? The high pressure of the captured CO2 will force it out if there is any leak.
Are you sure you want to counter the fact that Co2 is heavier then air with an example of a liquid being heavier then Co2? Guess what, Air, oxygen, nitrogen and any other gas in it will rise out of the drink too. That's because they are all lighter then then the liquid they would be in. No one is suggesting that we should be putting the Co2 into an underground lake or anything of the sort. They are suggesting filling the spent cavities from oil and natural gas locations. Those too were under pressure when the gas and oil was in them and didn't seep up and pollute everything.
Anyway the real problem is not of potential leaks but the cost and practicability. It's very expensive to separate out the CO2 and then pump it miles underground into a convenient hole.
I can agree with that. However, some people seem to think it is just as expensive or more expensive to replace all of our current power generating devices with ones that don't emit Co2 in the first place. So here is the question, which is more expensive and can the costs of one offset the damage of the other while it is being implemented and improved? From a practical standpoint, if it cheaper in the long run but more expensive in the short run to go solar with a molten sodium storage solution, how long will it take to implement the alternative and have it ready to meet the demands of the world, and how can the money be raised to implement it.
Having tech like separating Co2 and sequestering it underground can be a short term patch to a long term problem. And when I speak of short and long term, I'm really talking about decades and centuries if not more. Take something like the molten sodium solar (hell even wind could be stored in this way in conjunction with solar), if we ramp up out abilities to produce the facilities, we are looking at probably 5-10 years before a commercial scale plant can be built and operating at capacity. Meanwhile, we have two other problems, one is increased energy needs by either advances in conveniences in life or by population grow or even by replacing gas and oil with electricity in something like our cars. So we can implement the Co2 sequestering technology on existing power production (which will take 5-10 years before it's operating at maximum too) and first build supplemental power stations using the clean tech like solar power with molten sodium as storage to account for the increased demands as well as end of life facilities. Now once those are taken care of, which will require quite a bit of time and resources, we can set our sites on converting traditional facilities to the new tech and further replace older less efficient plants.
It's not practical in most places at all as there will be no where to pump the CO2 for 100s of miles.
Yes, but don't look at it as a final solution, look at is as one step in the end of the problem. Most ball games start off with one team giving the other the ball. The goal hasn't changed when you do that, it's just a step in attempting to achieve that goal. In the mean time, we would have a reliable source or power that would also be less polluting during the change over. It would be impossible to pool the resources to replace every ounce of energy produced in the world at once so the band aid is needed if we are going to entertain the idea that human produced Co2 is bad for the environment. If it is, then we have to accept out limitations and do anything that is necessary to mitigate it's effects that doesn't disrupt the stability of the world.
Trucks have largely destroyed our interstate system. Beat it to rubble. Your claim to convince is subsidized heavily by my tax dollars.
Trucks pay for the highways. When I drove, I spent something along the lines of an average of 12-13 thousand dollars a year in fuel based road use taxes alone (the tax that goes directly to the roads). Several years, I paid closer to $16,000. If you add the permitting, tire taxes, and other highway use tax, you can add another 5-10 K depending on the states. I was permitted in all 48 land locked states so I was on the high end.
In contrast, a car pays on average of around $720 per year in road use taxes.
Your interstate highways exist today because of trucking. You see, the IFTA regulation says that trucks will pay fuel taxes based on 5 miles to the gallon regardless of their actual fuel economy. Cars pay for actual ussage which is why there are so many schemes attempting to track usage of cars in order to collect road use taxes. Now, the fuel taxes are split between the state and federal tax rate which is believe in most areas is around 24.4 cents for both. Some states may be lower and some may be higher and some states might charge more for diesel then for gasoline. California for instance is higher then 24.4 and higher for diesel fuel which the trucks use. If a truck averages 3500 miles a week for a single driver, in a 48 week year, your looking at around 168,000 reportable miles. In contrast, a car usually doesn't average more then 2000 miles a month which is around 24000 miles a year. The truck will divide the 168k by 5 to get the 5 miles per gallon average and owe at least 48.8 cents for each mile that remains (33600*48.8). In this example, we are looking at almost $16,400 owed tot he federal government and each state the truck drove through for the truck's road use tax. The car will pay actual usage so if you assume a low end of 16 miles to the gallon (24000/16*.488) the car will pay around $732 per year to use the interstates.
Now trucks aren't allowed on all the roads cars are on, and the part about taxes comes around from politicking with your highway funds. First, the state doesn't allocate the funding to where it was developed. The trucks pay for roads they are forbidden to drive on which makes the highway repair portion less but you have the advantage of a road of convenience. Next, the federal government is more political in it's returning of the funding to the states in which they favor places with higher costs more then states with lower costs. The Alaskan bridge to nowhere was more or less politicking and rewards to donors and so on. This is complicated even more by both the state and federal government taking the taxes and using them for something other then the roads. In the city closest to me, we just saw a big chunk of highway dollars go to a scenic recreation "bike path" at the edge of the city that didn't even go close to industry or some place useful. It's more or less a 200 foot wide and 10 mile long park.
If you put all that stuff on the train, your highways will be worse then you can imagine now. I'm not sure if you simply weren't aware of the amounts trucks pay but the math doesn't lie. The roads will not last longer enough to make the differences in amounts collected be offset and both the state and federal governments will end up having to tax you specifically more to recoup the taxes collected from the trucks. The interstate freeway system was developed specifically for the use of trucks and shipment. It was a defense initiative to get troops and supplies across the country even when portions of it is destroyed. Every sixth mile is supposed to be straight so it can be used as a runway. There are a list of reasons why the interstates were built and responses to how or what problems they solved like fresh food being brought to disaster stricken areas and so on.
Some other things that aren't clean might include most food which is spray with petrochemicals to inhibit disease and bug devastation, Solar has some pretty nasty chemicals involved, wind uses metals mines, smelted, shipped, assembled and installed with each step along the way relying on coal or oil in some way as well as the potential to disrupt weather paterns.
The point is that things can be clean enough to not cause immediate harm and mediate long term risks. They might still cause a small amount of harm, they might cause harm in the future, they might cause pollution of some sort when you consider anything that wasn't there before a man made process as a pollutant but by negating the harm and effects of pollution in the broad sense of the term, there will be an acceptable point in which it is clean enough.
I don't disagree with the premise that coal will always be dirty, I just don't think that dirty is always dangerous nor should we be more concerned with a "cheap" dirty fuel while ignoring the different but similar disadvantages of an expensive but dirty in different ways fuel. Solar, Wind, nuclear, water, and most all forms of fuel have their problems along the same lines.
And to all this point, I think you know my position on the global warming, this comment is pretty much independent of that if the emissions can be scrubbed of the adverse effects contributing to it.
Debt wasn't the fundamental basis of the economy, it was the basis of the expansion of the economy. This isn't bad when enough value or worth is added to offset the expansion. Sadly, there wasn't any value added and in most cases, all perceived value or worth was severely inflated which is why the crash was so hard.
Co2 is heavier then air. So if the cracks are present and there isn't some other source of higher presure gases, then where is the Co2 going to leak to? Further under ground?
We have pumped gases underground for storage in the past with pretty good results. The pressures aren't really all that problematic and some increased pressure will be needed because of the difference in atmospheric weight.
I simply don't see enough of a problem for your Nervous Nelly Pessimism.
Here is what I don't get. Take Time Warner for instance, they advertise 3 and 6 meg always on high speed connections. When I buy their 6 meg always on connection, am I not purchasing a constant 6 megs divided between upload and download?
If the answer is yes, the what right would they have by either changing the always on or the 6 meg connection on anyone? It seems to me that they sold someone 6 megs of internet access always for the time they paid their bill. If that results in customer using 700 gigs of data trasnfer, so be it, the customer purchased internet service that was 6 megs speed and always on.
Now if the answer is no, then why is it being advertised in ways to mislead and/or confuse people? Time Warner isn't the only company doing things like that, ATT/SBC, Comcast and many other companies do it too. Surely I couldn't advertise a blue car and give you two pipes, two motorcycles, a welder and a tube of blue pain now could I? I mean truth in advertising would pretty much preclude me from making false and misleading representation and the act itself would seem to be something that would deceive a customer into purchase something obviously different then they were lead to believe.
I understand how network usage is accounted for, but that doesn't matter because if I said you could always have a certain speeds with an always on connection at a certain speed, the bandwidth usage is already accounted for in that representation. Any purposeful throttling or traffic shaping that results in slower traffic because of specific actions on the ISP's part would seem to lead to a failure to deliver advertised service.
Well, then explain me what the hell is it with pluto being a planet or a dwarf planet?
Pluto being a planet and a dwarf planet comes from a recent change in the definition of planets. Well, to be more precisely, the standardization of a definition for a planet.
When pluto was discovered, it originally fit the commonly accepted definition of a planet. This remained until more was known about Pluto and some people started claiming it wasn't large enough. Then a couple of years ago, almost 70 years after Pluto's discovery and commonly accepted naming as a planet, a group of astronomers came together and reveal that part of an agenda at a meeting was to settle on a common definition for a planet and a couple of other things that seem to have developed some discrepancies over the years as we learned more about the universe and objects in it. Some complained that notice wasn't given to the event, some complained that not enough notice was given to the agenda and so on.
Having the word planet in the name does nothing for the 70 years of tradition, the 70 years of common understanding, the 70 years of it being one thing to arbitrarily become another because some group of people met on the spur of the money and declared it so. Ego isn't always bad.
Just because he points out that all of Obama's friends worthy of a government position under him is either tax cheat or corrupt in some way does not mean he didn't appose another wrong under another administration.
In fact, it appears that you may be suggesting that it's OK for Obama to be surrounded by criminals because someone else did something wrong. Is this the modern version of Clinton did it?
I have noticed a long time ago that those "cops" shows are little more then propaganda tools so the police can make people think they have less rights then they do. It's all about giving you the impression that the police can do something that they can't.
I remember seeing one oncident where they pulled a guy over for speeding, cuffed him and sat him on the curb, then searched his car. They took the keys out of the ignition and opened a locked consol in the center of the car and found a gun. They claimed it was loaded and arrested him on that charge. The interesting thing is that I remembered this going through the courts, the guy fought the gun charge because the cops powers to search the cars for their safety only extend to within the reach of the people inside it and locked compartments aren't considered with reach because it requires a separate action that would alert the officers to their safety. This case played out in court before they ever showed it on TV. Yet there was no mention to the guy getting the gun charge dropped or that the cop was in the wrong. I have seen that same episode rerun 3 or 4 times in the same ways.
They pull people over for tinted windows and find Coke stashed in the trunk. What the hell do they need to look in the trunk for because of tinted windows? They always find something on people, and at the end, your left with the impression that the cops were just doing their jobs. But stopping someone who is walking down the street and harassing them until he runs and they find a rock of crack on him doesn't seem like the proper job of the police. I don't know if they make this up or if cops really do think they can pick someone they don't like and start harassing them for no reason in particular. But it is one of those they do it because they can things and most people don't know they can't do half the shit on those shows because you as a citizen of these great united states have rights.
The article is inflammatory BS. You don't go to prison for misdemeanors. You go to jail for misdemeanors. They are entirely different places and if you had been to either, you would know how different they are. The six months sentence hanging over his head will not be a prison sentence at all and that is half the maximum time which is also the minimum time anyone can face for a class A misdemeanor offense. (1 year for federal misdemeanors and mostly 6 months max for state misdemeanors)
Now according to the original offense which wasn't a misdemeanor, it was a felony charge, he could have been facing 10 years in prison (not jail), because of the supposed retail value of the songs he distributed or caused to be distributed.
The was actually a treated as a mass bootleg case and not a file sharing case because he supposedly "willfully infringed a copyright for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain." The problem he laid in front of them is that he admitted to doing it and helped identify where he got the files from. But this case isn't the ordinary "junior put the new album on the lime wire interweb".
His lawyer has a different take on it which would follow the pre-sentencing guidelines that recommended 1 years probation. He makes some pretty good points in it and I think this will probably be closer to what happens.
You have to understand that this case is a big political charade. Obama has brought in some RIAA lawyers to help run the hope and Change you can believe in but I don't think they are the problems here (could be but it's just me). It's more of a- they made a big issue out of his site being a commercial venture in order to force information out of him. They offered a reduced charge based his cooperation in telling them everything he knew to help the government in finding who originally released the songs. (according to his lawyers, it could have been the record industry itself or axel rose himself). He took the deal and now in order for there to be a "deterrent" the government has to appear like they are wanting the most they can get in order to have the deterrent factor be present. The judge will likely claim that his cooperation with investigators and mitigating factors like his actions to prevent down-loaders supersedes the Deterrent factor and sentencing guild lines and either negate any jail time with probation or list his jail time as the time he spent waiting bail after they raided him and credit him with time served. If he spent a week in jail, he would probably get 7 days- time served and 1 year probation or possibly 6 months suspended sentence on the completion of 1 years probation or something of the sort. But the point is to keep up appearances. The judge has quite a bit of leeway on this despite that class A misdemeanors have a minimum of 6 months.
Opensource is about the code in question and the freedom to adapt it to your needs.
That being said, the ability to give the code away again is still there even with certification is the certification is assigned like a patent or copyright. In this case, the assignment of the certification would be a specific implementation by a specific company or person or person representing the company.
To walk through this just so we are clear, if I create an open source product called "Little Dog" and I get it certified, if the certification is assigned to me for version 1.0, then version 1.2 or 1.45 or whatever would need a new certification. And because the certification is assigned to me, if you decided to take the code and offer your own product or even improve it, you wouldn't be able to claim it was certified because only the person assigned the certification could do that. Technically, the code would have been certified so you could get a certification in your name without fear of failing but you couldn't lay claim to my certification.
Now, I believe this follows along with the open source model and principle because you can get the code, you can distribute the code, you can modify it, you can still do anything you want with it. The only thing you couldn't do is make claims or representations over a certification for use that was assigned to me. Think of it like this, if Time magazine said you were the hero of the month because of some open source program you created, I couldn't accurately take the code, distribute it, and claim Time Magazine called me the hero of the month even though I would be using the same code you created that caused them to notice you.
I hope I didn't just write in circles and confuse my point.
The problem is that the model breaks when the software environment breaks because of fees to make the software useful.
Requiring a certification isn't part of the normal software process or model. It's actually an add on that isn't necessarily needed but has advantages. If the model was changed and the vendor certified the software in house to pass a third party review and the customer had to cover the expense from a third party verification service, it would be the same model and nothing would be broke. But no where else in software, do you have to pay someone in order for your software to be used unless your licensing someone else' product. Of course if your licensing someone else' product and they don't want it open sourced, you can't open source your product that contains theirs.
And something you should note, it's only a problem currently because of the outrageous costs associated with certification. If the costs were lower and more reasonable, the problem disappears. It's disingenuous to associate the problems with the FOSS model or commercializing FOSS software without pointing to what broke it. It isn't like many other software packages ever require third party certifications that require large sums of money either. And of those that might, the sums generally aren't as outrageous and ongoing like this.
Something the poster didn't mention that could negate most all of his fears and black out the point you raised is that they could certify the software under a trademark name and do the releases with the normal name. This would lock the certification into something only he could use. For instance, he likes the program MirrorMed. Now he can create a company called Trotter inc. and certify MirrorMed as "Trotter's certified MirrorMed" software. He then distributes it under that name "Trotter's Certified MirrorMed" and distribute his code as MirrorMed. No one else could claim MirrorMed was certified under his certification because they couldn't use his trademark "Trotter's certified" in the name of the product even though he distributed the code and the certification is in his trademarked name.
In short, the certification would be locked to the "trotter's certified" which is the over package he provides instead of just the software MirrorMed. He could control this because MirrorMed itself as a name wouldn't have been certified. Now the code would have technically been certified so everyone else wanting to do the same could certify it themselves without fear of it failing, and most likely they would certify it under their own trademarked name too.
Outside of the entire Fees for OSS idea, I think it is preposterous to think that once you certify a program or application to do a certain thing, you have to continue paying them based on annual sale of your program or application to keep that certification.
We don't need welfare for OSS, we need something different in place. A certification process shouldn't be dependent on future fees paid nor should it base any of the fees on the sales of the software. If you want to know why health care is so expensive, it's shit like this.
Think about it, 25K can go into 25 copies sold $1000 at a time. That isn't so much when considering what the software brings to the table. But an annual $5000 on top of that based on sales means the same program that was certified at $1000 a pop is now not certified if more money isn't paid. The question is, is that 5k a version sold?, up to 25 licenses sold? or is it 5 licenses sold? Now licenses could be a misnomer too, Take MS servers for instance, you need a license for the server, a license for the workstation's MS operating system, a license for the network connections to the server, and a license for all the MS applications running on those systems. Lets say MS Office is a given and for shits and giggles, lets say MS dynamics CRM is installed. Now, that means 1 server license, 1 workstation, 1 connection, 1 office and 1 CRM, that's 5 licenses just to be up and running. OF course more workstations will need less licenses but in the certification ordeal with CCHIT, how many of those licenses count as sales? I mean the ERM software could have modular features and easily require 5 licenses, so with the 5k based on sales, if that is for every 5 licenses, then you might need to recover 5k per workstation on top of your profit and expenses for creating the damn thing.
It's a racket that shouldn't be allowed. If we are going to require certification, then there should be some rules and guidelines and limits on costs instead of creating a get rich quick scheme that drives the cost of health care up so some damn politicians can fool the people when they claim to be fixing the problem. The opposite of that would be to open up the ability for other companies or organizations to become certifies and forbid lock ins to certain companies or organizations so competition can drive costs down to something more reasonable.
Geoffrey Landis is a liar that often writes and tells stories that never happened. He has lots of works that are nothing but fictional. He even claims to own race horses when he doesn't.
Now it is true that you write Scifi and tell stories that transcends mental acuity right? So did I just tell the truth or did I attempt to maliciously smear your name? You did write that " I do have a horse or two in both of the races" didn't you?
The problem is that the truth is often a rendition of fact or an opinion to be blunt. If I read one of your stories and decided that could never happen, I could say that you were lieing. However, a normal person would see them as one of your works of Science Fiction and you would probably want it viewed that way.
So the question is, does the truth set me free? Do you actually write and tell stories that aren't true, never happened, or possible could never happen? Or was that statement about you being a liar a malicious intent to insult your good name. The truth is, you do write and tell stories that aren't true. And yes, my intent was to show you how the truth shouldn't always be a validation for a defense of libel. The truth is interpreted.
All guesting aside, Geoffrey Landis is a great Scifi writer (I just talked with someone who read one of your works and strongly suggest I should too) and a pretty knowledgeable scientist that has done some great work with the various mars programs at nasa from all that I can tell about him. I only picked on him to show how the truth can be misinterpreted and applied in ways that probably shouldn't automatically vindicate someone of libel. Nothing I said was incorrect except for maybe the liar part where his fiction is presented as that, but someone could miss the presentation and mistake his fiction as one of his scientific endeavors.
If the intent of the statement is malicious, I see no reason not to hold someone liable to it. Often the truth is a matter of opinion. Take the Stapples case for instance, they labeled the guy a thief for not presenting all his receipts. He claims he is a sloppy record keeper and all the reimbursements were justified. Without the receipts, someone took the opinion that he was stealing from the company and the facts back that up. If he finds the receipts, does that make the person's statement any less accurate given the information availible at the time when the truth was he was a bad record keeper and simply didn't provide the proper documentation?
There is no absolutes when dealing with the truth. Especially when the truth is actually a collection of events being interpreted by someone who has to make a decision. This is most evident in car accidents witnessed by people viewing from different angles. There is always something that the other person didn't see or saw differently and it is common to have statements that conflict on who was at fault because of that. It's a flaw in humans that make us colorful because we interpret what we take in and process that information based on our own experiences, training, and whatever else that had made us unique individuals.
Speaking of car accidents, I saw one where someone got T-boned going through an intersection. I was waiting to cross the road when it happened and after giving the statements to the police, an officer came around to see how sure I was that the car had a green light. It appears that the other witnesses claimed the other car had the green light. The traffic light was actually malfunctioning and while we talked about who had the green light, another officer noticed that both light turned green for half a cycle. It appeared that every 5 or 6 cycles, the light would give all directions a green light for around 15-20 seconds. The interesting thing is that we just assumed the other light was red because that's how it works normally. To say someone ran a red light and caused an accident would have ordinarily been a naturally truthful statement until we saw what was going on. This is yet another example of how the truth is often opinions based around facts and not necessarily just fact.
2.5 court of appeals initially upholds the dismissal until someone brings up the 1902 law.
Outside of that, spot on.
Personally, I don't see the point of naming the employee personally in the Email. Most states have laws about what can be said about an employee after their dismissal which generally goes down to if they were fired or quit, if they would rehire the employee, and the dates which they were employed. Some states allow salaries to be discussed and job duties but generally performance is all opinion and they don't allow opinion to happen. The employer could have saved all the trouble by sending two separate emails. One stating that the employee no longer works there and another stating that they just dismissed someone for "problems" with their accounting and reporting so everyone needs to take extra care in ensuring it is done right and accurately.
Anyways, even if he does end up losing, I would hope that someone at staples realizes this and changes their policy. It is one thing for other employees to draw connections to something, it is another to point the person out. I think pointing the person out had the intent of malice and was intended to mark the man. The employee claims he isn't a thief, just a sloppy record keeper which may be true and make the "true statement" actually false. A reasonable person would probably conclude that he stole from the company by not providing receipt for reimbursements he claimed but with his lack of a job and the difficulty getting one, he may find those receipts making the theft claim an incorect opinion.
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Most insurance required states allow the posting of a bond in lieu of insurance. In the state of Ohio, I think it's a $30,000 bond that has to be on deposit with the state.
In ohio, if you get busted for driving without insurance, they require you to take a bonded policy out which is more or less a bond someone else pays and gives the state notice of who it's intended for. If you don't pay your insurance premium for any reason and they cancel you, your license automatically gets revoked. On the other hand, it's very difficult to purchase a bond like that unless you have actually been in trouble for no insurance. There are some advantages to the bond and some disadvantages too. The advantage is that you are covered no matter what car you drive or if the owner has insurance or not. The disadvantage is that 30k isn't much money and life threatening injuries plus propert damage could easily outweigh that sum of money.1
Let me try this one more time. I think we are talking past each other to look at the big picture but in fact, we are starring out separate windows on the opposite side of the house. First, of all, I understand that you won't get your maximum speed. I also understand that they sell you speeds up to a certain limit. Now, to quote your post,
So when the ISP purposely locks my speeds to below 3.0Mbps down and to less then 512Kpbd up, to lets say 2.0 down and 256 up, am I getting speeds up to 3.0Mbps? Of course the answer to that is no, I'm not getting speeds up to a any number higher then what they are limiting me to. The facts that my speeds might be effected by anything other then the ISP doesn't matter because that's a best effort up to. But when the ISP itself decides that I shouldn't get speeds up to 3.0Mbps, then I'm not capable of those speeds because of an action taken by the people who sold me the 3.0Mbpd service.
Now the question is, did they sell me a up to 3.0Mbps service or did they sell me an up to 1.0Mbps service when they are busy and a 3.0Mbps when they aren't. If it was the later, I would think someone would have pointed me to the advertisment or contract stipulation that says the ISP reserved the right to limit the speeds to below what they advertise and in fact make your up to speed less then what was represented on your service level.
If this was an investment firm firm seeking venture capitol and I invested with them under the promise of a potential 20% payout, there are a number of reasons why I wouldn't receive a 20% return on my investment. If any of those reasons are because of the investment firms direct actions to specifically limit my payout, Fraud has been committed and a bunch of laws are broken. You see, when the risk is ordinary and part of the game, it is something I am willing to assume by investing in the game. When the risk is a direct manipulation by the people I invested with, it become criminal. I'm not sure why ISPs get a pass when they advertise one thing and provide another. And yes, up to 3.0Mbps is entirely different then the ISP limiting me to 1.0Mbps because then I'm only capable of up to 1.0Mbps. There are two Mbps that I am missing in the up to possibilities because they purposely limited what speed I can get up to.
Actually, once we are on the same page, I think you will agree with me that it is illegal and net neutrality has everything to do with it. Even with the up to language, if the ISP limits any traffic to below the speeds they sold you or sold you the potential to receive, lets stick with the 3 meg, then regardless of any other network conditions present that could limit your speeds, you simple are not capable of ever achieving the up to limit because of an action the ISP specifically took to stop it.
Now this runs along with net neutrality because if they can limit VoIP or P2P traffic to below 3 Mbps, then you as a customer simple do not get the agreed upon 3 megs or even the up to 3 megs possibility. If you received what you paid for and the ISP was barred from purposely limiting traffic to below the speeds they sold you, then it would be impossible for them to limit any other tech or sites or push preferences to theirs. You would have the same experience regardless of efforts by an ISP to limit them because they have to give you the opportunity to get the speeds they agree to sell y
I agree with the work speaks for itself but I find it Ironic that your posting it under the name windows NT.
Anyways, why not just make sure the hole in the tire is the one where it mounts on to the rim. Then you don't have to worry about making things right. Quality products eventually sell themselves.
I purchased a bedroom suit from a national furniture store located in my area about 15 years ago. Anyways, I spent something around $2000 on it and after they delivered it, I noticed that there was a crack in the leg on one of the dressers and the brass inlays were coming undone on two of the pieces. I phoned them up and complained, they sent a guy out to "glue it back together". I felt so robbed, I just dropped 2 grand (which was a lot to me then) and all I got was patched up junk. I have never stepped foot back into the store since then. Quality products and services will sell themselves. Give the tire to someone else who is willing to tarnish their name when selling it. Just make sure the the only holes in the tire are where it mounts in the rim and you put air in it.
I think his point was that immigrants don't retain the local heritage and customs more then the population will shrink.
It's this entire history and culture thing that we encourage immigrants to retain when they move to a new nation. But you can't expect the immigrants to know and honor the local customs and traditions that have been in place for centuries. What will happen is the European cultures will be displaced by foreign cultures imported with the immigrants. Generally on a small scale this is actually a good thing because you can take whatever is better and improve your society. But on a large scale, it's all too possible to lose the good things in the flood or replacements.
First, I have to ask, are they really selling you a connection with a maximum speed when they limit it. I'll get a little more into it when I attempt to address the car analogy but for the time that the bandwidth is throttles by the ISP, is that maximum connection the same as I was sold or not? I don't think it matters over the time they aren't limiting it as much as when the ISP takes actions to limit it.
Now with the car. Great analogy except you described a scenario where normal traffic congestion limited the speed you could go. To make it fit with ISP throttling, imagine that when you took it out at 4am and wound her up, that you discovered the dealership put a device on the car that wouldn't let it go past 70MPH even though they said 200MPH as a selling point.
This is where I see the problem. If conditions restrict your movement, that's just how traffic is. If it gets so bad, people either look for a new service or pester the ISP to fix it. When the dealership or the ISP does so by limiting the speeds to below what they advertised when you took the service out, they are purposely shorting what they sold. It may seem trivial or necessary to you but does that make the deception right? So assume that an ISP oversells their bandwidth 70:1. They start throttling the speeds to below the advertised speeds and then notice that if everyone was limited to 2 megs instead of the 6 megs as advertised, they could over sell by another 50 subscribers. So now your 6 meg lines are only 2 megs because they want to sell the same thing they sold you to 120 people instead of just 70. SO the reality of the question might be, would you pay $40 a month for a 2 meg connection when you can have a 5 or 6 meg connection for the same price. And why is it that is you would go for the faster connection for the same price, would you be willing to allow the ISP to substitute the slower speeds at their discretion? Obviously you made a choice to spend your hard earned money on the faster speeds right?
I think the entire premise behind net neutrality revolves around the customer getting what they paid for. If you host a website I might be interested in and pay your bandwidth fees and all, then if your hosting service is at least as fast as my internet service, I should be able to access your site at the fastest speeds our computers would negotiate for the transfer. Why? Because that is what we paid for. Now, the way they destroy small businesses and inventive software is by limiting your site's speeds to something that would encourage me to look at the services offered by the ISP or someone who paid the ISP a bounty.
The entire premise of net neutrality can simply be implemented by not allowi
Well, actually it isn't just all the people claiming that the US economy is sound that are claiming coal is irreplaceable. It's all the little people who got shafted when gas prices went sky high in 2006 and caused everything else to jump in costs. I mean food jumped, electricity and natural gas jumped, of course home heating oils jumped, almost everything that got trucked to the stores jumped and you would be hard pressed to find one product that's availible to the public that isn't effected by the price of oil at all.
Anyways, when energy costs are high, it strains the poor in particular. When the gas prices jumped to $4.00 or more a gallon, many people's disposable income disappeared, people barely hanging on ended up losing their homes, cars or whatever else, people who were sound ended up barely hanging on and it basically knocked everyone down a thread or two. But worse yet, it started the collapse in the economy rolling. Now there were more problems then energy prices but what they did was stress the system by removing disposable income from a good portion of society which in turn magnified all of the other problems and made them fail. When food jumps 15% in 2 years because of energy costs, when your homes electricity jumps 10-20 percent, when your drive to and from work without all the other running around costs double, you find that no one or not enough people will buy the unnecessary things, and when you look at the profits from the sales, more of them went to energy costs instead of paying workers and keeping them employed.
I hope you can see the cycle there. IF we replaced coal with something that is twice as expensive, there are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to afford it. Imagine your electric bill and most likely your gas and water bill doubling. Imagine the supermarkets and retail stores who's electric bills doubled, they will only increase their prices to cover the costs. So if you can imagine that, then imagine how much extra a gallon of milk or a pair of socks or whatever would cost you. If you think it would be nothing, then your just not looking at it right or are somehow detached from everyone else' reality.
Well, no not really or not all the time. I just saw a time warner commercial that said a specific speed. In fact, from the time warner site itself, you see specific claims to the speed. On that page, I see no reference to up to. However, when I looked at Verizon's speed offerings, it did say "up to".
If they hide the "up to" in the fine print, then it really is the same as I'm claiming anyways. they are representing one thing and selling something else.
I was thinking about that a while ago.
A rotating laser leveling system like the dewalt uses dual lasers with a 600 feet range and rotates faster then the camera can recover. I was thinking of a way to widen the beam on a vertical axis to flood the cameras I first attempted to insert a filter but lacked any that could readily be used without modification. I then attempted to mount mirrors at various angles but the beam was too narrow.
Then a friend came around with a cop who took him to my house after his car was broken down and stranded on the road. The police have cameras now that read license plate numbers and they can press a single button and it retrieve registration information from it. Anyways, his video display went blank when he pulled in the drive and asked me what I was doing. I said rigging an automatic gate opener and attempted to claim I wanted to open a gate and the garage doors when I entered the drive way plus maybe turn a few light on.
The cop then told me that it was illegal to mount lasers like that to a car. It's covered under the radar jammer laws in which a cop uses laser radar. He also mentioned that it blinded his cameras in the cruiser which is what attracted him to me. He was cool with it but warned me that I could be in some trouble. I mention this because if you do attempt to do it, keep in mind that it might already be illegal in your area and if everyone else is without it, it isn't going to be hard for a cop around you to figure out you have something like that. Especially at night when you can't see them coming.
On the other hand, if you do get something figured out, let me know because I'm still interested. I just don't want a ticket or jail time over it.
I understand why they do it, what I don't get is how limiting my connection to less then what was advertised isn't bait and switch or false advertising or deceptive advertising or breach of contract.
I'm trying to think of a car analogy but I guess I have to go with a restaurant one. Now look at this from the customer perspective and not the providers. Imagine a Pizza joint that sells 16 inch large pizzas and claims each large has one pound of toppings. Now every Friday and Saturday, they get a ton of orders, lets say 5 times the normal amounts. Now if they didn't order more food in preparation of this, would it be ok to you if the pizza shop started making your large 16 inch pizza at a size of 12 or 13 inches with half the toppings for the same price while still representing them as 16 inches with one pound of toppings?
I think I know the answer to that so you don't need to address it. It's most likely no, it isn't ok. But that seems to be what is happening with the ISP, they advertise X speed and always on. When it is either not always on or a lower speed, you as a customer are not getting what was represented to you when you placed your order or continued your order.
Now I don't have a problem with the ISP taking a gamble that not everyone will be using the service at once. I also don't have a problem with the ISP's network slowing down slightly because more people decided to be on line at the same time. Where I have the problem is when the ISP purposely takes steps to make sure you are not getting what you paid for when purchasing the service. The ISP has a choice to make, they can gradually increase their bandwidth until there isn't a noticeable slowdown or they can represent slower connections speeds to those they wish to limit but they need to make this known before doing it so you as the customer are not paying for something you didn't receive.
Insurance companies operate on a very similar if not the same principle. They take payments from lots of people under the expectation that not everyone will be filing a claim at once. They then take the money and attempt to invest it to make more money. Hurricane Katrina brought this to light when several insurance companies almost folded because of the amount of claims were more then they brought in. However, they aren't allow to say your $200,000 home owners policy will only be worth $50,000 because we over sold out coverage. They can't say even though you you have paid in the system for the last 10 years with no claims, we aren't going to cover your automobile accident because we over sold our coverage and don't have the resources. They can't say that your mothers $50,000 term life will only pay out $100 because too many people died at once. Well, they can't say that and remain in business that is, so why are ISP's allowed to do the same?
At 70:1, they wouldn't need to increase their capacity to a 1:1 ratio, but if it is a problem at 70:1, then they need to decrease their speeds or increase their capacity to bring it down to a more respectable 25:1 or perhaps even a 50:1 ratio. And if the customer is going to get less, then they need to advertise that fact so people can make an informed decision when purchasing the service. It may be that the advertised speeds are the way they are just so they can compete with a DSL offering or something. Now if in reality, the network can support a 3 meg connection but DSL is offered at 5 megs so they jacked up the speeds to compete but limit people behind the scenes to 3 megs, wouldn't that be deceptive?
You see, the problem I have isn't the technical requirements of the service, it's how it is represented when clearly they aren't going to deliver what was advertised or even make an attempt at it. Instead, they are purposely attempting to deliver something less then what was advertised. And when they purposely do it, to me at lease, that shows an intent to decieve the customer they are selling services to. It doesn't seem any different then the people who prey on old ladies by contracting work to
Yea, I understand that.
I guess the point I was attempting to make was that they sell the service by advertising both upload and down load combined so that a 5 meg DSL connection may be actually a 4 meg down and 1 meg up giving a total of 5 megs. But they advertise this as always on so when they over sell their connections, normal traffic can slow it down. However, the problem I get into is where the company itself changes the 5 megs to 3 megs or slower or caps the total bandwidth. It seems to be different then the services they represent when selling me the connection service.
This is a problem with Net Neutrality and why I don't understand that it isn't already there by law. If I have the 5 meg connection as outlines above, the ISP shouldn't be able to limit that for any reason. Now if Google or Yahoo want to strike a deal with the ISP that gives me a 10 meg connection when visiting their sites, then that is above and beyond what I paid for when taking the service out. If my ISP wants to give me less then an always on 5 meg connection as they advertised (4 down and 1 up) because Google or Yahoo refused to pay an additional fee, then My ISP is misrepresenting the product they sold me and should be held accountable according to existing laws. I think this was the stand Micheal Powell took as the head of the FCC when he said it was ok to work out deals as long as the customer got what they paid for and wasn't cheated. Of course that doesn't address third party networks slowing the transmissions down in which case they should be severed from the peering agreements and have to contract a paid for connection in addition to covering their own infrastructure.
I guess I'm way off topic now. Anyways, I liken it to a restaurant advertising on the menu a quarter pound hamburger. Of course that is weight before cooking but when they have more guests/customers then they do hamburger, it doesn't give them the right to change the recipe and sell 2 ounce hamburgers as quarter pounders just to ensure they can collect the same amount of money from everyone that came in without buying additional meat.
Are you sure you want to counter the fact that Co2 is heavier then air with an example of a liquid being heavier then Co2? Guess what, Air, oxygen, nitrogen and any other gas in it will rise out of the drink too. That's because they are all lighter then then the liquid they would be in. No one is suggesting that we should be putting the Co2 into an underground lake or anything of the sort. They are suggesting filling the spent cavities from oil and natural gas locations. Those too were under pressure when the gas and oil was in them and didn't seep up and pollute everything.
I can agree with that. However, some people seem to think it is just as expensive or more expensive to replace all of our current power generating devices with ones that don't emit Co2 in the first place. So here is the question, which is more expensive and can the costs of one offset the damage of the other while it is being implemented and improved? From a practical standpoint, if it cheaper in the long run but more expensive in the short run to go solar with a molten sodium storage solution, how long will it take to implement the alternative and have it ready to meet the demands of the world, and how can the money be raised to implement it.
Having tech like separating Co2 and sequestering it underground can be a short term patch to a long term problem. And when I speak of short and long term, I'm really talking about decades and centuries if not more. Take something like the molten sodium solar (hell even wind could be stored in this way in conjunction with solar), if we ramp up out abilities to produce the facilities, we are looking at probably 5-10 years before a commercial scale plant can be built and operating at capacity. Meanwhile, we have two other problems, one is increased energy needs by either advances in conveniences in life or by population grow or even by replacing gas and oil with electricity in something like our cars. So we can implement the Co2 sequestering technology on existing power production (which will take 5-10 years before it's operating at maximum too) and first build supplemental power stations using the clean tech like solar power with molten sodium as storage to account for the increased demands as well as end of life facilities. Now once those are taken care of, which will require quite a bit of time and resources, we can set our sites on converting traditional facilities to the new tech and further replace older less efficient plants.
Yes, but don't look at it as a final solution, look at is as one step in the end of the problem. Most ball games start off with one team giving the other the ball. The goal hasn't changed when you do that, it's just a step in attempting to achieve that goal.
In the mean time, we would have a reliable source or power that would also be less polluting during the change over. It would be impossible to pool the resources to replace every ounce of energy produced in the world at once so the band aid is needed if we are going to entertain the idea that human produced Co2 is bad for the environment. If it is, then we have to accept out limitations and do anything that is necessary to mitigate it's effects that doesn't disrupt the stability of the world.
Trucks pay for the highways. When I drove, I spent something along the lines of an average of 12-13 thousand dollars a year in fuel based road use taxes alone (the tax that goes directly to the roads). Several years, I paid closer to $16,000. If you add the permitting, tire taxes, and other highway use tax, you can add another 5-10 K depending on the states. I was permitted in all 48 land locked states so I was on the high end.
In contrast, a car pays on average of around $720 per year in road use taxes.
Your interstate highways exist today because of trucking. You see, the IFTA regulation says that trucks will pay fuel taxes based on 5 miles to the gallon regardless of their actual fuel economy. Cars pay for actual ussage which is why there are so many schemes attempting to track usage of cars in order to collect road use taxes. Now, the fuel taxes are split between the state and federal tax rate which is believe in most areas is around 24.4 cents for both. Some states may be lower and some may be higher and some states might charge more for diesel then for gasoline. California for instance is higher then 24.4 and higher for diesel fuel which the trucks use. If a truck averages 3500 miles a week for a single driver, in a 48 week year, your looking at around 168,000 reportable miles. In contrast, a car usually doesn't average more then 2000 miles a month which is around 24000 miles a year. The truck will divide the 168k by 5 to get the 5 miles per gallon average and owe at least 48.8 cents for each mile that remains (33600*48.8). In this example, we are looking at almost $16,400 owed tot he federal government and each state the truck drove through for the truck's road use tax. The car will pay actual usage so if you assume a low end of 16 miles to the gallon (24000/16*.488) the car will pay around $732 per year to use the interstates.
Now trucks aren't allowed on all the roads cars are on, and the part about taxes comes around from politicking with your highway funds. First, the state doesn't allocate the funding to where it was developed. The trucks pay for roads they are forbidden to drive on which makes the highway repair portion less but you have the advantage of a road of convenience. Next, the federal government is more political in it's returning of the funding to the states in which they favor places with higher costs more then states with lower costs. The Alaskan bridge to nowhere was more or less politicking and rewards to donors and so on. This is complicated even more by both the state and federal government taking the taxes and using them for something other then the roads. In the city closest to me, we just saw a big chunk of highway dollars go to a scenic recreation "bike path" at the edge of the city that didn't even go close to industry or some place useful. It's more or less a 200 foot wide and 10 mile long park.
If you put all that stuff on the train, your highways will be worse then you can imagine now. I'm not sure if you simply weren't aware of the amounts trucks pay but the math doesn't lie. The roads will not last longer enough to make the differences in amounts collected be offset and both the state and federal governments will end up having to tax you specifically more to recoup the taxes collected from the trucks. The interstate freeway system was developed specifically for the use of trucks and shipment. It was a defense initiative to get troops and supplies across the country even when portions of it is destroyed. Every sixth mile is supposed to be straight so it can be used as a runway. There are a list of reasons why the interstates were built and responses to how or what problems they solved like fresh food being brought to disaster stricken areas and so on.
You can make coal clean enough though.
Some other things that aren't clean might include most food which is spray with petrochemicals to inhibit disease and bug devastation, Solar has some pretty nasty chemicals involved, wind uses metals mines, smelted, shipped, assembled and installed with each step along the way relying on coal or oil in some way as well as the potential to disrupt weather paterns.
The point is that things can be clean enough to not cause immediate harm and mediate long term risks. They might still cause a small amount of harm, they might cause harm in the future, they might cause pollution of some sort when you consider anything that wasn't there before a man made process as a pollutant but by negating the harm and effects of pollution in the broad sense of the term, there will be an acceptable point in which it is clean enough.
I don't disagree with the premise that coal will always be dirty, I just don't think that dirty is always dangerous nor should we be more concerned with a "cheap" dirty fuel while ignoring the different but similar disadvantages of an expensive but dirty in different ways fuel. Solar, Wind, nuclear, water, and most all forms of fuel have their problems along the same lines.
And to all this point, I think you know my position on the global warming, this comment is pretty much independent of that if the emissions can be scrubbed of the adverse effects contributing to it.
Debt wasn't the fundamental basis of the economy, it was the basis of the expansion of the economy. This isn't bad when enough value or worth is added to offset the expansion. Sadly, there wasn't any value added and in most cases, all perceived value or worth was severely inflated which is why the crash was so hard.
Co2 is heavier then air. So if the cracks are present and there isn't some other source of higher presure gases, then where is the Co2 going to leak to? Further under ground?
We have pumped gases underground for storage in the past with pretty good results. The pressures aren't really all that problematic and some increased pressure will be needed because of the difference in atmospheric weight.
I simply don't see enough of a problem for your Nervous Nelly Pessimism.
Here is what I don't get. Take Time Warner for instance, they advertise 3 and 6 meg always on high speed connections. When I buy their 6 meg always on connection, am I not purchasing a constant 6 megs divided between upload and download?
If the answer is yes, the what right would they have by either changing the always on or the 6 meg connection on anyone? It seems to me that they sold someone 6 megs of internet access always for the time they paid their bill. If that results in customer using 700 gigs of data trasnfer, so be it, the customer purchased internet service that was 6 megs speed and always on.
Now if the answer is no, then why is it being advertised in ways to mislead and/or confuse people? Time Warner isn't the only company doing things like that, ATT/SBC, Comcast and many other companies do it too. Surely I couldn't advertise a blue car and give you two pipes, two motorcycles, a welder and a tube of blue pain now could I? I mean truth in advertising would pretty much preclude me from making false and misleading representation and the act itself would seem to be something that would deceive a customer into purchase something obviously different then they were lead to believe.
I understand how network usage is accounted for, but that doesn't matter because if I said you could always have a certain speeds with an always on connection at a certain speed, the bandwidth usage is already accounted for in that representation. Any purposeful throttling or traffic shaping that results in slower traffic because of specific actions on the ISP's part would seem to lead to a failure to deliver advertised service.
Pluto being a planet and a dwarf planet comes from a recent change in the definition of planets. Well, to be more precisely, the standardization of a definition for a planet.
When pluto was discovered, it originally fit the commonly accepted definition of a planet. This remained until more was known about Pluto and some people started claiming it wasn't large enough. Then a couple of years ago, almost 70 years after Pluto's discovery and commonly accepted naming as a planet, a group of astronomers came together and reveal that part of an agenda at a meeting was to settle on a common definition for a planet and a couple of other things that seem to have developed some discrepancies over the years as we learned more about the universe and objects in it. Some complained that notice wasn't given to the event, some complained that not enough notice was given to the agenda and so on.
Having the word planet in the name does nothing for the 70 years of tradition, the 70 years of common understanding, the 70 years of it being one thing to arbitrarily become another because some group of people met on the spur of the money and declared it so. Ego isn't always bad.
Just because he points out that all of Obama's friends worthy of a government position under him is either tax cheat or corrupt in some way does not mean he didn't appose another wrong under another administration.
In fact, it appears that you may be suggesting that it's OK for Obama to be surrounded by criminals because someone else did something wrong. Is this the modern version of Clinton did it?
I have noticed a long time ago that those "cops" shows are little more then propaganda tools so the police can make people think they have less rights then they do. It's all about giving you the impression that the police can do something that they can't.
I remember seeing one oncident where they pulled a guy over for speeding, cuffed him and sat him on the curb, then searched his car. They took the keys out of the ignition and opened a locked consol in the center of the car and found a gun. They claimed it was loaded and arrested him on that charge. The interesting thing is that I remembered this going through the courts, the guy fought the gun charge because the cops powers to search the cars for their safety only extend to within the reach of the people inside it and locked compartments aren't considered with reach because it requires a separate action that would alert the officers to their safety. This case played out in court before they ever showed it on TV. Yet there was no mention to the guy getting the gun charge dropped or that the cop was in the wrong. I have seen that same episode rerun 3 or 4 times in the same ways.
They pull people over for tinted windows and find Coke stashed in the trunk. What the hell do they need to look in the trunk for because of tinted windows? They always find something on people, and at the end, your left with the impression that the cops were just doing their jobs. But stopping someone who is walking down the street and harassing them until he runs and they find a rock of crack on him doesn't seem like the proper job of the police. I don't know if they make this up or if cops really do think they can pick someone they don't like and start harassing them for no reason in particular. But it is one of those they do it because they can things and most people don't know they can't do half the shit on those shows because you as a citizen of these great united states have rights.
The article is inflammatory BS. You don't go to prison for misdemeanors. You go to jail for misdemeanors. They are entirely different places and if you had been to either, you would know how different they are. The six months sentence hanging over his head will not be a prison sentence at all and that is half the maximum time which is also the minimum time anyone can face for a class A misdemeanor offense. (1 year for federal misdemeanors and mostly 6 months max for state misdemeanors)
Now according to the original offense which wasn't a misdemeanor, it was a felony charge, he could have been facing 10 years in prison (not jail), because of the supposed retail value of the songs he distributed or caused to be distributed.
The was actually a treated as a mass bootleg case and not a file sharing case because he supposedly "willfully infringed a copyright for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain." The problem he laid in front of them is that he admitted to doing it and helped identify where he got the files from. But this case isn't the ordinary "junior put the new album on the lime wire interweb".
His lawyer has a different take on it which would follow the pre-sentencing guidelines that recommended 1 years probation. He makes some pretty good points in it and I think this will probably be closer to what happens.
You have to understand that this case is a big political charade. Obama has brought in some RIAA lawyers to help run the hope and Change you can believe in but I don't think they are the problems here (could be but it's just me). It's more of a- they made a big issue out of his site being a commercial venture in order to force information out of him. They offered a reduced charge based his cooperation in telling them everything he knew to help the government in finding who originally released the songs. (according to his lawyers, it could have been the record industry itself or axel rose himself). He took the deal and now in order for there to be a "deterrent" the government has to appear like they are wanting the most they can get in order to have the deterrent factor be present. The judge will likely claim that his cooperation with investigators and mitigating factors like his actions to prevent down-loaders supersedes the Deterrent factor and sentencing guild lines and either negate any jail time with probation or list his jail time as the time he spent waiting bail after they raided him and credit him with time served. If he spent a week in jail, he would probably get 7 days- time served and 1 year probation or possibly 6 months suspended sentence on the completion of 1 years probation or something of the sort. But the point is to keep up appearances. The judge has quite a bit of leeway on this despite that class A misdemeanors have a minimum of 6 months.
Opensource is about the code in question and the freedom to adapt it to your needs.
That being said, the ability to give the code away again is still there even with certification is the certification is assigned like a patent or copyright. In this case, the assignment of the certification would be a specific implementation by a specific company or person or person representing the company.
To walk through this just so we are clear, if I create an open source product called "Little Dog" and I get it certified, if the certification is assigned to me for version 1.0, then version 1.2 or 1.45 or whatever would need a new certification. And because the certification is assigned to me, if you decided to take the code and offer your own product or even improve it, you wouldn't be able to claim it was certified because only the person assigned the certification could do that. Technically, the code would have been certified so you could get a certification in your name without fear of failing but you couldn't lay claim to my certification.
Now, I believe this follows along with the open source model and principle because you can get the code, you can distribute the code, you can modify it, you can still do anything you want with it. The only thing you couldn't do is make claims or representations over a certification for use that was assigned to me. Think of it like this, if Time magazine said you were the hero of the month because of some open source program you created, I couldn't accurately take the code, distribute it, and claim Time Magazine called me the hero of the month even though I would be using the same code you created that caused them to notice you.
I hope I didn't just write in circles and confuse my point.
The problem is that the model breaks when the software environment breaks because of fees to make the software useful.
Requiring a certification isn't part of the normal software process or model. It's actually an add on that isn't necessarily needed but has advantages. If the model was changed and the vendor certified the software in house to pass a third party review and the customer had to cover the expense from a third party verification service, it would be the same model and nothing would be broke. But no where else in software, do you have to pay someone in order for your software to be used unless your licensing someone else' product. Of course if your licensing someone else' product and they don't want it open sourced, you can't open source your product that contains theirs.
And something you should note, it's only a problem currently because of the outrageous costs associated with certification. If the costs were lower and more reasonable, the problem disappears. It's disingenuous to associate the problems with the FOSS model or commercializing FOSS software without pointing to what broke it. It isn't like many other software packages ever require third party certifications that require large sums of money either. And of those that might, the sums generally aren't as outrageous and ongoing like this.
Something the poster didn't mention that could negate most all of his fears and black out the point you raised is that they could certify the software under a trademark name and do the releases with the normal name. This would lock the certification into something only he could use. For instance, he likes the program MirrorMed. Now he can create a company called Trotter inc. and certify MirrorMed as "Trotter's certified MirrorMed" software. He then distributes it under that name "Trotter's Certified MirrorMed" and distribute his code as MirrorMed. No one else could claim MirrorMed was certified under his certification because they couldn't use his trademark "Trotter's certified" in the name of the product even though he distributed the code and the certification is in his trademarked name.
In short, the certification would be locked to the "trotter's certified" which is the over package he provides instead of just the software MirrorMed. He could control this because MirrorMed itself as a name wouldn't have been certified. Now the code would have technically been certified so everyone else wanting to do the same could certify it themselves without fear of it failing, and most likely they would certify it under their own trademarked name too.
Outside of the entire Fees for OSS idea, I think it is preposterous to think that once you certify a program or application to do a certain thing, you have to continue paying them based on annual sale of your program or application to keep that certification.
We don't need welfare for OSS, we need something different in place. A certification process shouldn't be dependent on future fees paid nor should it base any of the fees on the sales of the software. If you want to know why health care is so expensive, it's shit like this.
Think about it, 25K can go into 25 copies sold $1000 at a time. That isn't so much when considering what the software brings to the table. But an annual $5000 on top of that based on sales means the same program that was certified at $1000 a pop is now not certified if more money isn't paid. The question is, is that 5k a version sold?, up to 25 licenses sold? or is it 5 licenses sold? Now licenses could be a misnomer too, Take MS servers for instance, you need a license for the server, a license for the workstation's MS operating system, a license for the network connections to the server, and a license for all the MS applications running on those systems. Lets say MS Office is a given and for shits and giggles, lets say MS dynamics CRM is installed. Now, that means 1 server license, 1 workstation, 1 connection, 1 office and 1 CRM, that's 5 licenses just to be up and running. OF course more workstations will need less licenses but in the certification ordeal with CCHIT, how many of those licenses count as sales? I mean the ERM software could have modular features and easily require 5 licenses, so with the 5k based on sales, if that is for every 5 licenses, then you might need to recover 5k per workstation on top of your profit and expenses for creating the damn thing.
It's a racket that shouldn't be allowed. If we are going to require certification, then there should be some rules and guidelines and limits on costs instead of creating a get rich quick scheme that drives the cost of health care up so some damn politicians can fool the people when they claim to be fixing the problem. The opposite of that would be to open up the ability for other companies or organizations to become certifies and forbid lock ins to certain companies or organizations so competition can drive costs down to something more reasonable.
Geoffrey Landis is a liar that often writes and tells stories that never happened. He has lots of works that are nothing but fictional. He even claims to own race horses when he doesn't.
Now it is true that you write Scifi and tell stories that transcends mental acuity right? So did I just tell the truth or did I attempt to maliciously smear your name? You did write that " I do have a horse or two in both of the races" didn't you?
The problem is that the truth is often a rendition of fact or an opinion to be blunt. If I read one of your stories and decided that could never happen, I could say that you were lieing. However, a normal person would see them as one of your works of Science Fiction and you would probably want it viewed that way.
So the question is, does the truth set me free? Do you actually write and tell stories that aren't true, never happened, or possible could never happen? Or was that statement about you being a liar a malicious intent to insult your good name. The truth is, you do write and tell stories that aren't true. And yes, my intent was to show you how the truth shouldn't always be a validation for a defense of libel. The truth is interpreted.
All guesting aside, Geoffrey Landis is a great Scifi writer (I just talked with someone who read one of your works and strongly suggest I should too) and a pretty knowledgeable scientist that has done some great work with the various mars programs at nasa from all that I can tell about him. I only picked on him to show how the truth can be misinterpreted and applied in ways that probably shouldn't automatically vindicate someone of libel. Nothing I said was incorrect except for maybe the liar part where his fiction is presented as that, but someone could miss the presentation and mistake his fiction as one of his scientific endeavors.
If the intent of the statement is malicious, I see no reason not to hold someone liable to it. Often the truth is a matter of opinion. Take the Stapples case for instance, they labeled the guy a thief for not presenting all his receipts. He claims he is a sloppy record keeper and all the reimbursements were justified. Without the receipts, someone took the opinion that he was stealing from the company and the facts back that up. If he finds the receipts, does that make the person's statement any less accurate given the information availible at the time when the truth was he was a bad record keeper and simply didn't provide the proper documentation?
There is no absolutes when dealing with the truth. Especially when the truth is actually a collection of events being interpreted by someone who has to make a decision. This is most evident in car accidents witnessed by people viewing from different angles. There is always something that the other person didn't see or saw differently and it is common to have statements that conflict on who was at fault because of that. It's a flaw in humans that make us colorful because we interpret what we take in and process that information based on our own experiences, training, and whatever else that had made us unique individuals.
Speaking of car accidents, I saw one where someone got T-boned going through an intersection. I was waiting to cross the road when it happened and after giving the statements to the police, an officer came around to see how sure I was that the car had a green light. It appears that the other witnesses claimed the other car had the green light. The traffic light was actually malfunctioning and while we talked about who had the green light, another officer noticed that both light turned green for half a cycle. It appeared that every 5 or 6 cycles, the light would give all directions a green light for around 15-20 seconds. The interesting thing is that we just assumed the other light was red because that's how it works normally. To say someone ran a red light and caused an accident would have ordinarily been a naturally truthful statement until we saw what was going on. This is yet another example of how the truth is often opinions based around facts and not necessarily just fact.
You forgot one step.
2.5 court of appeals initially upholds the dismissal until someone brings up the 1902 law.
Outside of that, spot on.
Personally, I don't see the point of naming the employee personally in the Email. Most states have laws about what can be said about an employee after their dismissal which generally goes down to if they were fired or quit, if they would rehire the employee, and the dates which they were employed. Some states allow salaries to be discussed and job duties but generally performance is all opinion and they don't allow opinion to happen. The employer could have saved all the trouble by sending two separate emails. One stating that the employee no longer works there and another stating that they just dismissed someone for "problems" with their accounting and reporting so everyone needs to take extra care in ensuring it is done right and accurately.
Anyways, even if he does end up losing, I would hope that someone at staples realizes this and changes their policy. It is one thing for other employees to draw connections to something, it is another to point the person out. I think pointing the person out had the intent of malice and was intended to mark the man. The employee claims he isn't a thief, just a sloppy record keeper which may be true and make the "true statement" actually false. A reasonable person would probably conclude that he stole from the company by not providing receipt for reimbursements he claimed but with his lack of a job and the difficulty getting one, he may find those receipts making the theft claim an incorect opinion.