I've seen what happens to folks from CA who go there in winter (frostbite is a damn ugly thing, when the parts start falling off). ^^
Offtopic, but one of the things that amused me when I went to the Presidential Inauguration was seeing the parade route. Before the parade it was lined with State Troopers from almost every State in the Union. The guys from New York, Massachusetts or Minnesota weren't doing too bad but the poor bastards from Georgia, Mississippi or California had no idea how to cope with the cold weather. They had four or five layers on and still looked like they wanted to die.
The sad thing is that it wasn't even that cold. I remember it being in the low 20s. Doesn't seem very cold to me but then I'm from Upstate NY:)
I was noticing today that Microsoft's stock has had a consistent slope downward since the deal, 13 months ago. How does Ballmer keep his job?
Well, to be fair to our chair throwing friend, every stock not related to pasta or firearms has had a consistent slope downward in the last 13 months......
I'm sorry but HAHAHAHAHAHA! Did you say MSFT overtakes them? Have you TRIED MSFT Search? Hell it was shit 10 years ago and it is shit+ extra stink now. The searches are total crap and most of what you find is simply crap trying to sell you junk that has NOTHING to do with what you are looking for.
I'm talking about the odds of success which strange as it may seem have little to do with the quality of Microsoft search. I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy but if you look at it objectively I think it was a bad deal for Yahoo's shareholders when management rejected Microsoft's offer. Microsoft offered $33/share, which was more than they've been valued since 2006 (and only for a brief time in 2006 at that).
Do you honesty see Yahoo crawling back up to $33/share on their own with either their current product portfolio or anything they have on the drawing board? I hear a lot of people bashing Microsoft but I don't hear too many people defending Yahoo. I still say I would have been pretty pissed if I was a Yahoo shareholder.
You can be #2 and be wildly profitable and stable. In fact many time #2 is the most stable company to invest in.
Thanks for telling me what you can be. Now tell me if you honestly think Yahoo has any future outside of slowly bleeding to death after Microsoft overtakes them and Google becomes even more entrenched.
It's almost as if they're widening the definition of child porn so they'll have more people to bust.
Call me cynical but I don't think they care about having "more people" to bust. The Man isn't out to get us. The Man is out to generate splashy headlines and get elected to higher office. Nothing generates splasher headlines than "Think of the Children!"
Does Yahoo! have a viable business plan besides merging with someone else at some point? If I was one of their shareholders I might have gotten pretty annoyed that they dismissed the MSFT offer out of hand the way they did. What's the future of Yahoo! without a merger? They have a platform in the works that can pose a serious challenge to Google and secure marketshare against them or Microsoft? Didn't think so.....
For instance, suppose I could be earning 30k per year for doing nothing, from interest. How is that fair to the people earning 30k/year for a year's worth of work? It's not.
So basically you've decided that income earned from investing your money well should be treated differently than income earned from working? I suppose that researching and managing your investments doesn't count as work in your world view?
A CEO getting millions is NOT doing 1000 times as much work as anybody else at the company.
The CEO isn't making 1000 times as much because he's doing 1000 times as much work. He's making that because his job skills aren't as common as those of others in the company and he can command a higher wage as a result. If the skillset to be a CEO was as common as the skillset to flip burgers then CEOs would make minimum wage as well. It's called supply and demand. You might want to read about it sometime.
Because at 30k/year you might only have 10% of your income that you can save or invest with. But at 230k/year that number jumps to more like 50% (after taxes).
So basically you've decided that the person who is making 230k/yr has too much disposable income so we need to take some away to use for Governmental projects? Sounds like someone is a little bit jealous.
then yes people should be taxed in a graduated sense just like other progressive taxes.
So again you've decided what is and what is not an acceptable level of disposable income to retain for your labors? From my vantage point progressive taxes are legalized robbery. A flat tax would seem to be more fair -- if I make ten times as much money as you I still pay ten times as much in taxes. You seem to think that I should be paying twenty times as much just because you think I can afford to do so.
Everyone seems to forget the simple fact that we own the spectrum, not the government. What this is essentially doing is making the people pay for something they already own. Why the fuck should we have to pay to use it
Because that spectrum was an untapped resource until someone was willing to come along and invest billions of dollars into building a network to make use of it. Or do you think all of those cellular towers, base stations and backhaul infrastructure magically appeared by themselves?
There is nothing unusual about position you have described -- it's a typical "But the rich deserve their profits (and oh, I soon will be rich, too)!" position. In fact, it's more or less the official US ideology -- people promote interests of the rich because they expect to join them someday, and everything until that point is supposed to be some kind of preparation to life.
And the opposite position is the typical liberal "the rich have bottomless pockets and need to pay their "fair share" even though they already pay 80+% of all Federal taxes, we need to finance the great society!" response.
You seem to have an oddly unorthodox hybrid of those two positions: you agree with the left-liberal economists that this is the natural outcome of the markets, but you don't think anything should be done about it.
Why should something be done about it? SMS isn't a critical necessity of life. Is society being unduly harmed or held back by current SMS rates? Somebody pointed out earlier that Verizon's profit margins are in line with other bluechip stocks. They aren't ripping us off. I'd suspect that a lot of the money collected through SMS charges goes back into network upgrades which benefit all of us. So what's the problem?
When people refer to SMS rate increases they are almost always referring to the ala carte prices anyway. The actual plan prices haven't changed that much in the last few years. If you want to be a Japanese schoolgirl you can get unlimited SMS plans ranging from $10/mo (Sprint) to $20/mo (Verizon) and in between ($15/mo w/T-Mobile). If you actually need unlimited SMS then it's a safe assumption that you send enough SMS that you'll wind up paying less than a penny for each one with such a plan. Again I'll ask, what's the problem?
I think that's a bit naive... using network theory, the more people that use something, the more it will be used. If someone texts you, you're probably going to text back
Every carrier with the exception of T-Mobile (why they don't is beyond me) offers you the ability to have SMS disabled. I've gone without it for the last eight years. It's not really that hard when you think of your cell phone as a phone.
This, compounded with familiarity means there's no great escape from expensive texts.
Turn them off and tell your friends that you don't get them. Problem solved.
You misunderstand. The E-911 fees are collected to fund the implantation of 911 call centers and upgrades to those facilities that provide new features (automatic location identification by mobile callers for example). That notwithstanding, any cell phone, regardless of whether the bill has been paid or the cell phone has even been activated can be used to call 911 in the United States. Well, assuming it has signal that is......
Oh, well I'm from China^W Denmark, so I have to put up with all ISPs censoring TPB. Thanks, censoring dumbasses of the IFPI.
Censorship has always been more acceptable in Europe than in the US. Don't believe me? Try selling some Nazi memorabilia in France or Germany. And yeah, Nazism is abhorrent but that still doesn't mean we need the Government to protect us from hearing about it.....
No arrangement made in the face of an overwhelming imbalance of power is "voluntary". So long as a state-backed minority class of "owners" controls the vast majority of economic resources, referring to the wage slavery that all but the most skilled workers have to sell themselves into as "voluntary" is a sick joke.
Thanks for the left wing talking points but what exactly does any of this have to do with TFA?
Nope, I believe the "poor" should pay less because the price impacts them more.
For cellular service? Really? What other critical life necessities should be subsidized? Cable TV? Internet access? Gasoline? Why should the poor pay the real cost of anything when we can just steal it from the rich?
But it won't be, it will be swept into some welfare pot to buy condoms for crack addicts or something
I had a fun experience at the grocery store the other day. Witnessed a woman using a WIC card to buy half of her groceries. The other half (approximately $80 worth of junk food, beer and cigarettes) she paid for with cash. She had a iPhone too.
Aren't you glad your tax dollars are financing her iPhone, junk food and controlled substances? Imagine if she didn't have that wic card -- she might actually have had to settle for a candybar phone or something.
While I do not use Boost, I am a T-Mobile customer and T-Mobile is already in serious consideration of matching Boost's service. When this happens, I will pretty much be a T-Mobile customer for life. While their coverage might not be as good as other GSM carriers, their customer service is outstanding.
I love T-Mobile but there's a reason why their rates are so much cheaper: Their network sucks donkey balls. They have to compete on price and customer service because there's no way in hell they can match Verizon or AT&T on coverage. They are fine and dandy if you live in a major city and rarely venture outside of it -- if you don't though they aren't really an option. Here in Upstate NY they cease functioning (if you are lucky you can roam on AT&T but half the time you can't) the minute you leave the city/expressway.
Verizon are an arrogant bunch of SOBs but they do actually have the network to back it up. What are you going to do, leave? Go ahead -- you'll be back. That's their attitude and until their competitors invest in the same type of network it isn't likely to change. AT&T might be able to do it but it will take decades for T-Mobile to -- if they are even interested in doing so.
I believe the argument is that it's worse than increasing income taxes (which are progressive) by a similar amount.
See, that's where your wrong. You aren't thinking like a politician. If you raise income taxes then you have to get it through Congress and expend political capital. If you raise it through the FCC nobody outside of the technical community is likely to notice until it's too late.
Hmm. yeah, that invisible hand does a really great job eh?
The invisible hand is working just fine. If people weren't willing to pay that much for texting then the cost would come down. Nobody needs texting. People want texting but few people can make the argument that they need it.
In a free market a company will charge what the market will bear. Their competitors will lower their price if they think they will make more money by doing so, otherwise they have no incentive. Do you think Verizon/AT&T would steal enough customers from the competition if they lowered their SMS rates to make up for the revenue they'd lose? If lower SMS rates were all it took to attract customers then Sprint and T-Mobile would be #1 and #2 instead of #3 and #4. Apparently there are other factors at play though.
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I've seen what happens to folks from CA who go there in winter (frostbite is a damn ugly thing, when the parts start falling off). ^^
Offtopic, but one of the things that amused me when I went to the Presidential Inauguration was seeing the parade route. Before the parade it was lined with State Troopers from almost every State in the Union. The guys from New York, Massachusetts or Minnesota weren't doing too bad but the poor bastards from Georgia, Mississippi or California had no idea how to cope with the cold weather. They had four or five layers on and still looked like they wanted to die.
The sad thing is that it wasn't even that cold. I remember it being in the low 20s. Doesn't seem very cold to me but then I'm from Upstate NY :)
G+R+E+E+D
I was noticing today that Microsoft's stock has had a consistent slope downward since the deal, 13 months ago. How does Ballmer keep his job?
Well, to be fair to our chair throwing friend, every stock not related to pasta or firearms has had a consistent slope downward in the last 13 months......
I'm sorry but HAHAHAHAHAHA! Did you say MSFT overtakes them? Have you TRIED MSFT Search? Hell it was shit 10 years ago and it is shit+ extra stink now. The searches are total crap and most of what you find is simply crap trying to sell you junk that has NOTHING to do with what you are looking for.
I'm talking about the odds of success which strange as it may seem have little to do with the quality of Microsoft search. I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy but if you look at it objectively I think it was a bad deal for Yahoo's shareholders when management rejected Microsoft's offer. Microsoft offered $33/share, which was more than they've been valued since 2006 (and only for a brief time in 2006 at that).
Do you honesty see Yahoo crawling back up to $33/share on their own with either their current product portfolio or anything they have on the drawing board? I hear a lot of people bashing Microsoft but I don't hear too many people defending Yahoo. I still say I would have been pretty pissed if I was a Yahoo shareholder.
You can be #2 and be wildly profitable and stable. In fact many time #2 is the most stable company to invest in.
Thanks for telling me what you can be. Now tell me if you honestly think Yahoo has any future outside of slowly bleeding to death after Microsoft overtakes them and Google becomes even more entrenched.
It's almost as if they're widening the definition of child porn so they'll have more people to bust.
Call me cynical but I don't think they care about having "more people" to bust. The Man isn't out to get us. The Man is out to generate splashy headlines and get elected to higher office. Nothing generates splasher headlines than "Think of the Children!"
How can that possibly cost that much?
They hired Dogbert Consulting?
Does Yahoo! have a viable business plan besides merging with someone else at some point? If I was one of their shareholders I might have gotten pretty annoyed that they dismissed the MSFT offer out of hand the way they did. What's the future of Yahoo! without a merger? They have a platform in the works that can pose a serious challenge to Google and secure marketshare against them or Microsoft? Didn't think so.....
For instance, suppose I could be earning 30k per year for doing nothing, from interest. How is that fair to the people earning 30k/year for a year's worth of work? It's not.
So basically you've decided that income earned from investing your money well should be treated differently than income earned from working? I suppose that researching and managing your investments doesn't count as work in your world view?
A CEO getting millions is NOT doing 1000 times as much work as anybody else at the company.
The CEO isn't making 1000 times as much because he's doing 1000 times as much work. He's making that because his job skills aren't as common as those of others in the company and he can command a higher wage as a result. If the skillset to be a CEO was as common as the skillset to flip burgers then CEOs would make minimum wage as well. It's called supply and demand. You might want to read about it sometime.
By following your plan you would be stealing from the poor people to subsidize the cost of the rich.
Come again?
Because at 30k/year you might only have 10% of your income that you can save or invest with. But at 230k/year that number jumps to more like 50% (after taxes).
So basically you've decided that the person who is making 230k/yr has too much disposable income so we need to take some away to use for Governmental projects? Sounds like someone is a little bit jealous.
then yes people should be taxed in a graduated sense just like other progressive taxes.
So again you've decided what is and what is not an acceptable level of disposable income to retain for your labors? From my vantage point progressive taxes are legalized robbery. A flat tax would seem to be more fair -- if I make ten times as much money as you I still pay ten times as much in taxes. You seem to think that I should be paying twenty times as much just because you think I can afford to do so.
Everyone seems to forget the simple fact that we own the spectrum, not the government. What this is essentially doing is making the people pay for something they already own. Why the fuck should we have to pay to use it
Because that spectrum was an untapped resource until someone was willing to come along and invest billions of dollars into building a network to make use of it. Or do you think all of those cellular towers, base stations and backhaul infrastructure magically appeared by themselves?
There is nothing unusual about position you have described -- it's a typical "But the rich deserve their profits (and oh, I soon will be rich, too)!" position. In fact, it's more or less the official US ideology -- people promote interests of the rich because they expect to join them someday, and everything until that point is supposed to be some kind of preparation to life.
And the opposite position is the typical liberal "the rich have bottomless pockets and need to pay their "fair share" even though they already pay 80+% of all Federal taxes, we need to finance the great society!" response.
Stereotyping works both ways Mr. 3 digit UID.
You seem to have an oddly unorthodox hybrid of those two positions: you agree with the left-liberal economists that this is the natural outcome of the markets, but you don't think anything should be done about it.
Why should something be done about it? SMS isn't a critical necessity of life. Is society being unduly harmed or held back by current SMS rates? Somebody pointed out earlier that Verizon's profit margins are in line with other bluechip stocks. They aren't ripping us off. I'd suspect that a lot of the money collected through SMS charges goes back into network upgrades which benefit all of us. So what's the problem?
When people refer to SMS rate increases they are almost always referring to the ala carte prices anyway. The actual plan prices haven't changed that much in the last few years. If you want to be a Japanese schoolgirl you can get unlimited SMS plans ranging from $10/mo (Sprint) to $20/mo (Verizon) and in between ($15/mo w/T-Mobile). If you actually need unlimited SMS then it's a safe assumption that you send enough SMS that you'll wind up paying less than a penny for each one with such a plan. Again I'll ask, what's the problem?
I think that's a bit naive... using network theory, the more people that use something, the more it will be used. If someone texts you, you're probably going to text back
Every carrier with the exception of T-Mobile (why they don't is beyond me) offers you the ability to have SMS disabled. I've gone without it for the last eight years. It's not really that hard when you think of your cell phone as a phone.
This, compounded with familiarity means there's no great escape from expensive texts.
Turn them off and tell your friends that you don't get them. Problem solved.
You misunderstand. The E-911 fees are collected to fund the implantation of 911 call centers and upgrades to those facilities that provide new features (automatic location identification by mobile callers for example). That notwithstanding, any cell phone, regardless of whether the bill has been paid or the cell phone has even been activated can be used to call 911 in the United States. Well, assuming it has signal that is......
Oh, well I'm from China^W Denmark, so I have to put up with all ISPs censoring TPB. Thanks, censoring dumbasses of the IFPI.
Censorship has always been more acceptable in Europe than in the US. Don't believe me? Try selling some Nazi memorabilia in France or Germany. And yeah, Nazism is abhorrent but that still doesn't mean we need the Government to protect us from hearing about it.....
No arrangement made in the face of an overwhelming imbalance of power is "voluntary". So long as a state-backed minority class of "owners" controls the vast majority of economic resources, referring to the wage slavery that all but the most skilled workers have to sell themselves into as "voluntary" is a sick joke.
Thanks for the left wing talking points but what exactly does any of this have to do with TFA?
Nope, I believe the "poor" should pay less because the price impacts them more.
For cellular service? Really? What other critical life necessities should be subsidized? Cable TV? Internet access? Gasoline? Why should the poor pay the real cost of anything when we can just steal it from the rich?
No, the big company executives are all going to go get a second job delivering pizzas in the evenings in order to pay for this
How do you deliver pizzas in a Gulfstream IV? ;)
taxes reduce the rate of currency flow through the market
Fixed that for you. You had an extra word in there.
Listen at the end of the day, where do you expect the government to make more revenue?
Why does the Government need more revenue? Oh, that's right, people want stuff for "free"......
But it won't be, it will be swept into some welfare pot to buy condoms for crack addicts or something
I had a fun experience at the grocery store the other day. Witnessed a woman using a WIC card to buy half of her groceries. The other half (approximately $80 worth of junk food, beer and cigarettes) she paid for with cash. She had a iPhone too.
Aren't you glad your tax dollars are financing her iPhone, junk food and controlled substances? Imagine if she didn't have that wic card -- she might actually have had to settle for a candybar phone or something.
While I do not use Boost, I am a T-Mobile customer and T-Mobile is already in serious consideration of matching Boost's service. When this happens, I will pretty much be a T-Mobile customer for life. While their coverage might not be as good as other GSM carriers, their customer service is outstanding.
I love T-Mobile but there's a reason why their rates are so much cheaper: Their network sucks donkey balls. They have to compete on price and customer service because there's no way in hell they can match Verizon or AT&T on coverage. They are fine and dandy if you live in a major city and rarely venture outside of it -- if you don't though they aren't really an option. Here in Upstate NY they cease functioning (if you are lucky you can roam on AT&T but half the time you can't) the minute you leave the city/expressway.
Verizon are an arrogant bunch of SOBs but they do actually have the network to back it up. What are you going to do, leave? Go ahead -- you'll be back. That's their attitude and until their competitors invest in the same type of network it isn't likely to change. AT&T might be able to do it but it will take decades for T-Mobile to -- if they are even interested in doing so.
I believe the argument is that it's worse than increasing income taxes (which are progressive) by a similar amount.
See, that's where your wrong. You aren't thinking like a politician. If you raise income taxes then you have to get it through Congress and expend political capital. If you raise it through the FCC nobody outside of the technical community is likely to notice until it's too late.
How about, specifically, the margin on texting? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html [nytimes.com]
Hmm. yeah, that invisible hand does a really great job eh?
The invisible hand is working just fine. If people weren't willing to pay that much for texting then the cost would come down. Nobody needs texting. People want texting but few people can make the argument that they need it.
In a free market a company will charge what the market will bear. Their competitors will lower their price if they think they will make more money by doing so, otherwise they have no incentive. Do you think Verizon/AT&T would steal enough customers from the competition if they lowered their SMS rates to make up for the revenue they'd lose? If lower SMS rates were all it took to attract customers then Sprint and T-Mobile would be #1 and #2 instead of #3 and #4. Apparently there are other factors at play though.