Again though, its not feasible to have a 1:1 ratio of bandwidth at the WAN
You don't have to have a 1:1 ratio. You just have to have a decent enough ratio that on the typical day your customers aren't competing for bandwidth with one another. Obviously there will be times that they do (a WAN link goes down, some event/disaster happens that causes a spike in traffic, etc, etc) but if that's happening more than occasionally then you need to consider investing in some network upgrades.
People are not going to just regulate themselves, nor should they have to.
Maybe the ISPs should invest in backhaul upgrades without raising the speed level delivered to the end users? Seems like that would solve the problem. What's the point in offering 10-15-20mbit speeds if your customers can only achieve them at 3AM?
Lets be realistic, completely unregulated P2P CAN destroy a network for ALL users.
The problem is now the traffic doesn't burst like it used to. It's more sustained and oversubscription rules are breaking
Cry me a river. Even ignoring the rise of p2p, did anyone seriously believe that the same oversubscription ratios that worked in the early 90s were still going to be valid in the 21st century? It's not like people didn't foresee the rise of streaming video and online content distribution.
Most ISPs are honestly trying to play a game of self-preservation so they can keep their service alive without being cost prohibitive.
"so they can keep their service alive without reducing dividends to the shareholders", there, fixed that for you.
Installing more capacity doesn't help with congestion when all of the P2P apps on the network automatically increase their bandwidth consumption in response to the increase in available bandwidth
It does if you invest in more capacity without increasing the speeds available to your end-users. Put another way, my torrent seeding at 768k might be consuming 1% of a backhaul link -- if they triple the speed of that link without increasing my upstream bandwidth then I'm only using 0.33% of it.
If you can't supply 10mbit speeds to your customers then stop offering them.....
Well I think Tibet is better off as part of China. I don't believe in feudalism nor theocracy- and I recognize that the nation is too impoverished to develop without China's support
You assume that the people want to develop. Did it ever occur to you that maybe they don't? I find it rather disturbing that you simultaneously justify China's involvement in Tibet because the people are "better off" while discouraging any attempt to improve the quality of life for the billion people living under the regime in Beijing.
China doesn't export its human rights violations like we do with our little foray into Iraq
I know some genocide victims in the Sudan that might disagree with that statement.
and for that reason it's a waste of time and trade potential to attack them over it.
"Attack them over it"? There you go again putting words into my mouth -- where did I advocate doing anything more forceful then calling them out on their behavior and leveraging the Olympics to hopefully get them to moderate their position? Nobody is advocating attacking China or even reducing our trade with them. I just don't see why the World owes them a global forum if this is what they intend to do with it.
You don't see a contradiction with saying that nothing justifies imperialism while simultaneously justifying it?
am merely implying that the US does not have hold over what is right and wrong- we are not the bastion nor vanguards of freedom
The notion that we can't criticize human rights failings because we ourselves aren't 100% perfect serves no one besides the oppressive regimes of the World.
The United States DOES NOT police the world.
Where did I advocate for 'policing' this situation? All I said was that the World doesn't owe China a free ride. Personally I won't be watching the Olympics and I'm considering trying to setup a boycott of any company that sponsors them. I see a bit of a difference between 'policing' and refusing to do business with companies that are profiting from the Olympics. I see a bit of a difference between 'policing' and refusing to attend the opening ceremonies.
What they're doing in Tibet does not justify US action, period.
It also doesn't justify treating them like a mature member of the community of nations -- or do you not believe that they should be held to the same standards (starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) as everybody else?
Can the ISPs afford to give encrypted traffic a very low priority?
No, but if they wanted to be pricks they could identify p2p users and give THEIR encrypted traffic a very low priority.
Even if you ran with full encryption and encrypted the communication with the tracker it's still trivial to identify you as a p2p user -- not many VPNs make connections with dozens (or hundreds) of remote hosts.
The only way around that would be to VPN somewhere and use that VPN link to pass all your p2p traffic -- but if you have the means at your disposal to set that up then you likely have the means to find an ISP that doesn't throttle your p2p traffic.
and since Europe is standardized on GSM there's no issues like in America where people on different operators sometimes can't even message each other
Where the hell did you get that idea from? I'm not aware of any carrier whose customers can't message people on another carrier. And what does GSM have to do with that? Different carriers being able to communicate with each other has nothing to do with the underlying cellular technology and everything to do with routing on the global POTS network.
You pay extra for calling abroad, even from America, so why is it not fair to pay the extra cash for routing the call through wireless equipment?
Because you are effectively making your friends pay for your privilege of having a wireless phone. In the American model the wireless customer pays for that privilege and the people seeking to call him aren't penalized because of his choice of phone service.
Like I said, I don't pretend to know which one is more "fair" and I'm not really interested in a debate about it -- my original point was that pointing out that Europe gets free incoming calls is only half the story.
Whether or not you think it's right, these people are no longer serfs. Although they don't know it yet- that's a good thing
Besides, Tibet was a theocratic feudal kingdom before China invaded, where most people were serfs who lived in hovels underneath lords. They revolt out of nationalistic pride, but in reality they are better off with China's modernizations.
China has invested so much infrastructure in Tibet that it would be ludicrous to pull out and reinstall their God-King.
China invaded a no-name forbidden kingdom in the mountains and actually improved their quality of life
Nothing justifies Imperialism
Do you not see the ridiculous contradictions in your own statements? "Nothing justifies Imperialism", yet you've devoted many of your statements to justifying it! You bemoan "American fascist economic policies" while condoning and justifying cultural imperialism on the part of China. Pot, kettle, black.
Like I'm sure the US and Europe gained all their power using naturally aspirated internal structuring- but they did not
Yes, we engaged in our fair share of imperialism. It was wrong then and it's wrong today. Pointing out past (or even current) imperialistic oppression on the part of the West does not justify modern day imperialism on the part of China. We aren't perfect but we have taken some steps to atone for our past misdeeds -- China seems to be actively seeking out new misdeeds.
I will call out any Government (including my own) that abuses human rights. To say that it's "none of our business" is to advocate for a policy of isolationism that history suggests will fail miserably every single time. I'm not suggesting that we send in the Marines to 'liberate' Tibet -- but the World doesn't owe China a free ride either -- and I don't see any problem with using whatever we have as leverage to get them to improve their treatment of Tibet. At the moment, that leverage would seem to include the Olympic games.
the same way that Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands likely cannot
There's nothing stopping either of those places from moving towards Independence if the population was so inclined. Palau obtained Independence. So did the Federated States of Micronesia. There is actually a Puerto Rican Independence Party too -- though they don't currently have the support of the majority of the population (which sees benefits in remaining an American Commonwealth), but they do exist. Think China would tolerate the creation of a Tibetan Independence Party?
Whether or not you think it's right, these people are no longer serfs. Although they don't know it yet- that's a good thing. You really need to take a long hard look at what life in China is really about before you start acting like it's a nation of slaves. Pre-1959 Tibet was a nation of slaves.
So can we invade Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia is practically a 'nation of slaves' -- particularly for those without a Y chromosome. What about all the rural poor in China? How are they much better off than 'serfs'? Can we invade them too?
You've heard of EDVO and 3G before, right? Those are "data networks".
SMS is sent over the standard cell network. This means you can receive text messages even when you CAN'T send data.
You do realize that the "data network" uses the exact same infrastructure (towers, antennas, frequencies, backhaul, etc) as the "standard cell network", right?
Data might not always be available depending on whether or not they've upgraded their base station equipment to support it, but it isn't a different "network" -- just a different functionality on the same underlying network that you use to make voice calls/send SMSes.
In the UK, where I am, & Europe, we pay to send messages, and make phone calls, but to receive either is free.
You also get to pay a premium to call mobile numbers. Here in the states it doesn't cost any more or less to dial a mobile number than it does to dial any landline number.
I don't pretend to know which one is more fair but I do know you aren't telling the whole story if you point out that you have free incoming calls without pointing out that it typically costs extra to call a mobile user.
I am serious- of all injustices in the world why has the Western world particularly adopted Tibet? No matter how you look at it, it's a rightful conquest. Do we expect France to come over and tell us to relinquish Puerto Rico? No- imperialist gains are imperialist gains. I don't see why China's dominion is evil while ours is not.
One suspects that if I made the same argument and replaced 'China' with 'the United States' and 'Tibet' with 'Iraq' that I'd be quickly modded troll. And since you mentioned Puerto Rico -- are we repressing an independence movement in Puerto Rico at gunpoint? Are the people of Tibet free to vote in local elections and choose their own destiny as the people of Puerto Rico are?
They revolt out of nationalistic pride, but in reality they are better off with China's modernizations.
If I made the same argument about Native Americans I'd be modded down faster then you can say "gunpowder". What the hell gives one group of people the right to impose "modernization" on another group of less well armed people? This isn't the 19th century anymore.
I should point out that VPN over a cellular modem is flaky at best, and practically useless if you are moving in a vehicle.
Are you sure about that? My boss has a Verizon Wireless EV-DO data card. He heads down to Myrtle Beach every few months (roughly 13 hours away) and works on his laptop pretty much the whole way. He's never complained about having issues with our VPN -- and he's using it to connect to a Citrix server, which is a pretty interactive application and would give him fits if the connection was flaky or spotty.
He has done nothing illegal in the sense that he was found "not guilty" by the criminal jury and avoided paying a civil judgement.
So you admit that skipping out on debts isn't a criminal matter? Thank you, that's all I was looking for.
You keep talking about how skillful you were at running away from your creditors. If you have done nothing wrong, why did you have to run? If you obtained the load in good faith and were going to pay off as much of it as you were able, why not go for bankruptcy right away
Because I was a dumbass who bought into the industry propaganda that bankruptcy will ruin your life and forever trash your credit. In spite of the fact that my debt was doubling every 16 months or so (gotta love those 35% penalty APRs and fees) I still held out some hope that I could pay it off without having to file bankruptcy.
Eventually I realized two things:
1) I couldn't pay it off in any reasonable amount of time. Nine years was my best projection but that would have required living off ramen noodles for that whole time.
2) The original creditors that loaned me the money wouldn't have gotten a dime back anyway. Bad debts are eventually sold outright (not assigned) to 'junk debt buyers' for pennies on the dollar. The JDB gets to keep 100% of anything they can manage to collect from you.
The combination of those two factors and the pending bankruptcy law "reform" (which accomplished nothing other then driving up the cost of filing bankruptcy -- it didn't make it harder for the overwhelming majority of the people that file) convinced me that I had to file. In the years leading up to that I choose to live below the radar because I didn't feel like doing with harassing phone calls and letters from 'creditors' that I never borrowed money from (JDBs) and couldn't pay back in any event.
Anyway, I wasn't looking for a debate on the morals of 'running away' from debt with you -- I was merely looking for a clarification on the whole "It's a crime to skip out on debt" remark. With few exceptions (child support, taxes, bad checks) that is not the case in the United States.
As it is, you got away with taking other people's money and because of you other Capital One cardholders had to pay higher interest on their accounts instead of taking care of THEIR families.
Are you a lobbyist for the credit card industry?
You can be legally obliged to appear in court by making several attempts to serve you in person and then just posting a notice in local newspaper.
Indeed you can. And if you don't show up they can obtain a default judgment. Of course if you no longer live in the 'local area' then that default judgment isn't worth the paper it's printed on (you can have it vacated later) and even if it is good luck collecting it -- ask this guy how effective a civil judgment is.
Your friends and relatives can be compelled to testify about your whereabouts or go to prison for contempt of court
That presupposes that they can identify who your friends or family are. I don't recall having to list all of my friends and family members on my last loan application.
A private detective can follow you after you pick up mail from your post box.
Yes, if they know where your PO box is.
You were just not important enough for the bank to utilize all the legally available resources to track you done
If they had bothered they would probably have found me -- and if I had bothered to hide better they wouldn't have been able to. So what's your point?
BTW, I still haven't seen a justification for your earlier remark that it's a crime to skip out a debt. Until I do I don't really see any point in continuing this conversation.
You seem to be so determined to run away from your obligations
That's a pretty big assumption from someone that doesn't know me.
that you are confusing legality with the fact that you can delay the inevitable for a while
Actually you can delay it practically forever if you know what you are doing. I leave it to the reader to decide if that's something they want to do. I personally wouldn't advocate purposefully abandoning your 'obligations' but I also tend to think that your obligation to your family outweighs your obligation to Capital One. If you can't meet both of them for whatever reason then it should be painfully obvious to anyone who isn't in the debt collection industry which one is more important.
But eventually creditors can call you to a debtor examination
Yes, they can. If they've obtained a judgment against you and if they can locate you to inform you of the DE. You don't seem to realize how easy it is to slip below the radar even in our modern interconnected time. Unless you happen to work for Uncle Sam, good luck finding me if I decide to go underground.
If you were a subject of missing person's report, police will know where you are from your credit report
And how do you think your credit report gets your new address? It gets it when you give your new address to existing creditors (or they obtain it from the USPS if you leave a forwarding order) or you apply for new credit using the new address. Not a single one of my credit reports (or CLUE report for that matter) obtained my physical address in the four years that I was living below the radar. They only obtained my PO box because I let them (set up forwarding with the USPS).
You should have just faced the music and declared bankruptcy or worked out a payment plan
Actually I did eventually file Ch 7. Wish I had done it earlier. Live and learn.
What you actually did could not have been any better for your credit rating or financial bottom line
My financial bottom line has nothing to do with my credit rating. The balance on my savings account or 403(b) plan is not dependent on my credit score. The only service I absolutely need that is (somewhat) dependent on my credit rating is automobile insurance. Everything else is just gravy.
Granted, my credit score 2.5 years from BK is pretty respectable (720 last month) but my credit score is not a major consideration in my financial planning. If I learned anything from filing bankruptcy it's living within my means and living a cash-only lifestyle. I see no reason to abandon either of those philosophies and I'm personally so disgusted by the practices of the credit card industry that I refuse to do any more business with them then necessary. I have a single credit card from my local credit union that I reserve for trips (hotels/car rentals) or doing business with outfits that I don't want having access to my checking account. And I'm a "deadbeat" -- I pay it off in full every month that I use it.
If you were mistreated by law, you should explain your case rather than talking about the general situation.
I wasn't mistreated by law. The only reason we are having this conversation is because I disagreed with your remark that running away from debt is a crime. You still haven't proved that it is either.
Can't I just buy a phone from kisosk X, with no plan, buy a SIM card+plan from kiosk Y, and be on my way?
You might be able to do that with AT&T or T-Mobile, though you'll likely find it easier to get the "free" phone they give away (and later sell it) then to just purchase a SIM card outright.
You can't do that with Verizon or Sprint. There is no such thing as an unbranded CDMA phone -- you HAVE to buy them through the carrier. So if you happen to live in an area where AT&T and T-Mobile have shitty coverage (or you just don't want to do business with them) then you are SOL.
do not attempt to evade court orders such as wage garnishment
Actually it depends on how you 'evade' them. You aren't breaking the law if you 'evade' a garnishment order by quitting your job. There's no law that says you HAVE to remain gainfully employed.
Likewise you aren't breaking the law if you leave your job for another company to 'evade' a garnishment order. Your creditors can call you in for a 'debtors examination' to find out where you work or bank and you are required to answer truthfully -- but what's true at 12pm doesn't still have to be true at 5pm -- and they can generally only demand you attend a DE once a year (depending on your state laws).
Vanishing casts serious doubt on both of these issues and gives police a probable cause to investigate a crime
If you think the police will 'investigate' someone who disappears while leaving behind consumer debts then I have a bridge that I'd like to sell you. Keeping your car without paying the note might be a crime -- but if I skip town and leave no forwarding address and $10,000 in unsecured debt good luck getting the police to help you.
Living under an assumed identity puts you in a proven violation of financial and other laws.
Who said you have to live under an assumed identity? I hid from my creditors for four years in plain sight. PO Boxes, un-listable phone numbers (VoIP and/or pre-paid cellular are popular options), non-local bank accounts (or no bank account) and a refusal to allow credit checks by a business that has your physical address (this is how the credit reporting agencies get your new address) are all perfectly legal steps that make it very hard for a creditor to locate you.
There is no law that says I can't vanish from my creditors.
If you think any debt is not criminal, try repeatedly writing bad checks.
There's a bit of a difference between walking away from a consumer debt that you can't pay for but obtained in good faith and purposefully writing bad checks to defraud a merchant. Obtaining a loan that you have no intention of repaying is fraud (as is lying on a loan application for a Federally chartered bank or credit union) but walking away from a loan that you can't repay is not a criminal act in this country. Making it harder for your creditors to locate you is not a criminal act either.
Running away as a minor, from your own children or from a debt is a crime by itself
Where the heck did you get the idea that running away from a debt is a 'crime'? Running away with security collateral may be a crime. Running away from a court ordered judgment may be a crime. Running away from unsecured debts (or secured if you leave behind the security collateral) is not a crime in the United States of America. We don't have debtors prisons here.
It has little or nothing to do with ringtones. Nobody AFAIK buys them
You don't know many teenagers, do you?;)
VZW didn't want to let you take your numbers to new carriers. They were against that
Actually, they did stop fighting that when they realized that they would probably benefit the most out of any of the carriers (and when it became apparent that it was going to pass anyway).
They also want to prevent you from not using a pay service they provide (VZ Navigator) for a free service (GPS+Google Maps) on their network. The list goes on and on too...
Totally agree with this. Look at the TOS for their data product sometime. They don't just limit you to 5GB a month -- they also limit what you can do with it. Listening to Pandora is a 'prohibited activity', among others.
carrier cost for subsidizing phones has to be an order of magnitude more than that.
Do you really think those 'subsidies' actually cost them anything near what they claim? Something tells me that with the volume of phones they purchase they probably get pretty good pricing from Nokia and Motorola.
In any event, I've always found it rather amusing that they can claim the early termination fees are to protect their investment (due to the aforementioned subsidy) when said ETF is the same regardless of whether or not you got a free $120 el-cheapo POS or a $600 Blackberry.
I remember watching "The Naked Detective" when I was a middle schooler. It was the most absurd softcore porn I'd ever seen.
For me it was 'Emmanuelle in Space';)
What horny male teenager didn't love Skinamax^WCinemax for the once a year free preview when the local cable company would unscramble them for everybody;)
'Tough Shit' Google? Try 'Tough Shit American Consumer' because that's who really gets burned if the carriers can keep their walled garden model.
I don't really give two shits about Google but I'd like to be able to buy my own (non carrier branded) phone and do whatever I want with it. You can't do this in CDMA land. Hell, even the GSM carriers (AT&T and T-Mobile) less informed employees will try to tell you that you can't use a non-branded phone.
I even had a T-Mobile employee try to tell me that I couldn't buy a prepaid phone to use with my postpaid service even though it was the exact same model phone as the one they were offering for postpaid customers (the prepaid was $30, postpaid was $100 without a contract). Needless to say I ignored them and bought the phone I wanted and it works just fine.
If they get away with flaunting these requirements then we all lose. Hell, even the carriers will lose out in the end, because sooner or later there will be a backlash and they'll find themselves actually being regulated by the states and/or Feds. Then they'll wish they had done it all voluntarily when they had the chance.
Does this ever actually happen in the real world? I'm doubtless spoiled living in the United States but I've never seen a traceroute with more than 30 or 35 hops on it. Isn't the lowest default TTL for any (major) operating system at least 64?
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have to have a 1:1 ratio. You just have to have a decent enough ratio that on the typical day your customers aren't competing for bandwidth with one another. Obviously there will be times that they do (a WAN link goes down, some event/disaster happens that causes a spike in traffic, etc, etc) but if that's happening more than occasionally then you need to consider investing in some network upgrades.
People are not going to just regulate themselves, nor should they have to.Maybe the ISPs should invest in backhaul upgrades without raising the speed level delivered to the end users? Seems like that would solve the problem. What's the point in offering 10-15-20mbit speeds if your customers can only achieve them at 3AM?
Lets be realistic, completely unregulated P2P CAN destroy a network for ALL users.Not a well designed network.
Cry me a river. Even ignoring the rise of p2p, did anyone seriously believe that the same oversubscription ratios that worked in the early 90s were still going to be valid in the 21st century? It's not like people didn't foresee the rise of streaming video and online content distribution.
Most ISPs are honestly trying to play a game of self-preservation so they can keep their service alive without being cost prohibitive."so they can keep their service alive without reducing dividends to the shareholders", there, fixed that for you.
It does if you invest in more capacity without increasing the speeds available to your end-users. Put another way, my torrent seeding at 768k might be consuming 1% of a backhaul link -- if they triple the speed of that link without increasing my upstream bandwidth then I'm only using 0.33% of it.
If you can't supply 10mbit speeds to your customers then stop offering them.....
You assume that the people want to develop. Did it ever occur to you that maybe they don't? I find it rather disturbing that you simultaneously justify China's involvement in Tibet because the people are "better off" while discouraging any attempt to improve the quality of life for the billion people living under the regime in Beijing.
China doesn't export its human rights violations like we do with our little foray into IraqI know some genocide victims in the Sudan that might disagree with that statement.
and for that reason it's a waste of time and trade potential to attack them over it."Attack them over it"? There you go again putting words into my mouth -- where did I advocate doing anything more forceful then calling them out on their behavior and leveraging the Olympics to hopefully get them to moderate their position? Nobody is advocating attacking China or even reducing our trade with them. I just don't see why the World owes them a global forum if this is what they intend to do with it.
You don't see a contradiction with saying that nothing justifies imperialism while simultaneously justifying it?
am merely implying that the US does not have hold over what is right and wrong- we are not the bastion nor vanguards of freedomThe notion that we can't criticize human rights failings because we ourselves aren't 100% perfect serves no one besides the oppressive regimes of the World.
The United States DOES NOT police the world.Where did I advocate for 'policing' this situation? All I said was that the World doesn't owe China a free ride. Personally I won't be watching the Olympics and I'm considering trying to setup a boycott of any company that sponsors them. I see a bit of a difference between 'policing' and refusing to do business with companies that are profiting from the Olympics. I see a bit of a difference between 'policing' and refusing to attend the opening ceremonies.
What they're doing in Tibet does not justify US action, period.It also doesn't justify treating them like a mature member of the community of nations -- or do you not believe that they should be held to the same standards (starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) as everybody else?
No, but if they wanted to be pricks they could identify p2p users and give THEIR encrypted traffic a very low priority.
Even if you ran with full encryption and encrypted the communication with the tracker it's still trivial to identify you as a p2p user -- not many VPNs make connections with dozens (or hundreds) of remote hosts.
The only way around that would be to VPN somewhere and use that VPN link to pass all your p2p traffic -- but if you have the means at your disposal to set that up then you likely have the means to find an ISP that doesn't throttle your p2p traffic.
Where the hell did you get that idea from? I'm not aware of any carrier whose customers can't message people on another carrier. And what does GSM have to do with that? Different carriers being able to communicate with each other has nothing to do with the underlying cellular technology and everything to do with routing on the global POTS network.
You pay extra for calling abroad, even from America, so why is it not fair to pay the extra cash for routing the call through wireless equipment?Because you are effectively making your friends pay for your privilege of having a wireless phone. In the American model the wireless customer pays for that privilege and the people seeking to call him aren't penalized because of his choice of phone service.
Like I said, I don't pretend to know which one is more "fair" and I'm not really interested in a debate about it -- my original point was that pointing out that Europe gets free incoming calls is only half the story.
Do you not see the ridiculous contradictions in your own statements? "Nothing justifies Imperialism", yet you've devoted many of your statements to justifying it! You bemoan "American fascist economic policies" while condoning and justifying cultural imperialism on the part of China. Pot, kettle, black.
Like I'm sure the US and Europe gained all their power using naturally aspirated internal structuring- but they did notYes, we engaged in our fair share of imperialism. It was wrong then and it's wrong today. Pointing out past (or even current) imperialistic oppression on the part of the West does not justify modern day imperialism on the part of China. We aren't perfect but we have taken some steps to atone for our past misdeeds -- China seems to be actively seeking out new misdeeds.
I will call out any Government (including my own) that abuses human rights. To say that it's "none of our business" is to advocate for a policy of isolationism that history suggests will fail miserably every single time. I'm not suggesting that we send in the Marines to 'liberate' Tibet -- but the World doesn't owe China a free ride either -- and I don't see any problem with using whatever we have as leverage to get them to improve their treatment of Tibet. At the moment, that leverage would seem to include the Olympic games.
There's nothing stopping either of those places from moving towards Independence if the population was so inclined. Palau obtained Independence. So did the Federated States of Micronesia. There is actually a Puerto Rican Independence Party too -- though they don't currently have the support of the majority of the population (which sees benefits in remaining an American Commonwealth), but they do exist. Think China would tolerate the creation of a Tibetan Independence Party?
Whether or not you think it's right, these people are no longer serfs. Although they don't know it yet- that's a good thing. You really need to take a long hard look at what life in China is really about before you start acting like it's a nation of slaves. Pre-1959 Tibet was a nation of slaves.So can we invade Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia is practically a 'nation of slaves' -- particularly for those without a Y chromosome. What about all the rural poor in China? How are they much better off than 'serfs'? Can we invade them too?
You do realize that the "data network" uses the exact same infrastructure (towers, antennas, frequencies, backhaul, etc) as the "standard cell network", right?
Data might not always be available depending on whether or not they've upgraded their base station equipment to support it, but it isn't a different "network" -- just a different functionality on the same underlying network that you use to make voice calls/send SMSes.
You also get to pay a premium to call mobile numbers. Here in the states it doesn't cost any more or less to dial a mobile number than it does to dial any landline number.
I don't pretend to know which one is more fair but I do know you aren't telling the whole story if you point out that you have free incoming calls without pointing out that it typically costs extra to call a mobile user.
One suspects that if I made the same argument and replaced 'China' with 'the United States' and 'Tibet' with 'Iraq' that I'd be quickly modded troll. And since you mentioned Puerto Rico -- are we repressing an independence movement in Puerto Rico at gunpoint? Are the people of Tibet free to vote in local elections and choose their own destiny as the people of Puerto Rico are?
They revolt out of nationalistic pride, but in reality they are better off with China's modernizations.If I made the same argument about Native Americans I'd be modded down faster then you can say "gunpowder". What the hell gives one group of people the right to impose "modernization" on another group of less well armed people? This isn't the 19th century anymore.
Are you sure about that? My boss has a Verizon Wireless EV-DO data card. He heads down to Myrtle Beach every few months (roughly 13 hours away) and works on his laptop pretty much the whole way. He's never complained about having issues with our VPN -- and he's using it to connect to a Citrix server, which is a pretty interactive application and would give him fits if the connection was flaky or spotty.
So you admit that skipping out on debts isn't a criminal matter? Thank you, that's all I was looking for.
You keep talking about how skillful you were at running away from your creditors. If you have done nothing wrong, why did you have to run? If you obtained the load in good faith and were going to pay off as much of it as you were able, why not go for bankruptcy right awayBecause I was a dumbass who bought into the industry propaganda that bankruptcy will ruin your life and forever trash your credit. In spite of the fact that my debt was doubling every 16 months or so (gotta love those 35% penalty APRs and fees) I still held out some hope that I could pay it off without having to file bankruptcy.
Eventually I realized two things:
1) I couldn't pay it off in any reasonable amount of time. Nine years was my best projection but that would have required living off ramen noodles for that whole time.
2) The original creditors that loaned me the money wouldn't have gotten a dime back anyway. Bad debts are eventually sold outright (not assigned) to 'junk debt buyers' for pennies on the dollar. The JDB gets to keep 100% of anything they can manage to collect from you.
The combination of those two factors and the pending bankruptcy law "reform" (which accomplished nothing other then driving up the cost of filing bankruptcy -- it didn't make it harder for the overwhelming majority of the people that file) convinced me that I had to file. In the years leading up to that I choose to live below the radar because I didn't feel like doing with harassing phone calls and letters from 'creditors' that I never borrowed money from (JDBs) and couldn't pay back in any event.
Anyway, I wasn't looking for a debate on the morals of 'running away' from debt with you -- I was merely looking for a clarification on the whole "It's a crime to skip out on debt" remark. With few exceptions (child support, taxes, bad checks) that is not the case in the United States.
Are you a lobbyist for the credit card industry?
You can be legally obliged to appear in court by making several attempts to serve you in person and then just posting a notice in local newspaper.Indeed you can. And if you don't show up they can obtain a default judgment. Of course if you no longer live in the 'local area' then that default judgment isn't worth the paper it's printed on (you can have it vacated later) and even if it is good luck collecting it -- ask this guy how effective a civil judgment is.
Your friends and relatives can be compelled to testify about your whereabouts or go to prison for contempt of courtThat presupposes that they can identify who your friends or family are. I don't recall having to list all of my friends and family members on my last loan application.
A private detective can follow you after you pick up mail from your post box.Yes, if they know where your PO box is.
You were just not important enough for the bank to utilize all the legally available resources to track you doneIf they had bothered they would probably have found me -- and if I had bothered to hide better they wouldn't have been able to. So what's your point?
BTW, I still haven't seen a justification for your earlier remark that it's a crime to skip out a debt. Until I do I don't really see any point in continuing this conversation.
That's a pretty big assumption from someone that doesn't know me.
that you are confusing legality with the fact that you can delay the inevitable for a whileActually you can delay it practically forever if you know what you are doing. I leave it to the reader to decide if that's something they want to do. I personally wouldn't advocate purposefully abandoning your 'obligations' but I also tend to think that your obligation to your family outweighs your obligation to Capital One. If you can't meet both of them for whatever reason then it should be painfully obvious to anyone who isn't in the debt collection industry which one is more important.
But eventually creditors can call you to a debtor examinationYes, they can. If they've obtained a judgment against you and if they can locate you to inform you of the DE. You don't seem to realize how easy it is to slip below the radar even in our modern interconnected time. Unless you happen to work for Uncle Sam, good luck finding me if I decide to go underground.
If you were a subject of missing person's report, police will know where you are from your credit reportAnd how do you think your credit report gets your new address? It gets it when you give your new address to existing creditors (or they obtain it from the USPS if you leave a forwarding order) or you apply for new credit using the new address. Not a single one of my credit reports (or CLUE report for that matter) obtained my physical address in the four years that I was living below the radar. They only obtained my PO box because I let them (set up forwarding with the USPS).
You should have just faced the music and declared bankruptcy or worked out a payment planActually I did eventually file Ch 7. Wish I had done it earlier. Live and learn.
What you actually did could not have been any better for your credit rating or financial bottom lineMy financial bottom line has nothing to do with my credit rating. The balance on my savings account or 403(b) plan is not dependent on my credit score. The only service I absolutely need that is (somewhat) dependent on my credit rating is automobile insurance. Everything else is just gravy.
Granted, my credit score 2.5 years from BK is pretty respectable (720 last month) but my credit score is not a major consideration in my financial planning. If I learned anything from filing bankruptcy it's living within my means and living a cash-only lifestyle. I see no reason to abandon either of those philosophies and I'm personally so disgusted by the practices of the credit card industry that I refuse to do any more business with them then necessary. I have a single credit card from my local credit union that I reserve for trips (hotels/car rentals) or doing business with outfits that I don't want having access to my checking account. And I'm a "deadbeat" -- I pay it off in full every month that I use it.
If you were mistreated by law, you should explain your case rather than talking about the general situation.I wasn't mistreated by law. The only reason we are having this conversation is because I disagreed with your remark that running away from debt is a crime. You still haven't proved that it is either.
You might be able to do that with AT&T or T-Mobile, though you'll likely find it easier to get the "free" phone they give away (and later sell it) then to just purchase a SIM card outright.
You can't do that with Verizon or Sprint. There is no such thing as an unbranded CDMA phone -- you HAVE to buy them through the carrier. So if you happen to live in an area where AT&T and T-Mobile have shitty coverage (or you just don't want to do business with them) then you are SOL.
Actually it depends on how you 'evade' them. You aren't breaking the law if you 'evade' a garnishment order by quitting your job. There's no law that says you HAVE to remain gainfully employed.
Likewise you aren't breaking the law if you leave your job for another company to 'evade' a garnishment order. Your creditors can call you in for a 'debtors examination' to find out where you work or bank and you are required to answer truthfully -- but what's true at 12pm doesn't still have to be true at 5pm -- and they can generally only demand you attend a DE once a year (depending on your state laws).
Vanishing casts serious doubt on both of these issues and gives police a probable cause to investigate a crimeIf you think the police will 'investigate' someone who disappears while leaving behind consumer debts then I have a bridge that I'd like to sell you. Keeping your car without paying the note might be a crime -- but if I skip town and leave no forwarding address and $10,000 in unsecured debt good luck getting the police to help you.
Living under an assumed identity puts you in a proven violation of financial and other laws.Who said you have to live under an assumed identity? I hid from my creditors for four years in plain sight. PO Boxes, un-listable phone numbers (VoIP and/or pre-paid cellular are popular options), non-local bank accounts (or no bank account) and a refusal to allow credit checks by a business that has your physical address (this is how the credit reporting agencies get your new address) are all perfectly legal steps that make it very hard for a creditor to locate you.
There is no law that says I can't vanish from my creditors.
If you think any debt is not criminal, try repeatedly writing bad checks.There's a bit of a difference between walking away from a consumer debt that you can't pay for but obtained in good faith and purposefully writing bad checks to defraud a merchant. Obtaining a loan that you have no intention of repaying is fraud (as is lying on a loan application for a Federally chartered bank or credit union) but walking away from a loan that you can't repay is not a criminal act in this country. Making it harder for your creditors to locate you is not a criminal act either.
Where the heck did you get the idea that running away from a debt is a 'crime'? Running away with security collateral may be a crime. Running away from a court ordered judgment may be a crime. Running away from unsecured debts (or secured if you leave behind the security collateral) is not a crime in the United States of America. We don't have debtors prisons here.
You don't know many teenagers, do you? ;)
VZW didn't want to let you take your numbers to new carriers. They were against thatActually, they did stop fighting that when they realized that they would probably benefit the most out of any of the carriers (and when it became apparent that it was going to pass anyway).
They also want to prevent you from not using a pay service they provide (VZ Navigator) for a free service (GPS+Google Maps) on their network. The list goes on and on too...Totally agree with this. Look at the TOS for their data product sometime. They don't just limit you to 5GB a month -- they also limit what you can do with it. Listening to Pandora is a 'prohibited activity', among others.
Do you really think those 'subsidies' actually cost them anything near what they claim? Something tells me that with the volume of phones they purchase they probably get pretty good pricing from Nokia and Motorola.
In any event, I've always found it rather amusing that they can claim the early termination fees are to protect their investment (due to the aforementioned subsidy) when said ETF is the same regardless of whether or not you got a free $120 el-cheapo POS or a $600 Blackberry.
For me it was 'Emmanuelle in Space' ;)
What horny male teenager didn't love Skinamax^WCinemax for the once a year free preview when the local cable company would unscramble them for everybody ;)
'Tough Shit' Google? Try 'Tough Shit American Consumer' because that's who really gets burned if the carriers can keep their walled garden model.
I don't really give two shits about Google but I'd like to be able to buy my own (non carrier branded) phone and do whatever I want with it. You can't do this in CDMA land. Hell, even the GSM carriers (AT&T and T-Mobile) less informed employees will try to tell you that you can't use a non-branded phone.
I even had a T-Mobile employee try to tell me that I couldn't buy a prepaid phone to use with my postpaid service even though it was the exact same model phone as the one they were offering for postpaid customers (the prepaid was $30, postpaid was $100 without a contract). Needless to say I ignored them and bought the phone I wanted and it works just fine.
If they get away with flaunting these requirements then we all lose. Hell, even the carriers will lose out in the end, because sooner or later there will be a backlash and they'll find themselves actually being regulated by the states and/or Feds. Then they'll wish they had done it all voluntarily when they had the chance.
That's rather ironic seeing as how your ancestors came to Australia to avoid the gallows ;)
Well, not all of them, but I still couldn't resist ;)
Does this ever actually happen in the real world? I'm doubtless spoiled living in the United States but I've never seen a traceroute with more than 30 or 35 hops on it. Isn't the lowest default TTL for any (major) operating system at least 64?