if they're willing to overrule you and insist you commit an illegal act
I wasn't aware that installing multiple copies of Office in excess of the number that you've licensed was illegal. It's definitely a violation of the software license, but illegal? I have a hard time seeing criminal charges result from something like this.
And, like it or not, most of the big shareholders of any publicly-held corporations are going to be pension and mutual funds, investment banks, and other companies -- not the sort of entities that are generally swayed by feel-good rhetoric
In this case it seems that this motion was brought by a pension trust:
"The Office of the Comptroller of New York City has advised us that it intends to submit the proposal set forth below for consideration at our annual meeting. It is the custodian and trustee of the New York City Employees' Retirement System, the New York City Teachers' Retirement System, the New York City Police Pension Fund, and the New York City Fire Department Pension Fund, and custodian of the New York City Board of Education Retirement System (the "Funds"), which beneficially own 486,617 shares of Google's Class A common stock."
There are some funds that engage in "socially responsible investing". This would seem to be one of them. My 403(b) is managed by another one.
So all the countries of the world that's economically hogtied to the Middle East doesn't like the idea of vast, cheap energy sources. Right...
It's about political willpower. We had the political will to fund Apollo because we needed to beat the Reds. There's no willpower to fund Fusion research as long as fossil fuels remain cheap and available. You also underestimate the power of the oil lobby. Hell, what did Bush do before he was appointed President?
the biggest problem is "Here's the particles that'll fly out of a fusion reactor. Make electricity out of it"
Fusion reactions create heat. Using heat to make electricity is hardly a new concept. It's basically how fission, coal and gas all work -- steam turbines.
but the alternative--50 independent nation states on the US continent--would suck even more.
Why would they suck? The blue and red states could do whatever the heck they wanted without resentment towards each other. My Assemblywoman is a lot more responsive to me then my Congressman. Where's the problem?
You don't think Spitzer has his eye on 2012 or 2016? It seems like that was all he was trying to do as AG was take on the sort of cases that would boost his national profile. Heck, I lived in the Mountain and Central Time Zones, am a hard core Republican, I can only name about 10 govenors on a good day and he was the only state AG that I knew.
I don't know if you live in New York or not but the joke wasn't on Spitzer or Pataki wanting higher office. The joke was on the reality of Pataki actually winning that higher office. Ignoring the fact that he's too liberal to get the Republican nomination anyway there weren't too many people in my state that liked him by the end of his last term.
"President Spitzer" isn't a punchline to a bad joke yet. "President Pataki" will make any New Yorker laugh with contempt.
4) Some of these frequencies have been heavily used in the past by high-channel UHF television stations with MUCH greater power (like 10,000 times). Ever wonder where channels above 70 went when cell phones started showing up? If it was something to do with these frequencies, all bees would have been gone back in the 70's.
Not saying that I buy this theory or not but it would be interesting to see if it was related to the pulse nature of GSM transmissions. Did they do any studies to see if analog or CDMA transmissions (continuous) have the same affect? Have they tried placing an inactive cell phone next to the hive to see what happens? Hell, the plastics in the phone could give off an odor of some sort that scares them away -- it may have nothing to do with RF at all. There's just too little information here to draw any conclusions.
Tmobile only works near the interstates and major freeways
Might want to check and see if you can roam on Cingular if you had a T-Mobile phone. T-Mo works at my house and in my city (Binghamton NY) -- if I leave the city and wander off the highway I can often roam on Cingular and use their network.
T-Mobile is the only decent provider if you care about customer service IMHO. Hopefully they remember where they came from if they become one of the big boys....
Don't forget iDen, which is in use by Nextel (Sprint blah blah), while also being used in numerous countries outside the US. Also, there's still AMPS and D-AMPS (a.k.a. TDMA).
Well, I don't know many people using iDen exclusive phones (most of them are CDMA/iDen combos). Ditto for AMPS. Most new CDMA phones don't even include support for AMPS (which I think is a pity but that's another discussion). TDMA is a good point (I forgot about it) but it's on the way out too.
Once again - the US ragtag of cellular non-standard networks is the loser
Ragtag of non-standard networks? You realize that Cingular and T-Mobile are both GSM carriers and together have 86,000,000 customers, right? And while CDMA might be loaded with patents it's enough of a standard to be used in a few dozen countries. Two competing standards is a "ragtag"?
Why does everybody point the finger at the US every time this discussion comes up? Assuming you have a quad-band phone you can actually bring your GSM phone to the US and use it. Try taking your GSM phone to Japan or South Korea. I don't see anybody bitching about them. But the US is a ragtag collection of non-standard networks?
but I'm willing to bet that I have the same torrent running.;)
Hehe, I think the AC knows;)
My old ISP gave me all the bandwidth I could use (I actually saw +1MB/sec) and as much traffic as I wanted. Now the "highspeed" connection from my new ISP is severely limited, no where near the advertised speed and I get heavily charged for exceeding my 60GB traffic limit (nearly $100 for an extra 40GB).
Verizon DSL isn't that great speed-wise (1.5/384 for me), but they do seem to leave me alone. I used to have a lot of respect for them (recall how they stood up and fought RIAA when they tried to subpoena a customer's IP?) but the business practices of their wireless company have disillusioned me. Still, it's decent. I get the speed they promise and they've never questioned my usage. For awhile I was even using it to backup data from the office. I did an initial 250 GB download and then rsync updates every night thereafter.
he same company that can't even manage to send my mobile phone bill on time or to the correct address every month.
Would they limit it? Customer service is a missing thing these days but if they provide the connection as promised, don't limit you and keep it working, who cares? That's my attitude towards big red. I hate having to call them -- but the DSL has never gone down so I don't have to.
But NY beurocracy has driven me insane already. I haven't transferred my license from PA yet because my: PA license, Passport, Military ID, Birth Certificate, Mortgage settlement, Concealed weapons permit, were not enough forms of ID. No sir! I needed to present them with additional ID. Yup. My SS card.
For what it's worth, all the DMVs in Broome County suck ass. Especially the one on Washington Ave. Don't even waste your time. Go to DMV in Owego. It's a 15 minute drive but it's worth it. They are infinitely nicer and easier to deal with.
I sent an e-mail to your throwaway account. Look at it when you get a chance and shoot me a reply. I'll give you any advice/help I can on this area.
What legitimate (according to their TOS) way could you even hit the upload cap for an extended period? Remember the TOS probably says no servers and they can easily argue that includes your bit torrent client so there goes the "linux iso's" argument.
Maybe I'm a web publisher and need to upload lots of files? Maybe I VPN into the office and need to move data? Maybe I want to send my 700 pictures from Italy to my Mom? Maybe I'm an Indie Artist and I want to upload my library to Live365? I can think of a million reasons I'd want upload bandwidth that aren't related to bittorrent or servers.
We need net neutrality. We also need a law: If it says unlimited, it's unlimited. No fine print. If they can't support unlimited connections then stop selling them. Print in plain English what your limits are. Then I'll be able to choose based on that. That's how a free market works.
If I could do anything I'd kill all the lawyers and outlaw fine print.
No DSL for me and I've tried. I'm w/i walking distance of West Corners too. I've taken a look at the COs in the area, and the next closest one to me is in the town of Maine. Sadly, it's not equipped with a DSLAM and I don't think my phone line connects to it even if it were.
Yeah, the Endicott CO is on Garfield Ave behind Wendy's. I don't know what kind of loop lengths they have to West Corners. A friend of mine got DSL but she only wanted the el-cheapo package. So I have no clue if you can get higher speeds out there. My loop length is about 14,000 feet so I missed the 3.0/768 service. I previously had Roadrunner at 5.0/384. It was stable for about two years and then started flapping all the time. After five weeks and eight visits to my house (new wire drop from the pole, new modems, line boosters, line attenuators, etc) I gave up and got DSL. I've had DSL for two years and it literally hasn't gone down once. It was even usable during the floods last year in spite of the fact that I had no electric. Ran my modem off the UPS and used my laptop. Time Warner's whole network went down because they apparently don't have UPSes or generators for their field boosters. I pity all the fools relying on digital phone....
I'm surprised that your dialup is no good. I've never noticed a problem around here with bad local loops. What's the inside wiring in your house like? I ripped all of mine out (some of the phone wiring in my place was cloth insulation!) and replaced it with Cat5. That made a huge difference in my POTS service back when I had it. You might check out these guys but I've never used them or heard of anyone who has so YMMV. Doesn't hurt to try though.
All this talk has really made me want to get ahold of the local municiple goverments and try to get them to put some leverage onto Verizon to make sure when they do upgrade here, they do it properly.
The month after my download speed increased from 5 to 10Mbps (and my upload from 384Kbps to 1Mbps) for no apparent reason other than the fact that Time Warner apparently rocks.
I bet FIOS is rolling out in your area if they upgraded your speed for "no apparent reason";)
but that they sell upstream bandwidth to hosting customers at a considerably higher price.
Even if that's the case (who the hell buys hosting from a cable company? isn't that what Rackspace & Friends are for?) I still don't think that a few large uploaders would harm them at all. I don't know about Comcast but in my area Roadrunner's upload is capped at 384k for residential customers. Even if I pegged that 24/7 do you really think that's even a dent in their operation?
It seems more likely that they are being pricks because they are assuming that you are running a server or uploading media.
Even though I'm probably SOL (I live in Endicott/Binghamton), before I moved Verizon had just upgraded my old house to FIOS.
Holy shit! I met an Endicott'er on/. and another person who replied? I'll be damned. I live near Little Round Top:)
For what it's worth I've talked to some Verizon guys and they claim that they will be doing a FIOS rollout towards the end of 2007/early 2008. I don't know if they will meet that deadline or not -- they are currently rolling it out in Syracuse.
Can you get DSL? Verizon manages to reach some areas in Endicott (like West Corners) that I would have assumed were too far away. They will also do dry loop in this area if you talk to the right person (I'm cell only).
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So if it's true that someone wants to kill the President, they should be allowed to sing it from the rooftops with no legal consequences?
Is it actually against the law to do this? It is illegal to threaten to kill him -- but is it actually illegal to want to kill him?
I.e: "I'm going to kill Bush" is obviously a threat. "I wish somebody would kill Bush" doesn't seem like one.
Hand your secret correspondence a DVD filled with high-quality random data
High quality "random" data eh? So basically you can just buy a DVD of just about anything Hollywood puts out and use it, right? ;)
if they're willing to overrule you and insist you commit an illegal act
I wasn't aware that installing multiple copies of Office in excess of the number that you've licensed was illegal. It's definitely a violation of the software license, but illegal? I have a hard time seeing criminal charges result from something like this.
grunt's gutt feeling is.
Based on the conversations I've had with my friends that are in the military we are screwed.
Unfortunately, that's only a good option in your mind. It doesn't actually work in the real world.
Cuz apathy is so much more effective.
As somebody said a couple of elections ago, we're faced with a choice of being forced to eat s*** and being forced to eat s*** with razor-blades.
Then do something about it! Run for office yourself. Setup your own party. Try to convince people to vote for the existing third-parties.
Will any of those be successful? Who can say? But I give them a much bigger chance of success then apathy....
There is also the low tech option and just go inside to talk where they're aren't any cameras....
A good low tech option in my mind would be to vote the dumbasses out of power that think this is a good idea.
And, like it or not, most of the big shareholders of any publicly-held corporations are going to be pension and mutual funds, investment banks, and other companies -- not the sort of entities that are generally swayed by feel-good rhetoric
In this case it seems that this motion was brought by a pension trust:
"The Office of the Comptroller of New York City has advised us that it intends to submit the proposal set forth below for consideration at our annual meeting. It is the custodian and trustee of the New York City Employees' Retirement System, the New York City Teachers' Retirement System, the New York City Police Pension Fund, and the New York City Fire Department Pension Fund, and custodian of the New York City Board of Education Retirement System (the "Funds"), which beneficially own 486,617 shares of Google's Class A common stock."
There are some funds that engage in "socially responsible investing". This would seem to be one of them. My 403(b) is managed by another one.
So all the countries of the world that's economically hogtied to the Middle East doesn't like the idea of vast, cheap energy sources. Right...
It's about political willpower. We had the political will to fund Apollo because we needed to beat the Reds. There's no willpower to fund Fusion research as long as fossil fuels remain cheap and available. You also underestimate the power of the oil lobby. Hell, what did Bush do before he was appointed President?
the biggest problem is "Here's the particles that'll fly out of a fusion reactor. Make electricity out of it"
Fusion reactions create heat. Using heat to make electricity is hardly a new concept. It's basically how fission, coal and gas all work -- steam turbines.
but the alternative--50 independent nation states on the US continent--would suck even more.
Why would they suck? The blue and red states could do whatever the heck they wanted without resentment towards each other. My Assemblywoman is a lot more responsive to me then my Congressman. Where's the problem?
You don't think Spitzer has his eye on 2012 or 2016? It seems like that was all he was trying to do as AG was take on the sort of cases that would boost his national profile. Heck, I lived in the Mountain and Central Time Zones, am a hard core Republican, I can only name about 10 govenors on a good day and he was the only state AG that I knew.
I don't know if you live in New York or not but the joke wasn't on Spitzer or Pataki wanting higher office. The joke was on the reality of Pataki actually winning that higher office. Ignoring the fact that he's too liberal to get the Republican nomination anyway there weren't too many people in my state that liked him by the end of his last term.
"President Spitzer" isn't a punchline to a bad joke yet. "President Pataki" will make any New Yorker laugh with contempt.
what happened to Pataki?
He has bigger dreams. To quote Jon Stewart.... say it with me: President Patak.... *rolfmao*.
Try and say it with a straight face ;)
The man then decided that people were too nice to kill in Toronto as well and so he turned himself into police.
Personally, I would have just left Toronto and continued on to Quebec ;)
4) Some of these frequencies have been heavily used in the past by high-channel UHF television stations with MUCH greater power (like 10,000 times). Ever wonder where channels above 70 went when cell phones started showing up? If it was something to do with these frequencies, all bees would have been gone back in the 70's.
Not saying that I buy this theory or not but it would be interesting to see if it was related to the pulse nature of GSM transmissions. Did they do any studies to see if analog or CDMA transmissions (continuous) have the same affect? Have they tried placing an inactive cell phone next to the hive to see what happens? Hell, the plastics in the phone could give off an odor of some sort that scares them away -- it may have nothing to do with RF at all. There's just too little information here to draw any conclusions.
Isn't more research called for?
Tmobile only works near the interstates and major freeways
Might want to check and see if you can roam on Cingular if you had a T-Mobile phone. T-Mo works at my house and in my city (Binghamton NY) -- if I leave the city and wander off the highway I can often roam on Cingular and use their network.
T-Mobile is the only decent provider if you care about customer service IMHO. Hopefully they remember where they came from if they become one of the big boys....
Don't forget iDen, which is in use by Nextel (Sprint blah blah), while also being used in numerous countries outside the US. Also, there's still AMPS and D-AMPS (a.k.a. TDMA).
Well, I don't know many people using iDen exclusive phones (most of them are CDMA/iDen combos). Ditto for AMPS. Most new CDMA phones don't even include support for AMPS (which I think is a pity but that's another discussion). TDMA is a good point (I forgot about it) but it's on the way out too.
Once again - the US ragtag of cellular non-standard networks is the loser
Ragtag of non-standard networks? You realize that Cingular and T-Mobile are both GSM carriers and together have 86,000,000 customers, right? And while CDMA might be loaded with patents it's enough of a standard to be used in a few dozen countries. Two competing standards is a "ragtag"?
Why does everybody point the finger at the US every time this discussion comes up? Assuming you have a quad-band phone you can actually bring your GSM phone to the US and use it. Try taking your GSM phone to Japan or South Korea. I don't see anybody bitching about them. But the US is a ragtag collection of non-standard networks?
but I'm willing to bet that I have the same torrent running. ;)
Hehe, I think the AC knows ;)
My old ISP gave me all the bandwidth I could use (I actually saw +1MB/sec) and as much traffic as I wanted. Now the "highspeed" connection from my new ISP is severely limited, no where near the advertised speed and I get heavily charged for exceeding my 60GB traffic limit (nearly $100 for an extra 40GB).
Verizon DSL isn't that great speed-wise (1.5/384 for me), but they do seem to leave me alone. I used to have a lot of respect for them (recall how they stood up and fought RIAA when they tried to subpoena a customer's IP?) but the business practices of their wireless company have disillusioned me. Still, it's decent. I get the speed they promise and they've never questioned my usage. For awhile I was even using it to backup data from the office. I did an initial 250 GB download and then rsync updates every night thereafter.
he same company that can't even manage to send my mobile phone bill on time or to the correct address every month.
Would they limit it? Customer service is a missing thing these days but if they provide the connection as promised, don't limit you and keep it working, who cares? That's my attitude towards big red. I hate having to call them -- but the DSL has never gone down so I don't have to.
But NY beurocracy has driven me insane already. I haven't transferred my license from PA yet because my: PA license, Passport, Military ID, Birth Certificate, Mortgage settlement, Concealed weapons permit, were not enough forms of ID. No sir! I needed to present them with additional ID. Yup. My SS card.
For what it's worth, all the DMVs in Broome County suck ass. Especially the one on Washington Ave. Don't even waste your time. Go to DMV in Owego. It's a 15 minute drive but it's worth it. They are infinitely nicer and easier to deal with.
I sent an e-mail to your throwaway account. Look at it when you get a chance and shoot me a reply. I'll give you any advice/help I can on this area.
What legitimate (according to their TOS) way could you even hit the upload cap for an extended period? Remember the TOS probably says no servers and they can easily argue that includes your bit torrent client so there goes the "linux iso's" argument.
Maybe I'm a web publisher and need to upload lots of files? Maybe I VPN into the office and need to move data? Maybe I want to send my 700 pictures from Italy to my Mom? Maybe I'm an Indie Artist and I want to upload my library to Live365? I can think of a million reasons I'd want upload bandwidth that aren't related to bittorrent or servers.
We need net neutrality. We also need a law: If it says unlimited, it's unlimited. No fine print. If they can't support unlimited connections then stop selling them. Print in plain English what your limits are. Then I'll be able to choose based on that. That's how a free market works.
If I could do anything I'd kill all the lawyers and outlaw fine print.
No DSL for me and I've tried. I'm w/i walking distance of West Corners too. I've taken a look at the COs in the area, and the next closest one to me is in the town of Maine. Sadly, it's not equipped with a DSLAM and I don't think my phone line connects to it even if it were.
Yeah, the Endicott CO is on Garfield Ave behind Wendy's. I don't know what kind of loop lengths they have to West Corners. A friend of mine got DSL but she only wanted the el-cheapo package. So I have no clue if you can get higher speeds out there. My loop length is about 14,000 feet so I missed the 3.0/768 service. I previously had Roadrunner at 5.0/384. It was stable for about two years and then started flapping all the time. After five weeks and eight visits to my house (new wire drop from the pole, new modems, line boosters, line attenuators, etc) I gave up and got DSL. I've had DSL for two years and it literally hasn't gone down once. It was even usable during the floods last year in spite of the fact that I had no electric. Ran my modem off the UPS and used my laptop. Time Warner's whole network went down because they apparently don't have UPSes or generators for their field boosters. I pity all the fools relying on digital phone....
I'm surprised that your dialup is no good. I've never noticed a problem around here with bad local loops. What's the inside wiring in your house like? I ripped all of mine out (some of the phone wiring in my place was cloth insulation!) and replaced it with Cat5. That made a huge difference in my POTS service back when I had it. You might check out these guys but I've never used them or heard of anyone who has so YMMV. Doesn't hurt to try though.
All this talk has really made me want to get ahold of the local municiple goverments and try to get them to put some leverage onto Verizon to make sure when they do upgrade here, they do it properly.
You really are new to the area aren't you? ;)
The month after my download speed increased from 5 to 10Mbps (and my upload from 384Kbps to 1Mbps) for no apparent reason other than the fact that Time Warner apparently rocks.
I bet FIOS is rolling out in your area if they upgraded your speed for "no apparent reason" ;)
but that they sell upstream bandwidth to hosting customers at a considerably higher price.
Even if that's the case (who the hell buys hosting from a cable company? isn't that what Rackspace & Friends are for?) I still don't think that a few large uploaders would harm them at all. I don't know about Comcast but in my area Roadrunner's upload is capped at 384k for residential customers. Even if I pegged that 24/7 do you really think that's even a dent in their operation?
It seems more likely that they are being pricks because they are assuming that you are running a server or uploading media.
Even though I'm probably SOL (I live in Endicott/Binghamton), before I moved Verizon had just upgraded my old house to FIOS.
Holy shit! I met an Endicott'er on /. and another person who replied? I'll be damned. I live near Little Round Top :)
For what it's worth I've talked to some Verizon guys and they claim that they will be doing a FIOS rollout towards the end of 2007/early 2008. I don't know if they will meet that deadline or not -- they are currently rolling it out in Syracuse.
Can you get DSL? Verizon manages to reach some areas in Endicott (like West Corners) that I would have assumed were too far away. They will also do dry loop in this area if you talk to the right person (I'm cell only).
I just have to deal with Rogers' packet-shaping, BitTorrent ruining behaviours :(
Bittorrent protocol encryption is your friend.