It seems to me that AOL is looking at the search engine model and trying to copy it. The only problem is that AOL has absolutely nothing to "draw" people in the way google does.
It's kind of backwards actually. AOL continues to offer bloatware, horrible customer service, a poor product, and is now going to try adding advertisement into the deal to save itself.
Google offers a top notch search engine with innovative product that makes people WANT to come, and now they are looking at offering broadband and becoming their own ISP.....
AOL needs to fix it's business model and offer something compelling. If you're not drawing people advertisements won't do much.
Taxes aren't meant to be specific to the medium that is used - they are meant to tax function. Wireless carriers have to pay this tax, as do wired carriers. VOIP does use phone lines - obviously once your bytes hit their servers, they go over to analogue.
I do wonder about double taxation. You pay a tax to your phone company for dsl (and many won't offer naked dsl) and alot of the time you're forced into at least a local plan, on which you'll also pay taxes, and now you're also paying the same tax on your voip - it isn't hard to see yourself getting taxed 2, 3, even 4 times for the same thing.
I have to wonder at the justification though. I'm sure the voip providers pay fees already to the telcos - and people who use those lines for normal voice pay the fees as well. So how, exactly, are the voip's adding the true COST of the phone lines? They pay what's required to the big telco's already!
Essentially it appears that this tax is a completely pointless money grab. I don't see a justification for it.
""In one," the article stated, "Airbus Industrie, the jet-liner consortium, lost out on a six billion dollar sale to Saudi Arabia after U.S authorities alerted Saudi authorities that Airbus was offering bribes." America's Boeing got the job. "
And of course, the NEW system won't be vulnerable to ANYTHING - right?
No, wait, let's think that through. Let's take video games as the paradigm. Every year companies spend upwards of 20 million per video game. Every year, they come out with the newest, latest, greatest in copy protection. This copy protection is only limited by their imaginations (and the hardware). And yet days after release, and sometimes prior to release, their code is hacked, cracked, and distributed.
This author somehow thinks that going back and redoing everything will fix it. The author is naive.
Call my analogy a bad one if you will, but the SECOND you put ANY type of system into the hands of the criminals / spammers, they will find ways to exploit it. This is proven time and again.
How exactly does this new email system stop phishing? Oh, right, it can't. Have a link, go to a malicious website, etc. How exactly does this new email system stop users from clicking executables thinking that they are going to see nudie pictures of Katie Holmes? They don't. How does this new email stop virii? It won't.
Encrypt your email if you want security. Password protect your account. Use filtering to dump spam before you read it.
OH, and I forgot to mention - I'll be sending you a snail mail letter that looks completely official. It's about a man I met in Nigeria, who has some money he'd like to give you.
Last time I checked, we have agencies for handling illegal activities. I believe they are called "police".....
Since when does a school have the time or resources to monitor this type of thing? Sure, sure, if they get notified and see it on the web page, report it to be the police. But last time I checked every person in this country is allowed "Due Process" before being sentenced for any type of crime, and last time I checked it is NOT the schools that are allowed to levy a sentence prior to a court of law.
Overstepping their bounds? WAY overstepping their bounds my friends.
Aside from the obvious issues here of a very minimal sample size, it sounds like some doubts have been raised as to the accuracy of the original diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS).
We understand very little of what causes a person to shutdown and go into PVS. As such, it is EXTREMELY hard to truly diagnosis and pinpoint what is going on. Normally, we wait. If they wake up, it wasn't PVS.
This is like a myriad of other diseases like SIDS that are vaguely defined. Many more incidents are attributed to the issue than are actually caused because we simply don't understand it.
Hyperactivity disorders in children are another perfect example of a rather subjective diagnosis leading to over-prescription and misunderstanding. All that said, hopefully another set of trials over a wider base of patients proves some hope. (insert the obligatory Robin Williams "awakenings" quote here).
First.... I don't mean to be flippant, but why do the IT postings regarding this to continue to regard themselves as either:
1. The sole class of people these actions are happening to
2. The class of people who it's the "worst" for
If it continues, I'm going to start calling it the "IT Victimization Syndrome".
Unionization isn't going to help IT any more than it helped the car industry. In fact, it would hurt you far more. You don't have billions in legacy equipment that is simply to costly to give up like auto companies do. It's pretty hard to outsource nursing.
All it takes to dump most IT guys (from a manager's point of view) is turning off their computers and revoking their access. Then you turn on a computer in a lower cost country. It's a nasty fact, but a fact non-the-less. If an IT worker wants to survive, he's going to have to move out of what has essentially become a service industry. Move into on-site support (very limited, I know) or move into management where the IT decisions are made and the sent to India etc. for implementation.
First you get your ass smacked by the government for being a monopoly. The, a super-secret branch comes in and tells you that you must cooperate or . You do so, then another branch of the government walks in and says "THAT'S ILLEGAL!".
I bet AT&T/SBC's collective head is spinning. Talk about taking it from both ends.
It's humorous to see a big corporation in the same situation millions of Americans find themselves in every day when it comes to government stupidty - completely helpless.
So, instead of forcing a domain, say.xxx, and then creating a single point portal that all web requests have to go through to reach the.xxx domain, they are spending millions and millions of tax payer dollars researching how to create unenforceable laws that limit our freedoms and hold people accountable when the should be held accountable.
Sorry, but businesses don't get out of a market to "clean up their name". Something financial was driving this, though I don't know what. Are they scared of litigation, or did their revenue from ads drop? Was google stealing their market?
And no one will ever pay to watch TV.
And no one will ever need more than 640k.
And no one will ever pay to park their car somewhere.
And no one will ever pay to drive down a road.
And no one will ever pay a fee to sit inside a fast food restaurant.
And no one will ever pay a fee to be served pretzels on board an aircraft.
And no one will ever pay to connect to this new fangled toy called the internet.
And no one will ever pay to make sure THEIR content is delivered more quickly than other peoples.
And no one will ever pay to have 5 second midi-music clips downloaded to their cell phone.
You already pay for small and stupid fees. Probably for things that would make you cringe, if you ever stopped and thought about it. You are being shorted sighted and blind, and that WILL lead you to end up paying, because you will still be claiming it can't happen while the train barrels down the tracks right at you.
The first 25 dolts to reply generally haven't even read the bill.
The current equipment will NOT be made obsolete.
They framed this in a manner that was interesting. Why are they talking about licensing and fees in law? That makes very little sense. Copyright law already covers who can copy it and who can't.
This law is really only about the "flag". And how that flag functions is NOT going to be up to the consumer. A consumer, wanting to make a copy of something they purchased, is NOT going to run out and buy a "license" before they make a copy.
However, I really do question the opponents to this law. You may pay for the right to watch your cable on demand and listen to your music. But you don't have the right to tape them, at least not last time I checked. I'm fairly certain movies aren't shown on TV and Cable to allow people a chance to record them and keep them. That may be unintended side affect of the current law. It was never the purpose.
Why is a broadcast flag bad? You don't OWN the material that's being beamed into your house, any more than you own a movie that you happened to go see in a theater. We all know where the legalities stand on taking a camcorder into a theater, don't we?
They're trying to make a buck. Are you surprised? We are well our on way to paying for email. First comes the "premium" packages. You know, if you want a virus and spam free inbox with the ability to send mass mails. Later you have to pay for intermediate mail as well - if you send over a certain amount.
The last step is to announce that because of the many security threats due to viruses and becuase of spam abuse and the high volume of email, EVERYONE will have to pay.
It's an enterprise. It will start with the big companies, and once they force it on the market, the smaller companies will follow.
There are a dozen reasons people developed the MP3 format. For the same reason pkzip was created. Remember? I do - when a 1 gig hard drive was just incredibly large.
So what, zonk, were you born in 2006? Don't remember floppy disks?
How DARE people create casette tapes when cd's would outdate them. How dare people create CD's. Seriously.... why on gods green earth was this even posted?
You may no longer bundle radios or air conditioning in cars. Also, spare tires are illegal.
You may no longer bundle popsicle sticks in with popsicles.
You may no longer bundle instructions with any piece of equipment.
There has to be more to the story. IANAL, but "bundling" software is nothing new, and certainly shouldn't be considered wrong. How can you differentiate "bundling software" from including features? For instance Winamp can now do far more than just play media. Are the ripping features, the burning features, etc, now "bundled"? When did a law get passed saying software can only do one thing?
Maybe Microsoft should remove the branding. Word is no longer word. Excel is no longer excel. It is simply Microsoft Office, and the seperate executables are simply "features".....
I see a lot of people here arguing the problems they saw with laptop use.
So far, I haven't seen anyone stop and ask - "What's the point?"
Do companies have people in meetings taking notes on computers? Nope. There are possibly a few isolated instances, but it's a lot easier and efficient to carry a pad of paper around.
Do you see people wandering around with laptops? Rarely.
The point of college is to either prepare yourself to enter the professional working world, or prepare yourself to stay in some form of education / research. In either case, walking around with a laptop helps neither. It is NOT a cost save over a traditional computer lab. Laptops, compared to desktops, are still overpriced and underpowered.
I've heard people say they can't take notes by hand quickly enough. Bullpuckey. Learn abbreviations and shorthand. Try typing a complicated mathematical formula out on a computer. No, it's not easy, or quick.
The question everyone should ask themselves is WHY this is a good idea? Answer - it's not. You'd be better off getting the kids PDA's so they remember when their classes are.
The people who paid for this study should be fired for wasting money. Only the small ones matter? One thief can only use 250 a year?
So, if we have a hundred thieves in the US.... that's 250,000 a year? And that's no big deal.
You know what this is? This is a study, funded by someone with a vested interest, that will be used when large companies are SUED for allowing large scale identity theft. It will be referenced, cross referenced etc.
Walk down the street and talk to someone who has spent 7 years trying to clean up their record. Someone who has been denied houses, cars, and bank accounts because of an identity theft. Ask them if they care about the size of the theft.
People who make $100k a year do not neccessarily drive Lambo's either. In fact, I bet very FEW people who make $100k a year drive "great" cars - $100k a year in the US isn't ALL that much money. Especially if you're supporting a family.
Entry level salaries for programmers, (and it's pretty freakin rare that someone right out of college gets a job programming for games) are more in the area of 30-40K, with a possibility of $50 if you were a top-notch grad from a top-notch school.
No?
Well then, there you go. You see, the world is driven by the dollar. Simply saying something is a good idea for the future will not make it change. Want proof?
Recyling. Gas Mileage. And of course the US moving to the larger european and olympic size hockey rinks.
When it becomes NECESSARY, through inconvenience or cost, to move to 6, we'll move to 6. You're wasting your breath arguing otherwise.
Ok, someone who puts something on ebay ISN'T running the auction. Ebay is. The person placing the good on ebay sets the high price and reserve - but how is that any different than if you hire an auctioneer?
So does everyone who wants to hire an auctioneer now need a license to auction? How non-sensical is that?
This is, quite literally, a stab at taxing the internet.
Let's get something straight. The pending doom of American science has very little to do with our political climate.
It has far more to do with school administrations, culture, and parenting.
#1 Tenure needs to be removed. Peer reviews need to be implemented. Salaries should be review / performance based. Schooling for teachers needs to be DRASTICALLY improved. Remove all the buzzword-techno-political crap that's found it's way into teaching and just TEACH.
#2 Kids who aren't in school to learn need to be removed. Yeah, so be it, some kids don't get schooled. If they nor their parents can put forth the effort, then that's too bad. Sure, we'll hear sob stories about how some are going to get left behind. Let me clue you in to a little secret. If you hold back our best and brightest to make sure no one is "left behind" then you're going to DESTROY the best and brightest. Or at least you'll have managed to severely inhibit their potential.
#3 Parenting. Why aren't parents do "fun" things like having foreign langauge weeks where they all try to speak different languages. Turn the fricken TV and computer off. Interact. Socialize. Take your kid out in the f'in garage and fix the car with him.
Finally, TECHNICAL EDUCATIONS. Go to despair.com and read the quote that states not everyone grows up to be rocket scientists. It's true.
No sane business operator enters a contract in which one party has the right to disregard its terms at will
Suuuuure. Yet, half the products I buy have a licensing agreement that not only tells me I don't actually own the product, but that the "licensing company" has the rights to revoke my rights at any time they please.
So what the original post really means to me is, that no sane Business would accept a contract like that, but hell, every consumer already has to.
That's where you're wrong.
I can categorically gaurantee that the number of Pirates on Mars right now is quickly approaching Zero. That can quite obviously be tied to the increase in temperature. I think we've already established the relationship between Pirates and global warming.
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that AOL is looking at the search engine model and trying to copy it. The only problem is that AOL has absolutely nothing to "draw" people in the way google does. It's kind of backwards actually. AOL continues to offer bloatware, horrible customer service, a poor product, and is now going to try adding advertisement into the deal to save itself. Google offers a top notch search engine with innovative product that makes people WANT to come, and now they are looking at offering broadband and becoming their own ISP..... AOL needs to fix it's business model and offer something compelling. If you're not drawing people advertisements won't do much.
Taxes aren't meant to be specific to the medium that is used - they are meant to tax function. Wireless carriers have to pay this tax, as do wired carriers. VOIP does use phone lines - obviously once your bytes hit their servers, they go over to analogue. I do wonder about double taxation. You pay a tax to your phone company for dsl (and many won't offer naked dsl) and alot of the time you're forced into at least a local plan, on which you'll also pay taxes, and now you're also paying the same tax on your voip - it isn't hard to see yourself getting taxed 2, 3, even 4 times for the same thing. I have to wonder at the justification though. I'm sure the voip providers pay fees already to the telcos - and people who use those lines for normal voice pay the fees as well. So how, exactly, are the voip's adding the true COST of the phone lines? They pay what's required to the big telco's already! Essentially it appears that this tax is a completely pointless money grab. I don't see a justification for it.
OH, you're so right. After a little researh....
""In one," the article stated, "Airbus Industrie, the jet-liner consortium, lost out on a six billion dollar sale to Saudi Arabia after U.S authorities alerted Saudi authorities that Airbus was offering bribes." America's Boeing got the job. "
FOR SHAME. BAD US. BAD BAD BAD....
Errr, or not.
And of course, the NEW system won't be vulnerable to ANYTHING - right?
No, wait, let's think that through. Let's take video games as the paradigm. Every year companies spend upwards of 20 million per video game. Every year, they come out with the newest, latest, greatest in copy protection. This copy protection is only limited by their imaginations (and the hardware). And yet days after release, and sometimes prior to release, their code is hacked, cracked, and distributed.
This author somehow thinks that going back and redoing everything will fix it. The author is naive.
Call my analogy a bad one if you will, but the SECOND you put ANY type of system into the hands of the criminals / spammers, they will find ways to exploit it. This is proven time and again.
How exactly does this new email system stop phishing? Oh, right, it can't. Have a link, go to a malicious website, etc. How exactly does this new email system stop users from clicking executables thinking that they are going to see nudie pictures of Katie Holmes? They don't. How does this new email stop virii? It won't.
Encrypt your email if you want security. Password protect your account. Use filtering to dump spam before you read it.
OH, and I forgot to mention - I'll be sending you a snail mail letter that looks completely official. It's about a man I met in Nigeria, who has some money he'd like to give you.
Last time I checked, we have agencies for handling illegal activities. I believe they are called "police".....
Since when does a school have the time or resources to monitor this type of thing? Sure, sure, if they get notified and see it on the web page, report it to be the police. But last time I checked every person in this country is allowed "Due Process" before being sentenced for any type of crime, and last time I checked it is NOT the schools that are allowed to levy a sentence prior to a court of law.
Overstepping their bounds? WAY overstepping their bounds my friends.
Aside from the obvious issues here of a very minimal sample size, it sounds like some doubts have been raised as to the accuracy of the original diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS).
We understand very little of what causes a person to shutdown and go into PVS. As such, it is EXTREMELY hard to truly diagnosis and pinpoint what is going on. Normally, we wait. If they wake up, it wasn't PVS.
This is like a myriad of other diseases like SIDS that are vaguely defined. Many more incidents are attributed to the issue than are actually caused because we simply don't understand it.
Hyperactivity disorders in children are another perfect example of a rather subjective diagnosis leading to over-prescription and misunderstanding. All that said, hopefully another set of trials over a wider base of patients proves some hope. (insert the obligatory Robin Williams "awakenings" quote here).
Right... because linux holds far more relevance to the every-day user. Or not.
First.... I don't mean to be flippant, but why do the IT postings regarding this to continue to regard themselves as either:
1. The sole class of people these actions are happening to
2. The class of people who it's the "worst" for
If it continues, I'm going to start calling it the "IT Victimization Syndrome".
Unionization isn't going to help IT any more than it helped the car industry. In fact, it would hurt you far more. You don't have billions in legacy equipment that is simply to costly to give up like auto companies do. It's pretty hard to outsource nursing.
All it takes to dump most IT guys (from a manager's point of view) is turning off their computers and revoking their access. Then you turn on a computer in a lower cost country. It's a nasty fact, but a fact non-the-less. If an IT worker wants to survive, he's going to have to move out of what has essentially become a service industry. Move into on-site support (very limited, I know) or move into management where the IT decisions are made and the sent to India etc. for implementation.
First you get your ass smacked by the government for being a monopoly. The, a super-secret branch comes in and tells you that you must cooperate or . You do so, then another branch of the government walks in and says "THAT'S ILLEGAL!".
I bet AT&T/SBC's collective head is spinning. Talk about taking it from both ends.
It's humorous to see a big corporation in the same situation millions of Americans find themselves in every day when it comes to government stupidty - completely helpless.
So, instead of forcing a domain, say .xxx, and then creating a single point portal that all web requests have to go through to reach the .xxx domain, they are spending millions and millions of tax payer dollars researching how to create unenforceable laws that limit our freedoms and hold people accountable when the should be held accountable.
Sorry, but businesses don't get out of a market to "clean up their name". Something financial was driving this, though I don't know what. Are they scared of litigation, or did their revenue from ads drop? Was google stealing their market?
And no one will ever pay to watch TV.
And no one will ever need more than 640k.
And no one will ever pay to park their car somewhere.
And no one will ever pay to drive down a road.
And no one will ever pay a fee to sit inside a fast food restaurant.
And no one will ever pay a fee to be served pretzels on board an aircraft.
And no one will ever pay to connect to this new fangled toy called the internet.
And no one will ever pay to make sure THEIR content is delivered more quickly than other peoples.
And no one will ever pay to have 5 second midi-music clips downloaded to their cell phone.
You already pay for small and stupid fees. Probably for things that would make you cringe, if you ever stopped and thought about it. You are being shorted sighted and blind, and that WILL lead you to end up paying, because you will still be claiming it can't happen while the train barrels down the tracks right at you.
The first 25 dolts to reply generally haven't even read the bill.
The current equipment will NOT be made obsolete.
They framed this in a manner that was interesting. Why are they talking about licensing and fees in law? That makes very little sense. Copyright law already covers who can copy it and who can't.
This law is really only about the "flag". And how that flag functions is NOT going to be up to the consumer. A consumer, wanting to make a copy of something they purchased, is NOT going to run out and buy a "license" before they make a copy.
However, I really do question the opponents to this law. You may pay for the right to watch your cable on demand and listen to your music. But you don't have the right to tape them, at least not last time I checked. I'm fairly certain movies aren't shown on TV and Cable to allow people a chance to record them and keep them. That may be unintended side affect of the current law. It was never the purpose.
Why is a broadcast flag bad? You don't OWN the material that's being beamed into your house, any more than you own a movie that you happened to go see in a theater. We all know where the legalities stand on taking a camcorder into a theater, don't we?
They're trying to make a buck. Are you surprised? We are well our on way to paying for email. First comes the "premium" packages. You know, if you want a virus and spam free inbox with the ability to send mass mails. Later you have to pay for intermediate mail as well - if you send over a certain amount. The last step is to announce that because of the many security threats due to viruses and becuase of spam abuse and the high volume of email, EVERYONE will have to pay. It's an enterprise. It will start with the big companies, and once they force it on the market, the smaller companies will follow.
Anyway.
Let's start:
There are a dozen reasons people developed the MP3 format. For the same reason pkzip was created. Remember? I do - when a 1 gig hard drive was just incredibly large.
So what, zonk, were you born in 2006? Don't remember floppy disks?
How DARE people create casette tapes when cd's would outdate them. How dare people create CD's. Seriously.... why on gods green earth was this even posted?
You may no longer bundle radios or air conditioning in cars. Also, spare tires are illegal.
You may no longer bundle popsicle sticks in with popsicles.
You may no longer bundle instructions with any piece of equipment.
There has to be more to the story. IANAL, but "bundling" software is nothing new, and certainly shouldn't be considered wrong. How can you differentiate "bundling software" from including features? For instance Winamp can now do far more than just play media. Are the ripping features, the burning features, etc, now "bundled"? When did a law get passed saying software can only do one thing?
Maybe Microsoft should remove the branding. Word is no longer word. Excel is no longer excel. It is simply Microsoft Office, and the seperate executables are simply "features".....
I see a lot of people here arguing the problems they saw with laptop use.
So far, I haven't seen anyone stop and ask - "What's the point?"
Do companies have people in meetings taking notes on computers? Nope. There are possibly a few isolated instances, but it's a lot easier and efficient to carry a pad of paper around.
Do you see people wandering around with laptops? Rarely.
The point of college is to either prepare yourself to enter the professional working world, or prepare yourself to stay in some form of education / research. In either case, walking around with a laptop helps neither. It is NOT a cost save over a traditional computer lab. Laptops, compared to desktops, are still overpriced and underpowered.
I've heard people say they can't take notes by hand quickly enough. Bullpuckey. Learn abbreviations and shorthand. Try typing a complicated mathematical formula out on a computer. No, it's not easy, or quick.
The question everyone should ask themselves is WHY this is a good idea? Answer - it's not. You'd be better off getting the kids PDA's so they remember when their classes are.
This will probably get modded flamebait, but...
The people who paid for this study should be fired for wasting money. Only the small ones matter? One thief can only use 250 a year?
So, if we have a hundred thieves in the US.... that's 250,000 a year? And that's no big deal.
You know what this is? This is a study, funded by someone with a vested interest, that will be used when large companies are SUED for allowing large scale identity theft. It will be referenced, cross referenced etc.
Walk down the street and talk to someone who has spent 7 years trying to clean up their record. Someone who has been denied houses, cars, and bank accounts because of an identity theft. Ask them if they care about the size of the theft.
Please realize that IGN is full of shit.
People who make $100k a year do not neccessarily drive Lambo's either. In fact, I bet very FEW people who make $100k a year drive "great" cars - $100k a year in the US isn't ALL that much money. Especially if you're supporting a family.
Entry level salaries for programmers, (and it's pretty freakin rare that someone right out of college gets a job programming for games) are more in the area of 30-40K, with a possibility of $50 if you were a top-notch grad from a top-notch school.
No? Well then, there you go. You see, the world is driven by the dollar. Simply saying something is a good idea for the future will not make it change. Want proof? Recyling. Gas Mileage. And of course the US moving to the larger european and olympic size hockey rinks. When it becomes NECESSARY, through inconvenience or cost, to move to 6, we'll move to 6. You're wasting your breath arguing otherwise.
Ok, someone who puts something on ebay ISN'T running the auction. Ebay is. The person placing the good on ebay sets the high price and reserve - but how is that any different than if you hire an auctioneer?
So does everyone who wants to hire an auctioneer now need a license to auction? How non-sensical is that?
This is, quite literally, a stab at taxing the internet.
What ever happened to the idea that you can't patent facts? Discovering WHAT they do doesn't mean you invented them.
If I discover a new element, can I patent it? Can you imagine if someone patented, say, Gold?
Let's get something straight. The pending doom of American science has very little to do with our political climate.
It has far more to do with school administrations, culture, and parenting.
#1 Tenure needs to be removed. Peer reviews need to be implemented. Salaries should be review / performance based. Schooling for teachers needs to be DRASTICALLY improved. Remove all the buzzword-techno-political crap that's found it's way into teaching and just TEACH.
#2 Kids who aren't in school to learn need to be removed. Yeah, so be it, some kids don't get schooled. If they nor their parents can put forth the effort, then that's too bad. Sure, we'll hear sob stories about how some are going to get left behind. Let me clue you in to a little secret. If you hold back our best and brightest to make sure no one is "left behind" then you're going to DESTROY the best and brightest. Or at least you'll have managed to severely inhibit their potential.
#3 Parenting. Why aren't parents do "fun" things like having foreign langauge weeks where they all try to speak different languages. Turn the fricken TV and computer off. Interact. Socialize. Take your kid out in the f'in garage and fix the car with him.
Finally, TECHNICAL EDUCATIONS. Go to despair.com and read the quote that states not everyone grows up to be rocket scientists. It's true.
No sane business operator enters a contract in which one party has the right to disregard its terms at will
Suuuuure. Yet, half the products I buy have a licensing agreement that not only tells me I don't actually own the product, but that the "licensing company" has the rights to revoke my rights at any time they please.
So what the original post really means to me is, that no sane Business would accept a contract like that, but hell, every consumer already has to.
That's where you're wrong. I can categorically gaurantee that the number of Pirates on Mars right now is quickly approaching Zero. That can quite obviously be tied to the increase in temperature. I think we've already established the relationship between Pirates and global warming. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.