Just out of curiosity, which of the other 3 providers isn't evil? Seriously, I'm really curious.
T-Mobile and Sprint didn't even get nominated for the Consumerist's Worst Company in America tournament this year. AT&T and Verizon both were nominated -- AT&T went all the way to the "Elite Eight" before being defeated by 2-time Tournament Champion EA.
Obviously unscientific, but the contestants were nominated and voted on by disgruntled consumers, so they are representative of "how bad" these companies are.
From a "who's best?" standpoint, in 2012 Consumer Reports ranked the majors in order: Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. A JD Power report based on "network quality" also put Verizon at the top of the list in most regions. As far as I can tell, the Power report doesn't reflect overall satisfaction, just voice and data performance.
This is what happens when companies are allowed to run rough shod over the populace and competition into that market is arbitrarily restricted by the government.
FTFY
Spectrum auctions that favor the incumbent players in the market (who have the money to "invest" in Congressmen and the FCC) aren't exactly "arbitrary". There's another auction coming up just now, Google "spectrum auctions" to see how Congress, interest groups of various types, carriers, wanna-be carriers, and the FCC are invested in the process. A little tedious, but interesting how these things get done.
Another example is tips at a restaurant. You leave a tip as a reward for excellent service. If a restaurant puts a mandatory 'tip' for any reason on the bill, it is now a fee not a tip.
(I post with the assumption you are in the US. If not, US tipping practices do not apply, and your local custom may differ, so my comment will likewise not apply.)
Please tell me that you leave an "acceptable" tip for "acceptable" service, and you're not that guy who goes out with his co-workers and stiffs the waiter, leaving everyone else to subsidize you just out of embarrassment. (That's also usually the guy who tries to get the whole table on a single check, so he can chip in just the price of his entree, rounded down. Not the beverage, not his portion of anything he shared, like the cheesy-potato-finger-burrito-fries appetizer. Not the tax. And certainly not the tip. "That service was not excellent".)
Or the retiree who "never left more than a 10% tip, and I'm not gonna give one to these freeloading entitled kids now!"
AT&T would be required to let customers out of their contracts without an early termination fee if it raised prices, but it is avoiding this by simply calling the increase a 'surcharge'
I love the way there's always a loophole!
There's not. This is blatantly illegal and a breach of contract.
Perhaps our lawyers should have a talk with AT&T's legal office.
On second thought, a single lawyer would probably be hopelessly outgunned against a team of lawyers who themselves wrote the loophole for the law. And the legal costs just to recover $0.61/month would be prohibitive, to say the least.
No, a class action is the only way to go.
Except for the "no class action" clause in the AT&T's contract.
Well, we're screwed, then.
I guess the only remaining argument for getting a contract-plan for wireless service -- stable pricing for the duration of the contract -- just disappeared.
Now let's just hope that the no-contract month-to-month plans don't disappear.
Assuming the technology was there and that it worked flawless, it still has a key flaw, namely that a bad guy isn't always going to be the other person to pick up the weapon. What if your home gets broken into when you're not at home? Wouldn't you want your spouse or your child to be able to defend themselves?
I assume that if you had such a system, you'd "key" it to everyone in the home that you trusted with the weapon. The same idea as giving your whole family their own set of housekeys.
1) A decent ergonomic chair that works for people 2 meters tall
2) A door
3) A manager who will
a) go to the meetings on my behalf and send me the 3-line email with the one detail that I needed to be there for
b) find interesting work for me to do
4) A bonus program that has clear, achievable objectives that pay out at least something if I beat my goals -- don't pull the rug out from under my feet if I've been slaving, just because Sales can't get in the door
A place with all that probably has the free soda and snacks, too.
Recently I read an old Arthur C Clarke article from the 50s or 60s about how hovercraft were to be the future of transport and no-one would want wheels any more. I guess it just wasn't this particular future.
I always wanted a hovercraft in the future, but I was too lazy to learn Esperanto.
8" were not used on PC's AFAIK... you mean the 5 1/4" ones.
While I've never seen a DOS computer with an 8" drive, but I've certainly seen single-user desktop CP/M systems with them, and that's technically a personal computer.
Lotus Notes may well be the worst piece of software ever to exist (even if you include blatant malware in the competition). It is technically considered a "groupware" platform, but in practice it's almost exclusively used as an email/calendaring client, and it absolutely sucks at that, lacking the most basic features every other email program takes for granted.
From my experience with Notes, it is (apparently) impossible to configure and use the scheduling function in a way that improves group/department/team/business in any way. I'd get invited to dumb meetings, and just to be a smartass, I'd reply I couldn't make it and that the company truck would be attending in my place. Instead of being insulted or irritated with me, my colleagues and bosses would just assume that Notes had somehow screwed up my response and ask if another time would work better for me.
No kidding. 1-2-3 dies and the abomination that's called "Notes" is allowed to live on. Tedious to use, painful to look at, the most powerful features usually not configured in a way to be useful. Die, Notes, die. Which of course is German for "The Notes, the.
The thing is actually modular, the back cover is more than just changing the color of the device, it can also bring features, and can theoretically fill up every possible niche imaginable with one device.
Where are you seeing anything that indicates the "other half" is anything more than Honda Element-style a choice of colors for part of the phone? I'm looking, but I'm not finding it.
Well, that was not the only issue with OS/2. I think IBM had no idea how to reach home users . ..
Yeah. A stack of 30-plus floppy discs for the installation is a bit off-putting. So is an unrecoverable error on disc 25 -- "start over". Memories . ..
Sorry, I was mixing up the N9 with the N900. I have an N9. They are legendary for SIM card problems. Similar to N900 but no keyboard and bad SIM holder...
Since the N9 uses a micro-SIM, I could see problems with users cutting their mini-SIMs down to fit. Not all of those punches are created equal, and the x-acto method depends on blade-wielding skill.
The Stasi was primarily an organ of political control, not an anti-terrorism or ordinary local law enforcement.
Trying to draw a parallel is nonsense.
Couldn't a government also use agencies charted for local law enforcement and anti-terrorism for purposes of political control? It would actually be a pretty good cover story.
I see how there could be confusion with the trailing 0 in the thousandths place. I have to presume they really did measure that distance down to the millimeter. Since NASA released the figures, make sure to localize the radix point and thousands separator to "US" when reading. Here's a lengthy but incomplete list of localized separators.
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Just out of curiosity, which of the other 3 providers isn't evil? Seriously, I'm really curious.
T-Mobile and Sprint didn't even get nominated for the Consumerist's Worst Company in America tournament this year. AT&T and Verizon both were nominated -- AT&T went all the way to the "Elite Eight" before being defeated by 2-time Tournament Champion EA.
Obviously unscientific, but the contestants were nominated and voted on by disgruntled consumers, so they are representative of "how bad" these companies are.
From a "who's best?" standpoint, in 2012 Consumer Reports ranked the majors in order: Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. A JD Power report based on "network quality" also put Verizon at the top of the list in most regions. As far as I can tell, the Power report doesn't reflect overall satisfaction, just voice and data performance.
This is what happens when companies are allowed to run rough shod over the populace and competition into that market is arbitrarily restricted by the government.
FTFY
Spectrum auctions that favor the incumbent players in the market (who have the money to "invest" in Congressmen and the FCC) aren't exactly "arbitrary". There's another auction coming up just now, Google "spectrum auctions" to see how Congress, interest groups of various types, carriers, wanna-be carriers, and the FCC are invested in the process. A little tedious, but interesting how these things get done.
Another example is tips at a restaurant. You leave a tip as a reward for excellent service. If a restaurant puts a mandatory 'tip' for any reason on the bill, it is now a fee not a tip.
(I post with the assumption you are in the US. If not, US tipping practices do not apply, and your local custom may differ, so my comment will likewise not apply.)
Please tell me that you leave an "acceptable" tip for "acceptable" service, and you're not that guy who goes out with his co-workers and stiffs the waiter, leaving everyone else to subsidize you just out of embarrassment. (That's also usually the guy who tries to get the whole table on a single check, so he can chip in just the price of his entree, rounded down. Not the beverage, not his portion of anything he shared, like the cheesy-potato-finger-burrito-fries appetizer. Not the tax. And certainly not the tip. "That service was not excellent".)
Or the retiree who "never left more than a 10% tip, and I'm not gonna give one to these freeloading entitled kids now!"
AT&T would be required to let customers out of their contracts without an early termination fee if it raised prices, but it is avoiding this by simply calling the increase a 'surcharge'
I love the way there's always a loophole!
There's not. This is blatantly illegal and a breach of contract.
Perhaps our lawyers should have a talk with AT&T's legal office.
On second thought, a single lawyer would probably be hopelessly outgunned against a team of lawyers who themselves wrote the loophole for the law. And the legal costs just to recover $0.61/month would be prohibitive, to say the least.
No, a class action is the only way to go.
Except for the "no class action" clause in the AT&T's contract.
Well, we're screwed, then.
I guess the only remaining argument for getting a contract-plan for wireless service -- stable pricing for the duration of the contract -- just disappeared.
Now let's just hope that the no-contract month-to-month plans don't disappear.
Wouldn't an even better idea be the "Westworld" gun? The one that only shoots bad guys? What could possibly go wrong?
Assuming the technology was there and that it worked flawless, it still has a key flaw, namely that a bad guy isn't always going to be the other person to pick up the weapon. What if your home gets broken into when you're not at home? Wouldn't you want your spouse or your child to be able to defend themselves?
I assume that if you had such a system, you'd "key" it to everyone in the home that you trusted with the weapon. The same idea as giving your whole family their own set of housekeys.
FTFY; some of us wised up to that some time ago, and thus only vote for third parties (if at all).
Is that working out as well for you as my one-man air-travel boycott is for me?
1) A decent ergonomic chair that works for people 2 meters tall 2) A door 3) A manager who will a) go to the meetings on my behalf and send me the 3-line email with the one detail that I needed to be there for b) find interesting work for me to do 4) A bonus program that has clear, achievable objectives that pay out at least something if I beat my goals -- don't pull the rug out from under my feet if I've been slaving, just because Sales can't get in the door
A place with all that probably has the free soda and snacks, too.
I'd rather have a larger paycheck.
I'd rather have a jet pack. But if the boss is cutting the free soda, we're both gonna be disappointed.
Recently I read an old Arthur C Clarke article from the 50s or 60s about how hovercraft were to be the future of transport and no-one would want wheels any more. I guess it just wasn't this particular future.
I always wanted a hovercraft in the future, but I was too lazy to learn Esperanto.
No embedded capital S in Eurostar. (Why do Americans always do this?) Also plural of hovercraft is "hovercraft".
Hovercraft? Hovercrafts? Hmm.
"Dear sir. I would like to order your Lone Star Hovercraft, plus another Lone Star hovercraft".
Every once in a while I dust off and fire up my old NeXT cube just to blow friends away . . .
Awesome. I wish I could use the phrase "my old NeXT cube" in a sentence . . . I mean other than that sentence.
8" were not used on PC's AFAIK... you mean the 5 1/4" ones.
While I've never seen a DOS computer with an 8" drive, but I've certainly seen single-user desktop CP/M systems with them, and that's technically a personal computer.
Lotus Notes may well be the worst piece of software ever to exist (even if you include blatant malware in the competition). It is technically considered a "groupware" platform, but in practice it's almost exclusively used as an email/calendaring client, and it absolutely sucks at that, lacking the most basic features every other email program takes for granted.
From my experience with Notes, it is (apparently) impossible to configure and use the scheduling function in a way that improves group/department/team/business in any way. I'd get invited to dumb meetings, and just to be a smartass, I'd reply I couldn't make it and that the company truck would be attending in my place. Instead of being insulted or irritated with me, my colleagues and bosses would just assume that Notes had somehow screwed up my response and ask if another time would work better for me.
A waste of perfectly good passive-aggression.
I'd take Outlook in a second over Notes.
No kidding. 1-2-3 dies and the abomination that's called "Notes" is allowed to live on. Tedious to use, painful to look at, the most powerful features usually not configured in a way to be useful. Die, Notes, die. Which of course is German for "The Notes, the.
The thing is actually modular, the back cover is more than just changing the color of the device, it can also bring features, and can theoretically fill up every possible niche imaginable with one device.
Where are you seeing anything that indicates the "other half" is anything more than Honda Element-style a choice of colors for part of the phone? I'm looking, but I'm not finding it.
Well, that was not the only issue with OS/2. I think IBM had no idea how to reach home users . . .
Yeah. A stack of 30-plus floppy discs for the installation is a bit off-putting. So is an unrecoverable error on disc 25 -- "start over". Memories . . .
Sorry, I was mixing up the N9 with the N900. I have an N9. They are legendary for SIM card problems. Similar to N900 but no keyboard and bad SIM holder...
Since the N9 uses a micro-SIM, I could see problems with users cutting their mini-SIMs down to fit. Not all of those punches are created equal, and the x-acto method depends on blade-wielding skill.
That's what I want to know too. With device owner root and a hardware keyboard this could be an N900 replacement.
I was hoping for a keyboard, too, but it looks like "the other half" is more accurately described as "your choice of back colors". Sad smiley.
That cover story gets blown when you arrest people for making jokes about the president. Ref: See Putin & Pussy Riot
True, but by then it doesn't matter.
Time travel may not work, but here's proof of space-travel, shifting between parallel universes. Arguably equally useful.
Or just travel 1 hour 50 minutes into the future while watching this classic.
The Stasi was primarily an organ of political control, not an anti-terrorism or ordinary local law enforcement.
Trying to draw a parallel is nonsense.
Couldn't a government also use agencies charted for local law enforcement and anti-terrorism for purposes of political control? It would actually be a pretty good cover story.
Should have read "down to the meter".
I see how there could be confusion with the trailing 0 in the thousandths place. I have to presume they really did measure that distance down to the millimeter. Since NASA released the figures, make sure to localize the radix point and thousands separator to "US" when reading. Here's a lengthy but incomplete list of localized separators.
There is water at the bottom of the ocean!
Still, finding a sample untouched for more than 1.5 Billion years is a once in a lifetime discovery.