If you're having to steal 3G internet access to be able to feed your family, you're a fucking idiot for wasting your time trying to steal 3G internet access rather than getting a job.
Except suppose my family don't like food, maybe they like 3G internet. And then suppose instead of giving it away, I was selling it at a price that was almost free.
Again, without basic restrictions there is no market at all. Why pay for anything in the first place if doing so hinders your family and bills in such a manner? Why is there a line drawn at all if not for the reasons of basic fairness, as embodied by the law?
I'm not being rhetorical here, either. I'm challenging you to answer how any market can survive within an anarchy.
If those policies affect other aspects of your service, then you may be interested in the logic behind them. If one company has higher fees, but provides a more robust network, and if that is important to you, you may still choose that provider. If another company has high prices but excellent customer service, that may be important to you.
I certainly agree with you that price isn't the only factor given that wireless services aren't exactly fungible. I thought that by saying "best deal" I was covering that without delving so much into the details as to be tedious.
But I am still not really concerned with the logic or method by which a carrier determines its pricing and service structure -- I'm only interested with the end result. Board meetings and focus groups and what-not may be part of the behind-the-scenes process at a wireless provider, but all I really want to know is what I'm getting.
I suppose having a fly-on-the wall viewpoint of (e.g.) Sprint's internal machinations might give me an idea of whether human customer service was going to be offshored or replaced by voice jail or something like that that could impact my selection process. After all, the "free market" presumes perfect information on the part of all parties. But that really wasn't what I meant by "the logic of the seller's pricing or policies". Like most customers, I'm only willing to put so much effort into corporate espionage for a purchase/contract of a given size.
However, if you start using it as general purpose Internet, to browse whatever you want, to download files, to play games, that breaks down. Suddenly cost goes up a whole lot, and less (or perhaps none) of the activity generates any money. As such it can't be sustained. They have to restrict it, shut it down, or charge.
Things in life aren't free. If you think everyone should just give everything away, well that shows a real lack of understanding of how the world works (and a good indication you've never had to provide for yourself).
If this is a free market, then as a consumer it is none of my concern how the supplier intends to make money. Nor is it my responsibility to use a product in such a way as to maintain the supplier's sustainability. This does not make me a crook. I'm merely trying to maximize the deal for myself. If this seems somehow unethical, consider that the same applies to the supplier. They need not concern themselves with such things as whether or not their products benefit society as a whole or whether a customer can really afford to buy such an offering.
So anyway, consumer wanting as much as possible for as little as he can is 1/2 of what makes a free market free. That doesn't make customer or supplier immature. To say otherwise shows a lack of understanding of the free market and an indication of a lack of sophistication as a consumer -- sorry, couldn't resist the symmetrical dig;)
Perhaps if all consumers and all suppliers were to take the long view, the socially responsible view, that might be good. But without laws to enforce this on all parties (and restrict the free market), I just can't afford to put myself at a competitive disadvantage vs. suppliers or other consumers. Can't feed my family or pay the bills with smug self-satisfaction or inner holiness.
BUT.. I do not really see an issue with verizon upping the ETF on certain phones. Lets look at your droid for example (other then the fact that Verizon chose to brand it in such a way as to confuse people who do not know the difference between the android OS from google which runs on multiple phones, and is not a particular phone for verizon, my wife, who is somewhat technically savvy got caught in this particular branding trap).
As a "free market" customer, my goal is to find the best deal for myself, not to see the logic of the seller's pricing or policies. I don't care why a carrier charges a large ETF, I just want to find the smallest one. If I were a carrier, OTOH, I definitely would be explaining to my customers the reason they should just shut up and accept whatever I wanted to charge.
If you buy the GSM version of the Droid, called the Sholes/Milestone unlocked at retail, it runs around $600 to $900 depending on where you buy it. Assuming bulk purchasing that carriers have, they probably get the phone for around $300 to $500 (total guess on my part). Unlocked non subsidized phones are expensive, even cheap freebies you get on contract can run $200 to $300 unlocked and non subsidized.
Phones equivalent to the "cheap freebies" you mention are available (e.g on ebay -- new) for under $100, some for $25-$50. If you find eBaying a phone a little iffy and unsavory, you can get similar deals in the Amazon Marketplace.
For the past 6 years or so I've been getting contracts w/o a phone (I buy new phones from private sellers who've gotten phones they don't want with their contracts) and my rates are about half of what they would be if I had gotten plans with a phone.
Unless you're dissatisfied with your carrier for some other reason, why not mention the name and the method you used to get the deal?
Americans aren't stupid, but you apparently are . ..
Hey, you just insulted someone to make your point. Oh well, I'll still respond politely.
My answer is that the contract period isn't really paying for the phone, it's providing a guaranteed revenue stream for the company for a specified period of time. A steady, guaranteed revenue stream is very important for a business, since it makes things a bit more predictable.
Isn't that really splitting hairs? To say that they carrier is providing you with a free or discounted phone to get you to sign a 2 year contract isn't meaningfully distinct from letting you finance the phone over a two-year period. Perhaps it makes a difference to the carrier's accounting, but that's none of the customer's concern.
But even it that were true, that the two-year contract was what the carrier was getting in exchange for the discount phone, why then wouldn't a carrier offer someone who brought their own equipment a somewhat discounted two-year plan? That way they could still get a steady, guaranteed revenue stream for predictability. If they entice the "free phone" crowd with a phone (which costs the carrier something), then why not entice the BYO crowd with a somewhat lower monthly fee, reflecting the lower initial cost due to not providing a discount phone.
Or perhaps, the discount phone really isn't discounted. Perhaps it isn't a loss leader at all, and is just sold to the customer for roughly its cost to the carrier. That would explain why monthly fees aren't discounted for BYO users and also don't go down at the end of the contract: namely, the carrier got a 2-year lock-in from the customer for essentially free.
By way of anecdotal evidence, I offer the case of my wife (then girlfriend). She got a run-of-the-mill phone from SBC (then Cingular then ATT) for the "discounted" price of ~$50. In exchange, she signed a 2-year contract for service, and was talked into an "insurance policy" for the instrument. The policy cost around $7 a month. When she dropped the phone (for the last time), she went to take advantage of the "insurance policy". Doing so required her to pay a $40 "administrative fee" in order to get a replacement phone. I talked her out of that and got her a new phone equivalent to her old one off ebay for $40. She canceled the "insurance policy" after I explained that she could buy 2 new phones per year for the cost of the policy, or 4 new phones for the cost of the policy and two claims.
Anyway, the original "discounted phone" and its replacement were no cheaper than buying an unlocked instrument from a third party. She received nothing of value for signing the contract or for paying for "phone insurance".
How is a police officer wanting control a myth? They're trained to do so to protect their own and your life.
They are not trained to protect your life. They are specifically trained to desensitize them to one's natural aversion to killing a human being. They are trained to protect their own lives by killing you. This is their reason for existence, to kill people
"I'm not saying that tapping an officer on the shoulder is assault,"
Good, because legally it is battery.
Are you quite sure of that?
The Free Dictionary: "battery Law: The unlawful and unwanted touching or striking of one person by another, with the intention of bringing about a harmful or offensive contact."
Meriam-Webster.com: "battery: an offensive touching or use of force on a person without the person's consent."
Dictionary.com: "battery: an unlawful attack upon another person by beating or wounding, or by touching in an offensive manner."
Tapping seems to lack the harm necessary to meet the definition, and shoulder is not generally considered an offensive place to touch someone, as opposed to the breasts, buttocks or genitals. So I think it would be hard to convince anyone in their right mind that tapping a shoulder, a common method of getting someone's attention, is battery. Perhaps a crooked judge or a republican, but not any reasonably intelligent person.
I'm not saying that tapping an officer on the shoulder is assault, but it probably isn't a good ideal to initiate physical contact by surprising them with a tap on the shoulder from behind when they might have a (quite reasonable) expectation of being attacked.
So you're saying treat them like vicious feral dogs.
But the poster has not matured. We know this because this mental child asks the question "How do I hide the shit I have done?".
That's quite a leap you just made there, judging a guy's mental state from one paragraph. It is not necessarily "immature" to wish to stop being punished. Heck, my Mom still holds a grudge against me for absent-mindedly leaving three 1/2 gallons of ice cream on the counter to melt -- 25 years ago. Am I immature for wishing she'd let that go? Am I still unable to properly store perishable foodstuffs? I assume you know. But this guy's case is quite different, you say? Please, share the details.
If it were up to the person themself, then I'd go out right now and kill a few dozen people, then let myself off.
Hiding your tendency to fantasy homicide behind AC isn't that much different than the anonymous reader's desire to bury his past hi-jinx, pranks, indiscretions, crimes, whatever.. Most people wouldn't kill anyone even if they could get away with it.
Seriously. You screwed up, why should history be re-written as a result? I hire sys admins, and from my point of view, even if this was 15 years ago it is relevant.
So all the more reason to bury it. BTW, I notice you're posting AC.
Somewhere, there's a recording executive reading this article and planning on dispatching a team to try to retrofit DRM onto vinyl records somehow.
Which I imagine would be quite a feat for a purely analog medium.
Either that, or said executive is now more paranoid about the "analog hole" than ever before, and now believes that people are turning to vinyl to pirate music somehow.
I get your point about greedy music execs (and I can imagine stupid stunts like that, too), but I think in this case the "dongle" is the disc itself, since the audience in question is buying these for the sound of the vinyl record. You sure don't covet 250 gram discs for the convenience or portability.
Before the anti-audiophile crowd comes in screaming about how digital is a more accurate reproduction vinyls are typically mastered for their audience so they often are not compressed to maximum loudness that you hear in modern CDs so you actually have some dynamic range.
I'm old enough to remember before they did that so much on CDs. I actually had to do my own dynamic compression when copying music to cassette for playing in my car since the louds were too loud when you turned up the volume to hear the quiet passages over the ambient noise. They were great for listening in a nice quiet house, the dynamic range being so much greater than the LPs they replaced (which were wearing out).
I guess they apply the DSP companding etc. just to make the audio appear bigger or whatever, but it gives digital music a bad rap (so to speak).
That's the irony, actually. Normally, the same people who are big on "personal responsibility" are also big on "accountability". Why would they be opposed to the Army Corps of Engineers being "accountable" for fucking up?
When conservatives say "personal responsibility", the mean it literally. In any matter of dispute between a person and another entity (corporation, etc.), the person is always responsible.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're having to steal 3G internet access to be able to feed your family, you're a fucking idiot for wasting your time trying to steal 3G internet access rather than getting a job.
Except suppose my family don't like food, maybe they like 3G internet. And then suppose instead of giving it away, I was selling it at a price that was almost free.
Again, without basic restrictions there is no market at all. Why pay for anything in the first place if doing so hinders your family and bills in such a manner? Why is there a line drawn at all if not for the reasons of basic fairness, as embodied by the law?
I'm not being rhetorical here, either. I'm challenging you to answer how any market can survive within an anarchy.
Yes, that is a good question.
If those policies affect other aspects of your service, then you may be interested in the logic behind them. If one company has higher fees, but provides a more robust network, and if that is important to you, you may still choose that provider. If another company has high prices but excellent customer service, that may be important to you.
I certainly agree with you that price isn't the only factor given that wireless services aren't exactly fungible. I thought that by saying "best deal" I was covering that without delving so much into the details as to be tedious.
But I am still not really concerned with the logic or method by which a carrier determines its pricing and service structure -- I'm only interested with the end result. Board meetings and focus groups and what-not may be part of the behind-the-scenes process at a wireless provider, but all I really want to know is what I'm getting.
I suppose having a fly-on-the wall viewpoint of (e.g.) Sprint's internal machinations might give me an idea of whether human customer service was going to be offshored or replaced by voice jail or something like that that could impact my selection process. After all, the "free market" presumes perfect information on the part of all parties. But that really wasn't what I meant by "the logic of the seller's pricing or policies". Like most customers, I'm only willing to put so much effort into corporate espionage for a purchase/contract of a given size.
However, if you start using it as general purpose Internet, to browse whatever you want, to download files, to play games, that breaks down. Suddenly cost goes up a whole lot, and less (or perhaps none) of the activity generates any money. As such it can't be sustained. They have to restrict it, shut it down, or charge.
Things in life aren't free. If you think everyone should just give everything away, well that shows a real lack of understanding of how the world works (and a good indication you've never had to provide for yourself).
If this is a free market, then as a consumer it is none of my concern how the supplier intends to make money. Nor is it my responsibility to use a product in such a way as to maintain the supplier's sustainability. This does not make me a crook. I'm merely trying to maximize the deal for myself. If this seems somehow unethical, consider that the same applies to the supplier. They need not concern themselves with such things as whether or not their products benefit society as a whole or whether a customer can really afford to buy such an offering.
So anyway, consumer wanting as much as possible for as little as he can is 1/2 of what makes a free market free. That doesn't make customer or supplier immature. To say otherwise shows a lack of understanding of the free market and an indication of a lack of sophistication as a consumer -- sorry, couldn't resist the symmetrical dig ;)
Perhaps if all consumers and all suppliers were to take the long view, the socially responsible view, that might be good. But without laws to enforce this on all parties (and restrict the free market), I just can't afford to put myself at a competitive disadvantage vs. suppliers or other consumers. Can't feed my family or pay the bills with smug self-satisfaction or inner holiness.
BUT.. I do not really see an issue with verizon upping the ETF on certain phones. Lets look at your droid for example (other then the fact that Verizon chose to brand it in such a way as to confuse people who do not know the difference between the android OS from google which runs on multiple phones, and is not a particular phone for verizon, my wife, who is somewhat technically savvy got caught in this particular branding trap).
As a "free market" customer, my goal is to find the best deal for myself, not to see the logic of the seller's pricing or policies. I don't care why a carrier charges a large ETF, I just want to find the smallest one. If I were a carrier, OTOH, I definitely would be explaining to my customers the reason they should just shut up and accept whatever I wanted to charge.
If you buy the GSM version of the Droid, called the Sholes/Milestone unlocked at retail, it runs around $600 to $900 depending on where you buy it. Assuming bulk purchasing that carriers have, they probably get the phone for around $300 to $500 (total guess on my part). Unlocked non subsidized phones are expensive, even cheap freebies you get on contract can run $200 to $300 unlocked and non subsidized.
Phones equivalent to the "cheap freebies" you mention are available (e.g on ebay -- new) for under $100, some for $25-$50. If you find eBaying a phone a little iffy and unsavory, you can get similar deals in the Amazon Marketplace.
For the past 6 years or so I've been getting contracts w/o a phone (I buy new phones from private sellers who've gotten phones they don't want with their contracts) and my rates are about half of what they would be if I had gotten plans with a phone.
Unless you're dissatisfied with your carrier for some other reason, why not mention the name and the method you used to get the deal?
Americans aren't stupid, but you apparently are . . .
Hey, you just insulted someone to make your point. Oh well, I'll still respond politely.
My answer is that the contract period isn't really paying for the phone, it's providing a guaranteed revenue stream for the company for a specified period of time. A steady, guaranteed revenue stream is very important for a business, since it makes things a bit more predictable.
Isn't that really splitting hairs? To say that they carrier is providing you with a free or discounted phone to get you to sign a 2 year contract isn't meaningfully distinct from letting you finance the phone over a two-year period. Perhaps it makes a difference to the carrier's accounting, but that's none of the customer's concern.
But even it that were true, that the two-year contract was what the carrier was getting in exchange for the discount phone, why then wouldn't a carrier offer someone who brought their own equipment a somewhat discounted two-year plan? That way they could still get a steady, guaranteed revenue stream for predictability. If they entice the "free phone" crowd with a phone (which costs the carrier something), then why not entice the BYO crowd with a somewhat lower monthly fee, reflecting the lower initial cost due to not providing a discount phone.
Or perhaps, the discount phone really isn't discounted. Perhaps it isn't a loss leader at all, and is just sold to the customer for roughly its cost to the carrier. That would explain why monthly fees aren't discounted for BYO users and also don't go down at the end of the contract: namely, the carrier got a 2-year lock-in from the customer for essentially free.
By way of anecdotal evidence, I offer the case of my wife (then girlfriend). She got a run-of-the-mill phone from SBC (then Cingular then ATT) for the "discounted" price of ~$50. In exchange, she signed a 2-year contract for service, and was talked into an "insurance policy" for the instrument. The policy cost around $7 a month. When she dropped the phone (for the last time), she went to take advantage of the "insurance policy". Doing so required her to pay a $40 "administrative fee" in order to get a replacement phone. I talked her out of that and got her a new phone equivalent to her old one off ebay for $40. She canceled the "insurance policy" after I explained that she could buy 2 new phones per year for the cost of the policy, or 4 new phones for the cost of the policy and two claims.
Anyway, the original "discounted phone" and its replacement were no cheaper than buying an unlocked instrument from a third party. She received nothing of value for signing the contract or for paying for "phone insurance".
How is a police officer wanting control a myth? They're trained to do so to protect their own and your life.
They are not trained to protect your life. They are specifically trained to desensitize them to one's natural aversion to killing a human being. They are trained to protect their own lives by killing you. This is their reason for existence, to kill people
Pardon, but being "*rarely* killed" is still being 'killed' nonetheless.
Lots more people are killed by cops than cops by people. I'd say the cops are winning this one.
prevented the millennial bomber. No small thing.
And yet, I fail to believe the whole thing.
"I'm not saying that tapping an officer on the shoulder is assault,"
Good, because legally it is battery.
Are you quite sure of that?
The Free Dictionary: "battery Law: The unlawful and unwanted touching or striking of one person by another, with the intention of bringing about a harmful or offensive contact."
Meriam-Webster.com: "battery: an offensive touching or use of force on a person without the person's consent."
Dictionary.com: "battery: an unlawful attack upon another person by beating or wounding, or by touching in an offensive manner."
Tapping seems to lack the harm necessary to meet the definition, and shoulder is not generally considered an offensive place to touch someone, as opposed to the breasts, buttocks or genitals. So I think it would be hard to convince anyone in their right mind that tapping a shoulder, a common method of getting someone's attention, is battery. Perhaps a crooked judge or a republican, but not any reasonably intelligent person.
I'm not saying that tapping an officer on the shoulder is assault, but it probably isn't a good ideal to initiate physical contact by surprising them with a tap on the shoulder from behind when they might have a (quite reasonable) expectation of being attacked.
So you're saying treat them like vicious feral dogs.
Fuck the Police!
I FTP every day.
Your private life is your own business.
But the poster has not matured. We know this because this mental child asks the question "How do I hide the shit I have done?".
That's quite a leap you just made there, judging a guy's mental state from one paragraph. It is not necessarily "immature" to wish to stop being punished. Heck, my Mom still holds a grudge against me for absent-mindedly leaving three 1/2 gallons of ice cream on the counter to melt -- 25 years ago. Am I immature for wishing she'd let that go? Am I still unable to properly store perishable foodstuffs? I assume you know. But this guy's case is quite different, you say? Please, share the details.
If it were up to the person themself, then I'd go out right now and kill a few dozen people, then let myself off.
Hiding your tendency to fantasy homicide behind AC isn't that much different than the anonymous reader's desire to bury his past hi-jinx, pranks, indiscretions, crimes, whatever.. Most people wouldn't kill anyone even if they could get away with it.
Seriously. You screwed up, why should history be re-written as a result? I hire sys admins, and from my point of view, even if this was 15 years ago it is relevant.
So all the more reason to bury it. BTW, I notice you're posting AC.
Sounds like you had WAY too much tracking force on the needle. Total weight on the needle should be a gram or two. You probably had it set at 5 or 6.
Or too little, and the needle was bouncing.
Somewhere, there's a recording executive reading this article and planning on dispatching a team to try to retrofit DRM onto vinyl records somehow.
Which I imagine would be quite a feat for a purely analog medium.
Either that, or said executive is now more paranoid about the "analog hole" than ever before, and now believes that people are turning to vinyl to pirate music somehow.
I get your point about greedy music execs (and I can imagine stupid stunts like that, too), but I think in this case the "dongle" is the disc itself, since the audience in question is buying these for the sound of the vinyl record. You sure don't covet 250 gram discs for the convenience or portability.
Before the anti-audiophile crowd comes in screaming about how digital is a more accurate reproduction vinyls are typically mastered for their audience so they often are not compressed to maximum loudness that you hear in modern CDs so you actually have some dynamic range.
I'm old enough to remember before they did that so much on CDs. I actually had to do my own dynamic compression when copying music to cassette for playing in my car since the louds were too loud when you turned up the volume to hear the quiet passages over the ambient noise. They were great for listening in a nice quiet house, the dynamic range being so much greater than the LPs they replaced (which were wearing out).
I guess they apply the DSP companding etc. just to make the audio appear bigger or whatever, but it gives digital music a bad rap (so to speak).
No surprises. Vinyl sounds better.
No kidding. Whack your friend over the head with a 250 gram twelve-inch 45 and you'll get some resonance you just can't get out of a lousy CD.
How many decades of our foreign policy have you slept through?
No kidding. If it turns out Sweden is responsible for this outrage, you can bet we'll invade Finland to punish them.
Blatant trolling. I'm not religious, but Mods, hello?
Thanks for the advice AC. I'll look into it. Oh, whoops, I just posted. Well, maybe next time.
oh, wait...
Pop Quiz:
1.) a: "Store" b: "Rejects" c: "Find"
Which one is the verb?
2.) Discuss why putting all three together in a headline is a bad idea.
[I would have gotten an iPhone for the "Find a New Home" app.]
insouciance = lighthearted unconcern, perhaps the most damning word used. In short, they didn't give a tinker's dam.
Aw, man. I've set up two commenters for that pun, and all I get is a lousy "Woosh"!
"You set 'em up, I knock 'em down." would be a more appropriate expression of gratitude.
Plus, you can't make a good bouillabaisse without insouciance.
That's the irony, actually. Normally, the same people who are big on "personal responsibility" are also big on "accountability". Why would they be opposed to the Army Corps of Engineers being "accountable" for fucking up?
When conservatives say "personal responsibility", the mean it literally. In any matter of dispute between a person and another entity (corporation, etc.), the person is always responsible.