I was once threatened with a firing for 'creating my own hours', namely coming in a half hour early... and then once in awhile having the gale to ask to leave a half hour early (not every day, probably 4 or 5 times in a year). They also insisted I couldn't claim my early half an hour...
Wow, your needs must be incredibly low. I commonly do: programming, document creating/editing (text, spreadsheets, etc), image editing, video editing, music playback (which If I owned a stereo I guess may be possible that way), gaming (varied genres), web browsing (multiple tabs), printing, video playback (various formats), video capture... I think that covers most of the things I do. Even using a laptop for most of these requires a hefty 'desktop replacement' class laptop. Some can work on 'app devices' as the article calls them, but more than 50% of those need a PC. Even web browsing with multiple tabs is something I've yet to see on smartphones, I assume without having ever seen one an iPad could do it though.
Anyways... Alot of my common tasks would be hard or impossible on a 'app device'. Then again I'm sure if all you do is consume and not create, then mobile devices are just fine.
The US has been at this since world war II. Heck one of the guys they used to send out to get other countries to buy into crazy proposals for US businesses and who was backed by agents of the US, turned on them and wrote a book about it a few years back. He spent considerable time discussing the way it all works and presented a very clear view of how the whole thing works... Up to and including CIA assassinations for those who wouldn't buy into what the companies were selling... Now most of those companies have been big energy companies, but it seems now it's the MPAA/RIAA's turn...
My landline internet connection is still a whole 8m/512k speed, so really... 21Mbps makes me drool... and it's wireless to... But at those rates I'd go over in a few hours of use...
That had to have been an attempt at humor... Especially since I seem to recall both Norton and McAfee having issues which remind me of this in past versions...
I guess it just means AVG has joined the Norton and McAfee club...
I use the internet just fine and stopped using AV's a few years back as they never ever came up with anything on my desktop PC. It was a complete waste.
I however have a laptop these days and a wireless network I use often requires Sophos as an AV to be working to access the network. If anything Sophos tags all sorts of craziness as a Virus... False positives on lots of games for instance, usually in the anti-cheating software they use. And the best part is it won't let you exclude something 90% of the time. I can't run certain things even in Sandboxie. The AV does not know more than me, but it sure damn well thinks it does. Besides wrongly tagging games and finding the occasional 'virus' of the low threat kind in stuff I plan to run with sandboxie it's useless to me and a waste of cpu cycles.
So no, you don't have to have 'SOMETHING' if you run a windows PC (64 bit or not) & in fact an AV can be a complete waste of resources...
Storytellers however existed basically from the dawn of time through a variety of traditions. Modern writers, musicians, and poets are our cultures take on the exact same ideas. Storytellers of various forms have not always been wealthy either. In fact it generally didn't pay well. Instead people did it because they _enjoyed_ it! We've gotten away from enjoying what you do and made it all about the money. That in itself is wrong.
I'd say more like 10 or 15. I've basically got any money I'll make from it by then (if any). There are very few exceptions to this, LotR and Foundation come to mind for books. I don't think my kids should live off my labor though, go let them make their own fucking works of art! Added to that is my personal opinion that books such as those belong even more in the public domain to act as the basis for a new generation of works. That's how culture worked until the 19th century. Within around a decade from it's point of origin the creator would have gotten any monetary benefit from it and it would become public domain. Then others could use it as a base for their own works. We broke this in the 19th century (the origin of increased copyright terms).
Music is even more transitory in general than books. Easily any realistic profits from 90% of bands would be made within 5 years or less of the date a 'record' was created. 'Bands' also need to constantly create new works or they lose momentum and relevance. The origins of hip hop for instance were DJ's remixing disco tunes from 20 years before their own time. Very few of whom even still made music. They however where the basis from an entire new form of music. But they way we've let things get so screwed up it is actually easier to cover an entire song, then repeat a 3 second clip from a single song.
I've btw, both written books (self-published) and created music. Neither has made me any real money and I'm happy if someone even likes them. Once series I wrote is now 8 or 9 years old. I'm happy that someone new even reads it and enjoys it enough to send me a note about it once or twice a year. Maybe if I really inspire them they'll use my work to create their own. I'd find that rather satisfying.
This is not paying the court (ie a criminal case) this is a civil law where the idea is you need to pay the other party. They aren't required to accept anything other than some form of lump sum payment. Their are even ways the courts can try to get the money specifically as a lump sum. I have dealt in civil law before. The court typically decides for one party, decides on sum, and expects payment within 'x' time. 'x' time can vary a bit, but 'lifetime repayment' has never been an option I've seen. 'x' is usually 30, 60, or 90 days. Maybe it's different in your state/country, but in mine civil cases don't have long repayment options.
I know your trying to be funny, but I'm five years past laughing about it.
We as a people gave them a limited right to our cultural heritage under the understanding that 1) it was limited and 2) it was because of the cost to distribute. In exchange they could make money from the act of distributing our cultural heritage for the limited time. Then it was ours again.
It didn't even take them 100 years to start screwing with this. It wasn't, specifically, music then. It was books, plays, etc. The last century brought music and movies into this mess and has gone completely insane to the point where they own our history itself and our culture now and for almost two lifetimes (and nearly 7 generations).
The insanity needs to stop. We have moved on as a people and do not need them! Some of them slowly came to realize this and rather than learn how to adapt they want us to revert to times where they had a license to print money.
It's really murky to remember this far back, but my first year of college during the days of 28.8kbps modems being 'new' I can recall stumbling upon mp3's. Within a few years winamp and mp3.com existed, but before that we still had mp3's and even full songs that took all night to download in the format...
Also just about every mp3 site in those days had big disclaimers that you could only download them for personal use and to be 'legal' one would need to delete the mp3 within a day (24hours)... I don't remember what lead to that, but I do remember when the web became more popular and mp3's more common this went away and most people assumed it was the same downloading as it was burning from a CD. This was still a year or two before Metallica and the RIAA 'proving' to everyone how they would treat people for it.
The problem with this is that the media corporations hold our cultural heritage by the balls. Culture is something we as humans need, even if you personally don't like the last crap the teens like.
I for one thing it's damn well time we ignored them and found some other means of creating and dispersing culture, but they keep blocking our attempts at every turn. The biggest problem is that often as humans we create new culture from old. As it stands now we have nearly 120 years of culture locked away from our use and it gets _worse_ as time goes on. They take things in the public domain and recreate them in new forms, these new forms then lock out recreations of public domain works we do. Disney is perhaps the best known for doing this, but they aren't the only ones.
I for one am also tired of them being able to claim 'piracy' any time their profits aren't astronomically high! You ignore the fact that they get their way more and more the fewer recordings they sell, and convince our governments who eat from their tables that things need to get worse for us because we are robbing them! If they want to call me a pirate I have no compunction about then _being_ a 'pirate' by downloading the few good bits they let slip through their fingers.
Fuck that crap! It's our culture. Not 'theirs'. They should not have been and should not now be allowed to own modern culture. We failed as a people to stop this insanity and now we need to find a solution to the issue we've inherited where the people who produce culture don't _own_ culture collectively. I'm not even saying this as someone who hasn't done their own share of creation, since I'm a trained musician. It won't end music. It won't end movies. It won't end plays. It won't end operas. It won't end concerts. It won't news. It won't end anything except their broken model where they think a corporation should be allowed to hold all rights to the cultural heritage of us all!
You do realize courts don't generally allow you to pay in installments, right? So this is a lump sum of $28k, which is likely more than she could make in a year most likely. Oh and $12/hour is funny... Where I live a good job is $12/hour... My mom for instance makes $7.75/hour and even a decade ago as a store manager was making all of $8/hour and denied overtime. So that's basically more than my mom's yearly income a decade ago or even worse now since she's not full time.
This is damning to any one on a low income and has proven to be one of the 'sanest' rulings yet for damages.
While only my personal experience... I've never had an issue touching peoples keyboards (or my own at home) or anything else. I haven't gotten sick in ages, probably close to 10 years now... I think we are healthy for different reasons, yours is avoidance, mines a robust immune system.
Really? See in my 32 years of life living in the US I've never seen politicians actually listen to the common person when there is a corporate voice that wants the opposite.
I've seen a few laws n the 'save or children' realm make it through, but corporations consistently walk all over our government and it's rare the government does more than make noise.
Anyways, call me jaded, but how exactly do you plan to get the law changed? Our current crop of politicians most definitely don't want to change it. So, go into politics yourself? Which party? And remember 'no one votes third party', because it's 'throwing your vote away'. And then if your on a good track and take lots of bribes from the corporations you may get a chance at say... senator in about 20 years... Then you'll need to make alliances among other senators and those in the house, oh and hope the president doesn't decided to veto it even if you did get it through... Oh and those corporations you've been taking bribes, err 'campaign contributions' from to get into office really don't take kindly yo all this 'nonsense' and stop giving you your money to stay in office...
You sir are a nut case who apparently lives in a fantasy land where the average person can change a law in a legal way opposed, not to the majority, but by the wealthy minority.
When no one in power listens to your voice the only act left to those who oppose it is the method of civil disobedience. Which you seem not to understand.
Well the problem with ever finding their heads in the bucket is that the overwhelming military might is now on their side, as it has become since at least WW I. As long as they retain the support of the military they are confident their heads will stay in place.
Well that and they have spent ages creating public apathy along with their corporate friends...
Having setup and maintained many Ubuntu installs just a year ago, I can say that windows (at least version 7) 'just runs' more than Ubuntu does. Ubuntu would not setup the 3D drivers for the Nvidia or Ati cards, so manual install. Ubuntu couldn't seem to find a HP 5i network printer they were connected to without uninstalling and reinstalling the whole printer interface from the web... Ubuntu randomly hated certain CD/DVD-rom drives from the same batch of computers failing to even install, so replacing hardware (which worked with windows) on about 1/4th of machines. That's even funnier when you would sometimes be able to place the drive that didn't work in one machine with Ubuntu in another machine and try it and it would (though this is only a 50/50 chance at best). I could go on, but a single batch of 10 machines would often take me a day. This couldn't be automated because many bits weren't identical between machines, like the random drive won't work to install Ubuntu issue.
I'm not saying Ubuntu or Linux are bad, but I am saying you make it out to be easy as pie to just run Ubuntu and windows is so much harder for some reason. 200 machines later I'd say neither is perfect and maybe, just maybe, we should stop this non-sense about Linux being no fuss for 'average tasks' and not MS.
As someone who pays US $59.99 (non-taxes/fees) for 8 Mbps/512kbps, I'm going to tell you you I want to move to Canada. I pay ~$75/month for my internet service and the same for the most basic cell phone package I can get (400 minutes + 400 text messages) and it will actually work in the areas I'm in.
Just be glad your only price option is 8Mbps/512kbps cable for $59.99 (Not including fees and taxes)... My only other options are dial-up and satellite internet... I'd love to only pay $35 a month even if I have to be slower...
Hell I've been threatened by top level management and HR at some places I've worked over the same things... As long as they don't need to _do_ it, they have yet to break any laws (technically). Fighting them over a 'threat' is such a carrier killing move few will ever stand up for themselves over it, foreign or US citizen. I even talked to a employment lawyer over it and was told I could expect to spend the next 10 years in 'court' (first 5 with 'arbitration'), if I did fight and I'd be footing the bill. That's without even considering what a 'win' could get me, which by that point is a net loss... The corporations hold all the cards quite often and as long as they don't have to make enough 'examples', no one ever cares.
My last employer chewed up workers every year, 75% of the staff would change within 2 years. I made 3 before the board got rid of the whole IT department outsourcing it to a consulting firm. The state even noticed our huge change of employment and started asking us (as in the company) questions about it. Nothing has ever come of it however.
It wasn't a flip flop, it was one random persons comment within MS earlier on that everyone has assumed is gospel on MS's stance. If MS had: Given a press release, stance commented on by someone among the top (like the director of the gaming division), or made an official statement this would in fact be a flip-flop. Instead this was the intention that one random uninformed person didn't know about in the first place.
Now it would probably also be different if people wanted to do something besides using the kinect...
To her it was somehow my fault, though I've never been hit by someone who says 'Sorry, that was my fault'. When I got out and looked at the space where my cars trunk used to be, she got all mad at me and accused me of trying to harm her kids by being in her way I guess? I should have known not to be on the same road as her, so she could have run the red light and been fucked up by 3 or four cars in the intersection instead and then when she wakes up in the coma in the hospital she can bitch about how it wasn't her fault those cars shouldn't have been there. She couldn't even be bothered to wait until the police I called came or leave contact information for like her insurance.
It's a right because we failed to protect our mass transit from the corporate interests nearly 50 years ago. Now unless you live in a big city you _MUST_ drive. It's the only option. Don't say you can ride a bike, it snows 6 months out of the year where I live and no bike is getting through that. And I doubt the city will let me keep a horse to pull a cart to get me from a to b (even if that wouldn't take ages anyways most horse carts go about 10 mph). And unless we all become marathon runners the 18 miles I have to go to get to any place that has jobs near me, won't be done on foot.
This is not to say I'm against stricter driving tests (though some of the things I was asked to do in mine I've never had to do again in 18 years of driving), but it can't be done first. Other means of locomotion have to be put in place especially in rural areas before you can just suddenly retest everyones driving with new standards, and if you don't retest everyone you have done nothing to help the problem your commenting on anyways. It's not just new drivers you need to fear. Hell in 18 years I've been hit (by other people) 7 times: rear ended at a red light, sideswiped by driver went through a red light, rear ended by a guy while waiting for the dump truck in front of me to turn, Person turned right on red with me directly in front of him going through my green light, driven off the road due to a guy who felt he needed to drive down the middle of the road the other direction (he clipped me as I tried to evade and spun me out), etc.. None was younger than 30. I don't fear young drivers, I fear fucking stupid people my age.
You may as well forget the entire US outside of major cities, there is zero ways my little town half an hour from a real city will ever get mass transit. The cost to run it versus the population of poor people to pay for it doesn't work. Nah, they'd never need to drive, oh our those farmers who make your food, they obviously don't need to drive either... Lets also ignore it takes time to buy buses (and find drivers), build railways, and construct subways.
Note I inherited my house here. When I got a 'free' house versus my apartment I was paying on. Add to that the fact the house will probably never sell, so I'll be paying taxes on it whether I live in it or not... A neighbor fyi has had their house up for sale for 7 years and it's not a bad house, just no one wants to fucking live here since you have to drive 30 minutes in any direction to get a job.
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I was once threatened with a firing for 'creating my own hours', namely coming in a half hour early... and then once in awhile having the gale to ask to leave a half hour early (not every day, probably 4 or 5 times in a year). They also insisted I couldn't claim my early half an hour...
Wow, your needs must be incredibly low. I commonly do: programming, document creating/editing (text, spreadsheets, etc), image editing, video editing, music playback (which If I owned a stereo I guess may be possible that way), gaming (varied genres), web browsing (multiple tabs), printing, video playback (various formats), video capture... I think that covers most of the things I do. Even using a laptop for most of these requires a hefty 'desktop replacement' class laptop. Some can work on 'app devices' as the article calls them, but more than 50% of those need a PC. Even web browsing with multiple tabs is something I've yet to see on smartphones, I assume without having ever seen one an iPad could do it though.
Anyways... Alot of my common tasks would be hard or impossible on a 'app device'. Then again I'm sure if all you do is consume and not create, then mobile devices are just fine.
The US has been at this since world war II. Heck one of the guys they used to send out to get other countries to buy into crazy proposals for US businesses and who was backed by agents of the US, turned on them and wrote a book about it a few years back. He spent considerable time discussing the way it all works and presented a very clear view of how the whole thing works... Up to and including CIA assassinations for those who wouldn't buy into what the companies were selling... Now most of those companies have been big energy companies, but it seems now it's the MPAA/RIAA's turn...
My landline internet connection is still a whole 8m/512k speed, so really... 21Mbps makes me drool... and it's wireless to... But at those rates I'd go over in a few hours of use...
That had to have been an attempt at humor... Especially since I seem to recall both Norton and McAfee having issues which remind me of this in past versions...
I guess it just means AVG has joined the Norton and McAfee club...
I use the internet just fine and stopped using AV's a few years back as they never ever came up with anything on my desktop PC. It was a complete waste.
I however have a laptop these days and a wireless network I use often requires Sophos as an AV to be working to access the network. If anything Sophos tags all sorts of craziness as a Virus... False positives on lots of games for instance, usually in the anti-cheating software they use. And the best part is it won't let you exclude something 90% of the time. I can't run certain things even in Sandboxie. The AV does not know more than me, but it sure damn well thinks it does. Besides wrongly tagging games and finding the occasional 'virus' of the low threat kind in stuff I plan to run with sandboxie it's useless to me and a waste of cpu cycles.
So no, you don't have to have 'SOMETHING' if you run a windows PC (64 bit or not) & in fact an AV can be a complete waste of resources...
Storytellers however existed basically from the dawn of time through a variety of traditions. Modern writers, musicians, and poets are our cultures take on the exact same ideas. Storytellers of various forms have not always been wealthy either. In fact it generally didn't pay well. Instead people did it because they _enjoyed_ it! We've gotten away from enjoying what you do and made it all about the money. That in itself is wrong.
I'd say more like 10 or 15. I've basically got any money I'll make from it by then (if any). There are very few exceptions to this, LotR and Foundation come to mind for books. I don't think my kids should live off my labor though, go let them make their own fucking works of art! Added to that is my personal opinion that books such as those belong even more in the public domain to act as the basis for a new generation of works. That's how culture worked until the 19th century. Within around a decade from it's point of origin the creator would have gotten any monetary benefit from it and it would become public domain. Then others could use it as a base for their own works. We broke this in the 19th century (the origin of increased copyright terms).
Music is even more transitory in general than books. Easily any realistic profits from 90% of bands would be made within 5 years or less of the date a 'record' was created. 'Bands' also need to constantly create new works or they lose momentum and relevance. The origins of hip hop for instance were DJ's remixing disco tunes from 20 years before their own time. Very few of whom even still made music. They however where the basis from an entire new form of music. But they way we've let things get so screwed up it is actually easier to cover an entire song, then repeat a 3 second clip from a single song.
I've btw, both written books (self-published) and created music. Neither has made me any real money and I'm happy if someone even likes them. Once series I wrote is now 8 or 9 years old. I'm happy that someone new even reads it and enjoys it enough to send me a note about it once or twice a year. Maybe if I really inspire them they'll use my work to create their own. I'd find that rather satisfying.
This is not paying the court (ie a criminal case) this is a civil law where the idea is you need to pay the other party. They aren't required to accept anything other than some form of lump sum payment. Their are even ways the courts can try to get the money specifically as a lump sum. I have dealt in civil law before. The court typically decides for one party, decides on sum, and expects payment within 'x' time. 'x' time can vary a bit, but 'lifetime repayment' has never been an option I've seen. 'x' is usually 30, 60, or 90 days. Maybe it's different in your state/country, but in mine civil cases don't have long repayment options.
Yes. Yes there is.
I know your trying to be funny, but I'm five years past laughing about it.
We as a people gave them a limited right to our cultural heritage under the understanding that 1) it was limited and 2) it was because of the cost to distribute. In exchange they could make money from the act of distributing our cultural heritage for the limited time. Then it was ours again.
It didn't even take them 100 years to start screwing with this. It wasn't, specifically, music then. It was books, plays, etc. The last century brought music and movies into this mess and has gone completely insane to the point where they own our history itself and our culture now and for almost two lifetimes (and nearly 7 generations).
The insanity needs to stop. We have moved on as a people and do not need them! Some of them slowly came to realize this and rather than learn how to adapt they want us to revert to times where they had a license to print money.
It's really murky to remember this far back, but my first year of college during the days of 28.8kbps modems being 'new' I can recall stumbling upon mp3's. Within a few years winamp and mp3.com existed, but before that we still had mp3's and even full songs that took all night to download in the format...
Also just about every mp3 site in those days had big disclaimers that you could only download them for personal use and to be 'legal' one would need to delete the mp3 within a day (24hours)... I don't remember what lead to that, but I do remember when the web became more popular and mp3's more common this went away and most people assumed it was the same downloading as it was burning from a CD. This was still a year or two before Metallica and the RIAA 'proving' to everyone how they would treat people for it.
The problem with this is that the media corporations hold our cultural heritage by the balls. Culture is something we as humans need, even if you personally don't like the last crap the teens like.
I for one thing it's damn well time we ignored them and found some other means of creating and dispersing culture, but they keep blocking our attempts at every turn. The biggest problem is that often as humans we create new culture from old. As it stands now we have nearly 120 years of culture locked away from our use and it gets _worse_ as time goes on. They take things in the public domain and recreate them in new forms, these new forms then lock out recreations of public domain works we do. Disney is perhaps the best known for doing this, but they aren't the only ones.
I for one am also tired of them being able to claim 'piracy' any time their profits aren't astronomically high! You ignore the fact that they get their way more and more the fewer recordings they sell, and convince our governments who eat from their tables that things need to get worse for us because we are robbing them! If they want to call me a pirate I have no compunction about then _being_ a 'pirate' by downloading the few good bits they let slip through their fingers.
Fuck that crap! It's our culture. Not 'theirs'. They should not have been and should not now be allowed to own modern culture. We failed as a people to stop this insanity and now we need to find a solution to the issue we've inherited where the people who produce culture don't _own_ culture collectively. I'm not even saying this as someone who hasn't done their own share of creation, since I'm a trained musician. It won't end music. It won't end movies. It won't end plays. It won't end operas. It won't end concerts. It won't news. It won't end anything except their broken model where they think a corporation should be allowed to hold all rights to the cultural heritage of us all!
You do realize courts don't generally allow you to pay in installments, right? So this is a lump sum of $28k, which is likely more than she could make in a year most likely. Oh and $12/hour is funny... Where I live a good job is $12/hour... My mom for instance makes $7.75/hour and even a decade ago as a store manager was making all of $8/hour and denied overtime. So that's basically more than my mom's yearly income a decade ago or even worse now since she's not full time.
This is damning to any one on a low income and has proven to be one of the 'sanest' rulings yet for damages.
While only my personal experience... I've never had an issue touching peoples keyboards (or my own at home) or anything else. I haven't gotten sick in ages, probably close to 10 years now... I think we are healthy for different reasons, yours is avoidance, mines a robust immune system.
Really? See in my 32 years of life living in the US I've never seen politicians actually listen to the common person when there is a corporate voice that wants the opposite.
I've seen a few laws n the 'save or children' realm make it through, but corporations consistently walk all over our government and it's rare the government does more than make noise.
Anyways, call me jaded, but how exactly do you plan to get the law changed? Our current crop of politicians most definitely don't want to change it. So, go into politics yourself? Which party? And remember 'no one votes third party', because it's 'throwing your vote away'. And then if your on a good track and take lots of bribes from the corporations you may get a chance at say... senator in about 20 years... Then you'll need to make alliances among other senators and those in the house, oh and hope the president doesn't decided to veto it even if you did get it through... Oh and those corporations you've been taking bribes, err 'campaign contributions' from to get into office really don't take kindly yo all this 'nonsense' and stop giving you your money to stay in office...
So yeah... good luck with that...
You sir are a nut case who apparently lives in a fantasy land where the average person can change a law in a legal way opposed, not to the majority, but by the wealthy minority.
When no one in power listens to your voice the only act left to those who oppose it is the method of civil disobedience. Which you seem not to understand.
Well the problem with ever finding their heads in the bucket is that the overwhelming military might is now on their side, as it has become since at least WW I. As long as they retain the support of the military they are confident their heads will stay in place.
Well that and they have spent ages creating public apathy along with their corporate friends...
Having setup and maintained many Ubuntu installs just a year ago, I can say that windows (at least version 7) 'just runs' more than Ubuntu does. Ubuntu would not setup the 3D drivers for the Nvidia or Ati cards, so manual install. Ubuntu couldn't seem to find a HP 5i network printer they were connected to without uninstalling and reinstalling the whole printer interface from the web... Ubuntu randomly hated certain CD/DVD-rom drives from the same batch of computers failing to even install, so replacing hardware (which worked with windows) on about 1/4th of machines. That's even funnier when you would sometimes be able to place the drive that didn't work in one machine with Ubuntu in another machine and try it and it would (though this is only a 50/50 chance at best). I could go on, but a single batch of 10 machines would often take me a day. This couldn't be automated because many bits weren't identical between machines, like the random drive won't work to install Ubuntu issue.
I'm not saying Ubuntu or Linux are bad, but I am saying you make it out to be easy as pie to just run Ubuntu and windows is so much harder for some reason. 200 machines later I'd say neither is perfect and maybe, just maybe, we should stop this non-sense about Linux being no fuss for 'average tasks' and not MS.
As someone who pays US $59.99 (non-taxes/fees) for 8 Mbps/512kbps, I'm going to tell you you I want to move to Canada. I pay ~$75/month for my internet service and the same for the most basic cell phone package I can get (400 minutes + 400 text messages) and it will actually work in the areas I'm in.
I don't even know why you are complaining...
Just be glad your only price option is 8Mbps/512kbps cable for $59.99 (Not including fees and taxes)... My only other options are dial-up and satellite internet... I'd love to only pay $35 a month even if I have to be slower...
Hell I've been threatened by top level management and HR at some places I've worked over the same things... As long as they don't need to _do_ it, they have yet to break any laws (technically). Fighting them over a 'threat' is such a carrier killing move few will ever stand up for themselves over it, foreign or US citizen. I even talked to a employment lawyer over it and was told I could expect to spend the next 10 years in 'court' (first 5 with 'arbitration'), if I did fight and I'd be footing the bill. That's without even considering what a 'win' could get me, which by that point is a net loss... The corporations hold all the cards quite often and as long as they don't have to make enough 'examples', no one ever cares.
My last employer chewed up workers every year, 75% of the staff would change within 2 years. I made 3 before the board got rid of the whole IT department outsourcing it to a consulting firm. The state even noticed our huge change of employment and started asking us (as in the company) questions about it. Nothing has ever come of it however.
It wasn't a flip flop, it was one random persons comment within MS earlier on that everyone has assumed is gospel on MS's stance. If MS had: Given a press release, stance commented on by someone among the top (like the director of the gaming division), or made an official statement this would in fact be a flip-flop. Instead this was the intention that one random uninformed person didn't know about in the first place.
Now it would probably also be different if people wanted to do something besides using the kinect...
To her it was somehow my fault, though I've never been hit by someone who says 'Sorry, that was my fault'. When I got out and looked at the space where my cars trunk used to be, she got all mad at me and accused me of trying to harm her kids by being in her way I guess? I should have known not to be on the same road as her, so she could have run the red light and been fucked up by 3 or four cars in the intersection instead and then when she wakes up in the coma in the hospital she can bitch about how it wasn't her fault those cars shouldn't have been there. She couldn't even be bothered to wait until the police I called came or leave contact information for like her insurance.
It's a right because we failed to protect our mass transit from the corporate interests nearly 50 years ago. Now unless you live in a big city you _MUST_ drive. It's the only option. Don't say you can ride a bike, it snows 6 months out of the year where I live and no bike is getting through that. And I doubt the city will let me keep a horse to pull a cart to get me from a to b (even if that wouldn't take ages anyways most horse carts go about 10 mph). And unless we all become marathon runners the 18 miles I have to go to get to any place that has jobs near me, won't be done on foot.
This is not to say I'm against stricter driving tests (though some of the things I was asked to do in mine I've never had to do again in 18 years of driving), but it can't be done first. Other means of locomotion have to be put in place especially in rural areas before you can just suddenly retest everyones driving with new standards, and if you don't retest everyone you have done nothing to help the problem your commenting on anyways. It's not just new drivers you need to fear. Hell in 18 years I've been hit (by other people) 7 times: rear ended at a red light, sideswiped by driver went through a red light, rear ended by a guy while waiting for the dump truck in front of me to turn, Person turned right on red with me directly in front of him going through my green light, driven off the road due to a guy who felt he needed to drive down the middle of the road the other direction (he clipped me as I tried to evade and spun me out), etc.. None was younger than 30. I don't fear young drivers, I fear fucking stupid people my age.
You may as well forget the entire US outside of major cities, there is zero ways my little town half an hour from a real city will ever get mass transit. The cost to run it versus the population of poor people to pay for it doesn't work. Nah, they'd never need to drive, oh our those farmers who make your food, they obviously don't need to drive either... Lets also ignore it takes time to buy buses (and find drivers), build railways, and construct subways.
Note I inherited my house here. When I got a 'free' house versus my apartment I was paying on. Add to that the fact the house will probably never sell, so I'll be paying taxes on it whether I live in it or not... A neighbor fyi has had their house up for sale for 7 years and it's not a bad house, just no one wants to fucking live here since you have to drive 30 minutes in any direction to get a job.