USPS doesn't have a monopoly; many people actively use (or have at least heard of or used before) UPS, FedEx, and DHL (I don't know of any other postal services).
USPS has an enforced LETTER monopoly. The companies you listed specialize in delivering packages, where USPS does not have an enforced monopoly. Does a monopoly on letters constitute a mail monopoly? I don't know, but it IS the case that they have an enforced monopoly on at least one subset of mail.
The USPS holds a statutory monopoly on non-urgent First Class Mail, outbound U.S. international letters.
Competition in "extremely urgent letters" is allowed under certain conditions: The private carrier must charge at least $3 or twice the U.S. postage, whichever is greater (other stipulations, such as maximum delivery time, apply as well); or, alternatively, it may be delivered for free.[5] This is where carriers such as Fed Ex compete by offering overnight delivery, as well as where bicycle messengers compete for intracity mail.
PG&E is a public company. ComEd is a public company. Verizon is a public company. AT&T is a public company. They're all public utilities. Simply being a publicly traded for profit corporation doesn't mean that you're not a public utility.
These companies were all given special monopoly privileges by the force of government. They can run wires, pipes, and other items through your property without your consent, by law. They are required to provide service to all persons in their scope of operation by law. No such law exists regarding Google Inc. and they are not a utility.
Because if you did it that way [paper and pencil], with the number of questions on a given ballot form it gets very unwieldy.
I don't buy that a paper ballot can't work. I voted absentee in the midterms (I'm studying abroad), and I had a total of 15 elections, with as many as 9 lines each, and a total of 12 different political parties. This even included such oddities as the "Rent Is Too High" party. Fit perfectly fine on a 11x17 sheet of paper. vote once in each column, each row is for a political party. The page was about 3/5 full, so probably 8 more elections and 7 more parties could have fit.
The ballot made sense, was easy to fill out, and included space to write in. I know cause I used that space in a couple of elections where I reviled both candidates. So to your complaint of unwieldy I say no good sir.
I know a number of lawyers. Except in the public sector, $75-100 per hour is VERY low. A corporate firm, like I used in my example, can easily charge $1000/hr and pay the attorney $750 of that. This is not most lawyers, but even say, an independent divorce attorney will charge upwards of $200 an hour. Also, many if not most lawyers DO own their practices. And the ones likely to blow $1500-2000 on a PS3 tend to own highly successful firms (such as corporate firms that charge $1000/hr). The highest rate I've heard of was $3000/hr for a top entertainment industry lawyer. And people thought exploiting artists with unfair contracts was cheap!
Disclaimer. It is my opinion that a person who buys a product way over the its market rate is either very wealthy and an idiot or just a plain idiot. Still without these people scalpers would not exist.
Not always. They (evidenced by paying $1500+ as other/.ers cited), have very high reservation prices (that is the max price they are willing to pay). If you make the rough equivalent of $500/hour (ask about rates at your local corporate law firm if you don't believe that number), then standing in line for 4 hours would be worth $2000 of opportunity cost to you. Paying $1500 for the scalped version is a savings of about $1100 for this hypothetical person ($2000 opportunity cost + $600 console price) - $1500. Or they could wait for demand to settle down and buy it later, but then there is an opportunity cost of waiting (in lost gaming time / bragging rights), which they price at over $900 ($1500 scalper price - $600 retail price).
Not saying this applies to most people, just people with insane amounts of either money or utility derived from gaming. Still, it is perfectly possible for a rational person to buy a scalped console, and really have that be the best value for them.
I actually have set up autocorrect in Gaim to allow me to type "u" and have it replaced with "you." Also, "dont" becomes "don't", and "i" becomes "I." I get the convenience of typing fewer characters, and yet don't sound like a moron.
25% = Percent of students taking the most popular/useful classes (estimate)
I know of no single class that 25% of university students take. If this is the estimate of all core courses, I would call it reasonable. Hovever, this being the case, the $11 million covers the most popular versions of textbooks for all courses. $11 million for the rights to enough textbooks for the first 2 years of college (when you take such classes as Calc I, European History, etc). That's a bargain.
A suggestion for a specific book is "A History of the Modern World" by Robert Roswell Palmer. Has been in use for 50+ years in universities, and is the canonical view of European History from the middle ages on. When you write revisionist history, HE is the standard you revise.
As a philosophy student, I experience this first hand. I needed Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics for my current moral philosophy class. I found a free translation, but it was nearly unreadable. The text my prof assigned was a more recent translation (Terence Irwin 1999) and was MUCH easier on the brain. For works in their original language, yes (I got my David Hume text off gutenberg), but translations need constant updating as language evolves, or you are dooming readers to a second-rate work.
If there was *any* question, he should have consulted his staff, or the court, BEFORE he decided.
Well, his staff he did consult...but they have the bias of working for him and having suggested the unconstitutional act in the first place. Courts are a different case however. Federal courts do not give advisory opinions. In order for a judge to make a ruling on any matter, there must be a plantiff and defendant. Period. This (among other things) prevents courts from ruling acts constitutional or unconstitutional without both sides being heard, and also assures that issues courts are ruling upon actually impact people.
You can be happy. I just installed flash 9 on my ubuntu box and all the audio problems that had plagued it earlier are gone. It's worth noting that I had tweaked the audio to get it from "none whatsoever" to "there, but mis-synched," so ymmv.
I too call bullshit. I am currently in posession of my absentee ballot. It does not say that. It says that if you vote for more than one party's candidate for one office your ballot for that office is invalidated. That's not against ticket splitting, its against voting for multiple people for one office.
This is a ballot for the third congressional district of New York. If a ballot said what GP described, it would be ludicrously unconstitutional, and would
Full booths were removed for reasons having nothing to do with cell phones. What happened (at least in NYC) was that drug dealers used them as offices. This was when they could recieve calls. So, out with the booth, in with the little metal awning. Though where I am now (Montreal) there is a phone booth about 60 feet from my front door.
Well, your rights were being trampled before, and now they closed the loophole by which you were able to secure your right to waste your money. Gambling is stupid, no doubt (you WILL lose), but you SHOULD have the right to make your own stupid decisions. Just because a government is tyrannical does not mean its people don't have rights. They are just having their rights significantly violated. The greater question here is where was the credit card lobby. They are going to lose serious money on this (1% fee on $12bn of transactions, PLUS the fact that people who gamble tend to have high debt and revolve credit at high interest rates).
Um, they exit poll at RANDOM precincts. Not chosen for any degree of closeness, just plain random. The pollsters (unlike some of the vote counters) do have an incentive in getting the results right, since the networks want to be able to call accurately and early. Sometimes these conflict. See: Florida 2000.
-Note when you have an incorportion that exists outside of time how long is a limited duration, what 50 years, 75, or has AOL/TimeWarner/Disney pushed it to 100 Years?
I believe what you are refering to is a COPYRIGHT. That is an exclusive right to produce a specific written/drawn/taped/otherwise recorded production for a scope of time as the creator of that content. It is fundamentally different from a patent in that it does not control production of a thing, but publication of an idea.
Patents provide a broader degree of protection for a more limited time, and for a more limited set of works.
That is, until some fsking asshat came up with patenting business models, which as written works that can't be physically created, should be copyrighted, not patented.
Also, you can pull things out of the soil for so long before nutriens are used up. What's their plane for maintaining the soil?
Assuming you meant plan there. Even on tree farms, other shrubs tend to grow (trees taking more than one season to farm), so the soil composition will be like that of a normal forest, just with the trees in a more rectangular pattern.
No, they managed to measure the velocity, of the ball, the wheel, and the other factors involved in roulette, and then quickly and accurately compute the path the ball would take. Once you release a coin in a flip, if monitored carefully and calculated correctly, you certianly can predict how it will land.
Is it difficult? Yes. That's why it's impressive. It is not impossible though.
Slashdot Mirror
USPS has an enforced LETTER monopoly. The companies you listed specialize in delivering packages, where USPS does not have an enforced monopoly. Does a monopoly on letters constitute a mail monopoly? I don't know, but it IS the case that they have an enforced monopoly on at least one subset of mail.
From Wikipedia
The USPS holds a statutory monopoly on non-urgent First Class Mail, outbound U.S. international letters.
Competition in "extremely urgent letters" is allowed under certain conditions: The private carrier must charge at least $3 or twice the U.S. postage, whichever is greater (other stipulations, such as maximum delivery time, apply as well); or, alternatively, it may be delivered for free.[5] This is where carriers such as Fed Ex compete by offering overnight delivery, as well as where bicycle messengers compete for intracity mail.
These companies were all given special monopoly privileges by the force of government. They can run wires, pipes, and other items through your property without your consent, by law. They are required to provide service to all persons in their scope of operation by law. No such law exists regarding Google Inc. and they are not a utility.
I don't buy that a paper ballot can't work. I voted absentee in the midterms (I'm studying abroad), and I had a total of 15 elections, with as many as 9 lines each, and a total of 12 different political parties. This even included such oddities as the "Rent Is Too High" party. Fit perfectly fine on a 11x17 sheet of paper. vote once in each column, each row is for a political party. The page was about 3/5 full, so probably 8 more elections and 7 more parties could have fit.
The ballot made sense, was easy to fill out, and included space to write in. I know cause I used that space in a couple of elections where I reviled both candidates. So to your complaint of unwieldy I say no good sir.
I know a number of lawyers. Except in the public sector, $75-100 per hour is VERY low. A corporate firm, like I used in my example, can easily charge $1000/hr and pay the attorney $750 of that. This is not most lawyers, but even say, an independent divorce attorney will charge upwards of $200 an hour. Also, many if not most lawyers DO own their practices. And the ones likely to blow $1500-2000 on a PS3 tend to own highly successful firms (such as corporate firms that charge $1000/hr). The highest rate I've heard of was $3000/hr for a top entertainment industry lawyer. And people thought exploiting artists with unfair contracts was cheap!
Not always. They (evidenced by paying $1500+ as other /.ers cited), have very high reservation prices (that is the max price they are willing to pay). If you make the rough equivalent of $500/hour (ask about rates at your local corporate law firm if you don't believe that number), then standing in line for 4 hours would be worth $2000 of opportunity cost to you. Paying $1500 for the scalped version is a savings of about $1100 for this hypothetical person ($2000 opportunity cost + $600 console price) - $1500. Or they could wait for demand to settle down and buy it later, but then there is an opportunity cost of waiting (in lost gaming time / bragging rights), which they price at over $900 ($1500 scalper price - $600 retail price).
Not saying this applies to most people, just people with insane amounts of either money or utility derived from gaming. Still, it is perfectly possible for a rational person to buy a scalped console, and really have that be the best value for them.
And yes IAAES (I am an economics student)
Actually, the full command is [space]u[space] becoming [space]you[space], so unless I am typing the letter as its own word, it's just "u."
I actually have set up autocorrect in Gaim to allow me to type "u" and have it replaced with "you." Also, "dont" becomes "don't", and "i" becomes "I." I get the convenience of typing fewer characters, and yet don't sound like a moron.
Series of tubes.
25% = Percent of students taking the most popular/useful classes (estimate)
I know of no single class that 25% of university students take. If this is the estimate of all core courses, I would call it reasonable. Hovever, this being the case, the $11 million covers the most popular versions of textbooks for all courses. $11 million for the rights to enough textbooks for the first 2 years of college (when you take such classes as Calc I, European History, etc). That's a bargain.
A suggestion for a specific book is "A History of the Modern World" by Robert Roswell Palmer. Has been in use for 50+ years in universities, and is the canonical view of European History from the middle ages on. When you write revisionist history, HE is the standard you revise.
As a philosophy student, I experience this first hand. I needed Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics for my current moral philosophy class. I found a free translation, but it was nearly unreadable. The text my prof assigned was a more recent translation (Terence Irwin 1999) and was MUCH easier on the brain. For works in their original language, yes (I got my David Hume text off gutenberg), but translations need constant updating as language evolves, or you are dooming readers to a second-rate work.
Well, his staff he did consult...but they have the bias of working for him and having suggested the unconstitutional act in the first place. Courts are a different case however. Federal courts do not give advisory opinions. In order for a judge to make a ruling on any matter, there must be a plantiff and defendant. Period. This (among other things) prevents courts from ruling acts constitutional or unconstitutional without both sides being heard, and also assures that issues courts are ruling upon actually impact people.
You can be happy. I just installed flash 9 on my ubuntu box and all the audio problems that had plagued it earlier are gone. It's worth noting that I had tweaked the audio to get it from "none whatsoever" to "there, but mis-synched," so ymmv.
This is a ballot for the third congressional district of New York. If a ballot said what GP described, it would be ludicrously unconstitutional, and would
In its current incarnation, Retrievr runs on a single computer.
Ow. The Slashdotting. It hurts.
I don't think he was the internet archive. http://www.archive.org/about/exclude.php
Full booths were removed for reasons having nothing to do with cell phones. What happened (at least in NYC) was that drug dealers used them as offices. This was when they could recieve calls. So, out with the booth, in with the little metal awning. Though where I am now (Montreal) there is a phone booth about 60 feet from my front door.
Seconded, I just downloaded it (before realizing I lack blank DVDs) and i got 31Mb/s.
Well, your rights were being trampled before, and now they closed the loophole by which you were able to secure your right to waste your money. Gambling is stupid, no doubt (you WILL lose), but you SHOULD have the right to make your own stupid decisions. Just because a government is tyrannical does not mean its people don't have rights. They are just having their rights significantly violated. The greater question here is where was the credit card lobby. They are going to lose serious money on this (1% fee on $12bn of transactions, PLUS the fact that people who gamble tend to have high debt and revolve credit at high interest rates).
Um, they exit poll at RANDOM precincts. Not chosen for any degree of closeness, just plain random. The pollsters (unlike some of the vote counters) do have an incentive in getting the results right, since the networks want to be able to call accurately and early. Sometimes these conflict. See: Florida 2000.
I believe what you are refering to is a COPYRIGHT. That is an exclusive right to produce a specific written/drawn/taped/otherwise recorded production for a scope of time as the creator of that content. It is fundamentally different from a patent in that it does not control production of a thing, but publication of an idea.
Patents provide a broader degree of protection for a more limited time, and for a more limited set of works.
That is, until some fsking asshat came up with patenting business models, which as written works that can't be physically created, should be copyrighted, not patented.
There are times when one is glad one has ELinks. This is one of them.
Federal Prosecutors Launch Probe of Dell.
Eliot Spitzer is the New York State Attorney General. He is looking for a new job though...Governor of New York to be specific.
7625597484987 = 3^3^3
Assuming you meant plan there. Even on tree farms, other shrubs tend to grow (trees taking more than one season to farm), so the soil composition will be like that of a normal forest, just with the trees in a more rectangular pattern.
No, they managed to measure the velocity, of the ball, the wheel, and the other factors involved in roulette, and then quickly and accurately compute the path the ball would take. Once you release a coin in a flip, if monitored carefully and calculated correctly, you certianly can predict how it will land.
Is it difficult? Yes. That's why it's impressive. It is not impossible though.