More importantly by the time I get the rebate check I've been without the rebate cash for so long that it no longer has the effect of lowering the purchase price and is more of a free cash for me kinda thing. If you put it on a credit card (assuming its not a 0ish% interest card) its entirely possible that you would outstrip the value of the rebate with interest charges in the interim. This is why I base my purchasing decisions on cost today and am happy when I get some free cash in the mail.
Ahh but I have that's why I change my own, but the $40 oil change is a perfect example of capitalism. The reason it isn't a $50 oil change is because you won't sell enough to offset the price increase and the $30 oil change doesn't exist because there will be excess demand so the market has decided that $40 is the correct price for that service. I tend to agree when I change the oil in my car myself it usually costs me about $30 (5 qts full synthetic oil and a GOOD filter) + about 10 minutes of my time rolling around on the ground at home getting oil on me and having to properly dispose of the waste, I believe Jiffy Lube charges approximately $60 for a full synthetic oil change during which time I get to wait in an air conditioned waiting room, and can do it during my lunch break at work. So the value proposition is in exchange for an extra $30 of my money I get to wait in a waiting room which is heated/cooled instead of on the ground in the hot/cold and I can do it during work instead of having to find time on my weekend. To me the tradeoff isn't worth the extra cash but to many it is which is why the market bears the expense. This is the same for the restore disks originally referred to, some see paying the $30 for a bunch of CDs at delivery time of their PC to be worth it. Afterall the cost of the media to make the restore disks has some cost, and there is some usage of my time which to me has value.
You haven't had a CSR job in a while have you? While you can certainly make a fuss about it the person selling the PC has no authority to give away stuff like recovery disks and the manager will surely not reprimand them for enforcing policy. Now if you ask nicely the manager may provide them to you but I doubt it, my last experience at CompUSA where an item I wanted to purchase was incorrectly pictured in the flyer with a sale price and then was displayed in the store with the same price after rebates met nothing but silence even when dealing with the store manager. He simply stated that the flyer was incorrectly printed and that I should have been more careful when inspecting the price tags on the endcap. The fact that he dispatched his minions to fix the endcap before even speaking with me was apparently not a queue to him that he should make good on the price. So in the face of gross incompetence, and an error which was immediately fixed managers of big box stores (if this one is to be considered representative) have little power or interest in pleasing the customer.
IANAA (apologist) but I don't see it as screwing over, in exchange for some of my time to perform for you a service you deem to have value you give me some of your cash in proportion to the value you perceive. The fact that you see no value in buying the disks because you are educated enough to make them for yourself and you have the time/interest to doesn't mean that everyone else is. One can easily change the oil in their car and I often encourage/train friends how to but I don't see places that offer to change it for you in exchange for a fee as ripping you off.
There are 2 things at work here 1) is the case where I post something and it gets changed relatively soon in that case I can see that perhaps the user who posted the LJ entry should be responsible but there is the other case 2) where 2 years from now www.coolsite.com becomes pr0n pr0n pr0n at this point should I still be responsible for checking that my links point to the content I originally intended? Maybe LJ needs to deactivate links in posts over a certain number of days and print them as text instead of links. Personally I think the whole concept of writing a diary for the world to see is rather foolish but I'm not one of those trendy teeniboppers.
The online purchased version I'm more OK with phoning home but if I were stuck in dial up land and I had to a) have an internet connection just to play b) suck up precious bandwidth phoning home to verify that the software was in fact legit I'd be pretty pissed atleast with the token system for boxed games you have a legit alternative but for it to be of value you have to value being legit, personally I no-cd hack all my games because I hate having to dig around for the CD to put in the drive when I want to play
Might I suggest an easier method? Back in the good ol days when computers were huge and geeks were single they used parallel port dongles to activate software perhaps we should return to this model with a twist go USB instead. I have many many USB ports why not go that route I can attach the key and leave it no need to put the key on some unreliable piece of poly-carbonate. Its hard to copy without special equipment, so presumably there are roughly the same number of keys out there that there are legit copies of the game, I can plug all the keys for all the games in at once if i wish and have enough ports
Item 8.01. Other Events. The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO", or the "Company"), offered the following statement in response to the August 10, 2007 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball regarding the Company's longstanding dispute with Novell over ownership of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights: "We are clearly disappointed by the Court's adverse ruling regarding ownership of copyrights covering the UNIX operating system. Although the district judge ruled in Novell's favor on many important issues, the case has not yet been fully vetted by the legal system and we will continue to explore our options with respect to how we move forward from here. We note that the court ruled that SCO owns the copyrights to the technology developed or derived by SCO after Novell transferred the assets to SCO in 1995. This includes the new development of all subsequent versions of UnixWare up through the most current release of UnixWare 7.1.4 and substantial portions of SCO UnixWare Gemini 64. We also own the exclusive, worldwide license to use the UnixWare trademark, now owned by The Open Group. Also, SCO's ownership of OpenServer and its Mobile Server platforms was not challenged and remains intact. These SCO platforms continue to drive enterprises large and small, and our rapidly developing mobile business is being well received in the marketplace. Moreover, the court did not dismiss our claims against Novell regarding the non-compete provisions of the 1995 Technology License Agreement relating to Novell's distribution of Linux to the extent implicated by the technology developed by SCO after 1995. Those issues remain to be litigated." Forward-Looking Statements: The statements contained in this press release, including but not limited to statements regarding the Company's pending litigation and expectations concerning the Company's developing mobile business OpenServer and Mobile Server platforms and other statements that are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements and are made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. We wish to advise readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, developments in the Company's litigation with Novell and IBM, continued competitive pressure on the Company's operating system products, which could impact the Company's results of operations, adverse developments in and increased or unforeseen legal costs related to the Company's litigation, the inability to devote sufficient resources to the development and marketing of the Company's products, including the Me Inc. mobile services and development platform, and the possibility that companies with whom the Company has formed partnerships will decide to terminate, or reduce the resources devoted to, their partnership with the Company. These and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated are discussed in more detail in the Company's periodic and current filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2006 and Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2007. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which such statements are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after such date.
Basically saying don't leave yet we do own stuff that has value see we can even name it
The flip side of this is that the government decided that it was in the public interest to have a broadcast communication network and that it was unfeasible for them to build it themselves as it would be infrequently used. The result is that they awarded some privileges to the people who did build the network and whom in exchange for the right to restrict the fair-use of their broadcast allow the government use of their network in times of emergency. Now i do believe that anything that the public should benefit in a non-trivial way from any private enterprise that traverses a public good be it railways, entertainment broadcasts, etc... and that any signal that you can receive should be yours to do with as you please as long as you don't interfere with the production of such signal.
As someone who like many other reads of Slashdot has a professional job instead of a 9-5 type job I can say that while I am permitted time off to go vote on any given day the time alloted to the project I'm working on doesn't get extended by that amount of time nor does it make any of my work disapear. I like the way they do it in France, vote on Saturday. All elections are held on Saturday, while this may not make voting any more accessable to people working manufacturing jobs where work schedules can be a mix of weekday days and weekend days it would make voting more accessable to a lot of the country. It would also become a family activity where mom and dad can go vote and take their kids with them, perhaps even have a discussion about what they're going to do, who they're going to vote for a why.
We do its call an election, it is your duty to investigate the candidates the best you can prior to choosing which one to vote for. This does not mean seeing the (R),(D) or (U) next to their name and deciding that you've investigated them.
and started an open-ended war with no clearly defined objectives that, and which became a terrorist recruiter's wet dream I thought Kennedy was a Democrat when he did something similar in the 1960's, oh wait that wasn't a war it was a police action.
I don't know anything about the guy, but what if he was just some geek who thought of a way to make some money? Maybe he didn't even realize what the impact would be.
The issue here is that he continued to spam after the CAN-SPAM law was signed into law, I can't believe that you are practically arguing for the ignorance of the law defense. Many (many, many, many??) spammers have figured out how to comply with CAN-SPAM and continue merrily on their way to selling V14GR4 or the like through the internet. I don't actually expect him to serve 11 years but I like that he can be sentenced to 11 years so that if he does it again the opportunity will be there to give him a harsher sentence. The justice system believes in giving people 2nd chances and I expect they will in this case as well.
As someone who carries a national ID in disguise, a commercial driver's license (CDL), every day of my life and having some exposure to the rationale for national IDs. The story starts way back in the 1950 s and before where each state did their own driver's licensing and didn't talk to eachother about anything. This left a huge law enforcement problem where one truck driver could have many licenses from as many states as there were at the time and often did so that in case one got suspended another could be used. This was fixed in the 1990's when the DoT took over the issuing of commercial driver's licenses to the extent that there is a check done when you apply for a license, renewal, or duplicate that you don't have any other licenses, that you are who you say you are, and that you are in the system as qualified (passed a road test and the written tests). So the way the system works today my NH issued CDL already has a whole bunch of extra information attached to it in some computer somewhere.
This is the part where the relevance comes back, I'm OK with a national ID card system as long as there are significant restrictions put in place as to who can demand access to it and what the identifying number can be used for. I see that system where the requirement to produce such identification is clearly defined to be a benefit over the current system where anyone can require you to produce your "identification" for any purpose and that identification can have a variety of information on it and based on the state where your state issued ID card was issued may fall at any point in the spectrum of counterfitability.
Moving to a uniform standard for the card seems like a good thing so that for example you won't be detained for extra time at a traffic stop in NJ if you have a license from Alaska because the officer is unfamiliar with the document and thinks it somehow looks forged. Also different states take different measures to protect the data on your license in NH your license number is composed of the month you were born, the first 2 letters of your last name, the first letter of your first name, the day of the month you were born, the last 2 digits of the year you were born, and a sequence number. This seems pretty easy to forge and to find if someone were stealing your identity. When I moved out of Massachusetts they were still using your social security number as the default but you could ask for a randomly assigned S number if you wanted.
Is REALID perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it does seem better than the current system where state IDs are handed out like candy in 50 different varieties that law enforcement has to make sense of, with varying degrees of protection for your personal information, and in a fashion where you can go around collecting IDs from many states (as long as you don't want a CDL:) )
What makes this wrong? If I were going to seek people to supervise an industry I'd sure as hell want people who had a background in that industry so yes you do chose folks from drug companies to supervise drug companies you do chose anti-trust lawyers to run anti-trust divisions of the DoJ.
Taking this up one level to that of governments who last I checked were **supposed to** be role models, isn't the CIA/NSA's bread and butter circumventing DRM schemes in an effort to read documents that the originator (other country) wanted kept secret? If the DMCA isn't good enough for gov't work then it shouldn't be implemented on a civil level either.
You sideswipe an interesting subject here. What every happened to Vista forcing users to have unprivleged accounts? I use it and as the first installed user I seem to have had them from day 1 and since I turned off UAC I don't get harassed every minute by it telling me that I may somehow be putting my PC at risk. So indeed what about those LUAs?
While I appreciate your comment that they have the opportunity to throw them out at the next election that opportunity will remain just that and nothing else. To be voted out of office in MA takes some serious doing. For an example look at their senior senitor the Honorable Edward M Kennedy, he's often publicly intoxicated, and has even been involved in fleeing the scene of an accident where his campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne was killed as a result of drowning after the car he was driving was driven off a bridge. I feel all their jobs are safe after all being a drunken murderer isn't enough to keep you from getting reelected.
This comes back to if you want more pay more, for most of my printing the ink being readable after more than a month is insignificant as the paper is likely to have been recycled by then and nobody has stated that the ink fades to being unreadable in a period.
In my parent's zip code DSL became available no later than 1998 but that was a very small section of the town, they weren't able to get anything past 26.4k dial up until 2002 when Comcast got their act together and offered 3Mbit service. The surprising part is that this was in an affluent suburban town about 20 miles from Boston.
The telcos can tell me as a matter of fact if they can provide me service and to what level immediately when I call to order service, why doesn't the FCC require this level of detail as its already available.
This is why I did my taxes with TaxCut in February as soon as the documents were available then as I owed money waited until Saturday to mail my return. That way there were no 4/15 surprises over how much was owed, any technical problems could be avoided and the line at the post office was fairly short. Its called planning folks its not news that taxes are due within a couple of days of 4/15.
I could understand it if you were new to the country, or just started working for the first time and this is a new process for you but why do people who should know better insist on waiting until the 11th hour to even calculate the amount they are getting back or paying?
The problem being that Windows XP doesn't install on SATA hardware without help so many people who still use XP also like IDE hardware because it just works especially Intel's IDE hardware. So until Vista and SATA CD-ROM drives become more common this seems like a premature move.
Slashdot Mirror
More importantly by the time I get the rebate check I've been without the rebate cash for so long that it no longer has the effect of lowering the purchase price and is more of a free cash for me kinda thing. If you put it on a credit card (assuming its not a 0ish% interest card) its entirely possible that you would outstrip the value of the rebate with interest charges in the interim. This is why I base my purchasing decisions on cost today and am happy when I get some free cash in the mail.
Ahh but I have that's why I change my own, but the $40 oil change is a perfect example of capitalism. The reason it isn't a $50 oil change is because you won't sell enough to offset the price increase and the $30 oil change doesn't exist because there will be excess demand so the market has decided that $40 is the correct price for that service. I tend to agree when I change the oil in my car myself it usually costs me about $30 (5 qts full synthetic oil and a GOOD filter) + about 10 minutes of my time rolling around on the ground at home getting oil on me and having to properly dispose of the waste, I believe Jiffy Lube charges approximately $60 for a full synthetic oil change during which time I get to wait in an air conditioned waiting room, and can do it during my lunch break at work. So the value proposition is in exchange for an extra $30 of my money I get to wait in a waiting room which is heated/cooled instead of on the ground in the hot/cold and I can do it during work instead of having to find time on my weekend. To me the tradeoff isn't worth the extra cash but to many it is which is why the market bears the expense. This is the same for the restore disks originally referred to, some see paying the $30 for a bunch of CDs at delivery time of their PC to be worth it. Afterall the cost of the media to make the restore disks has some cost, and there is some usage of my time which to me has value.
You haven't had a CSR job in a while have you? While you can certainly make a fuss about it the person selling the PC has no authority to give away stuff like recovery disks and the manager will surely not reprimand them for enforcing policy. Now if you ask nicely the manager may provide them to you but I doubt it, my last experience at CompUSA where an item I wanted to purchase was incorrectly pictured in the flyer with a sale price and then was displayed in the store with the same price after rebates met nothing but silence even when dealing with the store manager. He simply stated that the flyer was incorrectly printed and that I should have been more careful when inspecting the price tags on the endcap. The fact that he dispatched his minions to fix the endcap before even speaking with me was apparently not a queue to him that he should make good on the price. So in the face of gross incompetence, and an error which was immediately fixed managers of big box stores (if this one is to be considered representative) have little power or interest in pleasing the customer.
IANAA (apologist) but I don't see it as screwing over, in exchange for some of my time to perform for you a service you deem to have value you give me some of your cash in proportion to the value you perceive. The fact that you see no value in buying the disks because you are educated enough to make them for yourself and you have the time/interest to doesn't mean that everyone else is. One can easily change the oil in their car and I often encourage/train friends how to but I don't see places that offer to change it for you in exchange for a fee as ripping you off.
There are 2 things at work here 1) is the case where I post something and it gets changed relatively soon in that case I can see that perhaps the user who posted the LJ entry should be responsible but there is the other case 2) where 2 years from now www.coolsite.com becomes pr0n pr0n pr0n at this point should I still be responsible for checking that my links point to the content I originally intended? Maybe LJ needs to deactivate links in posts over a certain number of days and print them as text instead of links. Personally I think the whole concept of writing a diary for the world to see is rather foolish but I'm not one of those trendy teeniboppers.
The online purchased version I'm more OK with phoning home but if I were stuck in dial up land and I had to a) have an internet connection just to play b) suck up precious bandwidth phoning home to verify that the software was in fact legit I'd be pretty pissed atleast with the token system for boxed games you have a legit alternative but for it to be of value you have to value being legit, personally I no-cd hack all my games because I hate having to dig around for the CD to put in the drive when I want to play
Might I suggest an easier method? Back in the good ol days when computers were huge and geeks were single they used parallel port dongles to activate software perhaps we should return to this model with a twist go USB instead. I have many many USB ports why not go that route I can attach the key and leave it no need to put the key on some unreliable piece of poly-carbonate. Its hard to copy without special equipment, so presumably there are roughly the same number of keys out there that there are legit copies of the game, I can plug all the keys for all the games in at once if i wish and have enough ports
They're still not done this was filed today:
Form 8-K for SCO GROUP INC
13-Aug-2007
Other Events
Item 8.01. Other Events.
The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO", or the "Company"), offered the following statement in response to the August 10, 2007 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball regarding the Company's longstanding dispute with Novell over ownership of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights:
"We are clearly disappointed by the Court's adverse ruling regarding ownership of copyrights covering the UNIX operating system. Although the district judge ruled in Novell's favor on many important issues, the case has not yet been fully vetted by the legal system and we will continue to explore our options with respect to how we move forward from here.
We note that the court ruled that SCO owns the copyrights to the technology developed or derived by SCO after Novell transferred the assets to SCO in 1995. This includes the new development of all subsequent versions of UnixWare up through the most current release of UnixWare 7.1.4 and substantial portions of SCO UnixWare Gemini 64. We also own the exclusive, worldwide license to use the UnixWare trademark, now owned by The Open Group. Also, SCO's ownership of OpenServer and its Mobile Server platforms was not challenged and remains intact. These SCO platforms continue to drive enterprises large and small, and our rapidly developing mobile business is being well received in the marketplace.
Moreover, the court did not dismiss our claims against Novell regarding the non-compete provisions of the 1995 Technology License Agreement relating to Novell's distribution of Linux to the extent implicated by the technology developed by SCO after 1995. Those issues remain to be litigated." Forward-Looking Statements:
The statements contained in this press release, including but not limited to statements regarding the Company's pending litigation and expectations concerning the Company's developing mobile business OpenServer and Mobile Server platforms and other statements that are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements and are made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. We wish to advise readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, developments in the Company's litigation with Novell and IBM, continued competitive pressure on the Company's operating system products, which could impact the Company's results of operations, adverse developments in and increased or unforeseen legal costs related to the Company's litigation, the inability to devote sufficient resources to the development and marketing of the Company's products, including the Me Inc. mobile services and development platform, and the possibility that companies with whom the Company has formed partnerships will decide to terminate, or reduce the resources devoted to, their partnership with the Company. These and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated are discussed in more detail in the Company's periodic and current filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2006 and Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2007. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which such statements are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after such date.
Basically saying don't leave yet we do own stuff that has value see we can even name it
The flip side of this is that the government decided that it was in the public interest to have a broadcast communication network and that it was unfeasible for them to build it themselves as it would be infrequently used. The result is that they awarded some privileges to the people who did build the network and whom in exchange for the right to restrict the fair-use of their broadcast allow the government use of their network in times of emergency. Now i do believe that anything that the public should benefit in a non-trivial way from any private enterprise that traverses a public good be it railways, entertainment broadcasts, etc... and that any signal that you can receive should be yours to do with as you please as long as you don't interfere with the production of such signal.
As someone who like many other reads of Slashdot has a professional job instead of a 9-5 type job I can say that while I am permitted time off to go vote on any given day the time alloted to the project I'm working on doesn't get extended by that amount of time nor does it make any of my work disapear. I like the way they do it in France, vote on Saturday. All elections are held on Saturday, while this may not make voting any more accessable to people working manufacturing jobs where work schedules can be a mix of weekday days and weekend days it would make voting more accessable to a lot of the country. It would also become a family activity where mom and dad can go vote and take their kids with them, perhaps even have a discussion about what they're going to do, who they're going to vote for a why.
We do its call an election, it is your duty to investigate the candidates the best you can prior to choosing which one to vote for. This does not mean seeing the (R),(D) or (U) next to their name and deciding that you've investigated them.
I thought Kennedy was a Democrat when he did something similar in the 1960's, oh wait that wasn't a war it was a police action.
As someone who carries a national ID in disguise, a commercial driver's license (CDL), every day of my life and having some exposure to the rationale for national IDs. The story starts way back in the 1950
:) )
s and before where each state did their own driver's licensing and didn't talk to eachother about anything. This left a huge law enforcement problem where one truck driver could have many licenses from as many states as there were at the time and often did so that in case one got suspended another could be used. This was fixed in the 1990's when the DoT took over the issuing of commercial driver's licenses to the extent that there is a check done when you apply for a license, renewal, or duplicate that you don't have any other licenses, that you are who you say you are, and that you are in the system as qualified (passed a road test and the written tests). So the way the system works today my NH issued CDL already has a whole bunch of extra information attached to it in some computer somewhere.
This is the part where the relevance comes back, I'm OK with a national ID card system as long as there are significant restrictions put in place as to who can demand access to it and what the identifying number can be used for. I see that system where the requirement to produce such identification is clearly defined to be a benefit over the current system where anyone can require you to produce your "identification" for any purpose and that identification can have a variety of information on it and based on the state where your state issued ID card was issued may fall at any point in the spectrum of counterfitability.
Moving to a uniform standard for the card seems like a good thing so that for example you won't be detained for extra time at a traffic stop in NJ if you have a license from Alaska because the officer is unfamiliar with the document and thinks it somehow looks forged. Also different states take different measures to protect the data on your license in NH your license number is composed of the month you were born, the first 2 letters of your last name, the first letter of your first name, the day of the month you were born, the last 2 digits of the year you were born, and a sequence number. This seems pretty easy to forge and to find if someone were stealing your identity. When I moved out of Massachusetts they were still using your social security number as the default but you could ask for a randomly assigned S number if you wanted.
Is REALID perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it does seem better than the current system where state IDs are handed out like candy in 50 different varieties that law enforcement has to make sense of, with varying degrees of protection for your personal information, and in a fashion where you can go around collecting IDs from many states (as long as you don't want a CDL
What makes this wrong? If I were going to seek people to supervise an industry I'd sure as hell want people who had a background in that industry so yes you do chose folks from drug companies to supervise drug companies you do chose anti-trust lawyers to run anti-trust divisions of the DoJ.
Taking this up one level to that of governments who last I checked were **supposed to** be role models, isn't the CIA/NSA's bread and butter circumventing DRM schemes in an effort to read documents that the originator (other country) wanted kept secret? If the DMCA isn't good enough for gov't work then it shouldn't be implemented on a civil level either.
Seen any Quentin Tarantino movies where fake blood wasn't bought by the tanker truck?
You sideswipe an interesting subject here. What every happened to Vista forcing users to have unprivleged accounts? I use it and as the first installed user I seem to have had them from day 1 and since I turned off UAC I don't get harassed every minute by it telling me that I may somehow be putting my PC at risk. So indeed what about those LUAs?
While I appreciate your comment that they have the opportunity to throw them out at the next election that opportunity will remain just that and nothing else. To be voted out of office in MA takes some serious doing. For an example look at their senior senitor the Honorable Edward M Kennedy, he's often publicly intoxicated, and has even been involved in fleeing the scene of an accident where his campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne was killed as a result of drowning after the car he was driving was driven off a bridge. I feel all their jobs are safe after all being a drunken murderer isn't enough to keep you from getting reelected.
actually is was more like "Boing Boing is uhhh c..cwearwy some type of expwosive dewice"
This comes back to if you want more pay more, for most of my printing the ink being readable after more than a month is insignificant as the paper is likely to have been recycled by then and nobody has stated that the ink fades to being unreadable in a period.
In my parent's zip code DSL became available no later than 1998 but that was a very small section of the town, they weren't able to get anything past 26.4k dial up until 2002 when Comcast got their act together and offered 3Mbit service. The surprising part is that this was in an affluent suburban town about 20 miles from Boston.
The telcos can tell me as a matter of fact if they can provide me service and to what level immediately when I call to order service, why doesn't the FCC require this level of detail as its already available.
Not only that but it will be atleast $6B cheaper than the big dig in Boston and take considerably less time while being orders of magnitude longer
This is why I did my taxes with TaxCut in February as soon as the documents were available then as I owed money waited until Saturday to mail my return. That way there were no 4/15 surprises over how much was owed, any technical problems could be avoided and the line at the post office was fairly short. Its called planning folks its not news that taxes are due within a couple of days of 4/15. I could understand it if you were new to the country, or just started working for the first time and this is a new process for you but why do people who should know better insist on waiting until the 11th hour to even calculate the amount they are getting back or paying?
The problem being that Windows XP doesn't install on SATA hardware without help so many people who still use XP also like IDE hardware because it just works especially Intel's IDE hardware. So until Vista and SATA CD-ROM drives become more common this seems like a premature move.