Ah, you must be one of those "self-made, pulled-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps" people I keep hearing so much about, the kind they would trot out on stage at the republican national convention. You spent lots of time stereotyping and insulting me but I can't help but notice you neglected to elaborate on how you single-handedly escaped poverty with nothing but your own two hands. I'm sure lots of people would love to know. Secondly, I have no idea how old you are (or how much of what you said is true) but it's gotten a lot harder to climb the ladder these last few decades. Do you feel confident that if you lost everything today, you would be able to rebuild if you had zero resources at your disposal? That's where society comes in. However, the pull-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps people tend to be hypocrites, kind of like how Ted Cruz is asking for FEMA money after that fertilizer plant blew up that town (all due to a lack of safety regulation) a few weeks ago. Of course, a self-sufficient person like you would refuse help no matter how bad your situation was, right?
Where exactly did I ask for a handout? All I want is a society that fosters social mobility and has a decent safety net for when things go wrong.
You'd rather live in a society where there is no escape from poverty if you weren't talented^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hlucky enough to be born a millionaire? That's where we're headed if what TFA is about becomes commonplace. The idea is that everyone pays for it through taxes. This inherent selfishness of "I've got mine so fuck everybody else" is what is destroying my country and I'm sick of it! All the conservatives who bitch about taking care of other people have benefited far more from society than they can fathom and yet they can't see it. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization and part of civilization is making sure that everyone has a decent standard of living. Yes, you're paying for other people, but guess what? Other people are paying for you at the same time so it all works out. If you don't want to pay taxes you clearly don't want to live in a civilized country either.
What you're describing is fascism, not progressivism. Ever since Reagan, the USA has been going balls-out towards fascism. Lots of people would say that we're already there. Us progressives want to create a society that cares about its people instead of just the very rich and where it's possible for everyone to achieve a decent standard of living regardless of where they start at on the socioeconomic ladder.
Oh please. Reagan was the death knell for the middle class. It's all been downhill since that idiot got elected. Even his fellow republicans thought his economic policies were bullshit. Open your mouth and catch some of that nice warm golden trickle-down. Tastes good, doesn't it?
It's already institutionalized to the point where I'm ashamed of this country. Any society where the rich can steal everything that's not nailed down with utter impunity is an absolute shithole to live in at best and doomed to fail at the worst. How many wall street bankers have been prosecuted? If it were up to me they would be dragged out and literally crucified. There are more than enough resources to go around; the problem is the rich don't want to share. Income inequality in the USA is at the highest level it's been since the gilded age.
Nowadays we have proper source control so it's easy to commit changes and revert to a prior iteration if you break something. As far as backup goes, I use Github as my first line of defense because it's accessable from everywhere and cloning/syncing the latest codebase between machines is trivial. Github isn't going away anytime soon so it's relatively safe to rely on but I still create tarball backups and store them on my computer and offsite. The only downside of using old-fashioned tarballs as backup is that you eventually end up with a directory full of redundant archives (containing ancient code) that you're probably never going to use again. Source control is just better.
Back when I was a kid I remember seeing a Highlander cartoon on several occasions. It was kind of a wierd show b/c at that point I hadn't seen the movies yet so it took a few episodes before I figured out WTF was going on. The animation quality wasn't as bad as some kids' shows were back in the day but they made Highlander more kid-friendly; characters didn't have to behead each other to absorb a quickening anymore--they just held a sword and a beam of light shot up into the sky or something like that (it's been awhile since I've seen it).
If that person wanted to read on the beach, a dead-tree book might be the best option in such a hostile environment. Abrasive sand will get everywhere just from the wind (probably scratching the screen) but she could just shake the sand out of the book without harming it. Even if the book falls in the water it will probably still be good after it dries out. Try that with a Kindle.. salt water will fry every circuit it has. I've seen Kindles survive being dropped in fresh water (granted, they were immediately rescued and stowed in bags of rice to dry out) but salt water is a way better conductor than fresh so fatal shorting is practically guaranteed.
Re:That's the inconvenient truth of "the simple li
on
Iceman Had Bad Teeth
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Mod parent up.
To compare the Romans to cavemen is an insult. Romans were extremely advanced for the time. The legions (when not fighting) could build damn near anything and could build it to last. Roman roads survived the middle ages with little to no maintenance and are still servicable today. Meanwhile, our roads quickly crumble and deteriorate without yearly maintenance. Roman aquaducts and sewers meant that cities had running water and decent sanitation (including flush toilets), something not seen again until the late 19th-20th century. After the collapse of Rome, Europe would spend the next 1800 years shitting in a bucket. Romans even had a primitive steam engine. It wasn't deployed much (if at all) outside of design drawings but a steam-powered vehicle could have been possible if the empire had lasted a bit longer.
Does Windows 95 even run on modern hardware? I remember that getting Windows 98 SE to work in a virtual machine was a pain in the ass even after I found a floppy image that worked (b/c Microsoft in their infinite wisdom didn't or couldn't make a bootable CD image back in the day) because it didn't recognize any of the VM hardware and everything barely worked at the lowest-common-denominator level. For instance, the best video support I could get was 16-color 640x480 (i.e. absolute shit). Forget about sound or network access. I'm guessing the only reason why the Win98 installer found the blank hard disk file at all is because VMware was propping everything up and making it work behind the scenes. Hell, you couldn't install Win95 on a brand new PC without resorting to some kind of USB boot disk trickery because most new machines don't even have floppy drives anymore.
I remember the LucasArts games back in their heyday (titles like Outlaws, Dark Forces, Dark Forces II Jedi Knight, etc). One thing I liked about Lucasarts games is they tended to be very mod-friendly; I was part of a community that kept Jedi Knight alive long past its prime with everything ranging from simple weapon mods to custom maps to total conversions. The things that old game engine could do in the right hands were simply amazing.
From what I've heard, carriers in other countries are far superior (better service, period) to what we have in the US. Trying to wring every last dime from the customer is par for the course in this country. Why else would we have crippled, locked-down phones that force you to pay extra to use built-in features like tethering, an absolutely absurd system where the recipient pays for SMS messages (thereby allowing scammers like Jamster to spam people with impunity), and so-called "unlimited" data plans with caps?
The whole phone system in this country needs serious government regulation since they can't seem to "regulate" themselves without fucking everybody over in the process. Trust the private sector to regulate themselves, indeed. I have no idea how anyone can say that with a straight face.
Would bacteria even be viable after 200K+ years of hibernation (that's assuming the hypothetical planet is capable of supporting them in the first place)?
Why not run a company as a democracy? Everyone would be equal and would have equal power. Decisions that affect the entire company (like hiring/firing) can be done through popular vote (just hold meetings to get admin-type stuff done). Since everyone would be accountable to everyone else there would be no need for hierarchy and a manager class to lord it over everybody.
I prefer quality over quantity. We had to wait awhile to get Half Life 2 and Portal 2 but they were worth it. That said, I wish they would hurry up and finish HL2: Episode 3. IIRC it's been nearly 5 years since Episode 2 came out.
We follow all the laws, treat people with respect, don't use robocallers, and never threaten them with false claims.
And I'm supposed to take your word for all that? I have yet to meet an "honest" debt collector. If you say that someone owes a debt, the burden is on YOU to prove it! Good luck with that.
I definitely feel for you for having to deal with these scumbags at a time like that. They probably only stopped because the statute of limitations in your state ran its course. The fight is not over until the debt is out of statute because if you beat one collector they will just turn around and sell the debt to another collection agency (and the fight starts over again with the new guys). If a debt is out of statute nobody can ever touch it again (at that point, it's time to celebrate). If it ever happens again, send them a C&D letter or file a Sworn Denial if there's already a case number attached to the debt. Demand to see the original signed contract and see how quickly they back down. If they can't produce the contract at the hearing, motion for dismissal.
Yes, I've done all this (against several creditors simultaneously) so I speak from experience. I spent a lot of years building up good credit but when the economy got bad a few years ago it hit me really hard. At that point, I had nothing to lose so I had a "fuck it" mentality and just defaulted on my debts. I never planned on it, it's just how life went. I'm lucky that I had a friend teach me how to do all of this; most people get stomped into the ground or fucked over on a settlement deal because they don't know how to fight back.
There is a huge difference between defaulting on secured (car, house, etc.) and unsecured debt. If you default on your house you will face foreclosure. That is really hard to beat but it can still be done if you can prove corrupted chain of title (i.e. your lender no longer holds your mortgage). If you have a lot of equity in your property and fall behind on payments your lender may deliberately botch a loan mod so they can evict you and steal your equity. The biggest criminals in this country run the banks. Dealing with foreclosure fraud will be the most god-awful fight of your life and makes this other stuff look easy by comparison.
Beating credit card debt is easy because there's nothing they can really do to you. Until they actually sue (if it gets that far) all they can do is try to intimidate and scare you. Even then, the FDCPA limits what they can do (if they break the FDCPA you can sue them and get a nice default judgement). Their entire case against you is shaky from day one because they have to prove everything. They are not going to repo your stuff and they can't garnish your wages without a court order and that's only if you fail to kick them to the curb by demanding to see the original contract during the hearing. Lots of people get fucked over with garnishments because they panic/do nothing and the collector gets a default judgement against them.
Oh, it's far from fun. It's a hellish ordeal that may take a year or more to finish (fortunately, it's not an everyday thing and each move may be separated by a month or more). If you do this, you're basically going to war against the collectors but the fight is worth it because you have all the advantages and the law is on your side. The burden of proof is always on the creditor (never on you). Collectors don't want people to know their rights, that's why they are such aggressive and abusive little shits. Their goal is to beat people into submission. Most people declare bankruptcy because it's the easy way out. People don't want to go through this bullshit and that's what these assholes are counting on when they start harassing people. From a victim's point of view, a 50% settlement deal looks pretty good after 6 months of harassment. People are willing to settle to just make the problem go away. Well guess what? The collector paid a pittance for that debt and they never expected to get the whole thing. Even at 50% they're still making a profit, which is what this is all about (it's just another way of financially raping people down on their luck). On the other hand, you have people like me who get pissed off enough to fight back when that happens. It's immensely satisfying to curb-stomp the bastards and beat them at their own game.
There's all kinds of ways you can fuck with these collectors (even the ones who are allegedly law firms) to retaliate for the shit they put you through. For instance, you can deliberately wait until nearly the last minute to file important paperwork for your court case (they have to pay a paralegal to handle that and a rush job costs them a lot more and increases the chances they will overlook something important you can use against them later). The idea is to cost them as much money as possible (to the point where they wish they never heard of you since you're costing them a lot with a zero rate of return) so they will give up. Since you're handling your case pro se in these situations, you can do all kinds of shit that could get a lawyer in trouble and there's not much the collector can do about it.
That, and the Fair Debt Collections Act are unenforceable in the days of IP telephony.
Partially true. The FDCPA still has teeth but there are far better ways to wield it than talk to those assholes on the phone. If they start calling over unsecured credit card debt, ignore the calls but wait for them to send something in the mail (it will probably happen really soon once they start calling). What you need to do next is send a certified cease-and-desist letter to their physical brick-and-mortar office. Many of these fuckers are sneaky and work out of various PO boxes around the country but they always have a real office somewhere; spending a bit of time on Google usually helps you find it.
Your c/d letter should make several claims: disavow all responsibility for the debt; Demand an immediate cessation of all phone and written correspondence; if they are out of state demand to see their proof of license (and license number) to operate in [your home state here]; and threaten to report them to your state attorney general if they ever contact you again without providing the required license info. If they do it again, make good on your threat! Don't threaten to report them to the better business bureau---it's an empty threat because for all its posturing the BBB can't do shit. On the other hand, having to deal with an AG investigation usually makes collectors piss themselves. You need to understand that these are real dickless cowards. If you make it clear you intend to fight they will probably leave you alone since there are lots of other people they can shake down instead (they buy these delinquent accounts in bulk for pennies on the dollar and then try to collect).
If they actually sue you, it's time to break out the big guns: You need to file a Sworn Denial on Account in the jurisdiction that is handling your case. This the the equivilent of a not guilty plea; you officially deny the debt and require the plaintiff to furnish proof. Never take any settlement offers or deals; they will still try to fuck you with those and the burden of proof is always on them. The important thing to remember is that they are fucked unless they can produce the original signed contract in court since that is the only way to prove that you owe a debt.
Addendum: The only way I'd agree to pay $5 for an ebook is if most of it is going to the author (not the publisher). The author did the work so they deserve to get paid more than the middle man does. If the publisher is going to take all the profit, then piss on 'em. Otherwise, 99 cents for a DRM-free ebook in the format of my choice sounds fair to me.
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Ah, you must be one of those "self-made, pulled-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps" people I keep hearing so much about, the kind they would trot out on stage at the republican national convention. You spent lots of time stereotyping and insulting me but I can't help but notice you neglected to elaborate on how you single-handedly escaped poverty with nothing but your own two hands. I'm sure lots of people would love to know. Secondly, I have no idea how old you are (or how much of what you said is true) but it's gotten a lot harder to climb the ladder these last few decades. Do you feel confident that if you lost everything today, you would be able to rebuild if you had zero resources at your disposal? That's where society comes in. However, the pull-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps people tend to be hypocrites, kind of like how Ted Cruz is asking for FEMA money after that fertilizer plant blew up that town (all due to a lack of safety regulation) a few weeks ago. Of course, a self-sufficient person like you would refuse help no matter how bad your situation was, right?
Where exactly did I ask for a handout? All I want is a society that fosters social mobility and has a decent safety net for when things go wrong.
You'd rather live in a society where there is no escape from poverty if you weren't talented^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hlucky enough to be born a millionaire? That's where we're headed if what TFA is about becomes commonplace. The idea is that everyone pays for it through taxes. This inherent selfishness of "I've got mine so fuck everybody else" is what is destroying my country and I'm sick of it! All the conservatives who bitch about taking care of other people have benefited far more from society than they can fathom and yet they can't see it. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization and part of civilization is making sure that everyone has a decent standard of living. Yes, you're paying for other people, but guess what? Other people are paying for you at the same time so it all works out. If you don't want to pay taxes you clearly don't want to live in a civilized country either.
What you're describing is fascism, not progressivism. Ever since Reagan, the USA has been going balls-out towards fascism. Lots of people would say that we're already there. Us progressives want to create a society that cares about its people instead of just the very rich and where it's possible for everyone to achieve a decent standard of living regardless of where they start at on the socioeconomic ladder.
Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry, I should have been more clear.
How well does MariaDB work with Qt 4.x? I haven't had a chance to test it for myself yet.
Oh please. Reagan was the death knell for the middle class. It's all been downhill since that idiot got elected. Even his fellow republicans thought his economic policies were bullshit. Open your mouth and catch some of that nice warm golden trickle-down. Tastes good, doesn't it?
It's already institutionalized to the point where I'm ashamed of this country. Any society where the rich can steal everything that's not nailed down with utter impunity is an absolute shithole to live in at best and doomed to fail at the worst. How many wall street bankers have been prosecuted? If it were up to me they would be dragged out and literally crucified. There are more than enough resources to go around; the problem is the rich don't want to share. Income inequality in the USA is at the highest level it's been since the gilded age.
And you truly think the rich don't steal and redistribute? Their actions are what made the economy shit the bed in the first place.
Nowadays we have proper source control so it's easy to commit changes and revert to a prior iteration if you break something. As far as backup goes, I use Github as my first line of defense because it's accessable from everywhere and cloning/syncing the latest codebase between machines is trivial. Github isn't going away anytime soon so it's relatively safe to rely on but I still create tarball backups and store them on my computer and offsite. The only downside of using old-fashioned tarballs as backup is that you eventually end up with a directory full of redundant archives (containing ancient code) that you're probably never going to use again. Source control is just better.
Back when I was a kid I remember seeing a Highlander cartoon on several occasions. It was kind of a wierd show b/c at that point I hadn't seen the movies yet so it took a few episodes before I figured out WTF was going on. The animation quality wasn't as bad as some kids' shows were back in the day but they made Highlander more kid-friendly; characters didn't have to behead each other to absorb a quickening anymore--they just held a sword and a beam of light shot up into the sky or something like that (it's been awhile since I've seen it).
If that person wanted to read on the beach, a dead-tree book might be the best option in such a hostile environment. Abrasive sand will get everywhere just from the wind (probably scratching the screen) but she could just shake the sand out of the book without harming it. Even if the book falls in the water it will probably still be good after it dries out. Try that with a Kindle.. salt water will fry every circuit it has. I've seen Kindles survive being dropped in fresh water (granted, they were immediately rescued and stowed in bags of rice to dry out) but salt water is a way better conductor than fresh so fatal shorting is practically guaranteed.
Mod parent up.
To compare the Romans to cavemen is an insult. Romans were extremely advanced for the time. The legions (when not fighting) could build damn near anything and could build it to last. Roman roads survived the middle ages with little to no maintenance and are still servicable today. Meanwhile, our roads quickly crumble and deteriorate without yearly maintenance. Roman aquaducts and sewers meant that cities had running water and decent sanitation (including flush toilets), something not seen again until the late 19th-20th century. After the collapse of Rome, Europe would spend the next 1800 years shitting in a bucket. Romans even had a primitive steam engine. It wasn't deployed much (if at all) outside of design drawings but a steam-powered vehicle could have been possible if the empire had lasted a bit longer.
Does Windows 95 even run on modern hardware? I remember that getting Windows 98 SE to work in a virtual machine was a pain in the ass even after I found a floppy image that worked (b/c Microsoft in their infinite wisdom didn't or couldn't make a bootable CD image back in the day) because it didn't recognize any of the VM hardware and everything barely worked at the lowest-common-denominator level. For instance, the best video support I could get was 16-color 640x480 (i.e. absolute shit). Forget about sound or network access. I'm guessing the only reason why the Win98 installer found the blank hard disk file at all is because VMware was propping everything up and making it work behind the scenes. Hell, you couldn't install Win95 on a brand new PC without resorting to some kind of USB boot disk trickery because most new machines don't even have floppy drives anymore.
Seriously, fuck Disney!
I remember the LucasArts games back in their heyday (titles like Outlaws, Dark Forces, Dark Forces II Jedi Knight, etc). One thing I liked about Lucasarts games is they tended to be very mod-friendly; I was part of a community that kept Jedi Knight alive long past its prime with everything ranging from simple weapon mods to custom maps to total conversions. The things that old game engine could do in the right hands were simply amazing.
I have zero confidence in the SCOTUS ever since Citizens United.
From what I've heard, carriers in other countries are far superior (better service, period) to what we have in the US. Trying to wring every last dime from the customer is par for the course in this country. Why else would we have crippled, locked-down phones that force you to pay extra to use built-in features like tethering, an absolutely absurd system where the recipient pays for SMS messages (thereby allowing scammers like Jamster to spam people with impunity), and so-called "unlimited" data plans with caps?
The whole phone system in this country needs serious government regulation since they can't seem to "regulate" themselves without fucking everybody over in the process. Trust the private sector to regulate themselves, indeed. I have no idea how anyone can say that with a straight face.
Would bacteria even be viable after 200K+ years of hibernation (that's assuming the hypothetical planet is capable of supporting them in the first place)?
Why not run a company as a democracy? Everyone would be equal and would have equal power. Decisions that affect the entire company (like hiring /firing) can be done through popular vote (just hold meetings to get admin-type stuff done). Since everyone would be accountable to everyone else there would be no need for hierarchy and a manager class to lord it over everybody.
I prefer quality over quantity. We had to wait awhile to get Half Life 2 and Portal 2 but they were worth it. That said, I wish they would hurry up and finish HL2: Episode 3. IIRC it's been nearly 5 years since Episode 2 came out.
And I'm supposed to take your word for all that? I have yet to meet an "honest" debt collector. If you say that someone owes a debt, the burden is on YOU to prove it! Good luck with that.
I definitely feel for you for having to deal with these scumbags at a time like that. They probably only stopped because the statute of limitations in your state ran its course. The fight is not over until the debt is out of statute because if you beat one collector they will just turn around and sell the debt to another collection agency (and the fight starts over again with the new guys). If a debt is out of statute nobody can ever touch it again (at that point, it's time to celebrate). If it ever happens again, send them a C&D letter or file a Sworn Denial if there's already a case number attached to the debt. Demand to see the original signed contract and see how quickly they back down. If they can't produce the contract at the hearing, motion for dismissal.
Yes, I've done all this (against several creditors simultaneously) so I speak from experience. I spent a lot of years building up good credit but when the economy got bad a few years ago it hit me really hard. At that point, I had nothing to lose so I had a "fuck it" mentality and just defaulted on my debts. I never planned on it, it's just how life went. I'm lucky that I had a friend teach me how to do all of this; most people get stomped into the ground or fucked over on a settlement deal because they don't know how to fight back.
There is a huge difference between defaulting on secured (car, house, etc.) and unsecured debt. If you default on your house you will face foreclosure. That is really hard to beat but it can still be done if you can prove corrupted chain of title (i.e. your lender no longer holds your mortgage). If you have a lot of equity in your property and fall behind on payments your lender may deliberately botch a loan mod so they can evict you and steal your equity. The biggest criminals in this country run the banks. Dealing with foreclosure fraud will be the most god-awful fight of your life and makes this other stuff look easy by comparison.
Beating credit card debt is easy because there's nothing they can really do to you. Until they actually sue (if it gets that far) all they can do is try to intimidate and scare you. Even then, the FDCPA limits what they can do (if they break the FDCPA you can sue them and get a nice default judgement). Their entire case against you is shaky from day one because they have to prove everything. They are not going to repo your stuff and they can't garnish your wages without a court order and that's only if you fail to kick them to the curb by demanding to see the original contract during the hearing. Lots of people get fucked over with garnishments because they panic/do nothing and the collector gets a default judgement against them.
Oh, it's far from fun. It's a hellish ordeal that may take a year or more to finish (fortunately, it's not an everyday thing and each move may be separated by a month or more). If you do this, you're basically going to war against the collectors but the fight is worth it because you have all the advantages and the law is on your side. The burden of proof is always on the creditor (never on you). Collectors don't want people to know their rights, that's why they are such aggressive and abusive little shits. Their goal is to beat people into submission. Most people declare bankruptcy because it's the easy way out. People don't want to go through this bullshit and that's what these assholes are counting on when they start harassing people. From a victim's point of view, a 50% settlement deal looks pretty good after 6 months of harassment. People are willing to settle to just make the problem go away. Well guess what? The collector paid a pittance for that debt and they never expected to get the whole thing. Even at 50% they're still making a profit, which is what this is all about (it's just another way of financially raping people down on their luck). On the other hand, you have people like me who get pissed off enough to fight back when that happens. It's immensely satisfying to curb-stomp the bastards and beat them at their own game.
There's all kinds of ways you can fuck with these collectors (even the ones who are allegedly law firms) to retaliate for the shit they put you through. For instance, you can deliberately wait until nearly the last minute to file important paperwork for your court case (they have to pay a paralegal to handle that and a rush job costs them a lot more and increases the chances they will overlook something important you can use against them later). The idea is to cost them as much money as possible (to the point where they wish they never heard of you since you're costing them a lot with a zero rate of return) so they will give up. Since you're handling your case pro se in these situations, you can do all kinds of shit that could get a lawyer in trouble and there's not much the collector can do about it.
Partially true. The FDCPA still has teeth but there are far better ways to wield it than talk to those assholes on the phone. If they start calling over unsecured credit card debt, ignore the calls but wait for them to send something in the mail (it will probably happen really soon once they start calling). What you need to do next is send a certified cease-and-desist letter to their physical brick-and-mortar office. Many of these fuckers are sneaky and work out of various PO boxes around the country but they always have a real office somewhere; spending a bit of time on Google usually helps you find it.
Your c/d letter should make several claims: disavow all responsibility for the debt; Demand an immediate cessation of all phone and written correspondence; if they are out of state demand to see their proof of license (and license number) to operate in [your home state here]; and threaten to report them to your state attorney general if they ever contact you again without providing the required license info. If they do it again, make good on your threat! Don't threaten to report them to the better business bureau---it's an empty threat because for all its posturing the BBB can't do shit. On the other hand, having to deal with an AG investigation usually makes collectors piss themselves. You need to understand that these are real dickless cowards. If you make it clear you intend to fight they will probably leave you alone since there are lots of other people they can shake down instead (they buy these delinquent accounts in bulk for pennies on the dollar and then try to collect).
If they actually sue you, it's time to break out the big guns: You need to file a Sworn Denial on Account in the jurisdiction that is handling your case. This the the equivilent of a not guilty plea; you officially deny the debt and require the plaintiff to furnish proof. Never take any settlement offers or deals; they will still try to fuck you with those and the burden of proof is always on them. The important thing to remember is that they are fucked unless they can produce the original signed contract in court since that is the only way to prove that you owe a debt.
Addendum: The only way I'd agree to pay $5 for an ebook is if most of it is going to the author (not the publisher). The author did the work so they deserve to get paid more than the middle man does. If the publisher is going to take all the profit, then piss on 'em. Otherwise, 99 cents for a DRM-free ebook in the format of my choice sounds fair to me.