Yeah, I know, this is pretty optimistic, but there are a couple of factors which make me optimistic.
1/ This has the power to mightily piss off some major players. Itunes & Netflix will be directly and negatively impacted. Where Time Warner has a monopoly and use it to the detriment of a competitor (Itunes or Netflix), then you can sure that those two are not going to sit back and say "damn, there goes our business model", especially when Time Warner is delivering their own competing product at subsidised rates. Lobbyists will be called, major pressure will be brought to bear.
2/ This would be a major and detrimental change to peoples contracts, so they would be free to cancel without penalty (they probably won't know it, and the cable companies will try to deny it, but...).
I would be happy with $ per Gb charging, as long as I had real competition with the suppliers. Let the bandwidth hogs pay more than grandma. The idea is not bad, but there needs to be some real changes to stop it from being just another ploy to tighten their grip over digital content provision. The good thing is there are getting some mightily powerful players on the other side of the fence now.
But at least if it is YOUR employee who leaves their laptop full of data in the back seat of the car, you will have the satisfaction of beating him to a bloody pulp while you lament the loss of the data and try to figure out how much damage it will cause.
If it is online, some complete stranger who you cannot beat to a pulp can still leave their laptop with your data in the backseat of their car. And your employee whill still do it anyway, because they decided it was a good idea to save it locally because "insert stupid reason here".
We are constantly hearing about "x organisation" employee losing a laptop full of social security numbers etc. We don't hear about google docs (feel free to insert another company) employee losing a laptop full of your documents. So do you think that this is because they don't lose them, or because it is not reported? I know where my money is.
Yeah, that does kindof make sense. I would be surprised if the head honchos in the TV division even knew about, let alone supported the idea, so why punish them?
The reason is that despite what people say, companies have a culture. And this company is saying "we want to lock down the use of this media so we can extract the maximum posible revenue from consumers by requiring them to repurchase content, and we can do whatever we like to their property in this aim" This sort of thing does flow across division boundaries. You don't have one division acting like utter scum while all the others are helping little old ladies across the street.
Also, in any big company, there are a range of people. It is possible that there is one scumbag who decided it was a good idea and pushed it out while all of the good guys were not looking. In that case, when the good guys find out, there will be a public hanging and a good deal of making things better, because they know that they have betrayed trust. Scumbags on the other hand will just close ranks and deny everything.
If Sony owns 50% of SonyBMG, they have a lot of sway about what goes on there. If top Sony exec says "we should do this", then BMG will have to do a lot of work to do the opposite. Sony is therefore culpable for the actions of SonyBMG.
The next problem is when you boycott a media provider you are also boycotting the media producer. If you like Band X, then you have two choices, buy Sony AND Band X, or neither. The Sony business model is such that a few people avoiding their favorite band will not cost Sony a great deal, but will hit the band relatively more. Big ticket items on the other hand...
So, guess what Sony, when I was looking for a new HDTV this weekend, you weren't on the list of brands I would look at, because of this.
Oh yeah, and I am now looking for a new DVD player as well. Still a bit up in the air about formats, but guess which side I am leaning towards? Though that one has a little to do with past successes (beta, memorystick, minidisc, firewire...) as well.
I have had Sony stuff before, and have been really impressed (nothing came close to my Vaio), so I think it is pretty sad, but they acted like scum so deserve what they get. And they aren't getting my cash.
While I can understand that there are nutbars everywhere, and you have to be careful of them, your comment stuns me.
Something about the cable company was bad enough to send enough people crazy. Management decided that this was not good. So they decided to come up with a process to deal with people who go non-linear in your office?
Wouldn't it have been better to fix whatever the company was doing to drive them insane?
Kubuntu is now significantly simpler to install than XP.
My wife's laptop (XP) went pearshaped in a way that MS said the only thing that could be done was reinstall. I chose to go dual boot, XP & Kubuntu.
XP was a nightmare, with instructions that didn't make sense, and left you with an incomplete setup - internet not working, drivers to find etc. Kubuntu (other than the fact that when you were assiging partitions, did not tell you that it wouldn't kill the other partitions) was a dream. A few simple questions, and you were done.
For me the killer though was hardware support. I couldn't get my scanner working. It is an old scanner, and HP has no working XP drivers.
I have seen this a couple of times. If you feel the need to run the latest and greatest everything, then go windows. If you don't see the need to buy all new hardware when one part dies, then Linux is the way to go.
It still doesn't change the fact that reinstalls are a dog any time, and Windows has the advantage in it comes preinstalled.
This law is also well suited to collaborative development, as it should not be hugely controversial.
The Police Act is the law which gives the Police their authority to act on events which other laws (like the Crimes Act) have made illegal. The Crimes Act says growing drugs is illegal, the Police Act says that the Police can only break down doors looking for it if they have followed x procedure.
One of the biggest problems with laws is where there is inconsistency or vagueness leading to unintended consequences. Many eyes will help catch a lot of these.
You are right that it will not be a bargain for everyone but:
Why should I subsidise the viewing habits of others? Yeah, all of the others for $10 per month are reasonable, but I don't want ESPN. Why must I pay for it?
By providing more transparancy, the power of ESPN will be reduced. In the end this is likely to be a good thing for the consumer. I will get to chose that I don't want ESPN, and Comcast will have some ammunition to say 30% of our subscribers will not pay $20 for your channel.
If it is so bad for the consumers, then you would expect the cable companies to be all over it. They aren't.
These are interesting points, and I understand that you don't have the power to change the cable company, but to my mind their arguement essentially boils down to this:
We the cable company as a monopoly, will force our customers to pay for things they do not want, and will blame it on our suppliers, who are a cartel who want to restrict the opportunities of their competition.
Sorry, doesn't cut it.
Might be worth telling someone in programming land that there are customers out there who would love to tell ESPN to stick it, and like to watch the sports that they don't like or allow.
If someone is willing to throw in channels d,e& f for $1 per month if I buy a & b for $2, fine. But don't expect me to jump with joy when I find the basic package d through f so someone else gets to watch x & y cheaper.
This is not solely a MS to OO problem. It is a problem with ANY change.
Back in the day, I was involved with switching from Wordperfect 5.1 to Word.
Without exception, the users hated it. And the ones who were only mildly annoyed about having to learn something new would listen to the rabid ones and agree with them because it was the easiest thing to do. Talk to people individually, they were ok with changing, but once you were out of the room, it was a different story.
There it was relatively easy, WP (dos) needed to be replaced, and WP for Windows was a steaming pile, there was no choice. But when you switch from Office to OO, then there is nothing* wrong with Office.
Same as any software change really. By changing something, you are going to make peoples lives worse - they will have something new to learn, and for the majority this is a bad thing. You will be impacting peoples work a lot. Take away your favourite tool and replace it with something *slightly* different, and see how much fun it is. If you don't have one, try switching to one of the European keyboards which have a couple of keys in different places. For the change to succeed, then the users have to WANT it to. Why do they want to change office suites? Because the company saves money? Woohoo!
We screwed up the soft side of making people want to change, and it eventually came down to you *will* like it, or you will like working somewhere else. The minority of people who reinstalled WP were eventually forced into Office because they couldn't share files with anyone.
* For a limited definition of nothing, ie millions of people manage to do their work on it every day, and it is all they know. Please note that this is significantly different to such things as best practice, ideal etc.
How about we think about these first:
Suspended/surrendered license = no money
If your licence is physically taken off you, then you will need to use something else to pay for your goods. Like maybe your visa. Or cash. If they don't take that little plastic card, the key is still there, so using it for a payment system still works.
Hacked debit card = hacked license
Given that they don't change the data on the license, just read it and use it as a key, this isn't an issue. If someone wants to clone your card, they can do it onto any card with a mag strip today.
numerous swipes = worn card + license
Fair call. It would be interesting to know if drivers licences are as sturdy as credit cards there. Guess the early adopters will find out.
What is the benefit for me? Nada.
Well, if you RTFM (I know, I know), the benefit for you is pretty simple.
10 off per gallon Whether this is worth your while to deal with another financial institution is up to you
Oh, and because if someone finds/steals your wallet now, then all they have to do is drive to the nearest gas station, insert your credit card, fill up and drive off. This card system means that they have to insert a card and enter your pin number, which I at least are not in the habit of keeping with in my wallet. Of course if you sign up for the scheme and someone steals your wallet, it doesn't prevent them from using your credit card to buy gas, but that does not mean that this scheme is either insecure or worthless
If the lights are annoying, remove them. That is what wire cutters, soldering irons, screw drivers and hammers are for. Use all or some of these as your skills and mood dictate.
And if the light just happens to be a critical part of the circuit, well, the light won't be bothering you anymore will it?
But seriously, you complain that the light is too bright, but are not enough of a geek to open it up, remove the offending item and replace it with one which isn't so bright/is a less offensive colour?
And don't forget that this was not an isolated example. Both the Dutch and British East India Companies issued their own coins - about as much of an indication of sovereignty as there is. The Hudson Bay Company used to be a slightly larger land owner than it is now - basically half of North America, including big chunks of what is now the US. The history of these companies is fascinating, check it out some time.
So the explosivevs aren't dangerous until you mix them. Would it not be prudent then not just to pour them into a big bucket containing, among other things - the part B (assuming that they screened the co-conspirator).
There are any number of bad things that could be brought onto a plane in liquid form, some of which are explosives, others produce poison gas, biological agents etc. If you are truely concerned that you may be removing any of these items from people, then they should be handled as if they are dangerous.
When someone leaves a brown paper bag outside a federal building, do they send over the new guy to pick it up, because it is probably someones lunch, or do the bomb squad treat it as if it is a real bomb and blow it up? The TSA are sending in the new guy to pick up the bag.
I call bullshit.
Can you show me one potential terrorist who has been caught as a result of the searches at airports? How many hundreds of millions of dollars should we spend a year to mitigate what is a very small risk?
The biggest problem I have with them is beer. One of the major food groups (it counts as a grain product). In AZ we were lucky enough to be able to buy beer at the supermarket. First time I see the self checkouts at the supermarket, I think 'how hard can it be?, there is no queue, it should be faster!' Scan item 1 - frozen pizza, check Scan item 2 - 12 pack of beer, check Scan item 3 - 12 pack of beer, check - hey this is pretty easy. 'Press here to finish', click 'Please wait for an assistant'......waiting... no one around...waiting... Wonder why I am waiting...waiting... still no one around...waiting... figure out that I am waiting for a 16 year old kid to check my ID to see if I am old enough to buy beer. Decide that it was not worth the effort, leave it all and go to another store.
When someone gets pissed off enough to leave their beer behind because your system doesn't work, there is a problem with it.
Nope, I have never used the self checkouts at the grocery again. Home Depot ones get used occasionally, and depending on what I have.
What you want to be looking at is consumer protection legislation. I would bet that Telus can point to this charge *somewhere* in the crap they send out as standard policy to all new customers, therefore it is probably in the contract. However this does not stop it being deceptive, and that is where they get nailed.
A little summary... Competition Act contains provisions addressing false or misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices in promoting the supply or use of a product or any business interest. All representations, in any form whatever, that are false or misleading in a material respect are subject to the Act. If a representation could influence a consumer to buy or use the product or service advertised, it is material.
If there is a cancelation fee that was buried, then that is misleading.
Find yourself a copy of the act, find which section it is. Then call them back up and explain that you would like the fee reversed. When they say no, quote the relevant section, specify the act and say that you beleive that they have breached the Act, please reverse the fee or you will lodge a complaint with the Competition Bureau of Canada. Quoting a specific section, and the specific words in the act will probably get results. If it does not, then call the Competition Bureau of Canada & lodge a complaint. Even if they do reverse the fee, you may want to lodge a complaint anyway.
I don't know about the specifics of the Canadian Bureau, but the New Zealand equivalent loves going after telecoms and the likes. I suspect that their reasoning is like this: Any practice impacts a lot of people, the telecom should know better, and because it affects a lot of people, the courts (and they do prosecute) levy large fines, which gets the attention of a lot of people, including many Mom & Pop businesses who may otherwise try the same tricks. Besides *everyone* hates Telecom.
Another little point to remember is that conditions put in place AFTER the contract is entered into are NOT part of the contract. The click through after you have installed the modem is probably not enforceable as part of the contract, but is misleading even if it is enforceable.
IANAL, but I did get my law degree (in NZ). From what I have seen, the US really lags behind the Commonwealth countries in consumer protection legislation, and this shows in the US advice people have been giving you.
Thanks for the advice bozo. I tried this and it didn't help me any. Followed your advice to the letter, and I ended up in the slammer with Bubba. It seems that marijuana plants are not allowed, and they don't just take the plant off you. I couldn't walk right for a week afterwards.
Actually, I think the hand/foot crank is great, I would use it. Just think, you now have a battery which will last infinitely long. No matter how long your flight, your laptop will still run.
OK, so I may look like an idiot, cranking up my laptop, but since when has a geek cared what they look like? Some mates had a Freeplay(?) windup radio, which I think works in a similar manner. It was great for the beach, the charge lasted about as long as a beer, so everyone getting another beer had to wind the radio as well. It made for some great beach parties.
A cheap, rugged laptop which unlike my current one, doesn't need to be plugged in to run. I'm in.
I don't think that illegal immigration is a good thing, but I beleive that the US market demands it. I beleive your example proves it.
Your freind only hired people who could demonstrate that they were legally entitled to work. This is laudable. He was priced out of the market because his competitors hired illegals at a lower rate. This proves that the market did not value whether the work was done by illegals or not. If people cared that there construction was done by legal workers *and were prepared to pay for it* then your freind would not be out of business.
If Americans really cared that their vegetables were picked and houses built by people who were not legally entitled to work in the US, they would vote with their wallet, and entirely legal suppliers would florish. A sufficient number of American consumers do not care sufficiently to make a difference. Whether this is right or wrong is a matter of personal judgement, and I did not weigh in on it.
Immigrants have historically been used as a whipping boy and pointed to as the cause of the woes of whatever country you care to point at. I don't beleive they are. If the illegal immigration in the last 30 years is the cause of the problems the working poor have, what were the reasons 50 years ago?
I stand by my point, the American consumer demands lower prices and will accept illegal immigrants as the cost of this. When I lived in Arizona, it was obvious that illegal immigrants were everywhere, but people did not care enough to shop where the workers were legal. They would complain that there were too many hispanics (and ignore the fact that AZ was once part of Mexico), but not enough to shop elsewhere. I understand that your personal view is different, but I don't think you buy enough to sway the market
The fundamental point is that immigrants come to them because there is a DEMAND for them. Those illegal workers do work that Americans don't want to do for the wages which are required to support the prices they want to pay. Don't want illegal immigrants working on farms? Expect to pay more for your groceries. Don't want legal immigrants? Be prepared to live with a lower standard of living. Is Finland such a hellhole that Linus had no option to feed his family than to come to the US? I doubt it. Someone decided that he had skills they thought would add value to the US economy.
If you don't want immigrants, fine, that is the choice of the citizens, but remember, be careful what you wish for.
Why? There is a little document which some people think is important. Whether the ideals it contains are important to you is your personal choice. But it sounds like you might need to read it and a little history. It starts like this...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."
Catchy isn't it?
Now, lets skip the question of whether the US Constitution applies fully to immigrants, and consider a hypothetical example, based on your "it is ok to do things to foreigners argument"
I am the ruler of a country that is sick of having stupid American tourists standing around like idiots while they look at their tourist map. So I enact a law which says "if anyone looks at a map in public, and in doing so, they impede your passing, it shall be lawfull to push them in front of a bus, train or other moving vehicle so as to remove the impediment, so long as such person is not a citizen"
Tourists are not citizens, therefore it is ok to throw them in front of a bus. That follows your logic doesn't it?
One point to remember here, is that this is the output from the sewerage works at Blenheim. Blenheim has a population of about 35,000. Presumably the output would be 10 times as much from a city of 350,000. Then it starts to get more interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
It might result in lower base prices.
Yeah, I know, this is pretty optimistic, but there are a couple of factors which make me optimistic.
1/ This has the power to mightily piss off some major players. Itunes & Netflix will be directly and negatively impacted. Where Time Warner has a monopoly and use it to the detriment of a competitor (Itunes or Netflix), then you can sure that those two are not going to sit back and say "damn, there goes our business model", especially when Time Warner is delivering their own competing product at subsidised rates. Lobbyists will be called, major pressure will be brought to bear.
2/ This would be a major and detrimental change to peoples contracts, so they would be free to cancel without penalty (they probably won't know it, and the cable companies will try to deny it, but...).
I would be happy with $ per Gb charging, as long as I had real competition with the suppliers. Let the bandwidth hogs pay more than grandma. The idea is not bad, but there needs to be some real changes to stop it from being just another ploy to tighten their grip over digital content provision. The good thing is there are getting some mightily powerful players on the other side of the fence now.
It works really well, much faster boot times.
Though mine has a different name, it is called Kubuntu.
And I am not sure about the cut down part.
Still, it is a great idea, "your OS is slow and crappy, here, install another!"
It will be interesting to see how well this plays, Windows has liked to break dual booting for quite a while.
Fair call.
But at least if it is YOUR employee who leaves their laptop full of data in the back seat of the car, you will have the satisfaction of beating him to a bloody pulp while you lament the loss of the data and try to figure out how much damage it will cause.
If it is online, some complete stranger who you cannot beat to a pulp can still leave their laptop with your data in the backseat of their car. And your employee whill still do it anyway, because they decided it was a good idea to save it locally because "insert stupid reason here".
We are constantly hearing about "x organisation" employee losing a laptop full of social security numbers etc. We don't hear about google docs (feel free to insert another company) employee losing a laptop full of your documents. So do you think that this is because they don't lose them, or because it is not reported? I know where my money is.
Yeah, that does kindof make sense. I would be surprised if the head honchos in the TV division even knew about, let alone supported the idea, so why punish them?
The reason is that despite what people say, companies have a culture. And this company is saying "we want to lock down the use of this media so we can extract the maximum posible revenue from consumers by requiring them to repurchase content, and we can do whatever we like to their property in this aim" This sort of thing does flow across division boundaries. You don't have one division acting like utter scum while all the others are helping little old ladies across the street.
Also, in any big company, there are a range of people. It is possible that there is one scumbag who decided it was a good idea and pushed it out while all of the good guys were not looking. In that case, when the good guys find out, there will be a public hanging and a good deal of making things better, because they know that they have betrayed trust. Scumbags on the other hand will just close ranks and deny everything.
If Sony owns 50% of SonyBMG, they have a lot of sway about what goes on there. If top Sony exec says "we should do this", then BMG will have to do a lot of work to do the opposite. Sony is therefore culpable for the actions of SonyBMG.
The next problem is when you boycott a media provider you are also boycotting the media producer. If you like Band X, then you have two choices, buy Sony AND Band X, or neither. The Sony business model is such that a few people avoiding their favorite band will not cost Sony a great deal, but will hit the band relatively more. Big ticket items on the other hand...
So, guess what Sony, when I was looking for a new HDTV this weekend, you weren't on the list of brands I would look at, because of this.
Oh yeah, and I am now looking for a new DVD player as well. Still a bit up in the air about formats, but guess which side I am leaning towards? Though that one has a little to do with past successes (beta, memorystick, minidisc, firewire...) as well.
I have had Sony stuff before, and have been really impressed (nothing came close to my Vaio), so I think it is pretty sad, but they acted like scum so deserve what they get. And they aren't getting my cash.
What, an engineer who is civil?
Tough one!
While I can understand that there are nutbars everywhere, and you have to be careful of them, your comment stuns me.
Something about the cable company was bad enough to send enough people crazy.
Management decided that this was not good.
So they decided to come up with a process to deal with people who go non-linear in your office?
Wouldn't it have been better to fix whatever the company was doing to drive them insane?
I second that.
Kubuntu is now significantly simpler to install than XP.
My wife's laptop (XP) went pearshaped in a way that MS said the only thing that could be done was reinstall. I chose to go dual boot, XP & Kubuntu.
XP was a nightmare, with instructions that didn't make sense, and left you with an incomplete setup - internet not working, drivers to find etc. Kubuntu (other than the fact that when you were assiging partitions, did not tell you that it wouldn't kill the other partitions) was a dream. A few simple questions, and you were done.
For me the killer though was hardware support. I couldn't get my scanner working. It is an old scanner, and HP has no working XP drivers.
I have seen this a couple of times. If you feel the need to run the latest and greatest everything, then go windows. If you don't see the need to buy all new hardware when one part dies, then Linux is the way to go.
It still doesn't change the fact that reinstalls are a dog any time, and Windows has the advantage in it comes preinstalled.
This law is also well suited to collaborative development, as it should not be hugely controversial.
The Police Act is the law which gives the Police their authority to act on events which other laws (like the Crimes Act) have made illegal. The Crimes Act says growing drugs is illegal, the Police Act says that the Police can only break down doors looking for it if they have followed x procedure.
One of the biggest problems with laws is where there is inconsistency or vagueness leading to unintended consequences. Many eyes will help catch a lot of these.
You are right that it will not be a bargain for everyone but:
Why should I subsidise the viewing habits of others? Yeah, all of the others for $10 per month are reasonable, but I don't want ESPN. Why must I pay for it?
By providing more transparancy, the power of ESPN will be reduced. In the end this is likely to be a good thing for the consumer. I will get to chose that I don't want ESPN, and Comcast will have some ammunition to say 30% of our subscribers will not pay $20 for your channel.
If it is so bad for the consumers, then you would expect the cable companies to be all over it. They aren't.
These are interesting points, and I understand that you don't have the power to change the cable company, but to my mind their arguement essentially boils down to this:
We the cable company as a monopoly, will force our customers to pay for things they do not want, and will blame it on our suppliers, who are a cartel who want to restrict the opportunities of their competition.
Sorry, doesn't cut it.
Might be worth telling someone in programming land that there are customers out there who would love to tell ESPN to stick it, and like to watch the sports that they don't like or allow.
If someone is willing to throw in channels d,e& f for $1 per month if I buy a & b for $2, fine. But don't expect me to jump with joy when I find the basic package d through f so someone else gets to watch x & y cheaper.
The US is spending money on defense? Oh yeah, forward defense.
This is not solely a MS to OO problem. It is a problem with ANY change.
Back in the day, I was involved with switching from Wordperfect 5.1 to Word.
Without exception, the users hated it. And the ones who were only mildly annoyed about having to learn something new would listen to the rabid ones and agree with them because it was the easiest thing to do. Talk to people individually, they were ok with changing, but once you were out of the room, it was a different story.
There it was relatively easy, WP (dos) needed to be replaced, and WP for Windows was a steaming pile, there was no choice. But when you switch from Office to OO, then there is nothing* wrong with Office.
Same as any software change really. By changing something, you are going to make peoples lives worse - they will have something new to learn, and for the majority this is a bad thing. You will be impacting peoples work a lot. Take away your favourite tool and replace it with something *slightly* different, and see how much fun it is. If you don't have one, try switching to one of the European keyboards which have a couple of keys in different places. For the change to succeed, then the users have to WANT it to. Why do they want to change office suites? Because the company saves money? Woohoo!
We screwed up the soft side of making people want to change, and it eventually came down to you *will* like it, or you will like working somewhere else. The minority of people who reinstalled WP were eventually forced into Office because they couldn't share files with anyone.
* For a limited definition of nothing, ie millions of people manage to do their work on it every day, and it is all they know. Please note that this is significantly different to such things as best practice, ideal etc.
Suspended/surrendered license = no money
If your licence is physically taken off you, then you will need to use something else to pay for your goods. Like maybe your visa. Or cash. If they don't take that little plastic card, the key is still there, so using it for a payment system still works.
Hacked debit card = hacked license
Given that they don't change the data on the license, just read it and use it as a key, this isn't an issue. If someone wants to clone your card, they can do it onto any card with a mag strip today.
numerous swipes = worn card + license
Fair call. It would be interesting to know if drivers licences are as sturdy as credit cards there. Guess the early adopters will find out.
What is the benefit for me? Nada.
Well, if you RTFM (I know, I know), the benefit for you is pretty simple. 10 off per gallon Whether this is worth your while to deal with another financial institution is up to you
Oh, and because if someone finds/steals your wallet now, then all they have to do is drive to the nearest gas station, insert your credit card, fill up and drive off. This card system means that they have to insert a card and enter your pin number, which I at least are not in the habit of keeping with in my wallet. Of course if you sign up for the scheme and someone steals your wallet, it doesn't prevent them from using your credit card to buy gas, but that does not mean that this scheme is either insecure or worthless
Bah, tape and black markers are for pansies.
If the lights are annoying, remove them. That is what wire cutters, soldering irons, screw drivers and hammers are for. Use all or some of these as your skills and mood dictate.
And if the light just happens to be a critical part of the circuit, well, the light won't be bothering you anymore will it?
But seriously, you complain that the light is too bright, but are not enough of a geek to open it up, remove the offending item and replace it with one which isn't so bright/is a less offensive colour?
Whiners...
And don't forget that this was not an isolated example.
Both the Dutch and British East India Companies issued their own coins - about as much of an indication of sovereignty as there is.
The Hudson Bay Company used to be a slightly larger land owner than it is now - basically half of North America, including big chunks of what is now the US.
The history of these companies is fascinating, check it out some time.
So the explosivevs aren't dangerous until you mix them. Would it not be prudent then not just to pour them into a big bucket containing, among other things - the part B (assuming that they screened the co-conspirator).
There are any number of bad things that could be brought onto a plane in liquid form, some of which are explosives, others produce poison gas, biological agents etc. If you are truely concerned that you may be removing any of these items from people, then they should be handled as if they are dangerous.
When someone leaves a brown paper bag outside a federal building, do they send over the new guy to pick it up, because it is probably someones lunch, or do the bomb squad treat it as if it is a real bomb and blow it up? The TSA are sending in the new guy to pick up the bag.
I call bullshit.
Can you show me one potential terrorist who has been caught as a result of the searches at airports? How many hundreds of millions of dollars should we spend a year to mitigate what is a very small risk?
The biggest problem I have with them is beer. One of the major food groups (it counts as a grain product). In AZ we were lucky enough to be able to buy beer at the supermarket. First time I see the self checkouts at the supermarket, I think 'how hard can it be?, there is no queue, it should be faster!' ...waiting... no one around ...waiting... Wonder why I am waiting ...waiting... still no one around ...waiting...
Scan item 1 - frozen pizza, check
Scan item 2 - 12 pack of beer, check
Scan item 3 - 12 pack of beer, check - hey this is pretty easy.
'Press here to finish', click
'Please wait for an assistant'...
figure out that I am waiting for a 16 year old kid to check my ID to see if I am old enough to buy beer.
Decide that it was not worth the effort, leave it all and go to another store.
When someone gets pissed off enough to leave their beer behind because your system doesn't work, there is a problem with it.
Nope, I have never used the self checkouts at the grocery again. Home Depot ones get used occasionally, and depending on what I have.
What you want to be looking at is consumer protection legislation. I would bet that Telus can point to this charge *somewhere* in the crap they send out as standard policy to all new customers, therefore it is probably in the contract. However this does not stop it being deceptive, and that is where they get nailed.
1 944193912&pagename=CBSC_ON%2Fdisplay&lang=en&c=Reg s
Check out this site:
http://www.cbsc.org/servlet/ContentServer?cid=108
The Competition Act is a federal act, so it does apply to you.
A little summary...
Competition Act contains provisions addressing false or misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices in promoting the supply or use of a product or any business interest. All representations, in any form whatever, that are false or misleading in a material respect are subject to the Act. If a representation could influence a consumer to buy or use the product or service advertised, it is material.
If there is a cancelation fee that was buried, then that is misleading.
Find yourself a copy of the act, find which section it is. Then call them back up and explain that you would like the fee reversed. When they say no, quote the relevant section, specify the act and say that you beleive that they have breached the Act, please reverse the fee or you will lodge a complaint with the Competition Bureau of Canada. Quoting a specific section, and the specific words in the act will probably get results. If it does not, then call the Competition Bureau of Canada & lodge a complaint. Even if they do reverse the fee, you may want to lodge a complaint anyway.
I don't know about the specifics of the Canadian Bureau, but the New Zealand equivalent loves going after telecoms and the likes. I suspect that their reasoning is like this: Any practice impacts a lot of people, the telecom should know better, and because it affects a lot of people, the courts (and they do prosecute) levy large fines, which gets the attention of a lot of people, including many Mom & Pop businesses who may otherwise try the same tricks. Besides *everyone* hates Telecom.
Another little point to remember is that conditions put in place AFTER the contract is entered into are NOT part of the contract. The click through after you have installed the modem is probably not enforceable as part of the contract, but is misleading even if it is enforceable.
IANAL, but I did get my law degree (in NZ). From what I have seen, the US really lags behind the Commonwealth countries in consumer protection legislation, and this shows in the US advice people have been giving you.
Thanks for the advice bozo. I tried this and it didn't help me any. Followed your advice to the letter, and I ended up in the slammer with Bubba. It seems that marijuana plants are not allowed, and they don't just take the plant off you. I couldn't walk right for a week afterwards.
Actually, I think the hand/foot crank is great, I would use it. Just think, you now have a battery which will last infinitely long. No matter how long your flight, your laptop will still run.
OK, so I may look like an idiot, cranking up my laptop, but since when has a geek cared what they look like? Some mates had a Freeplay(?) windup radio, which I think works in a similar manner. It was great for the beach, the charge lasted about as long as a beer, so everyone getting another beer had to wind the radio as well. It made for some great beach parties.
A cheap, rugged laptop which unlike my current one, doesn't need to be plugged in to run. I'm in.
I don't think that illegal immigration is a good thing, but I beleive that the US market demands it. I beleive your example proves it.
Your freind only hired people who could demonstrate that they were legally entitled to work. This is laudable. He was priced out of the market because his competitors hired illegals at a lower rate. This proves that the market did not value whether the work was done by illegals or not. If people cared that there construction was done by legal workers *and were prepared to pay for it* then your freind would not be out of business.
If Americans really cared that their vegetables were picked and houses built by people who were not legally entitled to work in the US, they would vote with their wallet, and entirely legal suppliers would florish. A sufficient number of American consumers do not care sufficiently to make a difference. Whether this is right or wrong is a matter of personal judgement, and I did not weigh in on it.
Immigrants have historically been used as a whipping boy and pointed to as the cause of the woes of whatever country you care to point at. I don't beleive they are. If the illegal immigration in the last 30 years is the cause of the problems the working poor have, what were the reasons 50 years ago?
I stand by my point, the American consumer demands lower prices and will accept illegal immigrants as the cost of this. When I lived in Arizona, it was obvious that illegal immigrants were everywhere, but people did not care enough to shop where the workers were legal. They would complain that there were too many hispanics (and ignore the fact that AZ was once part of Mexico), but not enough to shop elsewhere. I understand that your personal view is different, but I don't think you buy enough to sway the market
The fundamental point is that immigrants come to them because there is a DEMAND for them. Those illegal workers do work that Americans don't want to do for the wages which are required to support the prices they want to pay. Don't want illegal immigrants working on farms? Expect to pay more for your groceries. Don't want legal immigrants? Be prepared to live with a lower standard of living. Is Finland such a hellhole that Linus had no option to feed his family than to come to the US? I doubt it. Someone decided that he had skills they thought would add value to the US economy.
If you don't want immigrants, fine, that is the choice of the citizens, but remember, be careful what you wish for.
Why? There is a little document which some people think is important. Whether the ideals it contains are important to you is your personal choice. But it sounds like you might need to read it and a little history. It starts like this...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."
Catchy isn't it?
Now, lets skip the question of whether the US Constitution applies fully to immigrants, and consider a hypothetical example, based on your "it is ok to do things to foreigners argument"
I am the ruler of a country that is sick of having stupid American tourists standing around like idiots while they look at their tourist map. So I enact a law which says "if anyone looks at a map in public, and in doing so, they impede your passing, it shall be lawfull to push them in front of a bus, train or other moving vehicle so as to remove the impediment, so long as such person is not a citizen"
Tourists are not citizens, therefore it is ok to throw them in front of a bus. That follows your logic doesn't it?
One point to remember here, is that this is the output from the sewerage works at Blenheim. Blenheim has a population of about 35,000. Presumably the output would be 10 times as much from a city of 350,000. Then it starts to get more interesting.
Sorry, spelling nazi attack...
That should be "American Idle"