A typo doesn't make me ignorant it means I am too lazy to proof read my posts. If typo's really appeal to you then go ahead and read a few books and see how many appear in works written by professionals that have editors. Oh and I'm drunk, but that doesn't make my original statement nay less valid.

If everyone in a culture uses a word to describe something and you are the only one who says it is something else then yuo are the ignorant one. Words are made up and have no inherent value... they only have the value that society gives them and in this case society doesn't agree with you.

It my not directly come out of the price of the X-Box in the case of Microsoft, you are correct, but that money must go somewhere. It can go to lower prices, better employee pay, more/better employees to make better products, investors, research, etc. Regardless lawsuits like this one don't help out the customer in any real sense and line the pockets of lawyers with gold.

I don't even know what PR shit you are talking about, care to link? Please quote Microsoft saying anything I said because I haven't read anything they wrote.

This. There is nothing in a law that says you must grant people access to your network, except something about phone networks... but this isn't a phone network so that doesn't matter.

And you are what is wrong with America. Many of these lawsuit are unjustified and cost the companies millions to fight. Essentially we pay more for every product and service because companies have to build the cost of fighting litigation in, the only problem is the LAWYERS collect that extra built in cost, not the consumer. Your short sightedness is amazing. Have fun paying $50 more for the next X-box so you can get your $5 class action settlement on the next infraction, years after paying the extra $50.

You missed one huge point: More is not always better. Mac has been based on SIMPLICITY and allowing 100 apps that do the same thing only hurts the average apple user who doesn't want choice as long as the app does what they want it to. I guess I shouldn't expect anything different from a bunch of FOSS fanboys who think its fun to make 100 distributions of Linux with 100 different programs that all do the same thing installed on each distribution.

Complain all you want but Apple's decision probably works better for the AVERAGE mac user (not techies) and pisses off techies and developers. This decision will likely not lower quality because developers (who are trying to make real money) will realize they can't throw some crap together and expect it to get approved, it actually has to work well and not duplicate functionality.

Most leases are structured with a cap on the "free" electricity. Usually the surcharge on the lease compared to comparable leases is about the amount it would cost if you hit that cap. So essentially you are already paying for the electricity.

If the lease is not structured that way... tell me where that landlord is. I will start all sorts of energy intensive businesses in that apartment. Having people live with me for free will be the least of their worries.

I think his point is that leases are meant to be broken on occasion in a no harm, no foul sort of way. If you have ever read an apartment lease I am guessing you would know that nearly everyone violates an apartment lease from the day they move in. The problem is that the complex needs to protect itself, so they must write the lease in absolute terms so that they can act when a real issue is going on. This prevents many clauses from being removed yet produces many violations that are "false positives" of the intended purpose. Now I would say that the free market would weed out the landlords that try this pretty fast but it would still be shitty to get stuck with one for a whole year if you didn't do your research.

I am saying this as a landlord. Maybe I am too reasonable because I lease to people my age and understand what is going to happen =/

What if the information is kept strictly in the system and encrypted so that no one can access it except the system. Then the system generates the proper aggregate reports. This would protect individuals rights to privacy while allowing a mindless system access to the sensitive information and manage the grid properly. Surely aggregate information is all the power company people would need to operate a smart grid. (Both aggregate across a household over a period and aggregate of all customers in real time)

Now of course there could be questions about back doors, hackers, etc but at least no one would be able to legally use the information against you in court or to obtain a search warrant (I am assuming that would be part of the 'deal').

Maybe I am missing something huge, so please let me know if I am, but this sort of solution seems like a reasonable way to get both of best worlds.

Funny at first until you realize how many laws the average person breaks a day without any harm being done to anyone or anything. I know I have sped, jay walked, turned into a non-adjacent lane, carried beer on a dry campus, carried explosives on a college campus (fireworks and beer in the trunk of my car) and maybe more just today. Many laws are unreasonable in certain contexts and we don't try and get the laws repealed because they are often used to convict people that were causing a problem but not necessarily because of the law they were violating.

For instance carrying beer on campus doesn't harm anyone: drinking it, getting drunk, and being an asshole does though.

HAHAHA. I am guessing you fall into the category of people who that think higher corporate taxes are the best way to fund government because you are not being taxed. Guess what... EVERY tax falls back on the customer. You think oil companies pay the gas tax? No, the price of gas just goes up and you pay the price of the tax even if it was levied on the company. Taxes are always shared with the customer, of course politicians love to make you think otherwise.. so they can raise taxes and make you happy about it.

Way to kill the joke.

Wait, you are calling those that purchase stuff online and don't report the taxes assholes? I don't condone skipping out on taxes but I think it put an unnecessary burden on the individual to a) know about this in the first place b) track purchases made and c) properly report these purchases.

I also don't see how you can argue that local governments deserve the tax revenue when the company doesn't operate in that local vicinity. They don't operate a store front so they don't need police, fire, (new)roads, etc. A shipping company brings in the product and the shipping company pays taxes related to its operation in the state. Then you go on to talk about locality.. we live in a global economy. The best way to support your local economy is keep doing your job because it is likely generating revenue from the other states just like you are sending your money to other states. The idea of a local economy is dead. Even the smallest towns participate in the global economy.

I understand that wherever you live this gets you audited and illegal or whatever, but you seem to be talking about it like everyone who doesn't pay sales tax on 3 $10 books bought off amazon is a evil bastard that should burn in hell.

It is a fact that if you are going to run a scam you should move the money the scam makes into a place other than the business/entity that you are conducting the scam with. If you don't do this you are a failure at scamming because there is not one reason to keep it there and a million reasons to move it.

People who leave money in an account labeled "scam account" are terrible scammers. Arguing this is false is like trying to argue that a bad(or terrible) basketball player is good because there is no real definition of what a good basketball player is. Sure you can argue it, and technically be "right", because there is no set definition of a bad basketball player, but you still are wrong, the player obviously is bad by the standards of any onlooker.

This is what I am talking about. Anyone with common sense is going to think to not keep money in an account directly associated with a scam. Anyone who does, is an idiot. Call it circular reasoning if you want but language is based off of definitions that are self created thus many true statements could be classified as circular reasoning because by the very nature of language it is based off of itself.

By your standards no-one can be called bad because they did something bad because that is circular reasoning. Fuck off, you are the one using games to redefine the situation and make yourself look right.

We are talking about scams , not legit businesses. Scammers are not afraid of lawyers because they offload the money to accounts not related to the business, instantly. You can't recover what isn't there. If you think this is outlandish you are ignorant to how many legit businesses use the same offloading model to protect their separate business units. They offload everything that they can so that if a lawsuit occurs they can cut losses and start over.

Strictly speaking your examples are talking about dumb-asses who didn't properly structure their businesses or scams to be successful. If you do it right you win unless the governemnt finds you, and that is only if it is an illegal operation. (I'm not condoning, just giving facts)

Why would a lawyer work a case where they get nothing because the defendant is effectively broke? They won't. Lawyers want deep pockets, with lots of real and predictable money in those pockets. Since most(all?) class action cases get paid on a % of the settlement it is impossible to get a firm/lawyer to proceed with a case if the target has no way to pay because the money is hidden or out of legal grasp.