What is needed is a LIMIT or CAP on legal fees that can be spent in a court case to 10% of the lowest income persons total income, so if AT&T sues you, they cant spend more than 10% of your income, thus keeping them from bleeding you dry.
Now I like that idea, except if you're suing a homeless person. I'd say keep recoverable fees at 10% and actual expenditures under the median income. Still a nice limiter that's automatically indexed to inflation.
*GASP* Whatever did people do before the internet???!?!?
Wasted a lot of time going to the bank, lawyer's office, USPS/UPS/FedEx, listening to crappy NOAA for the item of interest to come up, spend hours getting through to your broker to sell during a market drop, etc etc.
While you may have the time to do all those things, some of us are actually working and fully booked. I can live without all of them, much like I can live without electricity, gas, or even sewer/water service (solar/generators, wood fired stoves, septic systems and wells) but those are all much more inconvenient than the "utility" services.
c) Take the excess and form the most successful R&D lab and innovation engine the world has ever known.
And, while prices didn't drop a lot, service certainly improved in leaps and bounds. We used to have party lines (shared lines where only 1 subscriber could talk at a time to an outside number, but all members of the party line could chat with each other however much they wanted. We also used to have manually operated switches, 5 digit numbers, etc etc etc. All of those were "upgraded" within the monopoly window to the systems that we still use today.
Yep - average car 35.6 mpg. I know there's a whole slew of them below 30, meaning there's another slew in the 40+ range. There's only 17 motorcycles above 45 (which is still below the lowest rating on a prius) 7 of which are 250cc or less and don't really count IMNSHO.
My point here is that there are a whole slew of cars available that are equal to motorcycle MPG, which, honestly, removes any fuel saving argument from the motorcycle camp as most won't buy/ride those motorcycles anyways. Only 2 Harley's beat (barely) the prius' city mileage. So again, what's your point? Oh, and here's a nice list of numbers Honestly, motorcycles should be getting a minimum 70 MPG to be worth a look given those numbers, and a gas guzzler tax applied for anything below 50.
I thought we needed H1-B's because there weren't enough people to fill all these jobs. What, now suddenly all the jobs are filled?
With H1Bs.
If you really want to improve fuel economy, drive a motorcycle. You'll get FAR better gas mileage than any car you can buy and you won't have to drive slower than my grandmother while doing it.
This is a provably false statement. The average MPG of motorcycles is actually worse than passenger vehicles. Then you have to consider the additional risks of riding a motorcycle, and it's a no brainer - just buy a slightly more efficient car since those are averages for cars, so half will be more efficient.
Microsoft's leveraging contracts and monopoly power to kill other businesses is evil (even if they missed the phone/tablet revolution, it isn't for lack of trying)
Though I do not necessarily disagree, I must point out that:
A) MS most certainly missed the dock, boat, and ocean on both phones and tablets, almost as badly as the internet. Except this time they were too far behind to buy/force their way into either market. They were still swinging the antiquated Windows phone at the iPhone when the iPad came on the scene shifting the consumer market yet again. Android was better positioned to come in with a relatively untarnished name behind it, Windows Phones were just DOA from that point forward, and tablets just never materialized.
At this point, MS would have to recreate something like the XBox to make meaningful headway in either market, and while they have the bank account to attempt it, they would still have to overcome quite a bit of negative perception towards their products. Perhaps a whole new line with a whole new look? Since they've already fubarred the metro (MS modern?) UI, that probably won't be the answer either. Maybe reskinned, ditch all desktop capabilities, and just go from there?
BTW - love the MS fanboi's that appear to have mod points to spare today
Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.