Nah, just go to a pictograph alphabet. Draw the characters. Easy, simple. I don't know why it isn't used. All my friends use pinyin on QWERTY for input of Chinese characters. But I've never seen one have a draw system. Shouldn't be that hard, the number and types of strokes are pretty consistent. Perhaps it's that Chinese printing is easy, but most don't print. Chinese cursive is inconsistent and confusing.

The analogy I come up with is:

Would the government need a warrant to compel your mother to turn over all the letters she's sent to you over the years, so they can retro-actively track your location in an attempt to link you to crimes?

I worked for a telco (still do, but outside the US now), and the official policy was to comply, without question, to all court orders (warrants being a subset of court orders). Without a court order, we would be breaking the law (both state and federal) to even confirm Bob Smith was a customer, whether it's the local police, sherrif, state cops, or US President asking. But a court order to turn over records (if any), releases us from from any and all legal liability. It might not be able to stand up in court, but that's not our problem.

Sounds pretty bad, glad I never had the option to buy from them, so never even faced the temptation.

I've never lived in Comcast's or TWC's coverage areas. I've never had cable.

The issue wasn't that I had to send a letter, but that ATT lied to me for almost a year. They claimed something was "impossible" then did it in a few hours, when I stopped asking nicely. It was a small technical tweak on my line that didn't even need a truck roll. And it was to change it back to the original config. It worked great when I signed up, then they broke it and refused to acknowledge they broke it, until they fixed it. They violated the contract (and law) by changing my service, and lied for months about it, then lied for months after that in reasons why they wouldn't fix it.

I can't compare to Comcast. Never had them. I can tell you what my experience with ATT was. If yours was worse, share it. Otherwise, I don't understand why you are posting just to whine.

I am an MBA. And you don't understand anything because you are too tied up in the "us vs them" ideology.

When I ordered a Dell through the corporate account, we had a choice to order Windows OEM, or Windows Volume. They'd inform MS of the order, as per our agreement, but we could retire a piece of hardware at the same time, and we'd have our licensed volume OS delivered installed (with our corporate image), at something like a $10 cost. But then, this was a 10,000 person company, with a 4 year refresh, so a few thousand computers a year.

Having the corporate image pre-installed on the PCs was great, and only an option with volume licensing. So there is value somewhere, but not for the 100 seat company, they are almost always better buying with OEM installed.

The real reason MS pushes for no no-OS option is they know so many OEM licenses exist that someone retiring a computer could buy one with no OS, then move the OEM onto it, and at least appear compliant at a glance. Move the sticker or swap the case, not a huge deal for a 100 seat place with 3-person IT, generally 2 help desk to do the grunt work, and one "manager" to hire the consultants to do the real work. The help desk guys sit bored, and can spend all day swapping hardware to avoid a license cost.

Volume licensing is often more expensive. A copy of XP from release day to last supported day costs a whole lot less to buy a single retail copy, than to volume license it for most companies. Volume licensing is usually a license rental, while a retail copy is a license purchase (as much as you can purchase a license). This makes a large difference to cost. Even better is when you compare "cheap" licenses to volume. OEM is cheaper than retail, so if you use the OEM options when buying new PCs, you'll get cheaper licenses.

Volume sucks. It's good if you have an unlimited budget and prefer ease of license management. But "unlimited budget" doesn't describe anywhere I've ever worked.

So you don't hate them, you just think they are ridiculous. I'm not seeing that as a big distinction.

You don't abandon it. But you don't punish your low-margin customers because your high-margin business model is failing.

I was told something was "impossible" 10 times, until I got tired of their lies, and sent a complaint to the FCC, local regulator, and multiple departments in SBC (formerly and finally ATT), and within 48 hours of dropping a letter in the mail, the service was fixed, and a couple days later, a letter came indicating the problem was fixed and essentially gave a script to read from when the FCC contacted me.

From "impossible" to "done" in a few hours, once I sent a letter to the regulatory bodies. They won't do the job they are required by law to do, unless threatened with legal action. And, sadly, that was my best experience with ATT, as the problem was fixed, even if it took them 6 months to fix their DSL service, and required I send letters to the national and state governments.

Beats the idiots who demand non-Wikipedia cites for everything. I remember millions of details I don't remember how I learned, but I know them, like you know how to work an elevator. Prove the "down" button sends the elevator down to someone who is sitting where you can't see them and claims to not have access to an elevator to check. Proving "common knowledge" is hard. You don't realize it's special when you learn it, so you don't memorize that it's Otis Manual 1997, or whatever.

Gauge the person, then accept what they say or don't. Demanding cites like everything is a Slashdot thread makes *you* the idiot. What, are you to dumb or too lazy to look it up yourself?

They'll use 1% of the new 50%, but that's enough for them to want the new thing. Why do you hate people making choices you don't like? Just accept that people will make choices you wouldn't make.

Blonde is "race". If you discriminate against "fair haired" people, that will be considered under race. There are thousands (if not more) of cases on race.

The shutdown was caused by the veto, not the passing of the bill. The passing of the bill was valid and would have resulted in a working government, then Clinton took an action that caused the government to shut down.

I don't see why it matters so much to you. What does it matter who you blame for the shutdown? It was a good thing, not a bad thing.

Yes, there are. If you discriminate consistently against blonds, then you will be open to legal action. You are using a strict definition of "race", and the application of the laws doesn't work that way.

Has there ever been a documented case of someone discriminating against a Mi based on name? No? Then why do you think you deserve special laws?

I've seen some that explicitly list LGBT (as a non protected class). That's not an omission, but a license to discriminate. Is that any different?