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Comment Re:Phones for which a carrier requires a data plan (Score 1) 344

So how can I get a smartphone if I'm outside of AT&T's market?

Smartphones on other networks are A. phones for which the carrier imposes a similar requirement of a data plan or B. phones comparable in functionality to an AT&T smartphone.

But in your example, why would I buy a phone from AT&T if I'm going to get a GoPhone sim?

To ensure that it works on AT&T's network. (GoPhone is AT&T's prepaid brand.)

Won't I be paying for two phone plans then? AT&T (unused, but still per month costs) and GoWhatever?

Phones for use with GoPhone are sold up front.

Comment Structural unemployment defined (Score 1) 208

If you are talking something like teachers the ones I know that have done this fulfill their obligations with completing the school year as opposed to the physical year.

Structural unemployment means the labor surplus associated with widespread layoffs in an industry. You're referring to seasonal unemployment, which is generally excluded from structural unemployment. Structural unemployment happens on cycles far longer than a year or is permanent. How is someone supposed to work off student loan debt if he comes to find that nobody is hiring in his location and field?

Comment Eminent public domain (Score 1) 223

It also means that if we got a Congress that actually wanted to retroactively shorten copyright terms they can.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Major copyright owners would consider a term reduction to be "private property be[ing] taken for public use, without just compensation" per the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution (and foreign counterparts) and sue the government for said "just compensation".

Comment A periodic formality, like adopting House rules (Score 2) 223

A pattern of Congress continually extending term lengths retroactively is not the same as a law declaring that copyrights do not expire, because the action that occurs if Congress does not act is that copyrights expire. Whereas in the latter scenario Congress has to act in order to make copyrights expire.

Each house of Congress also has to act every two years in order to set its rules. The requirement of a periodic formality to prevent copyrights from expiring does not change the practical outcome, just as the requirement of a periodic formality to readopt House and Senate rules every two years does not keep the House and Senate from having rules.

Nobody actually wants perpetual copyright terms, except maybe Disney.

And the Gershwin estate. And the leadership of the Motion Picture Assocation of America (to find sources, search the web for the phrase "forever less one day"). And Dr. Seuss Enterprises, whose argument in its Eldred amicus was that an author and his heirs deserve royalties from adaptations of the author's work to media invented decades after the work's first publication.

Comment Pleading the thirteenth (Score 1) 208

"Free" tuition would not fix it because there is already lots of ways of getting tuition paid for without running up any debt.
From government programs that are under utilized where they will pay your tuition if you work, and get paid, in places they want you to and in position related to your degree for a few years.

I thought the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed indentured servitude. And even if these programs are structured not to qualify constitutionally as indentured servitude, how do they handle a graduate who faces structural unemployment in positions related to his degree?

Comment Which services does it support? (Score 1) 105

I already have a media player, thanks, and the web browser is not it.

How many streaming music and video services does your preferred media player support? And how can a new streaming music or video service arrange to be supported in your preferred media player? Finally, how should a browser-based video game play its music and sound effects? Or is the concept of a "browser-based video game" itself abhorrent to you?

Comment Multigenerational households (Score 1) 155

And if you're sufficiently poor, you might not have the option to fix it.

If someone has finally saved up enough to move out of their parents house in their hometown

Many poor people live in multigenerational households because they have no way of saving up that much money.

We are talking about an extra $100 or $200 to get to a better place, on top of the $1000 or so they already saved to pay for security deposit and start up stuff.

That's sort of hard at the equivalent of $0.25 per hour.

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