SSNs are no longer distributed in that fashion. They are randomly assigned since 2011. But they also weren't sequential. They were divided up by regions and doled out to more local areas.
I mostly remember them going out of business like Iridium did in 1999. Clearly the market wasn't there as no one I knew used satellite services for anything other than TV, and that model failed against broadband. Starlink is first time regular consumers like my family members actually paid for a satellite service.
That starts off with "I'm not a lawyer". So as much as people think they understand it, lawyers have to read the actual text of the entire license and interpret what could happen in a court case. With the vagueness of the license, it isn't unreasonable for lawyers to read it and say "there is risk here. if this goes in front of the wrong judge, we could be in trouble"
> there is risk here. if this goes in front of the wrong judge, we could be in trouble
This is it.
I find it a compelling argument there is tremendous risk to AGPL if Google says so. They not only talk the talk but walk the walk: Google just indemnified AI (C) without limits putting 1.7 trillion dollars behind that statement. The same company said "nah, we are afraid of AGPL".
The issue isn't that they have custom software. The issue is that their business model relies on their custom software being proprietary, and that's true of way fewer companies.
There's something much worse than "I'm not a lawyer" and that is "I'm not YOUR lawyer" -- you can practically assume that if you are reading a document produced by a lawyer you're not paying for, it is because it's trying to influence/scare you to act against your best interests (and into the lawyer's employers'). And FUD is a technique which is well defined in the handbook.
I've read plenty of documents from lawyers I don't pay that were not trying to influence or scare me. It would be really strange to assume their documents were. And when it comes to interpreting legal documents (what is being discussed here), "I'm not a lawyer" is far worse than "I'm not your lawyer".
No it may not be legal. If you continually follow someone, silent or not, it could cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or to experience emotional distress. There is nuance to this, but just the act of continually following someone can be stalking (even if you never engage with them).
Edit: And they apparently are even today: https://www.apple.com/connectED/index.html "We’ve donated an iPad to every student, a Mac and iPad to every teacher, and an Apple TV to every classroom."
The no-wifi seems to just be the kickstarter. When I ordered mine a little while back, they had an option for wifi (extra $8-$10, as I recall). I haven't received it yet...so not sure if it actually does.
This goes both ways. Numerous people (companies?) have setup arbitrage businesses. They post products on Amazon at a markup over Walmart and vice-versa. They leverage the APIs to dynamically adjust their prices based on how the prices move on each store. It technically isn't a rip-off, when you think about it. They are taking advantage of people not searching for the best deal. You get what you ordered, they make money from scouting prices and putting at a price you are willing to pay for said product (I assume otherwise you wouldn't order).
Don't get me wrong, when this happens, I get that feeling of rip off, but the reality is, I didn't price shop. And someone did some work to get it to show up for me where I was looking.
When I was an undergrad, me and buddy had what amounted to an arbitrage scheme (I didn't realize that was the name for it back then)selling laptops on campus. We would buy them from ebay, and sell them to local students with posters on physical bulletin boards around campus. At some point, the market flipped, and we could no longer turn a profit this way. So we started buying student's laptops on campus and selling them on ebay.
It's fine if you think markets are intended to be hostile to consumers instead of bettering people's lives. I don't think incentivizing deceptive middlemen is really a net benefit to society.
Perhaps not everyone can research cures for cancer, but that's not a good reason to then become the "cancer". Just because it's how it is now, doesn't mean that's how it has to be. Ideally Amazon, Walmart, Google, etc.. should manage their marketplaces better to provide a optimal consumer experience, but it seems so long as they get their cut, they couldn't care less. The continued consolidation of competition leaves fewer options for consumers to even "vote with their wallets".
Not if you're trying to avoid Amazon for moral boycott reasons (as the OP was). In that case, people are willing to knowingly pay an additional fee to avoid Amazon, but that money is just being pocketed and the rest of the money is being turned over to Amazon on their behalf.
It really is, I remember when my wife hated Wal-Mart for doing the same things she doesn't like Amazon doing. But apparently she now feels that Wal-Mart is the lesser of two evils so she doesn't mind shopping there.
In my mind Wal-Mart is actually the evil one, I watched them destroy entire towns in the 80s. Everyone ended up working there, full time if they were lucky, and they gave all their money back every week because there was nowhere else in town left to spend it.
Buy the time Amazon came around the destruction was over. What Amazon did was raise the bar on customer service so high that everybody else had to follow. That is a net positive I believe.
It hardly matters if what your wife wants to do was correct. The point is, she's trying to pay money (and is in fact spending the money) to try to cut Amazon out. And she's not getting what she's paying for.
Amazon is the biggest eCommerce retailer, so trying to prevent a monopoly is a moral reason.
Amazon also has a lot of famous worker safety/treatment issues for their delivery drivers and warehouse workers. I doubt they are unique in the fulfillment space, but they are extremely well publicized. Walmart has issues as well, but their publicized issues were in stores. Walmart online avoids the worst publicized worker treatment issues.
I was going to say "arbitrage." I thought of the pizza place guy who discovered that DoorDash or GrubHub was charging customers less than they paid him. Promoting the delivery business, you know.
So he'd just order pizzas for himself, and pocket the difference.
I remember this also being a thing with eBay as well. Not sure why someone would go to eBay first and not check Amazon, but then again some people still pay for AOL.
It appears you may not have read the bill either. It does not prevent sexual education to kids (if it stated that, it wouldn't have been that overly controversial). But that isn't what it says. It states it prohibits "discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students". That is a very important distinction from what you are saying. Sexual education is not prohibited, as long as it avoids discussing those two topics.
The other important distinction is that it is not just primary grade levels impacted, it is all levels (note the "or"s).
Have you gone through TurboTax's filing process? It starts with ~$149 upgrade for me, I believe. They have countless add-ons that popup throughout the filing process beyond just that (annual audit defense membership, get your refund faster, etc). So many up-sells and cross-sells, it is pretty disgusting.
I stopped using them last year because it was just too much. I can easily see how someone could end up with a multi-hundred dollar bill from them. Many of the popups are tailored to look like you need to say yes.
So they're trying to completely fill the price shadow underneath the $500 or so a very basic "entry-level" accountant relationship would cost — and fill it with a zero-marginal-cost roster of non-product products and non-service services. Terrible.
If we are throwing around anecdotes. I grew up in an east coast city run by the exact opposite politicians and policies you are complaining about. The crime rates and safety in that city was far worse than Seattle's numbers. Even today, it has some of the highest crime rates in the country. They don't have any of these policies you are saying are causing this. You know what they do have? A massive income and wealth inequality. This is a complex situation and the political axe grinding really moves nothing in the right direction. Neither sides' solutions have "worked". They have just shifted where the burden is.
