> If you're already fat, you're pretty much fucked.
That's not true, and that's a mentality that justifies self-destructive behavior. I used to be overweight but turned it around a few years ago, and in my case it boiled down to fixing some incredibly unhealthy habits
1) better sleeping habits. I used to go to sleep at 3-4 AM, now I force myself off of electronics by midnight and read a book or write until I doze off. Nowadays, when I first get up in the morning, I roll out of bed and do some pushups to avoid the crawl back to bed.
2) better eating habits. Eating breakfast is probably the best thing you can do for your diet. I found that I was eating much more later in the night, so as I shifted my sleeping pattern I also shifted my eating pattern (eating much more at breakfast and lunch and much less at dinner).
3) better exercise. It started with simple things: going to the grocery store, rather than waiting for the closest parking spot, I would park at the far end of the lot and walk the extra N steps; after a few months, I purchased a collapsable cart and just walked the mile from my house to the store. And bit by bit I would try to increase activity.
Obviously everyone's experience is different, but please don't propagate the idea that overweight people can't lose weight
I get up at 4 am every day and eat breakfast. I still overeat.
I've swung back and forth between 280lbs and 220lbs for the last 5 years. I'm currently around 250lbs.
I've been under 260lbs for almost 2 years now and I still have to starve myself constantly to get back down to 220lbs even though I sleep well. Nothing works. It's all pain. I eat too much and I'm miserable or I eat just enough or too little and I'm miserable. My ability to figure out when I'm full is completely broken. I'm either sated after having eaten too much or I'm starving.
> I've been under 260lbs for almost 2 years now and I still have to starve myself constantly to get back down to 220lbs even though I sleep well.
I weigh more than you but I've been successfully (if slowly, for most of the time) losing weight for several years, after having lots of the same kind of problems you describe before that. What seems to be working for me is:
1) Eat lots of non-starchy vegetables, especially toward the beginning of trying to establish a lower-calorie pattern. These can satisfy the need for stomach-fullness that develops over a history of overeating (over time, your stomach stretches, and it takes more volume of food to feel full), without the miserable feeling you get from eating too much caloric foods (I used to get different forms of misery from "too much carbs", "too much fat", and "too much protein" when I overate, but they were all misery.)
2) Eat more snacks between meals -- this helps level out your metabolism helps avoid the "starving -- must eat lots at next opportunity" feeling that leads to overeating misery.
3) Find one or more physical activities that you can enjoy for their own sake and do regularly. For me, it's been ballroom/latin/swing dancing, but the particular activity isn't all that important.
4) If you haven't already, try to get your doctor to check for metabolic conditions or vitamin deficiencies that might be making it hard for you to lose weight (I had a pretty significant Vitamin D deficiency and supplementing for that seems to have helped some, lots of other people I know have had bigger impacts when previously undiagnosed metabolic conditions were addressed.)
EDIT to add:
5) There's lots of approaches that are popular as to exact approaches to diet mix, and I've seen lots of people successful on different ones, but all of them -- including mine -- have included really sharply limiting sugar (often pretty much to whole fruit as the only sugar-heavy food, if even that.)
6) Drink plenty of water. For lots of people, hunger and thirst signals easily get crossed
> I definitely am not eating enough vegetables and too much starch, which I know I have to change.
To reemphasize this, for some people, eating carbs will never fill them up! I am one of those people for sure, I'll eat cookies until I am physically ill, but I will never be satiated!
Think about this question: Which can you eat more of, twice baked potatoes stuffed with goodies, or just steak?
Next time you sit down for a meal, eat the 10oz sirloin first, before the potatoes. Then wait a few minutes and see how you feel!
Also make sure to avoid "healthy" foods that are anything but.
Bananas are a good example of this. Aside from some potassium, they are no more healthy for you than a candy bar! Granola bars are another great example of "healthy" food that leaves you feeling hungry! (I don't know about you, but I've never been "filled up" from granola bars! I know people who can be, but I am not one of them!) Finally, anything with the word "juice" in it should be avoided!
Finally, realize that your environment is one of the single largest factors in helping you achieve your health goals. Everyone says it is motivation, but hell, odds are you are plenty motivated. Feeling like crap and wanting not to is damned good motivation. But following through, ah, there is the hard part!
Environment matters. I got rid of all snack food from my house. All of it. Eating at home now involves zero willpower. My fridge has nothing but raw food that I need to cook. I have will power for all of the 5 minutes I am grocery shopping each day. If I am too lazy to cook my food, I go hungry, it is that simple. Each day on the way back from work I buy exactly the food I need to cook the meal for that day. (And yes, guests get used to this! "Sorry we have exactly the right amount of this awesome home made food!")
Change your diet. I don't mean "diet", I mean change what you eat forever.
What you're eating, in addition to how much you eat, is extremely important. If you eat crap (sugar cereal), you're going to feel like you're starving two hours later when your blood glucose levels spike.
Risking to be the 52768th guy to propose a fad diet: Have you tried going ketogenic (/r/keto)? I've lost 50 lbs within about six months without really trying. No hunger pains at all (the first week is hell on earth though).
Just avoiding carbs and vegetable oils and eating lots of (mostly saturated) fat made my weight drop. Don't count calories. Just start eating when you feel physically hungry (cravings don't count), stop eating when you aren't hungry anymore (not when you're completely stuffed).
Out of curiosity, do you eat diet foods low in fat? Do you eat a large percentage of packaged/processed meals or made from "scratch"? Margarine or butter?
The monthly fee makes it unappealing for small volume customers, and the per-transaction fee makes it unappealing for large volume customers. I'm guessing there's some intermediate range, when you are negotiating the final deal, where it's comforting to have that "flexibility".
Justin from Spreedly here. Dan, thanks for the kind mention! Dan's use case is one of the main driver's we see. We also see most interest from businesses/services that need their own vault as they work across multiple payment gateways. Either a SaaS billing/booking platform or someone working with 3 or 4 different gateway's globally. Single API/Single Vault/No PCI headache. Many of our customers are weighing up PCI L1 for card storage and/or integration to multiple gateways or Spreedly.
In terms of Dan's scenario we had a customer whose primary gateway was unresponsive early Sunday morning which happened to be their biggest day of the week. They brought a Stripe account up in around 5 - 10 minutes and processed 6 figures that day. Not sure how you ROI that against our fees but they were happy!
Not sure why you were downvoted. A perfectly reasonable growth strategy would be to limit API requests for applications based on a free plan (and progressively increase the limit based on the plan chosen)
> “I was informed by the Singapore police about her death,” Abrams told The Wall Street Journal Thursday. “The cause of death is still under investigation.”
When the software comes with the computer, you can turn around and complain to Dell about the software. There is someone you can call, and generally it's rolled into the phone support contract.
When the software is installed afterwards, you don't have the same ease of complaining. Dell can argue that Firefox somehow messed up your computer.
That is a convenience many people are willing to pay for. Whether they would pay the 16£ is a different question
Sure, but who's next on this service installation?
I also want to make an analogy of asking Dell to upgrade 2GB to 4GB or to 8GB. I don't know how much an upgrade cost now, but a few years back it was about $20-$40? It was worth it to upgrade a hardware, not quite sure how it plays out asking Dell to install Firefox at ~$27 USD. Also consider Firefox upgrades every few months; things going to break, I don't know if Dell is ready to do GOOD support, or just one of those "have you tried power off and restart your computer?" This is also something Mozilla might need to look at as SUMO can get pretty overwhelming. The web is sometimes too technical to debug :(
> If you are using the Mozilla Mark(s) for the unaltered binaries you are distributing, you may not charge for that product. By not charging, we mean the Mozilla product must be without cost and its distribution (whether by download or other media) may not be subject to a fee, or tied to subscribing to or purchasing a service, or the collection of personal information.
Specifically the "By not charging, we mean the Mozilla product must be without cost and its distribution (whether by download or other media) may not be subject to a fee" part.
The problem is that Mozilla's policy applies to distribution but not necessarily to installation. Since this is a legal issue, the details are very important.
In this case, the process of ensuring that a functioning version of Firefox resides on the machine involves:
1. Transferring the Firefox software to the machine
2. Explicitly preparing the machine so that the Firefox software can be run (in this case, installing Firefox)
The Policy only applies to the first item. No part of the policy refers to the second action, and it's fair game for Dell to charge a fee for the labor associated with installing the software (they cannot, of course, charge a fee for the part of the process where the software is distributed to the machine).
If this sounds like nitpicking, welcome to the world of law
I would be willing to bet that they aren't running an installer on each person's machine, though. If they created multiple disk images - one with FF, one without - and are charging to use the one with FF, then it looks like they're charging for distribution.
If they really did create two sets of disk images based on presence of Firefox, Dell could argue that the price is not for the software but for other differences between the disk images.
Note that I'm not arguing about the spirit of the actions, but merely about whether Mozilla actually has a case here
Does one have to physically run an executable and click through the process to have “installed” software? The software is distributed in a different state to the installed state.
On the other hand, the only mention of trademarks in the license is:
> This License does not grant any rights in the trademarks, service marks, or logos of any Contributor
This is unfortunately worded in Dell's favour, as any trademark policy from Mozilla will stand independently from the license. Furthermore, Dell is allowed to use Mozilla's trademark in a fair way, regardless of what their own policies say.
No. The original article claimed that too, but there’s absolutely no way that interpretation would hold up in court.
Lawyer goes to mozilla.com, clicks Download. “By the plaintiff’s interpretation, as they have distributed the product to me, I now have an installed Firefox. Let’s go to the Start Menu and attempt to run it. Wait, hmm, I see no menu icons. Let’s look on the filesystem. Hmm, no folder. Oh, I see, there’s this additional step beyond distribution that I have to take to be able to use the product. What’s that additional step called? Installation. What do we call it when someone does something for us so that we don’t have to do it? A Service. Thank you, Your Hono(u)r (this is the UK after all, though it’d be M’Lord).”
Might be dick-ish (subjectively). But the Mozilla claims that it’s clearly not allowed by their license or trademark (which implies no association), and the repetition of same by the article (and by numerous in the peanut gallery online) does not make it so - Dell’s response is correct.
Doesn't the purchasing a service part explicitly say Dell isn't allowed to do this? Am I reading this wrong somehow or are they just blatantly breaking the rules?
I know people who get paid by their friends for help setting up computers - often reformatting/reinstalling after malware infections - and I'd guess many of them would be installing Firefox for them too. Does it mean they can't do that according to Mozilla if they charge for the services? Dell gets picked on here, but I bet they're not the only ones who charge to install free software like Firefox.
It's totally fine for anyone to charge to install Firefox -- the software is open source. They cannot advertise their services as a Mozilla Firefox Install Service -- Mozilla's trademark is not free. At the very least, you would have to be very clear that you are not affiliated with Mozilla in any way.
It's pretty clear (to me - IANAL) that Dell is using Mozilla's trademark without their permission. If they called it Open Source Pre-Install Service, and explained that it includes Mozilla Firefox and some other software, I think it would be fine.
You are reading it wrong. The -distribution- of the software isn’t tied to the purchase of a service. Dell isn’t charging to put Firefox-setup.exe in your Downloads folder. They’re charging to install it.
Granted, I think charging $18 to install a browser is entirely dickish behavior, but the legal nuances of ‘distribution’ versus ‘installation’ are neither subtle nor vague.
I don't want to take away from your argument, I agree with you 100%, but according to the article it's £16.26 or $27.18, so it's even worse than your $18. It's a ripoff and maybe they could be subject to fraud charges instead :p
Yes, buy enterprise-class hardware (Latitude, etc.) instead of the consumer brands (Inspiron, etc.)
Dell also has a program for large enough IT departments where they'll use a buyer-provided disk image at the factory so machines can be deployed right out of the box.
Not Dell, but the retail store where you got it. Most (Wal-Mart, OfficeMax/Depot, Best Buy) have their "Service plans" which is pretty much paying to get rid of misc software. Retailers gotta love that extra profit while the employees get a nice SPIF.
When it comes to McAffee and Symantec I don't trust a regular uninstall. Until I do a clean install of the OS the machine is forever unclean (any fans of "The League" out there?)
> ...the Mozilla product must be without cost and its distribution (whether by download or other media) may not be ... tied to subscribing to or purchasing a service
I ran the numbers in a previous thread and got numbers that contradict their claim. There's a car fire roughly every 3 minutes (rounding down; it's actually a bit over 3 minutes). In the 500-something days since the Tesla has been released, there have been a total of 3 fires.
If you want more fun, run the traffic fatality rates since June 22, 2012. Tesla is currently sitting at zero (it would be highly unrealistic to expect that to last).
That's not true, and that's a mentality that justifies self-destructive behavior. I used to be overweight but turned it around a few years ago, and in my case it boiled down to fixing some incredibly unhealthy habits
1) better sleeping habits. I used to go to sleep at 3-4 AM, now I force myself off of electronics by midnight and read a book or write until I doze off. Nowadays, when I first get up in the morning, I roll out of bed and do some pushups to avoid the crawl back to bed.
2) better eating habits. Eating breakfast is probably the best thing you can do for your diet. I found that I was eating much more later in the night, so as I shifted my sleeping pattern I also shifted my eating pattern (eating much more at breakfast and lunch and much less at dinner).
3) better exercise. It started with simple things: going to the grocery store, rather than waiting for the closest parking spot, I would park at the far end of the lot and walk the extra N steps; after a few months, I purchased a collapsable cart and just walked the mile from my house to the store. And bit by bit I would try to increase activity.
Obviously everyone's experience is different, but please don't propagate the idea that overweight people can't lose weight