Because bittorrent and encryption are communications enabling technologies, and internet filtering software is a communications censoring technology? Much as I often disagree with the Slashdot conventional "wisdom" on things, I'm not seeing a philosophical inconsistency here.
Well, for one thing, it really honks off the Mole People when you drill through their cities. We'd have nutjobs like the guy at the end of The Incredibles to worry about (not sure if the "Underminer" was him or his machine)
You can also be doing scheduled replication at the disk array level - from array to array, and back up from the secondary storage. Also, you have dedicated network interfaces for any backup to tape that isn't going exclusively over the storage network. Finally, there are some really massive tape libraries with robot loaders (that move quickly enough to kill anyone inside the unit when it comes on - detecting debris / obstacles becomes an important task). There are tape library systems that can support numbers like 400 drives, and 40,000 to 50,000 tapes.
And that's why it doesn't work for a lot of people, no matter how they meet. Real life is a distraction, a huge (and sometimes horrible) one. And a necessary one. It's hard to figure out from just talking if you really see things the same way and can live together. People often have personality traits that are irritating as hell in person. Just by talking, and someone being sympathetic at a distance, you can't gauge if they can really be there for you when the shit hits the fan. If you're dating someone in person, and they freak out at the littlest problem, you get some idea that they can't handle a crisis. We all live with and around other people, in a society. There's an actual context. Conversation is just words. Glad it may work out for you, but how people behave and what they do says as much or more than words to me, at least.
Same thing in Jersey - they got a rate hike and other incentives by promising of doing a high-speed network statewide by 2010 or 2011 or something like that. They're trying to claim that their FIOS offering, which isn't going to be available everywhere, counts, even though it doesn't really meet the original terms. I think the NJ PUC ought to roll back the rate hike and tell Verizon to get bent, but I know that's never going to happen.
So, for the duration of the lawsuit, a party was told that they had to log information that was easily written to logs, they just don't for policy reasons. Basically, they were told "yeah, so it's in RAM, smart-ass, it's still information you've got to fork over." And it's for the duration of the case going forward. The court obviously realizes it can't ask for the earlier contents of RAM. This is the same situation where if (as a company) you're being sued, you'd better start archiving the sent and received email of named / involved parties for the duration of the suit.
It's probably for the best that the law generally recognizes age, rather than maturity. Otherwise, we'd expect to let folks off the hook their whole lives, just because they insist on maintaining a Peter Pan existence:)
No kidding. I'd ask. I'd also try to get any cost of connecting the "last mile" part of haggling on price. Frankly, I don't trust FIOS or cable/VOIP for 911. When we had the huge regional power failure a few years ago from the Great Lakes out to New York, POTS was about the only thing working. Even in areas that had power, the cellphone carriers were completely overwhelmed. Here in northern NJ, all the carriers pretty much went to hell due to call volume and (in some cases) failed towers. SMS still worked, but you can't get EMS out that way. And if you are someplace that gets hit, in future outages, no VOIP, no FIOS, etc. If you've got kids, or someone with medical issues, or you can imagine yourself being unlucky, not being able to call 911 isn't a pleasant thought. And at what point does Verizon seek permission to shut the copper down entirely? How about 10% of customers subscribing to POTS? Maybe 20%? Why not 30%?
Here's the screwed-up part - POTS just works. It just works. It's a really good design. The copper goes to your house, it works. You can call 911, and it works. It pretty much works through anything except a major earthquake or storm (ice storm, hurricane, whatever). And, of course, we're going to screw it up through our own (often poorly informed, in the case of the 911 limitations) individual choices, plus our desire to let large companies make even more guaranteed profit by messing it up. Great. I can get TV and high-speed internet, but when the power goes out, I can't call 911. What the hell? As this sort of stuff movies forward, we're going to hear more and more horror stories of folks unable to get help and deaths resulting.
Maybe I'm just getting cranky, but screwing up a basic service so that Verizon (or whoever else) can stuff a bunch of channels into the Idiot Box doesn't really seem like great public policy. Sure, some people can live without a land line, and are willing to take whatever risk it entails (Whoops! Forgot to charge the battery, and I just sliced open an artery. D'oh!), but the broader question should be carefully looked at by regulators and lawmakers. It won't be, of course.
"do you REALLY want to stay as a customer anyways if your experience is so horrible?"
Not really, but it's better than getting whacked with large penalties for leaving a company that's abusing you. Since "real" disputes go to arbitration (an arbitration firm of the company's choosing), you've got little recourse. Sprint is actually destroying all the value that Nextel had when they acquired them due to lousy customer service, but I'll cover that in a minute.
There's one exception to the arbitration - if you pay your bill with a credit card, and Sprint (and they did this to someone I know) continues to bill you after you've terminated your month to month service (initial contract period was over), you go to your credit card issuer and tell them you're disputing it. In the case I'm aware of, the issuing bank demanded that Sprint show that the charges were legit, and Sprint didn't or couldn't do it. The bank reps, btw, seemed to really enjoy doing it, too.
The reason he dropped it, btw? Aside from lousy customer service experiences whenever he did need to call about a problem, the actual service here in NJ was lousy. Lots of dropped calls and situations where he couldn't place calls, but everyone around him with AT&T, Cingular, Verizon or T-Mobile could.
In terms of Sprint/Nextel, the best part is that Sprint thought "push to talk" was the killer feature that kept the Nextel customers happy. It wasn't. It was the customer service. Nextel had great customer service for the customers that wanted certain features and a certain service level. There have been news reports about Sprint dismantling the Nextel customer service organization, and suddenly the customers are unhappy and leaving. What a surprise. They knew what they wanted, even if the geniuses at Sprint didn't. I hold little hope for the shareholders holding them responsible for blowing it if that trend hold up, but if they end up destroying Nextel's value, they ought to clear out the entire board.
The funny thing is that at least in the part of NJ I'm in, I know a lot of people who are using AT&T because they were shafted by Verizon, or had service problems. The GSM carriers seem to get better signals inside of buildings than the CDMA carriers, at least in this area. And, by the way, if you're a government or educational customer, AT&T/Cingular has much better support for your end users - you can call at night for help, and you can actually go to a Cingular store for support, etc. For gov't/edu, Verizon won't do 24 hour, won't do weekends, and they don't want to see you in a Verizon store. If you're providing Blackberry service, the execs with them expect to get help no matter where they are.
Also, GSM data roams - CDMA doesn't, as far as I know. And it's not just internationally - if the local CDMA carrier isn't Verizon, you're be out of luck. However, there are places with non-Cingular GSM coverage, and GSM data (EDGE or GPRS) just works. I'm still not sure why they didn't include HDPSA support in the device, unless supporting that and EDGE wouldn't have fit in the form factor.. There's a rumor that there will be a 3G iPhone in Europe by October. Guess everyone in the US will shell out another $500 next year:).
No, actually, my usual problem with Apple's design (after the initial iPod) is that they're going in the direction of eliminating tactile feedback, with a bias towards having to look at the device even for simple activities. Some buttons that have feel to them, etc., would actually goes a long way towards making devices usable. As a side note, the iPhone is going to be a pain to use while driving as well - no voice dial, no buttons you can feel - you can't even go into your contact list and click down the right number of times to get to a certain frequent contact. Which would be fine if it discouraged people from using it in the car, but I'm sure it'll just lead to more idiots looking down at the phone while driving. It's almost like the experience of looking at the thing is somehow more important than actually using it for a task.
And, frankly, you're missing the point - manufacturers and carriers have a statutory requirement to make devices and the network accessible. And, by the way, in most schools they do ban nuts if there are students allergic. Last I checked, you had to go out of your way to get a car with a stick shift.
This could be the start of a real problem if it's copied, and yes, by acting like it doesn't matter, Apple is sending a message. Then again, I've never really gotten much of a "socially responsible" sense from Jobs, so I'm not really shocked.
The best part? It's a feature which is pretty unusable for anyone with a visual impairment. AWSOME! I'm going to be really happy when everyone copies the iPhone interface and suddenly the visually impaired have few/no options for a usable mobile phone. THANK YOU STEVE JOBS! After all, we wouldn't want those blind folks, or people who are farsighted even to be able to rely on any other sense when using a phone. I'm glad to see you bringing back Apple's initial OS X less-than-friendly period in a new device. By the way, you might want to read the following: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/section255.ht ml
Perhaps this will provide Sir Steve the incentive he needs to do the charity thing in a serious way - he could fund a cure for blindness! Then he could create the perfect UI without having to compromise his vision of the perfect UI.
If you're on some sort of agreement - like Novell's MLA/ALA/SLA licenses, there's a good chance that you're not paying per-server, you're paying a set amount for a product suite per person (full time equivalent employee, student, etc). So SuSE Linux Enterprise Server doesn't cost extra as you add virtual servers, whether you're using VMware or Xen.
Re:Xen (and virtualization) is for the Enterprise
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Expensive? Not really, if you compare the costs of actually getting that number of servers. Given the feature set you get, it's pretty modest. If you work in an educational setting, it's even cheaper. You can get VI3 Enterprise and a tier one server - 2U rackmount, dual quad-core system (2.4 ghz) with 16GB of RAM, dual power supply, 6 hour CTR service, an additional NIC and a 4GB fibre channel card and about 512GB of local storage for about $16,000. Depending on the size of the VMs you need to run, you can easily get anywhere from 12 to 20 VMs on that server.
We're entering our fourth year of server virtualization under VMware, and we would've sunk without it - trying to meet customer demands in our space and budget would have been impossible.
Factoring in things like the cost of gigabit ports on a data center switch, cost of power outlets (distribution is often as much of a problem as capacity), and the cost of fibre channel switch ports, there's a huge savings per server. We've got 42 VMs running on three servers similar to the above (one 2xdual core, two 2xquad) and an older server still running VMware ESX 2.5.x slated for replacement next year.
And yes, fibre channel. It's still cheaper than 10GB ethernet, and can run at 4GB.
Knowing where the gaps occurred would actually be interesting. Were there particular pre-DHS agencies or offices that had systems do well or poorly? On the server/software side, if failures occurred, were the same people or the same part of the organization in charge of those systems, or had they been shuffled around inside DHS? If you've got your own responsibilities already, odds are you're only going to have enough time to keep an unfamiliar system working, not learn it inside and out. There was a lot of institutional chaos created along with DHS (post-DHS FEMA was obviously an example). And FEMA and DHS became a dumping ground for political appointees under Bush. (Clinton, apparently, tended to load them into the Department of Commerce and a few other places).
There's a reason why products like RIM's Blackberry are popular with corporate. They WORK. It just works. Little support need, no messy configuration by the end user, it just works. Lose a device? The administrator can wipe the device remotely. On-device encryption. Integration with corporate email and corporate IM software. Ability to communicate device-to-device via IM without relying on the corporate backend systems. And actual push email. Not sms-triggered, or any other goofy stuff I've seen over the years.
To support corporate, Apple needs to provide a proper SDK so the companies that make multi-platform mobile syncing software can write to it. There's no other way to deal with the calender and contact list syncing and other features.
But, once again, Jobs' Stalinist view of technology (it'll set you free, but only in the way he defines freedom) isn't going to bend at all. Remember, it's not about working well with others, folks, it's about what YOU want, and the universe should reshape itself to you, and anyone who tells you differently is just trying to keep you down (geez, maybe a Scientology comparison would work as well). Unless you work at Apple, and then it's about what Steve wants, of course.
Bull. The problem is that corporate execs want their calenders and contact information to sync with backend corporate mail systems. To do that, you need an actual solution - it doesn't have to be RIM - but you need some software on the device to do it correctly. By the way, does the iPhone have "remote wipe" for lost or stolen devices? How about on-device encryption? If not, it's not going to go far in a lot of corporate, medical and government circles.
If you've already got Exchange, GroupWise or Notes, you just add a BES to your environment. If you sign a contract with one of the major carriers, you usually get the first 10 BES client licenses for free, and just have to pay support. And it's really easy to set it up.
Much like airline travel, business users are a HUGE, constant revenue stream. Residential users are a flighty nuisance in comparison. That's why it matters.
Some articles have comments about this (AP, maybe?) that basically said the only significant risk was a burst of concentrated gamma radiation that just happened to hit us, but the actual odds were really, really small. Looks like to really hit the earth hard, a supernova would have to be within 100 light years or so, with a type II supernova having to occur within 25 or 26 light-years to destroy half the ozone layer.
If too much money from institutional investors or hedge funds gets tied up here, it could be really, really bad. The sort of thing that can make economies collapse. The LTCM mess in 1998 is a good example - there was a massive bailout organized. It couldn't be allowed to fail - it would've taken too many things with it. So, why not? If you're a big enough fund, you get bailed out. If you're not, you're never on the hook for more than a small percentage of what you grabbed. So when I hear about this stuff, it just seems like an amazing gamble. Barely better than investing in lottery tickets, really. Geez, bet people feel good about those 401k/403b fund right now.
No, that's pretty much New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Connecticut - there's something of an assumption that people know best, your government probably doesn't, and even the well-meaning officials can be bozos, never mind the actual crooks. Maine is just kinda contrary, New Hampshire has the whole "live free or die" thing, and Rhode Island and the New Haven colony in Connecticut were started by folks who thought that freedom of worship only meant something if you had freedom of thought - not just think as Winthrop and the Puritans wanted. Took about an extra 100 years for the Massachusetts Bay Colony to start loosening up a bit on the issue. In the meantime (for example), Rhode Island had Quakers, Jews, etc. living there. In spite of everything, and all the immigration, etc., the government of Massachusetts still seems to want to get into people's lives more than most of the other New England states. Different history, different attitudes. Maine, although not a state until 1820, always had a distinct identity since it didn't connect with Massachusetts. Vermont, I can't speak to. It's the only New England state I haven't spent any appreciable time in. I grew up in Rhode Island, and the state's history helps explain the institutionalized contempt for authority (note, Bush has a 16% approval rating in Rhode Island). 1) It was the first state to declare independence 2) it was the last of the 13 to ratify the Constitution (forced, under threat of tariffs), and 3) a group of Rhode Islanders burnt a British revenue schooner in 1772. The HMS Gaspee is still burned in effigy every year.
A lot of the die-offs have been near corn fields, and a pesticide that coats some of the GM corn is a neurotoxin that causes disorientation in bees, even at low doses. There was a similar issue in France a number of years ago, apparently. Honey production was cut in half for several years. The Star-Ledger here in NJ ran an article about it today. Some are speculating that this might be a factor.
Slashdot Mirror
From a mental image standpoint, just be glad the headline wasn't "BBC Not in Bed With Steve Ballmer"
Because bittorrent and encryption are communications enabling technologies, and internet filtering software is a communications censoring technology? Much as I often disagree with the Slashdot conventional "wisdom" on things, I'm not seeing a philosophical inconsistency here.
Well, for one thing, it really honks off the Mole People when you drill through their cities. We'd have nutjobs like the guy at the end of The Incredibles to worry about (not sure if the "Underminer" was him or his machine)
You can also be doing scheduled replication at the disk array level - from array to array, and back up from the secondary storage. Also, you have dedicated network interfaces for any backup to tape that isn't going exclusively over the storage network. Finally, there are some really massive tape libraries with robot loaders (that move quickly enough to kill anyone inside the unit when it comes on - detecting debris / obstacles becomes an important task). There are tape library systems that can support numbers like 400 drives, and 40,000 to 50,000 tapes.
And that's why it doesn't work for a lot of people, no matter how they meet. Real life is a distraction, a huge (and sometimes horrible) one. And a necessary one. It's hard to figure out from just talking if you really see things the same way and can live together. People often have personality traits that are irritating as hell in person. Just by talking, and someone being sympathetic at a distance, you can't gauge if they can really be there for you when the shit hits the fan. If you're dating someone in person, and they freak out at the littlest problem, you get some idea that they can't handle a crisis. We all live with and around other people, in a society. There's an actual context. Conversation is just words. Glad it may work out for you, but how people behave and what they do says as much or more than words to me, at least.
Same thing in Jersey - they got a rate hike and other incentives by promising of doing a high-speed network statewide by 2010 or 2011 or something like that. They're trying to claim that their FIOS offering, which isn't going to be available everywhere, counts, even though it doesn't really meet the original terms. I think the NJ PUC ought to roll back the rate hike and tell Verizon to get bent, but I know that's never going to happen.
So, for the duration of the lawsuit, a party was told that they had to log information that was easily written to logs, they just don't for policy reasons. Basically, they were told "yeah, so it's in RAM, smart-ass, it's still information you've got to fork over." And it's for the duration of the case going forward. The court obviously realizes it can't ask for the earlier contents of RAM. This is the same situation where if (as a company) you're being sued, you'd better start archiving the sent and received email of named / involved parties for the duration of the suit.
It's probably for the best that the law generally recognizes age, rather than maturity. Otherwise, we'd expect to let folks off the hook their whole lives, just because they insist on maintaining a Peter Pan existence :)
Here's the screwed-up part - POTS just works. It just works. It's a really good design. The copper goes to your house, it works. You can call 911, and it works. It pretty much works through anything except a major earthquake or storm (ice storm, hurricane, whatever). And, of course, we're going to screw it up through our own (often poorly informed, in the case of the 911 limitations) individual choices, plus our desire to let large companies make even more guaranteed profit by messing it up. Great. I can get TV and high-speed internet, but when the power goes out, I can't call 911. What the hell? As this sort of stuff movies forward, we're going to hear more and more horror stories of folks unable to get help and deaths resulting.
Maybe I'm just getting cranky, but screwing up a basic service so that Verizon (or whoever else) can stuff a bunch of channels into the Idiot Box doesn't really seem like great public policy. Sure, some people can live without a land line, and are willing to take whatever risk it entails (Whoops! Forgot to charge the battery, and I just sliced open an artery. D'oh!), but the broader question should be carefully looked at by regulators and lawmakers. It won't be, of course.
Not really, but it's better than getting whacked with large penalties for leaving a company that's abusing you. Since "real" disputes go to arbitration (an arbitration firm of the company's choosing), you've got little recourse. Sprint is actually destroying all the value that Nextel had when they acquired them due to lousy customer service, but I'll cover that in a minute.
There's one exception to the arbitration - if you pay your bill with a credit card, and Sprint (and they did this to someone I know) continues to bill you after you've terminated your month to month service (initial contract period was over), you go to your credit card issuer and tell them you're disputing it. In the case I'm aware of, the issuing bank demanded that Sprint show that the charges were legit, and Sprint didn't or couldn't do it. The bank reps, btw, seemed to really enjoy doing it, too.
The reason he dropped it, btw? Aside from lousy customer service experiences whenever he did need to call about a problem, the actual service here in NJ was lousy. Lots of dropped calls and situations where he couldn't place calls, but everyone around him with AT&T, Cingular, Verizon or T-Mobile could.
In terms of Sprint/Nextel, the best part is that Sprint thought "push to talk" was the killer feature that kept the Nextel customers happy. It wasn't. It was the customer service. Nextel had great customer service for the customers that wanted certain features and a certain service level. There have been news reports about Sprint dismantling the Nextel customer service organization, and suddenly the customers are unhappy and leaving. What a surprise. They knew what they wanted, even if the geniuses at Sprint didn't. I hold little hope for the shareholders holding them responsible for blowing it if that trend hold up, but if they end up destroying Nextel's value, they ought to clear out the entire board.
Also, GSM data roams - CDMA doesn't, as far as I know. And it's not just internationally - if the local CDMA carrier isn't Verizon, you're be out of luck. However, there are places with non-Cingular GSM coverage, and GSM data (EDGE or GPRS) just works. I'm still not sure why they didn't include HDPSA support in the device, unless supporting that and EDGE wouldn't have fit in the form factor.. There's a rumor that there will be a 3G iPhone in Europe by October. Guess everyone in the US will shell out another $500 next year
And, frankly, you're missing the point - manufacturers and carriers have a statutory requirement to make devices and the network accessible. And, by the way, in most schools they do ban nuts if there are students allergic. Last I checked, you had to go out of your way to get a car with a stick shift.
This could be the start of a real problem if it's copied, and yes, by acting like it doesn't matter, Apple is sending a message. Then again, I've never really gotten much of a "socially responsible" sense from Jobs, so I'm not really shocked.
Perhaps this will provide Sir Steve the incentive he needs to do the charity thing in a serious way - he could fund a cure for blindness! Then he could create the perfect UI without having to compromise his vision of the perfect UI.
If you're on some sort of agreement - like Novell's MLA/ALA/SLA licenses, there's a good chance that you're not paying per-server, you're paying a set amount for a product suite per person (full time equivalent employee, student, etc). So SuSE Linux Enterprise Server doesn't cost extra as you add virtual servers, whether you're using VMware or Xen.
Expensive? Not really, if you compare the costs of actually getting that number of servers. Given the feature set you get, it's pretty modest. If you work in an educational setting, it's even cheaper. You can get VI3 Enterprise and a tier one server - 2U rackmount, dual quad-core system (2.4 ghz) with 16GB of RAM, dual power supply, 6 hour CTR service, an additional NIC and a 4GB fibre channel card and about 512GB of local storage for about $16,000. Depending on the size of the VMs you need to run, you can easily get anywhere from 12 to 20 VMs on that server.
We're entering our fourth year of server virtualization under VMware, and we would've sunk without it - trying to meet customer demands in our space and budget would have been impossible.
Factoring in things like the cost of gigabit ports on a data center switch, cost of power outlets (distribution is often as much of a problem as capacity), and the cost of fibre channel switch ports, there's a huge savings per server. We've got 42 VMs running on three servers similar to the above (one 2xdual core, two 2xquad) and an older server still running VMware ESX 2.5.x slated for replacement next year.
And yes, fibre channel. It's still cheaper than 10GB ethernet, and can run at 4GB.
Knowing where the gaps occurred would actually be interesting. Were there particular pre-DHS agencies or offices that had systems do well or poorly? On the server/software side, if failures occurred, were the same people or the same part of the organization in charge of those systems, or had they been shuffled around inside DHS? If you've got your own responsibilities already, odds are you're only going to have enough time to keep an unfamiliar system working, not learn it inside and out. There was a lot of institutional chaos created along with DHS (post-DHS FEMA was obviously an example). And FEMA and DHS became a dumping ground for political appointees under Bush. (Clinton, apparently, tended to load them into the Department of Commerce and a few other places).
There's a reason why products like RIM's Blackberry are popular with corporate. They WORK. It just works. Little support need, no messy configuration by the end user, it just works. Lose a device? The administrator can wipe the device remotely. On-device encryption. Integration with corporate email and corporate IM software. Ability to communicate device-to-device via IM without relying on the corporate backend systems. And actual push email. Not sms-triggered, or any other goofy stuff I've seen over the years.
To support corporate, Apple needs to provide a proper SDK so the companies that make multi-platform mobile syncing software can write to it. There's no other way to deal with the calender and contact list syncing and other features.
But, once again, Jobs' Stalinist view of technology (it'll set you free, but only in the way he defines freedom) isn't going to bend at all. Remember, it's not about working well with others, folks, it's about what YOU want, and the universe should reshape itself to you, and anyone who tells you differently is just trying to keep you down (geez, maybe a Scientology comparison would work as well). Unless you work at Apple, and then it's about what Steve wants, of course.
Bull. The problem is that corporate execs want their calenders and contact information to sync with backend corporate mail systems. To do that, you need an actual solution - it doesn't have to be RIM - but you need some software on the device to do it correctly. By the way, does the iPhone have "remote wipe" for lost or stolen devices? How about on-device encryption? If not, it's not going to go far in a lot of corporate, medical and government circles.
If you've already got Exchange, GroupWise or Notes, you just add a BES to your environment. If you sign a contract with one of the major carriers, you usually get the first 10 BES client licenses for free, and just have to pay support. And it's really easy to set it up.
Much like airline travel, business users are a HUGE, constant revenue stream. Residential users are a flighty nuisance in comparison. That's why it matters.
"That's odd, every time I try to read a negative story about AT&T, the link doesn't work . . . "
Some articles have comments about this (AP, maybe?) that basically said the only significant risk was a burst of concentrated gamma radiation that just happened to hit us, but the actual odds were really, really small. Looks like to really hit the earth hard, a supernova would have to be within 100 light years or so, with a type II supernova having to occur within 25 or 26 light-years to destroy half the ozone layer.
If too much money from institutional investors or hedge funds gets tied up here, it could be really, really bad. The sort of thing that can make economies collapse. The LTCM mess in 1998 is a good example - there was a massive bailout organized. It couldn't be allowed to fail - it would've taken too many things with it. So, why not? If you're a big enough fund, you get bailed out. If you're not, you're never on the hook for more than a small percentage of what you grabbed. So when I hear about this stuff, it just seems like an amazing gamble. Barely better than investing in lottery tickets, really. Geez, bet people feel good about those 401k/403b fund right now.
No, that's pretty much New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Connecticut - there's something of an assumption that people know best, your government probably doesn't, and even the well-meaning officials can be bozos, never mind the actual crooks. Maine is just kinda contrary, New Hampshire has the whole "live free or die" thing, and Rhode Island and the New Haven colony in Connecticut were started by folks who thought that freedom of worship only meant something if you had freedom of thought - not just think as Winthrop and the Puritans wanted. Took about an extra 100 years for the Massachusetts Bay Colony to start loosening up a bit on the issue. In the meantime (for example), Rhode Island had Quakers, Jews, etc. living there. In spite of everything, and all the immigration, etc., the government of Massachusetts still seems to want to get into people's lives more than most of the other New England states. Different history, different attitudes. Maine, although not a state until 1820, always had a distinct identity since it didn't connect with Massachusetts. Vermont, I can't speak to. It's the only New England state I haven't spent any appreciable time in. I grew up in Rhode Island, and the state's history helps explain the institutionalized contempt for authority (note, Bush has a 16% approval rating in Rhode Island). 1) It was the first state to declare independence 2) it was the last of the 13 to ratify the Constitution (forced, under threat of tariffs), and 3) a group of Rhode Islanders burnt a British revenue schooner in 1772. The HMS Gaspee is still burned in effigy every year.
A lot of the die-offs have been near corn fields, and a pesticide that coats some of the GM corn is a neurotoxin that causes disorientation in bees, even at low doses. There was a similar issue in France a number of years ago, apparently. Honey production was cut in half for several years. The Star-Ledger here in NJ ran an article about it today. Some are speculating that this might be a factor.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news -11/1176611470205100.xml&coll=1