Google really doesn't care if you run an mtr network stress test between Kansas City and Norway 24/7 and suck up your whole gigabit both up and down
Google would care, because there is no way for them to make any money from it. Now if you changed your stress test to do random searches through Google, then they might not care.
Cocaine is schedule II. Cannabis is schedule 1. See, you can learn something from CNN. There doesn't appear to be any real facts to support pot being a gateway drug to cocaine or heroin, but I'll bet you can find proof that it's a gateway to Twinkies.
re you kidding? That strategy has generated billions of dollars worth of free advertising for the Twinkie brand and demand is now at an all-time high; profits from now go to the new owners, losses from then are accounted for in the bankruptcy and get paid for by the creditors. It's brilliant, really, in a sociopathic sort of way.
Not to mention it gave them the opportunity to reduce product size and redefine 'fresh'.
None of it? Wouldn't said doctor incorporate his practice so that he could deduct business expenses, such as insurance coverage, before paying his salary that will include tax obligations?
We need a single-payer system if we're ever gonna have any kind of sane pricing for healthcare, and having the consumer of healthcare pay for it is the most logical choice because that brings market forces into play. And free market is the most efficient distribution of goods and services known to man.
You seem to be confused by the terminology 'single-payer' and 'free market'. The only practical single payer is the federal government. Unless you're saying we set up a private company in a monopoly as the single payer. But that wouldn't be free market either and possibly the most idiotic solution.
And a free market isn't the most efficient method of distributing goods. It's efficiency is in profit margins. Example; suppose I open an ethanol processing plant and pay a premium to Nebraska corn farmers. The farmers choices are to sell at market prices to food manufacturers or at a premium to me, even if that means people starve. That is profit efficiency, not distribution efficiency.
The 850Mhz spectrum they are freeing up with the iDen shutdown will help a ton
The time to judge Sprint's coverage is next year, after they have had a chance to exploit the recent changes in their business. Shutting down iDEN frees up capital and spectrum. Being purchased by Softbank infuses a lot of new capital. And the purchase of Clearwire gives them a ton of new spectrum. With the Network Vision upgrades they have pluggable cards to support frequencies and protocols at the towers. So the 'upgrade' the upgraded towers to support 850 FDD-LTE and 2.5g TDD-LTE is a matter of plugging in two new cards. The 850 will enable them to get Verizon like coverage at a similar cost. And 2.5g in metro areas will provide access to massive data capacity in high density areas. Now their only problem will be backhaul. Sprint and T-Mobile are both at a disadvantage due to not having a Bell lineage.
With these rideshares, the passenger is submitting a request over the internet to a public facing company. That company in turn sends out a pickup request to a specific driver, who accepts it and logs their intent to pick up the passenger.
And here is the problem with the whole situation. These companies aren't offering a 'rideshare' service, they are offering a 'shuttle' service. Rideshare, I'm going someplace and I'll offer to take someone along to share the expenses. These companies are hiring drivers and dispatching them to pick up people who signed up for their service on the Internet. This is Super Shuttle with an online interface. Except that the drivers likely don't have a commercial drivers license (and training) and there are no standards on vehicles and inspections. No verification of liability or medical insurance. No background checks and a tenuous relationship with a company that may only have an online presence.
It doesn't matter if code explicitly states that something is permissible--if they don't personally understand it, it doesn't meet code. If they don't like the practice, it doesn't meet code.
As someone who does have experience with codes enforcement, I can tell you for a fact that in the US, if the code explicitly states something is permissible, it will be accepted by the inspector. City/County governments don't like to get sued any more than the rest of us do. If my city codes inspector failed my inspection because he 'didn't like the practice', I'd make 3 calls and it would be resolved; the city administrator, my alderman, and my attorney. In that order.
As far as the GP's assertion that if an engineer designed it, then it's good. That's bullshit too. Many jurisdictions base their codes on national standards, and the engineer needs to be familiar with the codes for the property in question. For example, if code says a 2x10 floor joist can span x feet. The engineer can't make the span x+1 and say "a little deflection is acceptable". It will fail inspection, builder will have to remedy the problem, and the person paying the bills is going to sue the engineer for the additional costs.
I am led to believe many of these "prologue ads", like the overpriced refreshments, actually go a long way toward the theatres bottom line: unlike much of the ticket revenue.
I have a friend that works (IT management) for a smaller theater chain. They earn very little from ticket sales. Particularly when taking into account the requirements the studios put on them for new projection equipment every few years. (the result of the studios appeasing the George Lucases with fancy new tech rather than requiring better content) Without ad revenue and concessions you wouldn't have any theaters. Even large chains, like AMC, are struggling with higher overhead and lower revenue.
has their office and their servers in that same building can't afford a DR Plan.
Every business can afford an IT DR plan. If you can have a disaster, you need a recovery plan. That plan might be to take the off site tapes and run down to Best Buy and get a new computer. But it's still a DR plan. Every serious business should have contingency planning. What happens if you lose your phone service? A power outage? A tornado? Flooding? A disgruntled employee? A drunk driver through your front door. How does your business survive when your customers can't contact you or you can't provide whatever puts money in your accounts. The cost of the contingency plan will be directly related to how long you can afford to be without those resources.
As far as moving your business to the cloud, what happens when the 'cloud' eventually has a failure. And it will at some point. Some will be large, some will be small. Will your business be important enough to encourage a 3rd party to respond quickly to restore your service. Because now the response to any outage is directly related to how much income you provide for that 3rd party, not how serious that outage affects your business.
I have several relatives w/ type 2 that were able to reduce their medication dependence by losing weight (they were overweight to begin with), though of course it doesn't cure it.
Then there are those of us who managed a normal weight through diet and exercise until diagnosed Type-2 and put on medication.
And back in the reign of Pinball, you would find a machine in every convenience store, and every mall had an arcade. But today you can earn more money by standing up another rack of Twinkies.
Oddly enough, I have both a 1996 pinball machine and a 1970 muscle car. Not that I'm arguing the maintenance on either is easy, but they are not expensive -- probably under 50th percentile as far as hobbies for Americans go. Both have low or negative depreciation, and $100-$1000, plus 5-10 hours of my time, per year.
Hmm, I have a 1980 Williams pinball. I took care of some 'deferred maintenance' when I bought it 12 years ago, but since all I have needed to do was clean/wax the playfield and change an occasional bulb. Since it was designed for commercial use and now is strictly home use, once restored the ongoing cost is not much more than electricity. Due to appreciation I should be able to sell it for more than all the $$ I have spent on it.
My cars, OTOH, are much more expensive to keep around. Local ordinances require all vehicles to be licensed or stored in a garage. And licensing requires maintaining insurance. Because somehow an unlicensed vehicle lowers everyone's property value. I swear, one of these days I'm going to buy the ugliest car that I can find that will pass a state inspection, and park it on the street in front of my house. I'm thinking something along the lines of a Yugo with a rattle-can paint job.
Some organisms live at the edge of sustainability,
That would actually be a good design choice. Something that could limit it's growth so as not to introduce yet another invasive plant. Imagine glow in the dark kudzu.
Try that sort of thinking out with other infrastructure; why not invest in 4 lane roads to each house, and 500 amps of current to each house, and double-capacity storm drainage. I mean, the need isnt there NOW, but in the future, who knows, right?
So what you are saying is that you would be fine if they were dragging 10mbit coax to those rural houses? You do realize that the bulk of the cost is deploying the last mile, and there is little difference in cost whether they pull coax or fiber? Wouldn't want to use current technology to support the hicks out in the country. Just update the copper on the phone poles and give them DSL. (of course, you might end up needing to pull some fiber anyway for the DSLAMs they'll need to install to overcome circuit length limits) Question, if the cost was essentially the same to build your mythical 4 lane road to each house as the current 2 lane roads, would you still advocate building 2 lane roads simply based on cost?
They city pays for the entire infrastructure and then once the bond is paid off will have to pay Google for the pleasure of using the service they the tax payer paid for!
That is incorrect. Only about a third of the households were covered. Without this deal the city would have to pay for the expansion to the rest, or admit defeat. Google is committing to complete the network.
This would make it similar in complexity to sell your gun as it is to sell a car.
I'm not required to check to see if the buyer of my car has a license. He could have used his last car to mow down old ladies and small children in the park on a drunken binge and it would have no affect on my ability to sell my car. All I require of the buyer is cash, and I hand them the keys and a signed title. In my state I am now required to file a stub from the title, but that is to prevent tax fraud, not a transfer of official ownership. The buyer is not required to title the car in my state or any other.
Also, you couldn't pass a gun safety test without the weapon, or one similar, that you intend to purchase. Part of the safety requirements would have to include how to safely load, unload, and put the weapon in a 'safe' mode. Go to a gun show some time and look at a variety of weapons. Ask the dealer to show you the variety of safeties on different pistols. It's a cheap $10 education.
although getting rid of the gun show loophole is a good idea.
The media can't get this right, but how about we give it a try? It's a private sale loophole, not a gun show loophole. I have purchased from gun shows and retail stores, and in all cases I've filled out the federal firearms transaction form and the associated background check. In all cases I purchased from an FFL holder. Private sales, OTOH, do not require that. It doesn't matter if you are at a gun show or selling your deer rifle out of the trunk of your car.
The problem with background checks for private sales isn't the background check. It that now some government agency can tell you whether or not you can sell your personal property, and you get to pay for the privilege. Likely you would have to sell through an FFL holder and pay a transaction fee. Those fees tend to run in the $20-30 range. The end effect is that it devalues your property by the amount of that new regulatory fee and a third party is inserted into the sale.
The first tax we'll consider, corporate income tax, ranges from about 24% to 44% in different places. For example, in California, USA, a medium sized business pays 35% federal, 8.84% state, plus local. In the UK, it's 24% income tax, but then also 20% VAT which compounds to about 35% total VAT. We'll use a mid-range number - 30% corporate income tax.
Then that same money goes to you, the owner, and you pay tax on the same money again. 28% is the UK rate, and it's about the average of the several US rates.
In the US corporations don't pay tax on salaries. They don't pay taxes on revenue. The pay taxes on profit. Salaries, including payroll taxes and benefits, are deducted as expenses before the tax calculation. Along with depreciation, office supplies, utilities, lease payments, etc. A company could have a billion a year in revenue and pay no taxes if they earned no profit.
As a 'business owner', how you file is determined on how your business is structured. Partnerships and sole proprietorships are handled differently than corporations. But again, if you are being double-taxed in the manner you imply, you need a better tax accountant. And some of the places you do get double taxed (some sales tax is an example) can be used as a deduction, but is simply too tedious to document.
Plea bargaining works in the defendant's favor at times too. A friend of mine used to get tickets quite often. In order to keep his license he would hire a lawyer each time. That lawyer would talk to the prosecutor and agree to plead to a lessor non-moving violation with a fine. Speeding? Speedometer was off. Equipment violation, $200 fine and no points. It used to be so common that DUIs were plead down to C&I (Careless and Imprudent), that insurance companies just assumed a C&I was actually a DUI and adjusted your rates accordingly.
But given the state of academic publishing in journals, I think most of the authors would agree they had to give that consent under duress - "publish or die."
Are there requirements that they publish to JSTOR? Does JSTOR require exclusivity? If the answer to either of those is no, then wouldn't the solution be to create a web site where academic papers can be published openly? We do it all the time for software and code.
It seems to me that competition in this case might have been a better solution than civil disobedience. Particularly if you aren't willing to accept the consequences for your actions.
JSTOR had a solution for violation of their terms of service. They notified their customer, MIT, that they were going to suspend their service if they didn't correct the problem.
Putting a web server on the internet means that people will connect to it with various types of software.
I don't believe JSTOR had their server on the Internet. Mr Swartz first hacked MIT's network (kept changing his MAC every time the MIT admins blocked access), and eventually broke into a network closet and installed his equipment.
You don't get to determine what that software is -- a TOS that says "no IE" is meaningless, and so it one that says "no bots"; and using IE or bots to access that site, in and of itself, is not a wrong.
Bullshit. If I want to put up a website with a TOS that says you can only access it with a specific version of Safari, I can certainly, legally, block every single agent that isn't from the browser that I want. I can say you can only access with IE on Monday, Firefox on Tuesday, and Chrome on Wednesday. And if I find someone changing their agent id to bypass that, I can block their IP or their net block. It would be my web site and I'm free (as a US citizen) to disallow access to anyone I like for any reason that doesn't violate Federal discrimination laws. If you don't believe me, log into WOW and install a bot.
But to be clear, Mr Swartz wasn't being prosecuted for violating JSTOR's TOS. He was being prosecuted for breaking into MIT's network and theft of services, which happened to include JSTOR's offerings.
The problem for location services in theaters is that to improve the reliability you have to do something that is counter productive to encouraging people to NOT use their phones. Location services are most accurate when the the handset can see multiple satellites. Under those conditions accuracy can get below 5 meters. When the handset can't accurately determine it's location from satellites it falls back to towers. So if theater owners really wanted your cell phone to know where it was they would install pico cells in their auditoriums. But that would give you a strong signal and would encourage some to use their phone more.
I have always thought theater chains should either create apps, or work with some existing ones like Locale, and put all their locations in the apps database. Maybe make it a loyalty app and reward points for using it. Due to the problem above, it would mean assuring a strong signal in the lobby and then locking the 'theater behavior' when the signal degraded in the auditoriums.
Slashdot Mirror
Google really doesn't care if you run an mtr network stress test between Kansas City and Norway 24/7 and suck up your whole gigabit both up and down
Google would care, because there is no way for them to make any money from it. Now if you changed your stress test to do random searches through Google, then they might not care.
Cocaine is schedule II. Cannabis is schedule 1. See, you can learn something from CNN. There doesn't appear to be any real facts to support pot being a gateway drug to cocaine or heroin, but I'll bet you can find proof that it's a gateway to Twinkies.
re you kidding? That strategy has generated billions of dollars worth of free advertising for the Twinkie brand and demand is now at an all-time high; profits from now go to the new owners, losses from then are accounted for in the bankruptcy and get paid for by the creditors. It's brilliant, really, in a sociopathic sort of way.
Not to mention it gave them the opportunity to reduce product size and redefine 'fresh'.
How much of that goes to malpractice?
None of it? Wouldn't said doctor incorporate his practice so that he could deduct business expenses, such as insurance coverage, before paying his salary that will include tax obligations?
We need a single-payer system if we're ever gonna have any kind of sane pricing for healthcare, and having the consumer of healthcare pay for it is the most logical choice because that brings market forces into play. And free market is the most efficient distribution of goods and services known to man.
You seem to be confused by the terminology 'single-payer' and 'free market'. The only practical single payer is the federal government. Unless you're saying we set up a private company in a monopoly as the single payer. But that wouldn't be free market either and possibly the most idiotic solution.
And a free market isn't the most efficient method of distributing goods. It's efficiency is in profit margins. Example; suppose I open an ethanol processing plant and pay a premium to Nebraska corn farmers. The farmers choices are to sell at market prices to food manufacturers or at a premium to me, even if that means people starve. That is profit efficiency, not distribution efficiency.
The 850Mhz spectrum they are freeing up with the iDen shutdown will help a ton
The time to judge Sprint's coverage is next year, after they have had a chance to exploit the recent changes in their business. Shutting down iDEN frees up capital and spectrum. Being purchased by Softbank infuses a lot of new capital. And the purchase of Clearwire gives them a ton of new spectrum. With the Network Vision upgrades they have pluggable cards to support frequencies and protocols at the towers. So the 'upgrade' the upgraded towers to support 850 FDD-LTE and 2.5g TDD-LTE is a matter of plugging in two new cards. The 850 will enable them to get Verizon like coverage at a similar cost. And 2.5g in metro areas will provide access to massive data capacity in high density areas. Now their only problem will be backhaul. Sprint and T-Mobile are both at a disadvantage due to not having a Bell lineage.
They haven't done a good job of informing their customers of the upgrades.
Are you looking for something like this? http://network.sprint.com/
With these rideshares, the passenger is submitting a request over the internet to a public facing company. That company in turn sends out a pickup request to a specific driver, who accepts it and logs their intent to pick up the passenger.
And here is the problem with the whole situation. These companies aren't offering a 'rideshare' service, they are offering a 'shuttle' service. Rideshare, I'm going someplace and I'll offer to take someone along to share the expenses. These companies are hiring drivers and dispatching them to pick up people who signed up for their service on the Internet. This is Super Shuttle with an online interface. Except that the drivers likely don't have a commercial drivers license (and training) and there are no standards on vehicles and inspections. No verification of liability or medical insurance. No background checks and a tenuous relationship with a company that may only have an online presence.
It doesn't matter if code explicitly states that something is permissible--if they don't personally understand it, it doesn't meet code. If they don't like the practice, it doesn't meet code.
As someone who does have experience with codes enforcement, I can tell you for a fact that in the US, if the code explicitly states something is permissible, it will be accepted by the inspector. City/County governments don't like to get sued any more than the rest of us do. If my city codes inspector failed my inspection because he 'didn't like the practice', I'd make 3 calls and it would be resolved; the city administrator, my alderman, and my attorney. In that order.
As far as the GP's assertion that if an engineer designed it, then it's good. That's bullshit too. Many jurisdictions base their codes on national standards, and the engineer needs to be familiar with the codes for the property in question. For example, if code says a 2x10 floor joist can span x feet. The engineer can't make the span x+1 and say "a little deflection is acceptable". It will fail inspection, builder will have to remedy the problem, and the person paying the bills is going to sue the engineer for the additional costs.
I am led to believe many of these "prologue ads", like the overpriced refreshments, actually go a long way toward the theatres bottom line: unlike much of the ticket revenue.
I have a friend that works (IT management) for a smaller theater chain. They earn very little from ticket sales. Particularly when taking into account the requirements the studios put on them for new projection equipment every few years. (the result of the studios appeasing the George Lucases with fancy new tech rather than requiring better content) Without ad revenue and concessions you wouldn't have any theaters. Even large chains, like AMC, are struggling with higher overhead and lower revenue.
has their office and their servers in that same building can't afford a DR Plan.
Every business can afford an IT DR plan. If you can have a disaster, you need a recovery plan. That plan might be to take the off site tapes and run down to Best Buy and get a new computer. But it's still a DR plan. Every serious business should have contingency planning. What happens if you lose your phone service? A power outage? A tornado? Flooding? A disgruntled employee? A drunk driver through your front door. How does your business survive when your customers can't contact you or you can't provide whatever puts money in your accounts. The cost of the contingency plan will be directly related to how long you can afford to be without those resources.
As far as moving your business to the cloud, what happens when the 'cloud' eventually has a failure. And it will at some point. Some will be large, some will be small. Will your business be important enough to encourage a 3rd party to respond quickly to restore your service. Because now the response to any outage is directly related to how much income you provide for that 3rd party, not how serious that outage affects your business.
I have several relatives w/ type 2 that were able to reduce their medication dependence by losing weight (they were overweight to begin with), though of course it doesn't cure it.
Then there are those of us who managed a normal weight through diet and exercise until diagnosed Type-2 and put on medication.
And back in the reign of Pinball, you would find a machine in every convenience store, and every mall had an arcade. But today you can earn more money by standing up another rack of Twinkies.
Oddly enough, I have both a 1996 pinball machine and a 1970 muscle car. Not that I'm arguing the maintenance on either is easy, but they are not expensive -- probably under 50th percentile as far as hobbies for Americans go. Both have low or negative depreciation, and $100-$1000, plus 5-10 hours of my time, per year.
Hmm, I have a 1980 Williams pinball. I took care of some 'deferred maintenance' when I bought it 12 years ago, but since all I have needed to do was clean/wax the playfield and change an occasional bulb. Since it was designed for commercial use and now is strictly home use, once restored the ongoing cost is not much more than electricity. Due to appreciation I should be able to sell it for more than all the $$ I have spent on it.
My cars, OTOH, are much more expensive to keep around. Local ordinances require all vehicles to be licensed or stored in a garage. And licensing requires maintaining insurance. Because somehow an unlicensed vehicle lowers everyone's property value. I swear, one of these days I'm going to buy the ugliest car that I can find that will pass a state inspection, and park it on the street in front of my house. I'm thinking something along the lines of a Yugo with a rattle-can paint job.
Some organisms live at the edge of sustainability,
That would actually be a good design choice. Something that could limit it's growth so as not to introduce yet another invasive plant. Imagine glow in the dark kudzu.
Try that sort of thinking out with other infrastructure; why not invest in 4 lane roads to each house, and 500 amps of current to each house, and double-capacity storm drainage. I mean, the need isnt there NOW, but in the future, who knows, right?
So what you are saying is that you would be fine if they were dragging 10mbit coax to those rural houses? You do realize that the bulk of the cost is deploying the last mile, and there is little difference in cost whether they pull coax or fiber? Wouldn't want to use current technology to support the hicks out in the country. Just update the copper on the phone poles and give them DSL. (of course, you might end up needing to pull some fiber anyway for the DSLAMs they'll need to install to overcome circuit length limits) Question, if the cost was essentially the same to build your mythical 4 lane road to each house as the current 2 lane roads, would you still advocate building 2 lane roads simply based on cost?
One mistake and you cause a national communications blackout.
Or worse, you kill somebody. This was caused by a sub contractor for Time Warner installing fiber to a new office building.
They city pays for the entire infrastructure and then once the bond is paid off will have to pay Google for the pleasure of using the service they the tax payer paid for!
That is incorrect. Only about a third of the households were covered. Without this deal the city would have to pay for the expansion to the rest, or admit defeat. Google is committing to complete the network.
This would make it similar in complexity to sell your gun as it is to sell a car.
I'm not required to check to see if the buyer of my car has a license. He could have used his last car to mow down old ladies and small children in the park on a drunken binge and it would have no affect on my ability to sell my car. All I require of the buyer is cash, and I hand them the keys and a signed title. In my state I am now required to file a stub from the title, but that is to prevent tax fraud, not a transfer of official ownership. The buyer is not required to title the car in my state or any other.
Also, you couldn't pass a gun safety test without the weapon, or one similar, that you intend to purchase. Part of the safety requirements would have to include how to safely load, unload, and put the weapon in a 'safe' mode. Go to a gun show some time and look at a variety of weapons. Ask the dealer to show you the variety of safeties on different pistols. It's a cheap $10 education.
although getting rid of the gun show loophole is a good idea.
The media can't get this right, but how about we give it a try? It's a private sale loophole, not a gun show loophole. I have purchased from gun shows and retail stores, and in all cases I've filled out the federal firearms transaction form and the associated background check. In all cases I purchased from an FFL holder. Private sales, OTOH, do not require that. It doesn't matter if you are at a gun show or selling your deer rifle out of the trunk of your car.
The problem with background checks for private sales isn't the background check. It that now some government agency can tell you whether or not you can sell your personal property, and you get to pay for the privilege. Likely you would have to sell through an FFL holder and pay a transaction fee. Those fees tend to run in the $20-30 range. The end effect is that it devalues your property by the amount of that new regulatory fee and a third party is inserted into the sale.
The first tax we'll consider, corporate income tax, ranges from about 24% to 44% in different places. For example, in California, USA, a medium sized business pays 35% federal, 8.84% state, plus local. In the UK, it's 24% income tax, but then also 20% VAT which compounds to about 35% total VAT.
We'll use a mid-range number - 30% corporate income tax.
Then that same money goes to you, the owner, and you pay tax on the same money again. 28% is the UK rate, and it's about the average of the several US rates.
In the US corporations don't pay tax on salaries. They don't pay taxes on revenue. The pay taxes on profit. Salaries, including payroll taxes and benefits, are deducted as expenses before the tax calculation. Along with depreciation, office supplies, utilities, lease payments, etc. A company could have a billion a year in revenue and pay no taxes if they earned no profit.
As a 'business owner', how you file is determined on how your business is structured. Partnerships and sole proprietorships are handled differently than corporations. But again, if you are being double-taxed in the manner you imply, you need a better tax accountant. And some of the places you do get double taxed (some sales tax is an example) can be used as a deduction, but is simply too tedious to document.
Plea bargaining works in the defendant's favor at times too. A friend of mine used to get tickets quite often. In order to keep his license he would hire a lawyer each time. That lawyer would talk to the prosecutor and agree to plead to a lessor non-moving violation with a fine. Speeding? Speedometer was off. Equipment violation, $200 fine and no points. It used to be so common that DUIs were plead down to C&I (Careless and Imprudent), that insurance companies just assumed a C&I was actually a DUI and adjusted your rates accordingly.
But given the state of academic publishing in journals, I think most of the authors would agree they had to give that consent under duress - "publish or die."
Are there requirements that they publish to JSTOR? Does JSTOR require exclusivity? If the answer to either of those is no, then wouldn't the solution be to create a web site where academic papers can be published openly? We do it all the time for software and code.
It seems to me that competition in this case might have been a better solution than civil disobedience. Particularly if you aren't willing to accept the consequences for your actions.
Then its up to JSTOR to detect and block bots.
JSTOR had a solution for violation of their terms of service. They notified their customer, MIT, that they were going to suspend their service if they didn't correct the problem.
Putting a web server on the internet means that people will connect to it with various types of software.
I don't believe JSTOR had their server on the Internet. Mr Swartz first hacked MIT's network (kept changing his MAC every time the MIT admins blocked access), and eventually broke into a network closet and installed his equipment.
You don't get to determine what that software is -- a TOS that says "no IE" is meaningless, and so it one that says "no bots"; and using IE or bots to access that site, in and of itself, is not a wrong.
Bullshit. If I want to put up a website with a TOS that says you can only access it with a specific version of Safari, I can certainly, legally, block every single agent that isn't from the browser that I want. I can say you can only access with IE on Monday, Firefox on Tuesday, and Chrome on Wednesday. And if I find someone changing their agent id to bypass that, I can block their IP or their net block. It would be my web site and I'm free (as a US citizen) to disallow access to anyone I like for any reason that doesn't violate Federal discrimination laws. If you don't believe me, log into WOW and install a bot.
But to be clear, Mr Swartz wasn't being prosecuted for violating JSTOR's TOS. He was being prosecuted for breaking into MIT's network and theft of services, which happened to include JSTOR's offerings.
The problem for location services in theaters is that to improve the reliability you have to do something that is counter productive to encouraging people to NOT use their phones. Location services are most accurate when the the handset can see multiple satellites. Under those conditions accuracy can get below 5 meters. When the handset can't accurately determine it's location from satellites it falls back to towers. So if theater owners really wanted your cell phone to know where it was they would install pico cells in their auditoriums. But that would give you a strong signal and would encourage some to use their phone more.
I have always thought theater chains should either create apps, or work with some existing ones like Locale, and put all their locations in the apps database. Maybe make it a loyalty app and reward points for using it. Due to the problem above, it would mean assuring a strong signal in the lobby and then locking the 'theater behavior' when the signal degraded in the auditoriums.