"Hi, this is Bob in accounting, the Help Desk app looks like it's down."
"Hi Bob. Yup, its down. There is no ETR. I can't give you a ticket number because it's down."
And poof! We're back to scribbled notes on paper, and a really bad day for the poor folks on the Help Desk. And in the meantime, there are no tickets coming in, so the folks who can actually fix anything are clueless. Great plan.
My local paper of record (the San Diego Union-Tribune) REQUIRES a valid Facebook account to comment on everything they publish online. Given that I'm not quite willing to forgo my right to comment publicly on what they publish, I need to have a Facebook account.
(I leave the idiocy of their decision for another comment.)
People have been doing that for many years with the common hop vine (Humulus lupulus) which is also a member of the Cannabaceae family. Grafting hop vines onto a good Cannabis rootstock yields a scion with strobili that are visually indistinguishable from an ordinary hop flower. Unfortunately, the product is not very potent-- the best outcome is maybe 1.5-2% THC (and only trace amounts of other interesting compounds) which is terrible compared to the 10-20% THC that you can get from a well-managed C. sativa or C. indica flower. Also, the graft process is very finicky, the scion does not grow as well as an ungrafted vine, and your resulting plant is annual (like Cannabis) rather than perennial (like Humulus.) The hops you get are not terribly useful for beer-making, which is pretty much the only use for hops. (Some people like to make a sedative tea from hops, though I doubt that would be a good delivery method for the THC, since it's not water-soluble.) One other major "gotcha" is that the Cannabis plant matures much faster than hops, and the production density is hundreds of times better for Cannabis than Humulus.
Interestingly, there is some published scientific literature (see Crombie) that claims this grafting process does not work. However, I wonder, because Crombie talks about the hops "leaves" even though the only useful part of the plant is the flower (or properly, the "strobile.") The research I mention above has not been published, though the "1.5-2% THC" value I quoted has been measured by GC-MS. And, of course, there are just tons of anecdotal evidence from amateur gardeners that support either opinion.
I'll let someone else do the genetic research, but I think it may eventually be possible to engineer an algae that eats sunlight and poops THC. Wouldn't that be fun!
I suppose it's ironic that I am currently adblocking as much of Slashdot and the associated domains as I'm blocking on Yahoo.
And the really ironic thing is that I keep seeing this stupid message that says something along the lines of "because you are such an excellent Slashdotter, you're eligible to block ads if you click here." Uhhh, what?
I'm not sure where you work(ed?) but this is the exact opposite of my lab in California, which is part of a major national chain. The report goes to the ordering physician, and a copy to the patient only if the ordering physician authorizes it. Except for certain low-complexity tests, all lab testing has to be ordered by a licensed physician or an AP/NP under their direct supervision. This is regulated by the state Department of Health Services.
The problem discussed in the article has been a problem for us long before DNA testing was available. There are certain diseases that one might not want to have on one's medical record for one reason or another. So the patient asks to pay cash up front. But when the paperwork hits the lab computer system, the patient demographics get scanned against various health plan eligibility databases and automatically popped into their health plan, reported back, etc. More than once, we've had a patient in this situation call and ask why we sent them a refund check.
If you ever have a lab test that you want to make sure doesn't show up on your medical record, don't give the phlebotomist your SSN or health plan ID card, and make sure it's not on the paperwork your doctor gave you. (You probably won't be able to give a fake name; most labs absolutely require picture ID as positive patient identification for HIPAA compliance.)
Yeah, actually this is *exactly* why I use OpenDNS.
As you probably already know (why else are you posting as an AC?) this is a workaround for a nasty thing that Dell and Google have come up with to present the user with a screen full of ads when they make a typo in the search box. It's installed by default on new Dell machines. It's impossible for an ordinary user to to turn off. I'm a hardcore techie and I had a rough time with it on my new Inspiron. More details here: http://blog.opendns.com/2007/05/22/google-turns-the-page/
So, AC, do you work for Google or Dell? Shame on you in either case for spreading this FUD. If you work for Google, even more shame for violating the "don't be evil" policy. Because this is pretty fucking evil, and trying to convince people not to use OpenDNS because of it is even more evil.
I do this all the time. My feeling is that code snippets posted in a public forum are meant to be be used by others unless it says not to. Yes, I recognize that this is at least theoretically contrary to US copyright laws. But if you don't want someone to use it, why post it? To show your brilliant code?
Since this specific case apparently bothers you, I think you should try to contact the author through some back-channel and get an explicit okay to use it. But I bet more than likely your request will be ignored or you'll get a "why the fsck are you asking such a dumb thing?" That's generally how I reply when someone asks me about code I've posted.
Re:If you are that old, ACCEPT IT!
on
Jim Gray Is Missing
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Heh. Funny you should mention it. A couple of weeks ago I rescued some young fool who thought it would be a good idea to go kayaking in the Pacific without proper gear. He fell off, got wet, got himself into a serious hypothermic crisis and had to be rescued by yours truly, an old fart who *was* properly prepared and knows his limitations. I guess I'm lucky that my cardiovascular system held up to the challenge, one more time. I'll head off to my rocking chair now. Thanks for the heads-up.
I think things like pay, benefits, location, etc. matter far more to the vast majority of techies than merely "working on a prominent website." After all, in today's world, prominent websites come and go in a matter of months.
Amen, brother. Preach it. Like many on Slashdot, I survived the dot-bomb era and I landed at a company that pays well, provides good benefits, and treats me well. I have a boss who I like a lot, and I'll probably stay until he leaves or fires me. This isn't a cool sexy job, but I'm doing work that matters to real people. It's relatively secure, I don't work 90 hours a week, the office is fifteen minutes from the beach, and I can telecommute when I want to. Yeah, there are some drawbacks-- corporate HQ is full of bureaucrats, there are an awful lot of suits, and I spend more time in meetings than I like. But it balances out.
Now I wouldn't classify myself as a "programming superstar" (I'm not even sure what that means!) Sometimes I think about going back to the world where there's still a "???" in the road to "profit!" and some people think that a website actually matters in the real world. A few of our junior programmers have done it, and the ones I've stayed in contact with seem happy enough.
But I know that I'm happy enough that a headhunter is going to have to come up with something better than a lame email or a cold call to even get me talking to him/her. And any company that wants to hire me is going to have to do a hell of a lot more than a conference call phone interview (rescheduled three or four times) where they ask dumb logic questions about getting tourists and cannibals across a river. I've worked a lot of places and that project has never come up. You want to know what I know? Ask me how I'm going to code a bulletproof component to handle user input three days before a project is due and a five junior programmers are sitting around waiting for it. That, I've done.
Sometimes as myself if I've gotten *too* comfortable here. I'm not sure there's a clear answer. But I've been out on the cutting edge of technology; now I'm not, and I think that my quality of life is better.
Eudora was always an odd thing in Qualcomm's portfolio
You've got that right. It's always been kind of an orphan that they don't quite know what to do with. Quite a few years ago I interviewed for a technical manglement position in their Eudora group, but I kept getting the feeling that they didn't know what to do with it. On the one hand, it doesn't make enough money to kept under the Qualcomm umbrella as current product. On the other hand, the name recognition is high and it's their oldest ongoing product, and the only Qualcomm product that a consumer ever sees for sale.
I ended up not taking the job because I didn't think they were going to keep Eudora alive. So much for my business prediction skills. Now I go to work every day at another place in the shadow of the Qualcomm development center, high on the hill above.:-)
It seems to be that this latest move will be a good thing. I use Eudora myself, but I looked seriously at Thunderbird as a replacement during one version change when they added a license agreement that I couldn't stomach. At the time, I didn't think Thunderbird was quite ready for prime time, and Eudora has since relaxed the licensing agreement to my satisfaction.
And, of course, Linspire is nearly useless without the Click-N-Run subscription service. (CNR is Linspire's slick automated apt-get functionality.) TFA makes no mention of whether he's planning to give that away too. I would suspect not. All the other recent Linspire giveaways have not included CNR, or have included very brief trial runs.
is the composer even being maintained any more by anybody?
In Oct 2003, Michael "short attention span" Robertson announced a that he was funding a plan to create a replacement for Microsoft's FrontPage, called NVU that was based on the original Composer code. It's been sitting in beta ever since. Rumor has it that it's being developed by one programmer who shares his time with other projects. It's supposedly at 1.0 beta (actually version 0.8) but it's been sitting there since last year. It may not be abandonware, but it's as close as it can be. Needless to say, it's got no hope of ever being a FrontPage-killer....
The parent company of the company I work for has recently developed a noninvasive screening test for colon cancer. Basically, you poop in a bucket and the poop is analyzed for fragments of RNA that are associated with cancerous cells. The company spent approximately a bazillion dollars developing this test.
So how do you let them protect their investment? The detection processes are already patented (we license them, at a cost of another bazillion dollars a year.) They can't patent the poop itself-- everyone's is different. So they patented the structure of the detectable fragments. Did they invent the fragment itself? Of course not, the cancer cells did. But they made these particular fragments incredibly valuable, in one particular context.
Do these patents prevent someone else from discovering another, equally detectable fragment? No. All it does is protect the company's investment in R&D, while still allowing them to provide a reasonable profit while providing a valuable service.
If it weren't possible to patent such things, this research would never have been done. And believe me, if you've ever had a colonoscopy, you'd be damned pleased that an alternate technology exists.
Ain't gonna happen. Even as the tools get better and more "user friendly" [hah!] we get more of them and they're more complicated. It still requires a coder's mindset to work through those kinds of problems.
I'm somewhat amused that on the java.net home page there's an article about the proliferation of Java component libraries. What the headline doesn't say is that they all have their own learning curve, their own peccadillos, and their own unique characteristics.
I agree with the parent that woefully few of us bother to research our algorithms and optimize our code anymore. So what? The tools make it unnecessary, and CPU speed has so outpaced software that it's usually counterproductive to try to improve code beyond what a good optimizing compiler can do. Yet on the other hand, I can write a full-blown Windows app with all the bells and whistles in a couple of weeks. (Which is exactly what I've been doing lately.)
I'm an old programmer. I've been at it for almost thirty years now. I'm about as senior as it gets in my field (healthcare.) The things I work on today aren't that much different than what I worked on back in 1977. PCs instead of mainframes, optimizing compilers instead of line-based interpreters, but it's still just as much of a struggle translating what the user wants into a working program. And I'm confident that will still be true when I'm hacking the database at the old-age home to make it give me more pudding with my lunch.
I wonder what the system will do when it encounters signs with logical impossibilities? I've driven through an intersection in NYC that had opposite-facing "one way" signs on the same utility pole, along with a "no entry" sign at the entrance to the only other way out. Eventually I figured out which one was wrong, or I guess I'd still be there. Somehow I doubt that this system would come up with the same answer I did.
Because the potential payout may be ten times as much as what you'd get from selling outright. Back in the good ol' days, it might have been orders of magnitude more. And once the VCs and your new board of directors start destroying what was your brainchild, you take your f***-you money, bail out, and do something else you want to try. Even in this post-dot-com era, it still works... just ask Philip Greenspun.
On the other hand, I have a hard time believing that Craig would go for it. Then again, I said the same thing about Sergei and Larry, and 'twould appear I was wrong....
In a related story, Las Vegas police department sharpshooters shot two men who they say were preparing to assassinate random pedestrians from an 11th floor window of the Aladdin Hotel. When the concept of the "Bluetooth rifle" was explained to the police spokesman, he said, and we quote, "what a pair of f***ing idiots." Since the pair was shot approximately 10,000 times by the nice policemen with *real* rifles, only splinters of the "Bluetooth rifle" remain. Film at 11.
I don't want to see every bit of telemetry. I can't be there live, and sometimes I can't watch it on TV. (Work does tend to frown on that a bit.)
So I want to see words. I want to read a description of how the sweat is pouring off Ivan Basso as he wobbles up the last agonizing meters of Col d'Madeleine and looks over his shoulder at Virenque, a hundred meters behind. I couldn't care less whether his heart rate is 200 or his cadence is 86.5. I want to hear about Lance posing for photos and sipping champagne as he rides into Paris, not that he's doing it at 28.8 km/hr.
The folks at Velonews did a spectacular job this year describing the minute-by-minute action over every stage. I'm not going to link to it, because they'd probably have me killed if I got their server slashdotted now that it's all over, but if you care, you can find it. It's better than all the telemetry in the world.
Amen. If they want to abandon that market, it's not worth the regulatory and market hassles of pulling out of it. Instead, they'll just let it die as their customers leave them, one by one. Anybody that's left after a year or two either never uses long-distance, or still believes that AT&T is "The Phone Company" and will never willingly switch services.
It's all a matter of semantics, I suppose, though all civil disobedience is, pretty much by definition, criminal.
The traditional definition of "civil disobedience" is "[t]he active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence."
I suppose it really depends on who's in power and what they want to call your act. Seditionist? Terrorist? Freedom fighter? And if it's the will of the people, is it disobedient at all?
So practice an art long admired in the great city of Boston: civil disobedience. If you don't like them, destroy the cameras. One second with a spray can and they're useless. And then the cops come and guard them, and you post pictures of that on the 'net, and they look like idiots. If you get busted, you'll get your day in court.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hi, this is Bob in accounting, the Help Desk app looks like it's down."
"Hi Bob. Yup, its down. There is no ETR. I can't give you a ticket number because it's down."
And poof! We're back to scribbled notes on paper, and a really bad day for the poor folks on the Help Desk. And in the meantime, there are no tickets coming in, so the folks who can actually fix anything are clueless. Great plan.
Yes, need.
My local paper of record (the San Diego Union-Tribune) REQUIRES a valid Facebook account to comment on everything they publish online. Given that I'm not quite willing to forgo my right to comment publicly on what they publish, I need to have a Facebook account.
(I leave the idiocy of their decision for another comment.)
People have been doing that for many years with the common hop vine (Humulus lupulus) which is also a member of the Cannabaceae family. Grafting hop vines onto a good Cannabis rootstock yields a scion with strobili that are visually indistinguishable from an ordinary hop flower. Unfortunately, the product is not very potent-- the best outcome is maybe 1.5-2% THC (and only trace amounts of other interesting compounds) which is terrible compared to the 10-20% THC that you can get from a well-managed C. sativa or C. indica flower. Also, the graft process is very finicky, the scion does not grow as well as an ungrafted vine, and your resulting plant is annual (like Cannabis) rather than perennial (like Humulus.) The hops you get are not terribly useful for beer-making, which is pretty much the only use for hops. (Some people like to make a sedative tea from hops, though I doubt that would be a good delivery method for the THC, since it's not water-soluble.) One other major "gotcha" is that the Cannabis plant matures much faster than hops, and the production density is hundreds of times better for Cannabis than Humulus.
Interestingly, there is some published scientific literature (see Crombie) that claims this grafting process does not work. However, I wonder, because Crombie talks about the hops "leaves" even though the only useful part of the plant is the flower (or properly, the "strobile.") The research I mention above has not been published, though the "1.5-2% THC" value I quoted has been measured by GC-MS. And, of course, there are just tons of anecdotal evidence from amateur gardeners that support either opinion.
I'll let someone else do the genetic research, but I think it may eventually be possible to engineer an algae that eats sunlight and poops THC. Wouldn't that be fun!
I suppose it's ironic that I am currently adblocking as much of Slashdot and the associated domains as I'm blocking on Yahoo.
And the really ironic thing is that I keep seeing this stupid message that says something along the lines of "because you are such an excellent Slashdotter, you're eligible to block ads if you click here." Uhhh, what?
Just when I want to start thinking about them as evil, they have an outbreak of common sense and do the right thing.
Oh well. I still think they're too big and have too much of my data stored away, but I'll let go of the paranoia. Until the next time. :-)
I hope wherever he's gone, it's full of stars.
I'm not sure where you work(ed?) but this is the exact opposite of my lab in California, which is part of a major national chain. The report goes to the ordering physician, and a copy to the patient only if the ordering physician authorizes it. Except for certain low-complexity tests, all lab testing has to be ordered by a licensed physician or an AP/NP under their direct supervision. This is regulated by the state Department of Health Services.
The problem discussed in the article has been a problem for us long before DNA testing was available. There are certain diseases that one might not want to have on one's medical record for one reason or another. So the patient asks to pay cash up front. But when the paperwork hits the lab computer system, the patient demographics get scanned against various health plan eligibility databases and automatically popped into their health plan, reported back, etc. More than once, we've had a patient in this situation call and ask why we sent them a refund check.
If you ever have a lab test that you want to make sure doesn't show up on your medical record, don't give the phlebotomist your SSN or health plan ID card, and make sure it's not on the paperwork your doctor gave you. (You probably won't be able to give a fake name; most labs absolutely require picture ID as positive patient identification for HIPAA compliance.)
Yeah, actually this is *exactly* why I use OpenDNS.
As you probably already know (why else are you posting as an AC?) this is a workaround for a nasty thing that Dell and Google have come up with to present the user with a screen full of ads when they make a typo in the search box. It's installed by default on new Dell machines. It's impossible for an ordinary user to to turn off. I'm a hardcore techie and I had a rough time with it on my new Inspiron. More details here: http://blog.opendns.com/2007/05/22/google-turns-the-page/
So, AC, do you work for Google or Dell? Shame on you in either case for spreading this FUD. If you work for Google, even more shame for violating the "don't be evil" policy. Because this is pretty fucking evil, and trying to convince people not to use OpenDNS because of it is even more evil.
I do this all the time. My feeling is that code snippets posted in a public forum are meant to be be used by others unless it says not to. Yes, I recognize that this is at least theoretically contrary to US copyright laws. But if you don't want someone to use it, why post it? To show your brilliant code?
Since this specific case apparently bothers you, I think you should try to contact the author through some back-channel and get an explicit okay to use it. But I bet more than likely your request will be ignored or you'll get a "why the fsck are you asking such a dumb thing?" That's generally how I reply when someone asks me about code I've posted.
Heh. Funny you should mention it. A couple of weeks ago I rescued some young fool who thought it would be a good idea to go kayaking in the Pacific without proper gear. He fell off, got wet, got himself into a serious hypothermic crisis and had to be rescued by yours truly, an old fart who *was* properly prepared and knows his limitations. I guess I'm lucky that my cardiovascular system held up to the challenge, one more time. I'll head off to my rocking chair now. Thanks for the heads-up.
I think things like pay, benefits, location, etc. matter far more to the vast majority of techies than merely "working on a prominent website." After all, in today's world, prominent websites come and go in a matter of months.
Amen, brother. Preach it. Like many on Slashdot, I survived the dot-bomb era and I landed at a company that pays well, provides good benefits, and treats me well. I have a boss who I like a lot, and I'll probably stay until he leaves or fires me. This isn't a cool sexy job, but I'm doing work that matters to real people. It's relatively secure, I don't work 90 hours a week, the office is fifteen minutes from the beach, and I can telecommute when I want to. Yeah, there are some drawbacks-- corporate HQ is full of bureaucrats, there are an awful lot of suits, and I spend more time in meetings than I like. But it balances out.
Now I wouldn't classify myself as a "programming superstar" (I'm not even sure what that means!) Sometimes I think about going back to the world where there's still a "???" in the road to "profit!" and some people think that a website actually matters in the real world. A few of our junior programmers have done it, and the ones I've stayed in contact with seem happy enough.
But I know that I'm happy enough that a headhunter is going to have to come up with something better than a lame email or a cold call to even get me talking to him/her. And any company that wants to hire me is going to have to do a hell of a lot more than a conference call phone interview (rescheduled three or four times) where they ask dumb logic questions about getting tourists and cannibals across a river. I've worked a lot of places and that project has never come up. You want to know what I know? Ask me how I'm going to code a bulletproof component to handle user input three days before a project is due and a five junior programmers are sitting around waiting for it. That, I've done.
Sometimes as myself if I've gotten *too* comfortable here. I'm not sure there's a clear answer. But I've been out on the cutting edge of technology; now I'm not, and I think that my quality of life is better.
I ended up not taking the job because I didn't think they were going to keep Eudora alive. So much for my business prediction skills. Now I go to work every day at another place in the shadow of the Qualcomm development center, high on the hill above.
It seems to be that this latest move will be a good thing. I use Eudora myself, but I looked seriously at Thunderbird as a replacement during one version change when they added a license agreement that I couldn't stomach. At the time, I didn't think Thunderbird was quite ready for prime time, and Eudora has since relaxed the licensing agreement to my satisfaction.
Maybe this should be tagged as "what were they thinking?"
And, of course, Linspire is nearly useless without the Click-N-Run subscription service. (CNR is Linspire's slick automated apt-get functionality.) TFA makes no mention of whether he's planning to give that away too. I would suspect not. All the other recent Linspire giveaways have not included CNR, or have included very brief trial runs.
is the composer even being maintained any more by anybody?
In Oct 2003, Michael "short attention span" Robertson announced a that he was funding a plan to create a replacement for Microsoft's FrontPage, called NVU that was based on the original Composer code. It's been sitting in beta ever since. Rumor has it that it's being developed by one programmer who shares his time with other projects. It's supposedly at 1.0 beta (actually version 0.8) but it's been sitting there since last year. It may not be abandonware, but it's as close as it can be. Needless to say, it's got no hope of ever being a FrontPage-killer....
The parent company of the company I work for has recently developed a noninvasive screening test for colon cancer. Basically, you poop in a bucket and the poop is analyzed for fragments of RNA that are associated with cancerous cells. The company spent approximately a bazillion dollars developing this test.
So how do you let them protect their investment? The detection processes are already patented (we license them, at a cost of another bazillion dollars a year.) They can't patent the poop itself-- everyone's is different. So they patented the structure of the detectable fragments. Did they invent the fragment itself? Of course not, the cancer cells did. But they made these particular fragments incredibly valuable, in one particular context.
Do these patents prevent someone else from discovering another, equally detectable fragment? No. All it does is protect the company's investment in R&D, while still allowing them to provide a reasonable profit while providing a valuable service.
If it weren't possible to patent such things, this research would never have been done. And believe me, if you've ever had a colonoscopy, you'd be damned pleased that an alternate technology exists.
Ain't gonna happen. Even as the tools get better and more "user friendly" [hah!] we get more of them and they're more complicated. It still requires a coder's mindset to work through those kinds of problems.
I'm somewhat amused that on the java.net home page there's an article about the proliferation of Java component libraries. What the headline doesn't say is that they all have their own learning curve, their own peccadillos, and their own unique characteristics.
I agree with the parent that woefully few of us bother to research our algorithms and optimize our code anymore. So what? The tools make it unnecessary, and CPU speed has so outpaced software that it's usually counterproductive to try to improve code beyond what a good optimizing compiler can do. Yet on the other hand, I can write a full-blown Windows app with all the bells and whistles in a couple of weeks. (Which is exactly what I've been doing lately.)
I'm an old programmer. I've been at it for almost thirty years now. I'm about as senior as it gets in my field (healthcare.) The things I work on today aren't that much different than what I worked on back in 1977. PCs instead of mainframes, optimizing compilers instead of line-based interpreters, but it's still just as much of a struggle translating what the user wants into a working program. And I'm confident that will still be true when I'm hacking the database at the old-age home to make it give me more pudding with my lunch.
I wonder what the system will do when it encounters signs with logical impossibilities? I've driven through an intersection in NYC that had opposite-facing "one way" signs on the same utility pole, along with a "no entry" sign at the entrance to the only other way out. Eventually I figured out which one was wrong, or I guess I'd still be there. Somehow I doubt that this system would come up with the same answer I did.
Because the potential payout may be ten times as much as what you'd get from selling outright. Back in the good ol' days, it might have been orders of magnitude more. And once the VCs and your new board of directors start destroying what was your brainchild, you take your f***-you money, bail out, and do something else you want to try. Even in this post-dot-com era, it still works... just ask Philip Greenspun.
On the other hand, I have a hard time believing that Craig would go for it. Then again, I said the same thing about Sergei and Larry, and 'twould appear I was wrong....
In a related story, Las Vegas police department sharpshooters shot two men who they say were preparing to assassinate random pedestrians from an 11th floor window of the Aladdin Hotel. When the concept of the "Bluetooth rifle" was explained to the police spokesman, he said, and we quote, "what a pair of f***ing idiots." Since the pair was shot approximately 10,000 times by the nice policemen with *real* rifles, only splinters of the "Bluetooth rifle" remain. Film at 11.
... it's not about data, it's about the riders.
I don't want to see every bit of telemetry. I can't be there live, and sometimes I can't watch it on TV. (Work does tend to frown on that a bit.)
So I want to see words. I want to read a description of how the sweat is pouring off Ivan Basso as he wobbles up the last agonizing meters of Col d'Madeleine and looks over his shoulder at Virenque, a hundred meters behind. I couldn't care less whether his heart rate is 200 or his cadence is 86.5. I want to hear about Lance posing for photos and sipping champagne as he rides into Paris, not that he's doing it at 28.8 km/hr.
The folks at Velonews did a spectacular job this year describing the minute-by-minute action over every stage. I'm not going to link to it, because they'd probably have me killed if I got their server slashdotted now that it's all over, but if you care, you can find it. It's better than all the telemetry in the world.
Amen. If they want to abandon that market, it's not worth the regulatory and market hassles of pulling out of it. Instead, they'll just let it die as their customers leave them, one by one. Anybody that's left after a year or two either never uses long-distance, or still believes that AT&T is "The Phone Company" and will never willingly switch services.
It's all a matter of semantics, I suppose, though all civil disobedience is, pretty much by definition, criminal.
The traditional definition of "civil disobedience" is "[t]he active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence."
I suppose it really depends on who's in power and what they want to call your act. Seditionist? Terrorist? Freedom fighter? And if it's the will of the people, is it disobedient at all?
Who wants a worn-out shredder?
So practice an art long admired in the great city of Boston: civil disobedience. If you don't like them, destroy the cameras. One second with a spray can and they're useless. And then the cops come and guard them, and you post pictures of that on the 'net, and they look like idiots. If you get busted, you'll get your day in court.