"I agree. I would love to move to Alaska. Any Alaskan companies looking for an experienced LAMP developer? I scan the job sites on a regular basis but haven't found any appropriate opportunities."
I agree with you, but if you look beyond the snarky comments in the "article" you will see they also consider the employment situation. Anchorage perhaps has the lowest per-capita quantity of IT jobs of any major city in the US. The number of tech companies that have a significant presence there is near zero. Just a few corporate IT jobs.
"WTF? Does that mean the US telcos are double dipping?!"
No, it is just a different model.
In the US/Canada, calling a mobile vs. calling a landline is the same price (often unmetered or very cheap). In most cases it costs just a few cents a minute to call anywhere in the US, landline or mobile, usually including Alaska and Hawaii. Some packages even extend that to Canada, and western Europe (non-mobile in the latter case).
That is not the case in Australia, the caller to a mobile is usually charged a hefty surcharge. Take a look at your international calling rates, you will see no special mobile rate for calls to the US. It is all the same rate, there are no special mobile area codes (a.k.a. city codes).
In many cases, you can even transfer your home number to a mobile if you are eliminating your landline.
One could argue which concept is better, fairer, or whatever. As with Australia (and almost everywhere) it really depends on the package you get.
"Well, they also completely missed the question (or rather dropped) the question of whether or not Obama is really even eligible to be president, or that one citizen tried to discover if he was through the courts and got thrown out for "having no standing to bring the lawsuit". "
Your point is somewhat valid. The concept of "standing" is important to keep the courts from being overwhelmed by frivolous lawsuits. The question is, who does have standing in this case, and why did they not file a lawsuit?
My guess is a Secretary of State for an individual state (or whomever is the head of elections) or an Attorney General could probably claim standing on behalf of the state's residents. So could Congress, or probably the Solicitor General or US Attorney General (both of the latter reporting to a Republican President). There are certainly plenty of officials from red states where Obama one that might be motivated to do so.
My guess is they are not filing suit for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is they know it is a farce and that they would be proved wrong, then highly embarrassed.
Also note, despite the "privacy" of the original vault copy, there are plenty of people who could access it (legally or illegally). I am sure the CIA, FBI, etc. have plenty of resources that could dig in, and have, but found it was legit.
If you read the lawsuit the Hilary supporter in PA filed, it was a bunch of conspiracy theory crap. No proof whatsoever, just a bunch of accusations. Are you telling me that some official in Kenya could not be bribed to pony up a birth certificate if it existed? But, no such certificate has emerged.
Obama responded with a birth certificate, yet no official in Hawaii has disputed it, and I am sure there are plenty of honest people there that would if it were bogus.
Bottom line, this was brought up by the media, but dropped mostly because it was a bogus claim.
"the nice part of solar cells is that the majority of 'peak' power occurs while the sun shines. so going to peak/off peak you can really make a huge difference, along with a solar panel array."
Hmmmm, interesting point I never thought of. The part of solar/wind I did not like was the battery part of the equation. An expensive, toxic mess.
Your view suggests I could at least help at peak and skip the batteries. I work at home, and have several test servers, music, etc. running during the day, so this would have an impact. Even for those not at home during the day, there is something to be said for running the A/C or fans when there is free power available, lessening the need for night-time A/C, etc. as your home would be pre-cooled.
Here in Chicago at least, it is usually windier during the day (must be due to the politicians being awake and spewing their hot air) so wind has somewhat of the same benefit as solar.
"What i REALLY want is an ATX power supply for my PC that has a 12-volt POWER IN line on it so I can have a stack of sealed-lead-acid batteries behind it wired to a solar panel on the roof, and so it would switch back to mains on-the-fly when the battery power got too low.. preferably without crashing the O/S"
What you REALLY want is a PC that runs off of 12V directly, with as little voltage conversion as practical.
Google is pushing hard for that. PSUs are one of the bigger areas of a PC for power waste, and also generate a lot of heat (that needs to be removed with A/C). Google runs huge datacenters and stands to gain a lot from reduced waste in the PSU and reduced A/C usage.
Google has a lot to gain from this, and the side benefits of being able to run PCs off of stored solar, wind, etc. are big for the rest of us.
"Just change the air time of American Idol to 6:00pm and turn politics to 8:00-9:00pm"
LOL. Scary, but true.
That would not solve the problem, as it would just enhance the effect of the 4-7pm peak.
Move American Idol to 6am and you might actually spread power usage a bit.
Yeah, yeah, I know you were joking, just had to play along.
Seriously now, the solution is demand-based control. Move laundry and other big users of electricity to the middle of the night, and charge demand-based rates (cheaper rates at night when demand is lower). This has to be done as automatically as practical, with little user intervention.
We will not likely be able to affect things like TV and Internet usage times, but we can spread the load on high consumers like laundry, dish washers, car charging (when the comes along), etc. There might even be some hope for Air Conditioning, but that is a bit tougher to time.
"I'm (hoping) analyzing spam headers is part of your job description, otherwise you have way too much spare time:D"
I know I look at my spam folder and could come up with similar "analysis" without spending much time or effort. It is usually pretty obvious what the trends are.
Most of us know that spam filters are not perfect, so we scan our spam folders for false positives. Every now and then I open one up, mostly just curious as to what the scam is.
A few months ago I opened one up. It was an email confirming my registration with some dating site. I was perusing it, looking for the scam, when I noticed it had the last 4 digits of the credit card used to open this account. Strangely, it was the same as my credit card!
I checked my bank website and sure enough, somebody was using my credit card. They foolishly used my email account, and I use unique email addresses when I buy things online. I canceled my card immediately and contacted the company associated with that email address.
I convinced them it was likely real and suggested they contact a security firm. Sure enough, a few days later, the FBI called and thanked me for being persistent and asked for any more info I had. They indeed had been hacked (SQL injection), about a year earlier, and about 90% of the credit cards used at that site over the last year had been canceled due to fraud.
In my case, I was able to cancel my card within hours of it being compromised, and about $1000 worth of fraudulent purchases wiped off my card with almost no questions. It would have been a lot uglier and more hassle if I did not catch this until the statement came. I now get a daily statement in email and scan it thoroughly.
Bottom line, a little basic analysis of your spam is a good idea. Doesn't have to be your job to find benefit. To the best of my knowledge nobody got busted, but that gaping hole was fixed, and that company now uses a trusted service for their shopping cart application.
"Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view)...this is simply not a constitutionally granted power that the government (Federal) has at this time."
Hmmm, though I agree with the general sentiment that government has the wrong priorities, and is protecting their rich friends (and themselves) it is hard to question whether they have a constitutionally granted power to do this. I believe the commerce clause gives them this power.
While I believe that it could be a mistake on their part. The fact that it was "an oversight" doesn't make sense to me.
Yes, I agree. Google employs many lawyers. One of them MUST have signed off on the TOS before it went live. This was a conscious decision. Corporations just don't copy and past legal stuff -- EVER. Someone in Google liked the original TOS.
Kinda doubt it. Lawyers are rarely involved in the quality and release process. Not unless there is a debate or concern and they are called in by someone more involved with the product.
They would have certainly approved a boilerplate at some point, and would usually be called in if someone actually noticed the problem and wanted to modify it. But I have never heard of any tech company including legal in the test and release process as a standard practice.
Also, getting marketing, testers and developers to review doc is usually like pulling teeth. They would almost never more than glance at a EULA, warranty statement or something like that.
"States are perfectly free to strip municipalities of their authority to regulate businesses, zone property, establish building codes, etc."
Er, sort of. At least here in Illinois the power of the municipalities is laid out in the state constitution. It is called "home rule".
For the state legislature to take away any powers from a home rule city/county they need a 60% super-majority. That is really hard to get in our state, especially since home rule is quite popular, and the democratic "machine" in Chicago rules more than about 50% of the legislators, and the downstate Republican "combine" rules the rest.
At the next level, the counties can pass ordinances, but if they conflict with a city/village ordinance, the city ordinance takes precedence.
It is nearly impossible to coordinate anything at the state or even county level and override local ordinances. The result is a hodge-podge of laws city to city, county to county.
The classic example of this is the number of gun laws. State laws are fairly strict (but mostly resonable), but then you have individual towns with their own stricter laws. And there is the reverse, Cook County (contains Chicago and a lot of suburbs) has super-strict laws, but some towns have overruled them with less strict laws. You almost have to be a lawyer just to drive from home to the range.
"If a little yellow bar like the "remember password" bar came down and said "this site is encrypted, but its identity cannot be authenticated. Be aware that, like any normal (http) website, this one may not be from who it says it's from" then it would be completely different. Instead they interrupt the browsing experience with a very unfriendly message that non-tech people will not have a chance of understanding."
I agree. I think it is appropriate to warn the user, and it should be made clear this is unnacceptable on a site where banking or credit card info is involved. But completely alarming the user is overboard.
I use self-signed certs every now and again where I am trying to protect passwords, but there is not a big security risk.
That said, a godaddy cert is pretty darn cheap these days, so I do it fairly rarely now.
> Sure, you get what you pay for. But the problem > here is that these drives don't indicate on the > packaging whether they use SLC or MLC memory, or > whether they offer more than one channel.
At the very least you would expect the makers of the "good drives" to make it clear why they are worth the extra cash. Not sure I expect the makers of "bad drives" to advertise their deficiencies.
As consumers, we can then assume that drives that do not list specs are crap.
"Rather than throttle P2P, youtube.com, or itunes.com, Comcast should identify their customers who download tons of information, impose a limit on those people, and then tell them, "If you go over 100 gigabytes, you will need to pay $100 a month to gain unlimited downloads." i.e. a Tier system:"
I somewhat agree. The aspect you are missing is "during peak". Peak is what the ISP needs to provision capacity for. If they throttle at all, or charge for "excessive" usage, it should be during peak only, and take any restrictions off during non-peak. Resources during non-peak are essentially free (or at least far less expensive). I know I tend to start my big-ass downloads (usually large ISOs) right before I go to sleep (around midnight or so). youtube-type services are the main exception (as I obviously watch them real-time). P2P usage during peak is a bit on the wasteful side, during non-peak it is not heavily affecting others.
I know I am preaching, but if we all made an attempt to concentrate our use of resources during off-peak, systems would be more efficient and more enjoyable for most. Not only bandwidth, but this concept also applies to transportation, electricity, water, restaurants, vacation destinations, etc.
A good non-Internet example is skiing. I tend to ski during January/February, and often fly in on Sunday night, fly out Friday night. I get cheaper rooms and flights, with a big bonus of shorter lift lines, less skiers on the mountain and often better snow conditions. The ski resorts love me as my money is gravy to them, they have empty rooms to fill, empty lifts they have to run anyway, etc. The profit margin on me, percentage-wise, is much higher than the family coming during the holidays, while I win paying less for a better experience. My employer likes it as I am glad to work during the holidays, and take time off when they are fully staffed. Everybody wins.
To summarize, a homeowner shot a burglar that was in his home. The homeowner was not charged with the shooting as it was deemed to be in self-defense, but was charged for violating the town's ban on handguns. A major bruhaha ensued.
The state legislature passed a law giving people charged with violating a local government's gun laws an affirmative defense if they were defending themselves or someone else when they were caught with the gun. The town was forced to drop the charges and return the guns. No one has challenged the law on constitutional grounds, yet the anti-gunners definitely would if they thought they would win.
To be honest, I think the law is bad public policy. Not 'cause I am against gun ownership (I own several), but because it makes a mockery of the idea of law and order. My view is the same for the telco immunity issue in this topic. Personally, I believe Illinois should prohibit local gun ordinances (called "municipal preemption") and do any regulation at the State level, but that is off-topic.
Bottom line, it is not uncommon to decriminalize things that occurred in the past, and I do not believe there is anything unconstitutional about it. Sometimes it is a good thing, as it could correct bad laws. In this case of telco immunity it is bad IMNSHO. Seems kind of moot in this case, as the gov't is using the State Privilege pretty effectively to shut these lawsuits down. Very sad.
"I Know (with some element of guess that) "Tata" maybe a slang or a real word in different languages with meanings ranging from simple "waving of hand" to something obscense:)"
This reminds me (and there are many of these) of a similar situation involving a car name not working in another country/culture. Chevrolet years back introduced the Chevy Nova into Mexico and it did not sell very well though it should have been popular there. "No va" roughly translates to "No go" in spanish.
"If it's registered as a US-based non-profit then absolutely."
Not quite. In the US it needs to be a "charity", not simply "non-profit". I think 501(C)(3) is the designation. If they are (and Apache is) they will make it VERY CLEAR on their donations page as it obviously helps their fund-raising efforts.
Bottom line, IANATL, but I know that simple "non-profit" status is not enough to make a donation deductible on your US taxes. Most non-profit FOSS projects probably are NOT tax deductible. My personal opinion is for small donations, it is not a big deal. I do not let that stop me from dropping $20 to a project I find useful. I also find a thank you note, or a wish-list gift, goes a long way too, especially for the smaller projects with only one or two developers. Folks like to know their hard work is appreciated.
Your suggestion on cancelled checks, though, is likely good advice (again, IANATL).
"My brother lived in Alaska for 5 years. I went a visited twice during the summer. My god it was beautiful up there."
Living there, and visiting in the summer, are two very different things. Much of Alaska (south of the circle at least) is awesome 4-5 months a year, the other 7-8 take some serious fortitude. If the weather doesn't get you down (Anchorage and Juneu can be mild-ish), the short days probably will.
"The problem your "boycotts" have is that **AA will just point to any decline in sales as a result of piracy instead of them alienating the consumers, giving them another excuse for pursuing even worse laws. This will lead into further boycotts, which in turn will lead to... well you get the point."
I am sure I will get modded down here, but...... downloading copyrighted material without permission of the owner is stealing. Plain and simple. I never have done it, and won't.
That doesn't mean I am going to buy their crap either. I buy CDs from little bands playing at bars. I download legal music (example Phish and Dead and other jam band live shows). I will buy commercial CDs if they allow free downloads of their live shows (I have bought plenty of Phish, Dead, String Cheese Incident, etc.).
I certainly do not advocate the RIAA's tactics, so I refuse to support them, and actively boycott them. Have for several years. Just because they are assholes does not mean it is OK to steal their property. Like it or not, it is their right to set the price.
Boycotting RIAA labels is the only ethical approach.
"The idiots who use Windows affect me indirectly which is really annoying since their computers are sending me spam and brute forcing my servers."
The most common brute-force attack I see on my IPS are ssh brute-force attacks coming from *nix servers that have been compromised. From what I understand, those ssh brute force attacks are highly effective.
I am no fan of Windows either, but I think that might be a stretch to blame Windows for the bulk of brute-force attacks.
"The only possible reason I can see for users/corporations upgrading to Vista is if vendors start releasing packages that are dependant apon features that XP does not include."
For most corporate types, and non-gamer consumers, that time is likely a long way off. I can't see any features in Vista that are of interest to me and most non-gamer users.
The issue I see most likely to get Windows users to go to Vista will be when MS stops issuing patches for XP and it's subsystems.
Slashdot Mirror
"I agree. I would love to move to Alaska. Any Alaskan companies looking for an experienced LAMP developer? I scan the job sites on a regular basis but haven't found any appropriate opportunities."
I agree with you, but if you look beyond the snarky comments in the "article" you will see they also consider the employment situation. Anchorage perhaps has the lowest per-capita quantity of IT jobs of any major city in the US. The number of tech companies that have a significant presence there is near zero. Just a few corporate IT jobs.
"WTF? Does that mean the US telcos are double dipping?!"
No, it is just a different model.
In the US/Canada, calling a mobile vs. calling a landline is the same price (often unmetered or very cheap). In most cases it costs just a few cents a minute to call anywhere in the US, landline or mobile, usually including Alaska and Hawaii. Some packages even extend that to Canada, and western Europe (non-mobile in the latter case).
That is not the case in Australia, the caller to a mobile is usually charged a hefty surcharge. Take a look at your international calling rates, you will see no special mobile rate for calls to the US. It is all the same rate, there are no special mobile area codes (a.k.a. city codes).
In many cases, you can even transfer your home number to a mobile if you are eliminating your landline.
One could argue which concept is better, fairer, or whatever. As with Australia (and almost everywhere) it really depends on the package you get.
"Well, they also completely missed the question (or rather dropped) the question of whether or not Obama is really even eligible to be president, or that one citizen tried to discover if he was through the courts and got thrown out for "having no standing to bring the lawsuit". "
Your point is somewhat valid. The concept of "standing" is important to keep the courts from being overwhelmed by frivolous lawsuits. The question is, who does have standing in this case, and why did they not file a lawsuit?
My guess is a Secretary of State for an individual state (or whomever is the head of elections) or an Attorney General could probably claim standing on behalf of the state's residents. So could Congress, or probably the Solicitor General or US Attorney General (both of the latter reporting to a Republican President). There are certainly plenty of officials from red states where Obama one that might be motivated to do so.
My guess is they are not filing suit for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is they know it is a farce and that they would be proved wrong, then highly embarrassed.
Also note, despite the "privacy" of the original vault copy, there are plenty of people who could access it (legally or illegally). I am sure the CIA, FBI, etc. have plenty of resources that could dig in, and have, but found it was legit.
If you read the lawsuit the Hilary supporter in PA filed, it was a bunch of conspiracy theory crap. No proof whatsoever, just a bunch of accusations. Are you telling me that some official in Kenya could not be bribed to pony up a birth certificate if it existed? But, no such certificate has emerged.
Obama responded with a birth certificate, yet no official in Hawaii has disputed it, and I am sure there are plenty of honest people there that would if it were bogus.
Bottom line, this was brought up by the media, but dropped mostly because it was a bogus claim.
"the nice part of solar cells is that the majority of 'peak' power occurs while the sun shines. so going to peak/off peak you can really make a huge difference, along with a solar panel array."
Hmmmm, interesting point I never thought of. The part of solar/wind I did not like was the battery part of the equation. An expensive, toxic mess.
Your view suggests I could at least help at peak and skip the batteries. I work at home, and have several test servers, music, etc. running during the day, so this would have an impact. Even for those not at home during the day, there is something to be said for running the A/C or fans when there is free power available, lessening the need for night-time A/C, etc. as your home would be pre-cooled.
Here in Chicago at least, it is usually windier during the day (must be due to the politicians being awake and spewing their hot air) so wind has somewhat of the same benefit as solar.
Anyway, interesting perspective.
"What i REALLY want is an ATX power supply for my PC that has a 12-volt POWER IN line on it so I can have a stack of sealed-lead-acid batteries behind it wired to a solar panel on the roof, and so it would switch back to mains on-the-fly when the battery power got too low.. preferably without crashing the O/S"
What you REALLY want is a PC that runs off of 12V directly, with as little voltage conversion as practical.
Google is pushing hard for that. PSUs are one of the bigger areas of a PC for power waste, and also generate a lot of heat (that needs to be removed with A/C). Google runs huge datacenters and stands to gain a lot from reduced waste in the PSU and reduced A/C usage.
Google has a lot to gain from this, and the side benefits of being able to run PCs off of stored solar, wind, etc. are big for the rest of us.
Here is an article on this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/technology/26google.html
"Just change the air time of American Idol to 6:00pm and turn politics to 8:00-9:00pm"
LOL. Scary, but true.
That would not solve the problem, as it would just enhance the effect of the 4-7pm peak.
Move American Idol to 6am and you might actually spread power usage a bit.
Yeah, yeah, I know you were joking, just had to play along.
Seriously now, the solution is demand-based control. Move laundry and other big users of electricity to the middle of the night, and charge demand-based rates (cheaper rates at night when demand is lower). This has to be done as automatically as practical, with little user intervention.
We will not likely be able to affect things like TV and Internet usage times, but we can spread the load on high consumers like laundry, dish washers, car charging (when the comes along), etc. There might even be some hope for Air Conditioning, but that is a bit tougher to time.
"I'm (hoping) analyzing spam headers is part of your job description, otherwise you have way too much spare time :D"
I know I look at my spam folder and could come up with similar "analysis" without spending much time or effort. It is usually pretty obvious what the trends are.
Most of us know that spam filters are not perfect, so we scan our spam folders for false positives. Every now and then I open one up, mostly just curious as to what the scam is.
A few months ago I opened one up. It was an email confirming my registration with some dating site. I was perusing it, looking for the scam, when I noticed it had the last 4 digits of the credit card used to open this account. Strangely, it was the same as my credit card!
I checked my bank website and sure enough, somebody was using my credit card. They foolishly used my email account, and I use unique email addresses when I buy things online. I canceled my card immediately and contacted the company associated with that email address.
I convinced them it was likely real and suggested they contact a security firm. Sure enough, a few days later, the FBI called and thanked me for being persistent and asked for any more info I had. They indeed had been hacked (SQL injection), about a year earlier, and about 90% of the credit cards used at that site over the last year had been canceled due to fraud.
In my case, I was able to cancel my card within hours of it being compromised, and about $1000 worth of fraudulent purchases wiped off my card with almost no questions. It would have been a lot uglier and more hassle if I did not catch this until the statement came. I now get a daily statement in email and scan it thoroughly.
Bottom line, a little basic analysis of your spam is a good idea. Doesn't have to be your job to find benefit. To the best of my knowledge nobody got busted, but that gaping hole was fixed, and that company now uses a trusted service for their shopping cart application.
"Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view)...this is simply not a constitutionally granted power that the government (Federal) has at this time."
Hmmm, though I agree with the general sentiment that government has the wrong priorities, and is protecting their rich friends (and themselves) it is hard to question whether they have a constitutionally granted power to do this. I believe the commerce clause gives them this power.
Yes, I agree. Google employs many lawyers. One of them MUST have signed off on the TOS before it went live. This was a conscious decision. Corporations just don't copy and past legal stuff -- EVER. Someone in Google liked the original TOS.
Kinda doubt it. Lawyers are rarely involved in the quality and release process. Not unless there is a debate or concern and they are called in by someone more involved with the product.
They would have certainly approved a boilerplate at some point, and would usually be called in if someone actually noticed the problem and wanted to modify it. But I have never heard of any tech company including legal in the test and release process as a standard practice.
Also, getting marketing, testers and developers to review doc is usually like pulling teeth. They would almost never more than glance at a EULA, warranty statement or something like that.
"In Nevada, we'll oppose it for not other reason than that the feds want it"
IIRC, the attempts to legalize marijuana in Nevada were curtailed as the feds stated pretty clearly they would not allow it to happen.
I am sure there were other factors, but at least it appears the feds objections were the primary killer.
"States are perfectly free to strip municipalities of their authority to regulate businesses, zone property, establish building codes, etc."
Er, sort of. At least here in Illinois the power of the municipalities is laid out in the state constitution. It is called "home rule".
For the state legislature to take away any powers from a home rule city/county they need a 60% super-majority. That is really hard to get in our state, especially since home rule is quite popular, and the democratic "machine" in Chicago rules more than about 50% of the legislators, and the downstate Republican "combine" rules the rest.
At the next level, the counties can pass ordinances, but if they conflict with a city/village ordinance, the city ordinance takes precedence.
It is nearly impossible to coordinate anything at the state or even county level and override local ordinances. The result is a hodge-podge of laws city to city, county to county.
The classic example of this is the number of gun laws. State laws are fairly strict (but mostly resonable), but then you have individual towns with their own stricter laws. And there is the reverse, Cook County (contains Chicago and a lot of suburbs) has super-strict laws, but some towns have overruled them with less strict laws. You almost have to be a lawyer just to drive from home to the range.
"If a little yellow bar like the "remember password" bar came down and said "this site is encrypted, but its identity cannot be authenticated. Be aware that, like any normal (http) website, this one may not be from who it says it's from" then it would be completely different. Instead they interrupt the browsing experience with a very unfriendly message that non-tech people will not have a chance of understanding."
I agree. I think it is appropriate to warn the user, and it should be made clear this is unnacceptable on a site where banking or credit card info is involved. But completely alarming the user is overboard.
I use self-signed certs every now and again where I am trying to protect passwords, but there is not a big security risk.
That said, a godaddy cert is pretty darn cheap these days, so I do it fairly rarely now.
> Sure, you get what you pay for. But the problem
> here is that these drives don't indicate on the
> packaging whether they use SLC or MLC memory, or
> whether they offer more than one channel.
At the very least you would expect the makers of the "good drives" to make it clear why they are worth the extra cash. Not sure I expect the makers of "bad drives" to advertise their deficiencies.
As consumers, we can then assume that drives that do not list specs are crap.
"How about blocking all emails from gmail servers not coming from an @gmail.com address?"
Won't work.
There are boatloads of people and companies using Google with their own domains. Google Apps, Google Enterprise, etc.
Also, many of the spammers are using gmail addresses. Remember, they don't care about return emails, they just drive people to their websites.
"Rather than throttle P2P, youtube.com, or itunes.com, Comcast should identify their customers who download tons of information, impose a limit on those people, and then tell them, "If you go over 100 gigabytes, you will need to pay $100 a month to gain unlimited downloads." i.e. a Tier system:"
I somewhat agree. The aspect you are missing is "during peak". Peak is what the ISP needs to provision capacity for. If they throttle at all, or charge for "excessive" usage, it should be during peak only, and take any restrictions off during non-peak. Resources during non-peak are essentially free (or at least far less expensive). I know I tend to start my big-ass downloads (usually large ISOs) right before I go to sleep (around midnight or so). youtube-type services are the main exception (as I obviously watch them real-time). P2P usage during peak is a bit on the wasteful side, during non-peak it is not heavily affecting others.
I know I am preaching, but if we all made an attempt to concentrate our use of resources during off-peak, systems would be more efficient and more enjoyable for most. Not only bandwidth, but this concept also applies to transportation, electricity, water, restaurants, vacation destinations, etc.
A good non-Internet example is skiing. I tend to ski during January/February, and often fly in on Sunday night, fly out Friday night. I get cheaper rooms and flights, with a big bonus of shorter lift lines, less skiers on the mountain and often better snow conditions. The ski resorts love me as my money is gravy to them, they have empty rooms to fill, empty lifts they have to run anyway, etc. The profit margin on me, percentage-wise, is much higher than the family coming during the holidays, while I win paying less for a better experience. My employer likes it as I am glad to work during the holidays, and take time off when they are fully staffed. Everybody wins.
Agreed. Actually, it is not uncommon to pass laws that decriminalize past acts.
Here in Illinois we had just such a situation a few years ago. http://www.reason.com/news/show/36162.html
To summarize, a homeowner shot a burglar that was in his home. The homeowner was not charged with the shooting as it was deemed to be in self-defense, but was charged for violating the town's ban on handguns. A major bruhaha ensued.
The state legislature passed a law giving people charged with violating a local government's gun laws an affirmative defense if they were defending themselves or someone else when they were caught with the gun. The town was forced to drop the charges and return the guns. No one has challenged the law on constitutional grounds, yet the anti-gunners definitely would if they thought they would win.
To be honest, I think the law is bad public policy. Not 'cause I am against gun ownership (I own several), but because it makes a mockery of the idea of law and order. My view is the same for the telco immunity issue in this topic. Personally, I believe Illinois should prohibit local gun ordinances (called "municipal preemption") and do any regulation at the State level, but that is off-topic.
Bottom line, it is not uncommon to decriminalize things that occurred in the past, and I do not believe there is anything unconstitutional about it. Sometimes it is a good thing, as it could correct bad laws. In this case of telco immunity it is bad IMNSHO. Seems kind of moot in this case, as the gov't is using the State Privilege pretty effectively to shut these lawsuits down. Very sad.
'I guess "unetical" is too big a word for the average facebook user.'
Perhaps they would use the word "unethical" though.
"I Know (with some element of guess that) "Tata" maybe a slang or a real word in different languages with meanings ranging from simple "waving of hand" to something obscense :)"
This reminds me (and there are many of these) of a similar situation involving a car name not working in another country/culture. Chevrolet years back introduced the Chevy Nova into Mexico and it did not sell very well though it should have been popular there. "No va" roughly translates to "No go" in spanish.
"If it's registered as a US-based non-profit then absolutely."
Not quite. In the US it needs to be a "charity", not simply "non-profit". I think 501(C)(3) is the designation. If they are (and Apache is) they will make it VERY CLEAR on their donations page as it obviously helps their fund-raising efforts.
Bottom line, IANATL, but I know that simple "non-profit" status is not enough to make a donation deductible on your US taxes. Most non-profit FOSS projects probably are NOT tax deductible. My personal opinion is for small donations, it is not a big deal. I do not let that stop me from dropping $20 to a project I find useful. I also find a thank you note, or a wish-list gift, goes a long way too, especially for the smaller projects with only one or two developers. Folks like to know their hard work is appreciated.
Your suggestion on cancelled checks, though, is likely good advice (again, IANATL).
"All gases are easily flammable! Carbon dioxide? Nitrogen? Argon?"
;)
I doubt it is "easy" to ignite steam
"My brother lived in Alaska for 5 years. I went a visited twice during the summer. My god it was beautiful up there."
Living there, and visiting in the summer, are two very different things. Much of Alaska (south of the circle at least) is awesome 4-5 months a year, the other 7-8 take some serious fortitude. If the weather doesn't get you down (Anchorage and Juneu can be mild-ish), the short days probably will.
"The problem your "boycotts" have is that **AA will just point to any decline in sales as a result of piracy instead of them alienating the consumers, giving them another excuse for pursuing even worse laws. This will lead into further boycotts, which in turn will lead to... well you get the point."
...... downloading copyrighted material without permission of the owner is stealing. Plain and simple. I never have done it, and won't.
I am sure I will get modded down here, but
That doesn't mean I am going to buy their crap either. I buy CDs from little bands playing at bars. I download legal music (example Phish and Dead and other jam band live shows). I will buy commercial CDs if they allow free downloads of their live shows (I have bought plenty of Phish, Dead, String Cheese Incident, etc.).
I certainly do not advocate the RIAA's tactics, so I refuse to support them, and actively boycott them. Have for several years. Just because they are assholes does not mean it is OK to steal their property. Like it or not, it is their right to set the price.
Boycotting RIAA labels is the only ethical approach.
"The idiots who use Windows affect me indirectly which is really annoying since their computers are sending me spam and brute forcing my servers."
The most common brute-force attack I see on my IPS are ssh brute-force attacks coming from *nix servers that have been compromised. From what I understand, those ssh brute force attacks are highly effective.
I am no fan of Windows either, but I think that might be a stretch to blame Windows for the bulk of brute-force attacks.
Spam, absolutely.
"The only possible reason I can see for users/corporations upgrading to Vista is if vendors start releasing packages that are dependant apon features that XP does not include."
For most corporate types, and non-gamer consumers, that time is likely a long way off. I can't see any features in Vista that are of interest to me and most non-gamer users.
The issue I see most likely to get Windows users to go to Vista will be when MS stops issuing patches for XP and it's subsystems.
"Ok I just tested it. In fact you *can* use this to upload emails!!! hooray! Now I can use gmail as my primary/only email repository!!!!!"
Really? I just checked. I have the IMAP option on my settings for access using an IMAP app. Mail fetching is still only using POP, no IMAP option.
Maybe I missed something.