Locally (Canada) frost-heaves in winter and then erosion in spring count for a significant amount of road damage. The frozen ground pushes up underneath the roads and causes them to crack, then resettles as things warm up. Meanwhile melting causes flows of ground-water that can undermine roads, or wash away parts of them in a mudslide/landslide.
Then you get other fun things like vegetation which can slowly but surely take out sidewalks and streets with creeping roots, floods, floating trees damaging bridges, debris on tracks causing derailments, and moose kicking up concrete.
OK, just joking about the moose, but the rest are pretty common events which necessitate a regular cycle of road patching, repair, and replacement.
I actually wonder what the cost is of maintaining tracks VS roads.
Cheap is one factor, and there's also convenience. With infrastructure in mind, trains are the only really sane choice for various types of shipments. Just imagine constantly shipping millions of tons of product back-and-forth across the country?
In the cost factor we have the vehicles themselves, the speed of travel, the congestion, the existing infrastructure, etc.
To do that all by truck would involve a *LOT* of weight. That means special roads, which involves a lot of time to build. -1 convenience for time and -1 for cost.
Then there's the number of "trailers" a truck can haul VS a train. Could you imagine a "B-train" (road-train) with 10-30 trailers? Navigation on open road VS fixed track, steep hills (even with the biggest truck out there), and poor road conditions would make it improbably if not outright impossible. Not to mention the congestion involved.
There simply isn't any other combination of infrastructure and vehicle, even with a boatload of cash, that could be built anytime soon to handle over-land transportation the way a train does. If we one day manage to build antigravity it's a possible, but until then I say trains are here to stay.
For that matter, improving and adding to rail lines between core cities might also make a lot economic sense if done right. I'm Canadian so there's a whole lot of open space here (and in the US) to cross, but perhaps if we focused newer construction technologies and vehicles at the task then perhaps the short-term costs could mean long-term gains. Unfortunately when you have a 4-year turnover no political party would ever likely touch the idea, as the debt taken on in the "now" doesn't stack up against the possibility of their opponents being in power at completion (if not nixing the idea partway through).
Legally, I'm not sure. But having a list of customers (especially those near the end of a contract) to call and say:
"Did you know that your current provider was hacked and all your critical information was exposed, how about to you switch to a more secure provider instead" might be useful.
Of course, even without a list I'd say that if competitors focused on security and advertised it, they might be able to gobble some customers up if this hits big news.
California's standard of living would have to drop below that of a peasant Chinese factory worker living in a hut with 20 other people
And the cost of all the middlemen, transportation, and other factors that come into play before the products make it to North America. In bulk these are less impacting, but in a world where - for example the cost of fuel for transportation is rapidly increasing, they're still significant.
Or can the judicial assign penalties for such frivolous or even illegal requests?
It seems that the RIAA could bury the system under stacks of such requests if they wished, but if they're all groundless then perhaps penalties would be in order? Intentionally wasting the judicial's time shouldn't be allowed.
If you don't have an apple restriciphone, then you can install CyCorder, which takes quite nice video on my 3G without requiring any new hardware.
Which is probably a major reason why Apple WON'T ever open the phone in that manner, because then they can't sell new "hardware' with software enabled to emulate new functionality...
"When was the last time high school taught a course that detailed how to get a loan in a safe way, or how to sensibly manage credit?"
How many profs know how to do so, other than possibly college accounting profs. I've known some teachers who weren't so good at managing a paycheque.
There are, however, courses available on some such things, but often outside of public education. Avoiding "ways to get screwed" is a pretty hard topic since new scams are invented almost daily, and nobody can really teach you to have/use common sense.
Lawyers have their trolls too. It seems that the RIAA/MPAA have many of them working their bridges, but only the judges get to mod them "-1 Misconduct", and you need to be a Jack Thompson to get modded "-5 disbarred":-)
"All I ask for is fairness. A lawyer who disagrees with me, but does so with integrity and honor, is okay in my book."
One of the best lines I've heard on here in a long time. Every time I heard the "lawyers are just in it for the money" I've been of the opinion that it's pretty much a no-brainer. So's almost everyone else that works for a living to some extent, exempting the lucky few who love 99.9% of their jobs, and those who do charity (and some lawyers do that as well).
Lawyers work for cash, but they do get to in most cases choose who they work for, and within certain limits how they do so.
Always a pleasure to have you onboard, Ray. Next time somebody on here bugs ya about being a money-grubbing lawyer, ask how many community computers they've fixed for free:-)
There are plenty of people getting rich in China, but many of those are lining their pockets at the expense of others, just as happens here. The concept that the economic growth is positive for everyone is actually untrue, as it often comes as the expense of many less-wealthy groups, and with it corruption has bloomed to the point where it's almost a part of the culture in many ways. Bribes are pretty much part of doing business, and in many cases you can't even get your kid through school properly without certain unwarranted detentions etc unless you're giving his/her teacher a "nice gift" on certain occasions.
Most of the younger Chinese I've met knew about a lot of this, or learned rather quickly (and I've had a number of Chinese friends over the last few years). However the young seem more inclined to disbelief of propaganda, whereas the older ones I've met seem to have grown to accept it.
Of course many of my Chinese friends also believe(d) that ducks can't fly (not my blog). It seems that without experiencing something directly when caught between sources of (mis)information, many will rely on what they see.
Populating the Internet probably wouldn't hurt things. However, one thing that I must admit is that while few in the know deny that the T Square events DID occur, I've heard some very mixed stories about how things came to that point, and many of the controversial ones mention meddling in Chinese politics by certain overseas governments/entities, which isn't an entirely new concept these days either.
Sounds like that could be varying combinations of words though.
Yes, it could come out as "head shits" but also as "heads hits" etc
Double-meanings like that are rumoured to be why Experts-Exchange.com added the hyphen to their URL. Apparently there were getting also sorts of weird traffic prior to that with the ExpertSexChange.com domain (capitalization emphasis mine).
Yes, for a lot of them it seems it's not so much about physical locations are monetary ones.
The fact is that a lot of the offshore locations are finding that they get shafted just as easily (or worse) by companies pinching pennies, and then companies execs themselves often find it harder to keep a thumb on operations that are half a world away.
I'm not sure that the companies who worm through tax laws and others by setting up off-base tax havens are the types you'd want around right now anyhow, as they seem to be even more likely than the local scummy corps to screw Joe taxpayer and anyone else not on the board of directors or investors.
Actually, it's quite interesting to see how - in terms of infrastructure - smaller cities compare to the big ones. Two years ago, I lived in a city (my hometown) of about 85,000 in BC, Canada. Internet access was generally quite fast, especially with cable providers, etc for residential. Around when I was leaving, the city in conjunction with various local businesses had been in the process of laying fiber in all areas.
After that I moved to Toronto, Ontario (population over 2,500,000). Internet and telecommunications infrastructure sucked there. Bell seems to have little motivation to upgrade lines, meaning DSL outside of certain major downtown areas could not reliably offer high speeds, either for businesses or residences. Not only that, but Bell's throttling of third-party connections was a nightmare, not just for home-user torrents, but for SSL-tunnelled connections to/from my workplace when telecommuting.
Rogers was the local cableco provided and I'd heard of similar issues with them: poor service, bad cabling, and weird issues due to throttling. I know of at least one business that bounced between Bell, Rogers, and a third-party (DSL, so unbeknownst to them still going through Bell) provider trying to get reliable connectivity.
Local tech shops had more deals and cool small items. Things like monitors or PC's/laptops weren't much of a deal though, and customer service STANK. Got a new LCD with dead pixels out of the box, and a fairly major local retailer (yes, I'm looking at you Canada Computers) refused to exchanged it. I know for a fact my local shop in the previous city would have done so.
Now I'm in back in a smaller city/town of around populatimainon 30,000. No long commutes to work. Internet via cable is fast. There's a local wifi provider who gets rather impressive speeds to all sorts of weird areas around town, and they're continuously improving service. Rent and property costs are a lot lower.
I was just musing whether it would be possible to setup a datacentre downtown. There are quite a number of buildings with space that might fit a small DC as long as the power requirements were met, though I've yet to investigate what the local providers offer for large commercial trunks.
Big cities are overrated. When I moved to Toronto I expected to find myself able to do all sorts of things, but the reality was with the longer commutes, extra work hours, and almost universally crappy service. Here, people tend to be more honest (in a smaller city you can't get away with as much without it becoming known eventually), and the quality of life is better. There may not be a huge glass-covered shopping multiplex within 10 minutes drive, but for that sort of thing a bigger city is still within driving range, and really the local stores aren't that bad except when it comes to stuff like furniture etc, and my iPhone only gets 2G service (until next year).
Screw big cities.Businesses should invest in local communities at smaller locations. Power and rent are cheaper here. Connectivity seems in many cases better. There will be likely be less location-related expenses, and I've found that there are still plenty of tech-savvy citizens available to work there, and even a good share of front-line grunts for phone support etc.
Simply calling somebody "gay" (or outing them as) online hardly seems enough to make it a police matter. The police really *would* have their hands full if they dealt with every time this happened online. So what I'd like to know is:
a) Who had it in for this kid?
b) What "important person" was outed as being gay? The mayor or police chief son?
Because without either (a) or (b), I can hardly see why this would have even gotten anyone to even try with a warrant+seizure, even an ill-formed/illegal one.
I remember listening to a discussion on the radio just recently about the "untouchable" class in Indian society, which seems to be much the same thing. The members were relegated to the lowest possible jobs (cleaning toilets, etc) without hoping of themselves or their children escaping the caste, and were literally considered unclean/untouchable. This system was also eliminated in India, but - as the author/narrator in the radio interview mentioned from personal experience - is still often practiced. It wasn't until she moved to the US and Canada that she realized how despicable it was to treat people this way, and mainly because she found herself being treated as an outcast/undesirable due to her obvious Indian heritage in the western post 9-1-1 society. It made me wonder if - for all the terrible effects of 9-1-1 on those with "brown" skin - perhaps sometimes things like this help societies reflect on themselves.
That's not to say I condone such behavior from either end, but it was a very interesting discussion and viewpoint.
Accounting slashed the budget so that we were short developers and testers. Marketing advertised it for other than it's intended purposes, or more featureful than originally designed. Sales cut us out of client meetings and added a bunch of glitzy features or things that weren't even really possible to do properly.
The end product had features tacked on at the last minute, a shortened development cycle, a bunch of extra eye-candy thrown on at the expense of real features, a neutered budget, and almost no testing because even with the above cuts they still ensured customers it would be released at a way-too-early date...
Even with the headline's example of Microsoft, I'd have hard time placing all blame on the devs when all the above bullshit tends to happen, not to mention the overall fragmentation I've heard that they suffer from lately.
Why not? There are some people - serial criminals - that will *never* reform their ways. The current choices are to imprison them for life (expensive, and generally not in what one would call choice conditions either) or to have done with them. Personally, I'd say that to avoid "revenge killings" perhaps it just best to do it in a closed room with a little gas, as mentioned above, or in the same way one might put down a deranged or ill pet.
Of course, a third choice might be to put them in some form of imprisoned labor camp, so that their productivity at least pays for the cost of their imprisonment. The problems with that are:
a) As it may become profitable to imprison people, corruption will lead to more people imprisoned or kept in prison (Shawshank style).
b) If you know you're never going to get out or profit from your labors, what reason is there work? Maybe a small in-prison incentive system might be needed, but this is again subject to corruption.
It seems to me that having a police-station in certain areas might in-fact increase certain types of crime.
For example, perp is picked up, brought back to station, questioned, released, etc.
Upon exiting the station, he realizes he needs a ride home, or a fix, or whatever. So he wanders a few blocks down and steals a car, robs a bank, or buys some drugs, etc.
ThePlanet had a fricking explosion at one of their Texas DC's that took down some boxes, took our power/networking, and basically dropped all servers present off the map. Some of our actual boxes were down for a week, but our backups were located elsewhere and we were able to restore service at another location. I highly doubt that most of their customers - and there would be a *LOT - were quite so lucky.
Slashdot carried an article on it and approx 9000 servers were affected.
Longing for Bush? You think that just a few months after taking over the president was aware of and personally involved in every police raid? Do you think that the laws (or lack of oversight) in this RAID are due to a policy implemented in these last few months?
While I don't expect the current government to be completely perfect in this regard, and Obama has already shown certain favoritism to the media companies, I doubt that these particular goings-on have much of a connection to the party or president that has recently come into-power.
Slashdot Mirror
Locally (Canada) frost-heaves in winter and then erosion in spring count for a significant amount of road damage. The frozen ground pushes up underneath the roads and causes them to crack, then resettles as things warm up. Meanwhile melting causes flows of ground-water that can undermine roads, or wash away parts of them in a mudslide/landslide.
Then you get other fun things like vegetation which can slowly but surely take out sidewalks and streets with creeping roots, floods, floating trees damaging bridges, debris on tracks causing derailments, and moose kicking up concrete.
OK, just joking about the moose, but the rest are pretty common events which necessitate a regular cycle of road patching, repair, and replacement.
I actually wonder what the cost is of maintaining tracks VS roads.
Cheap is one factor, and there's also convenience. With infrastructure in mind, trains are the only really sane choice for various types of shipments. Just imagine constantly shipping millions of tons of product back-and-forth across the country?
In the cost factor we have the vehicles themselves, the speed of travel, the congestion, the existing infrastructure, etc.
To do that all by truck would involve a *LOT* of weight. That means special roads, which involves a lot of time to build. -1 convenience for time and -1 for cost.
Then there's the number of "trailers" a truck can haul VS a train. Could you imagine a "B-train" (road-train) with 10-30 trailers? Navigation on open road VS fixed track, steep hills (even with the biggest truck out there), and poor road conditions would make it improbably if not outright impossible. Not to mention the congestion involved.
There simply isn't any other combination of infrastructure and vehicle, even with a boatload of cash, that could be built anytime soon to handle over-land transportation the way a train does. If we one day manage to build antigravity it's a possible, but until then I say trains are here to stay.
For that matter, improving and adding to rail lines between core cities might also make a lot economic sense if done right. I'm Canadian so there's a whole lot of open space here (and in the US) to cross, but perhaps if we focused newer construction technologies and vehicles at the task then perhaps the short-term costs could mean long-term gains. Unfortunately when you have a 4-year turnover no political party would ever likely touch the idea, as the debt taken on in the "now" doesn't stack up against the possibility of their opponents being in power at completion (if not nixing the idea partway through).
cablecompany (shaw.ca) home phone, cheaper than regular PSTN, never noticed it going down.
I ran across this out when looking up a shaw internet outage the other day:
http://www.bloggernews.net/115941
Legally, I'm not sure. But having a list of customers (especially those near the end of a contract) to call and say:
"Did you know that your current provider was hacked and all your critical information was exposed, how about to you switch to a more secure provider instead" might be useful.
Of course, even without a list I'd say that if competitors focused on security and advertised it, they might be able to gobble some customers up if this hits big news.
California's standard of living would have to drop below that of a peasant Chinese factory worker living in a hut with 20 other people
And the cost of all the middlemen, transportation, and other factors that come into play before the products make it to North America. In bulk these are less impacting, but in a world where - for example the cost of fuel for transportation is rapidly increasing, they're still significant.
Or can the judicial assign penalties for such frivolous or even illegal requests?
It seems that the RIAA could bury the system under stacks of such requests if they wished, but if they're all groundless then perhaps penalties would be in order? Intentionally wasting the judicial's time shouldn't be allowed.
If you don't have an apple restriciphone, then you can install CyCorder, which takes quite nice video on my 3G without requiring any new hardware.
Which is probably a major reason why Apple WON'T ever open the phone in that manner, because then they can't sell new "hardware' with software enabled to emulate new functionality...
"When was the last time high school taught a course that detailed how to get a loan in a safe way, or how to sensibly manage credit?"
How many profs know how to do so, other than possibly college accounting profs. I've known some teachers who weren't so good at managing a paycheque.
There are, however, courses available on some such things, but often outside of public education. Avoiding "ways to get screwed" is a pretty hard topic since new scams are invented almost daily, and nobody can really teach you to have/use common sense.
Lawyers have their trolls too. It seems that the RIAA/MPAA have many of them working their bridges, but only the judges get to mod them "-1 Misconduct", and you need to be a Jack Thompson to get modded "-5 disbarred" :-)
"All I ask for is fairness. A lawyer who disagrees with me, but does so with integrity and honor, is okay in my book."
One of the best lines I've heard on here in a long time. Every time I heard the "lawyers are just in it for the money" I've been of the opinion that it's pretty much a no-brainer. So's almost everyone else that works for a living to some extent, exempting the lucky few who love 99.9% of their jobs, and those who do charity (and some lawyers do that as well).
Lawyers work for cash, but they do get to in most cases choose who they work for, and within certain limits how they do so.
Always a pleasure to have you onboard, Ray. Next time somebody on here bugs ya about being a money-grubbing lawyer, ask how many community computers they've fixed for free :-)
There are plenty of people getting rich in China, but many of those are lining their pockets at the expense of others, just as happens here. The concept that the economic growth is positive for everyone is actually untrue, as it often comes as the expense of many less-wealthy groups, and with it corruption has bloomed to the point where it's almost a part of the culture in many ways. Bribes are pretty much part of doing business, and in many cases you can't even get your kid through school properly without certain unwarranted detentions etc unless you're giving his/her teacher a "nice gift" on certain occasions.
Most of the younger Chinese I've met knew about a lot of this, or learned rather quickly (and I've had a number of Chinese friends over the last few years). However the young seem more inclined to disbelief of propaganda, whereas the older ones I've met seem to have grown to accept it.
Of course many of my Chinese friends also believe(d) that ducks can't fly (not my blog). It seems that without experiencing something directly when caught between sources of (mis)information, many will rely on what they see.
Populating the Internet probably wouldn't hurt things. However, one thing that I must admit is that while few in the know deny that the T Square events DID occur, I've heard some very mixed stories about how things came to that point, and many of the controversial ones mention meddling in Chinese politics by certain overseas governments/entities, which isn't an entirely new concept these days either.
Sounds like that could be varying combinations of words though.
Yes, it could come out as "head shits" but also as "heads hits" etc
Double-meanings like that are rumoured to be why Experts-Exchange.com added the hyphen to their URL. Apparently there were getting also sorts of weird traffic prior to that with the ExpertSexChange.com domain (capitalization emphasis mine).
Yes, for a lot of them it seems it's not so much about physical locations are monetary ones.
The fact is that a lot of the offshore locations are finding that they get shafted just as easily (or worse) by companies pinching pennies, and then companies execs themselves often find it harder to keep a thumb on operations that are half a world away.
I'm not sure that the companies who worm through tax laws and others by setting up off-base tax havens are the types you'd want around right now anyhow, as they seem to be even more likely than the local scummy corps to screw Joe taxpayer and anyone else not on the board of directors or investors.
Actually, it's quite interesting to see how - in terms of infrastructure - smaller cities compare to the big ones. Two years ago, I lived in a city (my hometown) of about 85,000 in BC, Canada. Internet access was generally quite fast, especially with cable providers, etc for residential. Around when I was leaving, the city in conjunction with various local businesses had been in the process of laying fiber in all areas.
After that I moved to Toronto, Ontario (population over 2,500,000). Internet and telecommunications infrastructure sucked there. Bell seems to have little motivation to upgrade lines, meaning DSL outside of certain major downtown areas could not reliably offer high speeds, either for businesses or residences. Not only that, but Bell's throttling of third-party connections was a nightmare, not just for home-user torrents, but for SSL-tunnelled connections to/from my workplace when telecommuting.
Rogers was the local cableco provided and I'd heard of similar issues with them: poor service, bad cabling, and weird issues due to throttling. I know of at least one business that bounced between Bell, Rogers, and a third-party (DSL, so unbeknownst to them still going through Bell) provider trying to get reliable connectivity.
Local tech shops had more deals and cool small items. Things like monitors or PC's/laptops weren't much of a deal though, and customer service STANK. Got a new LCD with dead pixels out of the box, and a fairly major local retailer (yes, I'm looking at you Canada Computers) refused to exchanged it. I know for a fact my local shop in the previous city would have done so.
Now I'm in back in a smaller city/town of around populatimainon 30,000. No long commutes to work. Internet via cable is fast. There's a local wifi provider who gets rather impressive speeds to all sorts of weird areas around town, and they're continuously improving service. Rent and property costs are a lot lower.
I was just musing whether it would be possible to setup a datacentre downtown. There are quite a number of buildings with space that might fit a small DC as long as the power requirements were met, though I've yet to investigate what the local providers offer for large commercial trunks.
Big cities are overrated. When I moved to Toronto I expected to find myself able to do all sorts of things, but the reality was with the longer commutes, extra work hours, and almost universally crappy service. Here, people tend to be more honest (in a smaller city you can't get away with as much without it becoming known eventually), and the quality of life is better. There may not be a huge glass-covered shopping multiplex within 10 minutes drive, but for that sort of thing a bigger city is still within driving range, and really the local stores aren't that bad except when it comes to stuff like furniture etc, and my iPhone only gets 2G service (until next year).
Screw big cities.Businesses should invest in local communities at smaller locations. Power and rent are cheaper here. Connectivity seems in many cases better. There will be likely be less location-related expenses, and I've found that there are still plenty of tech-savvy citizens available to work there, and even a good share of front-line grunts for phone support etc.
Simply calling somebody "gay" (or outing them as) online hardly seems enough to make it a police matter. The police really *would* have their hands full if they dealt with every time this happened online. So what I'd like to know is:
a) Who had it in for this kid?
b) What "important person" was outed as being gay? The mayor or police chief son?
Because without either (a) or (b), I can hardly see why this would have even gotten anyone to even try with a warrant+seizure, even an ill-formed/illegal one.
I remember listening to a discussion on the radio just recently about the "untouchable" class in Indian society, which seems to be much the same thing. The members were relegated to the lowest possible jobs (cleaning toilets, etc) without hoping of themselves or their children escaping the caste, and were literally considered unclean/untouchable. This system was also eliminated in India, but - as the author/narrator in the radio interview mentioned from personal experience - is still often practiced. It wasn't until she moved to the US and Canada that she realized how despicable it was to treat people this way, and mainly because she found herself being treated as an outcast/undesirable due to her obvious Indian heritage in the western post 9-1-1 society. It made me wonder if - for all the terrible effects of 9-1-1 on those with "brown" skin - perhaps sometimes things like this help societies reflect on themselves.
That's not to say I condone such behavior from either end, but it was a very interesting discussion and viewpoint.
Did you buy it with Visa? There's a magic work, and it's called "Chargeback," I think the time limit on one ranges from 2-6 months.
From my experience, it's often more like,:
Accounting slashed the budget so that we were short developers and testers. Marketing advertised it for other than it's intended purposes, or more featureful than originally designed. Sales cut us out of client meetings and added a bunch of glitzy features or things that weren't even really possible to do properly.
The end product had features tacked on at the last minute, a shortened development cycle, a bunch of extra eye-candy thrown on at the expense of real features, a neutered budget, and almost no testing because even with the above cuts they still ensured customers it would be released at a way-too-early date...
Even with the headline's example of Microsoft, I'd have hard time placing all blame on the devs when all the above bullshit tends to happen, not to mention the overall fragmentation I've heard that they suffer from lately.
Why not? There are some people - serial criminals - that will *never* reform their ways. The current choices are to imprison them for life (expensive, and generally not in what one would call choice conditions either) or to have done with them. Personally, I'd say that to avoid "revenge killings" perhaps it just best to do it in a closed room with a little gas, as mentioned above, or in the same way one might put down a deranged or ill pet.
Of course, a third choice might be to put them in some form of imprisoned labor camp, so that their productivity at least pays for the cost of their imprisonment. The problems with that are:
a) As it may become profitable to imprison people, corruption will lead to more people imprisoned or kept in prison (Shawshank style).
b) If you know you're never going to get out or profit from your labors, what reason is there work? Maybe a small in-prison incentive system might be needed, but this is again subject to corruption.
It seems to me that having a police-station in certain areas might in-fact increase certain types of crime.
For example, perp is picked up, brought back to station, questioned, released, etc.
Upon exiting the station, he realizes he needs a ride home, or a fix, or whatever. So he wanders a few blocks down and steals a car, robs a bank, or buys some drugs, etc.
coreip resells rackspace. coreip only has 50 machines
Judging by the 9-1-1 outage I'd say that it wasn't just coreIP services affected...
ThePlanet had a fricking explosion at one of their Texas DC's that took down some boxes, took our power/networking, and basically dropped all servers present off the map. Some of our actual boxes were down for a week, but our backups were located elsewhere and we were able to restore service at another location. I highly doubt that most of their customers - and there would be a *LOT - were quite so lucky.
Slashdot carried an article on it and approx 9000 servers were affected.
Longing for Bush? You think that just a few months after taking over the president was aware of and personally involved in every police raid? Do you think that the laws (or lack of oversight) in this RAID are due to a policy implemented in these last few months?
While I don't expect the current government to be completely perfect in this regard, and Obama has already shown certain favoritism to the media companies, I doubt that these particular goings-on have much of a connection to the party or president that has recently come into-power.
Based on BSD, and pretty much a type of PDA...