The graphs where the countries are sorted by some value are of an informative nature. They show, for example, how many different offers with differential pricing ("zero rating") are available in the different countries.
I know what the "graphs" were showing. What you're describing, however, is properly conveyed by a "table", not a graph. A graph shows relationship between the Y value and the X value. "As X changes in a certain way, Y does this..." How is X changing in that graph? It's going from "biggest Y" to "smallest Y". That's useless. Did you really need to see a graph of that concept? You don't understand as a basic concept that when Y decreases, Y decreases? You need a graph to show that?
It's just a visual representation of a sorted list.
A visual representation of a sorted list will ALWAYS show a relationship to the SORT that is used, but not between X and Y. It's dishonest to imply such a relation exists by using a graph. It's called lying with statistics. All you see is that indeed, when you sort X by number of DPP the outcome is a decreasing DPP with increasing X. Could you not predict that?
I sincerely doubt you would understand it though, seeing how you seem to have trouble interpreting simple graphs.
I seem to have interpreted it better than thee, considering you think it means something. And personal insults don't help your argument, coward.
The fact remains, the paper did not prove what was claimed. They even admit as much.
Not questioning your conclusion, just how you got there. stupid graphs, calling something "the hypothesis" does not lead to a conclusion of false,
One proves nothing by using graphics that have no logical relation between how the points appear on them. An abscissa of "country" is meaningless. It is obvious for most of the graphs they sorted the x axis by the value on the y axis. Yes, the graph shows a nice smooth decline in some value on Y, but only because it was jiggered to show it that way. (I can prove global cooling if you allow me to use a graph where I sort the x axis by inverse average temperatures. A steady decline in average global temperatures proves global cooling, doesn't it?)
And sorry, but when you start with an "intuitive assumption" and then proceed to prove it as if it were a hypothesis, you've committed a cardinal sin in logic. If you assume the result you want, you can always prove the result you want.
That's how I got to the fact that the report does not prove what the summary claims it does.
implying a causal relationship is ALWAYS what these sorts of analysis do.
And I rather successfully argued that it did not prove that causal relationship. The claim was that the report has shown this causal relationship, not that no such causal relationship can exist.
Perhaps you were rushed to type your response and missed the detail that I said that the claim that the report showed some causality was false, not that no such possible causal relations could exist? Who doesn't look good?
That is not true. Comparing identical services from two different companies and deciding which to pick based on price is a quantitative "better". (Make it three companies and you can say "best".)
The word you are possibly looking for is "subjective", which is also not really true. The "best" in the example I just used is still objective.
"Best" becomes subjective when different weights are applied to different criteria, and the things being compared are not essentially identical in all ways.
If their perception of what's "best" for them differs from yours, you have no real grounds to claim that your answer is "better" than theirs.
That is the significant part of your statement. People who claim others are 'voting against their own best interests' are assuming their evaluation of the situation is the only possible one. The word for that is "arrogance".
The point is not of causation or correlation. The point is that ISPs claim cheaper prices, when that isn't true.
That is not true. They don't claim cheaper prices. They claim that certain data does not count against any limits that apply to the plan you have. The PRICE stays the SAME no matter how much zero-rated data you use. That's the claim. That is a fact.
And yes, causation is required of you want to prove that zero-rating is costing people money.
They also claim that cheaper prices are due to zero rating,
No, they do not. The COSTS to a user can be lower if someone who has a limited data plan uses zero-rated sources instead of non-zero-rated ones, and the wireless companies are honest when they say that. The PRICE of the plan, however, does not change. It's like saying "the price per Gb is $1" and "you used 15 Gb so your COST is $15." The price is the same, the cost depends on what you do. In this example, using zero-rated data sources saves you $1/Gb of data you use, which saves you money -- even if the price doesn't change.
To our knowledge we are the first organisation to conduct such an analysis examining the correlation
of the existence of differential pricing practices and the price of moaile data volume. (p.31)
Emphasis mine. They also start with an "intuitive assumption" of what they want to prove, trying to later call it "the hypothesis".
Combined with the use of stupid graphs (where the abscissa has NO logical basis) instead of tables, the claim in the summary that the report "has found that zero rating business practices by wireless carriers have increased the cost of wireless data" is false. It implies a causal relationship that is not proven.
If it's contrast based then there could be problems.
There's a simple solution to all of this. Ahem, my solution, which is by Obfuscant, which is mine, is: don't Skype with secret crap on the wall behind you.
and apply other pressures to make the scientists there, and their government minders, stop doing this via embarrassment.
If the Chinese government has not been embarrassed by the public revelation of the justifications they are using to execute prisoners, is it really sane to think they'll be embarrassed because a few journals won't publish research that studies the results of transplant operations of organs harvested from the dead?
LibreOffice is perfect for occasional home use, or a student writing a term paper.
One assumes that the student writing a term paper is not doing so for fun, but for class credit. If he turns that paper in electronically and Word cannot read it, poof goes the credit.
As for another comment about forcing students to pay for copies of MS Word -- good unis have bulk licensing and students get the tools they need. Like Word, Matlab, etc...
Yes, but I certainly didn't read my email on both at the same time.
You don't need to be reading the same email at the same time on both devices to be using the NETWORK at the same time on both devices. Or even using both devices connected to the LTE network at the same time. The point is that the claim that you cannot use both at the same time anyway is patently absurd.
I think that one of the child bot ads were hocking TurboTax, but I'm not sure of that. It wasn't exactly all that memorable.
The "child-bot" couldn't be a TurboTax online real-person CPA because it didn't have the emotions necessary. As if CPAs were supposed to be really emotional while reviewing your tax return.
I thought the Alexa ad with failed integration attempts was funny. The electric toothbrush that played a podcast in someone's mouth, and Harrison Ford's dog ordering a pallet load of dog food (and sausages and gravy...) was prescient of where Amazon will be trying to put Alexa over time.
They stop talking about it because it's an embarrassing failure?
The news stops talking about it because the hoopla and hysteria die down after everyone realizes the story was only written to get clickthroughs to the advertisers on the news website, and they've posted the next sensational story of hypothetical outrageous dangers intended to grab everyone's attention.
The job of "news" is to provide people to the advertisers. That's why nobody ever sees the page 7 retraction of a front page story about the latest outrage -- nobody buys papers or goes to websites to read retractions.
How is paying somebody less than what they need to live for a job that society doesn't even need getting done treating that person with any respect?
Paying a person for the work they've done is not treating them with respect, according to you. If a job can be automated but isn't because it would be cheaper to pay someone, and even if it is not cheaper it is a way of paying back to the community that the business is in, it is disrespectful to the employee to pay him to do it. What malarky.
High school students who are holding part-time jobs to save money for college are being paid money that they don't need AT ALL to live, because they're still living at home supported by their parents. Thus I can pay that person ZERO dollars per hour because they need ZERO dollars per hour to live, in your utopian workplace.
That job serves society because it is an education in how to work for that employee, which he will use for the rest of his life no matter where he works eventually. It serves the employee because it gives him money (and the education). It serves the company who provides the job because it creates something of value for the company.
It's just ridiculous to claim that someone should be paid with no regard to the value that the person brings to the job, and that any job that cannot pay as much as a full-time employee providing for a living needs should be eliminated.
then any human that does it should not ever be paid less per hour than whatever a minimal living wage happens to be in that municipality.
So, if anyone in the "municipality" is a breadwinner with a family of four, ALL your employees make enough per hour to provide for a family of four, no matter what they do or how many people it feeds? Do you realize that some people have, or claim to have, really high "minimal living wage", like the guy who claimed that he makes $10k/month and needs every penny of that just to live? You're minimal wage is now $120k/year. Yes, please, sign me up for that.
Do you realize the havoc that would create when one of your "burger flippers" realizes he's getting just $10/hour while the guy doing the same job standing next to him is getting $40/hour, just because he's married and has kids and the cheap labor guy doesn't? Do you realize the problems this creates in hiring "expensive" employees? Why hire a guy with a family when you can cut your costs by hiring a single guy?
I would want to eliminate people being paid less, per hour, than what a human being fairly needs to live on if they were doing that job full time.
Then yes, you would eliminate all jobs that don't produce enough return to justify paying that much.
Maybe you don't realize that not every job is intended to be done by the breadwinner of a family of four?
If they are not doing the job full time, they could reasonably make less than a person needs to live on doing that job, but their effective hourly wage should still never be less than the minimal living wage that I am advocating.
So every job that doesn't return the investment in the wage will simply go away, or the increased costs of doing that job will be passed on to the consumer. A burger flipper who works where he can produce a value of $10/hour but has to be paid $15 because of your "minimal wage" law will be subsidized by the consumer until it does return $15/hour.
Or the job is automated and nobody is paid to do it.
My bad. The bill excludes dial-up. It does not, however, put any speed limitations on the definition. Here is a link to SB-822, which says, in part:
(b) "Broadband Internet access service" means a mass-market retail service by wire or radio provided to customers in California that provides the capability to transmit data to, and receive data from, all or substantially all Internet endpoints, including, but not limited to, any capabilities that are incidental to and enable the operation of the communications service, but excluding dial-up Internet access service. "Broadband Internet access service" also encompasses any service provided to customers in California that provides a functional equivalent of that service or that is used to evade the protections set forth in this title.
In other words, if you have a dedicated line to an ISP and have fixed 56.k modems at each end, you have "broadband", according to this bill. Or a fixed T1 service (1.544 Mbps). Anything except dial-up is "broadband". Is that a good definition?
Now, that's not saying that NN in the bill is wrong, it's just a stupid use of the word "broadband" where it does not belong. They could have omitted that word and referred simply to "internet access service", but they chose not to.
But isn't it nice to know, your dial-up service in California is not covered by the NN law, and the ISP is free to diddle with your traffic as they desire. All due to a stupid definition of a simple concept.
Only if by minimum wage you mean the exact legislated amount that is the minimum you can pay a worker,
That's what the phrase means, and is what Amazon means when they say it.
If a job isn't worth paying a human being a living wage to do, then you shouldn't be paying human beings to do it in the first place.
Your entire argument eliminates every part-time job open to high school and college students, along with a lot of others. And every entry level job that would cost more to automate than it returns in production.
Are you trying to increase unemployment and poverty?
Fortunately, it doesn't matter whether or not we agree on a definition, because a clear and straightforward definition already exists, helpfully posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what the EFF posts, or gets tattooed on their chests, or anything else. The definition that will count will be the definition in the law itself.
I predict that it will be a bad definition, based on historical bad definitions of technical things in laws, and then it will become a political football as some people vote against it because the definition doesn't really match what NN really is, and the opponents start yelling about how the first group "opposes net neutrality" because they voted against something that wasn't NN to start with.
If you think laws have good definitions of anything, remember the California NN law that defined "broadband" to cover dial-up modem service.
Why do Comcast, Verizon, et al have near-monopolies? Because the local goverments gave it to them.
Cable companies got exclusive franchises more than 20 years ago. Federal law prohibits this today, and has for more than 20 years. That's longer than any existing franchise agreement. If you know of an existing exclusive franchise, notify DOJ so the perps can be prosecuted.
ISPs have NEVER, as ISPs, been granted any monopoly status. Perhaps that's why you can usually find another one, if you don't put strict limitations on what you would accept as an ISP. Like cost. Or the specific service medium.
The governments like it because it gives them control over the telecoms
The same laws that prohibit exclusive franchises also wrested control over the cable companies away from local governments. I know, I was there when it happened, on the commission that "controlled" the local cable company.
If you want to fix this, just rescind the government-granted monopolies.
The government-granted monopolies on cable companies went away more than two decades ago. You're demanding something that happened before a lot of/.ers were born. There has never been a government-granted monopoly for an ISP.
Just elect people to your city or county government in favor of allowing multiple cable companies to compete in your area.
It doesn't matter what they want, it's federal law they have to allow it. And you're stuck now referring to cable companies, and cable companies are not the only possible method of ISP service delivery. You also can't force another cable company to come compete in your area, even now that they could if they wanted to.
One obvious answer that everybody on slashdot should already know; mail can be sent from systems with the right hosts file!
And being/., the pedantic answer to that is that's resolving the name into an address -- just not using public name servers. One assumes, however, that when one seeks to determine if an address is "in use", or tries sending email to it and it is not locally controlled, the public DNS system will be used.
Or in general, you don't have to send mail out through a mail gateway, your mail client can instead connect directly to the recipient server.
And if the domain does not resolve, how does one determine the recipient server? Yes, yes, local systems can do a lot of things locally.
You might have a setup where email can be routed normally inside a private network, but from the outside you have to know the IP.
So the name resolves -- locally -- but not globally, and then I'll ask again, if the name does not resolve to any IP address, how does it get email?
Not saying it is common or recommended, just that there are lots of obvious places that an IP address might come from.
A name that doesn't resolve to an IP address isn't getting an IP address from anywhere.
Sorry, for me two paychecks a month is $10,000. If I lost my job I do not have $10,000 in the bank to cover a month of no income,
I believe the commonly stated goal is that you should have three months backup.
Perhaps a short-term goal should be for you to figure out how not to spend $10,000/month, even if you keep doing it. If you have to spend that much just to survive, then you have overextended yourself somewhere. Maybe too big a mortgage, too big a car payment, or you're a wage slave to the credit card company finance charges.
Of course, if you lost your job you become eligible for unemployment.
Slashdot Mirror
The graphs where the countries are sorted by some value are of an informative nature. They show, for example, how many different offers with differential pricing ("zero rating") are available in the different countries.
I know what the "graphs" were showing. What you're describing, however, is properly conveyed by a "table", not a graph. A graph shows relationship between the Y value and the X value. "As X changes in a certain way, Y does this..." How is X changing in that graph? It's going from "biggest Y" to "smallest Y". That's useless. Did you really need to see a graph of that concept? You don't understand as a basic concept that when Y decreases, Y decreases? You need a graph to show that?
It's just a visual representation of a sorted list.
A visual representation of a sorted list will ALWAYS show a relationship to the SORT that is used, but not between X and Y. It's dishonest to imply such a relation exists by using a graph. It's called lying with statistics. All you see is that indeed, when you sort X by number of DPP the outcome is a decreasing DPP with increasing X. Could you not predict that?
I sincerely doubt you would understand it though, seeing how you seem to have trouble interpreting simple graphs.
I seem to have interpreted it better than thee, considering you think it means something. And personal insults don't help your argument, coward.
The fact remains, the paper did not prove what was claimed. They even admit as much.
Not questioning your conclusion, just how you got there. stupid graphs, calling something "the hypothesis" does not lead to a conclusion of false,
One proves nothing by using graphics that have no logical relation between how the points appear on them. An abscissa of "country" is meaningless. It is obvious for most of the graphs they sorted the x axis by the value on the y axis. Yes, the graph shows a nice smooth decline in some value on Y, but only because it was jiggered to show it that way. (I can prove global cooling if you allow me to use a graph where I sort the x axis by inverse average temperatures. A steady decline in average global temperatures proves global cooling, doesn't it?)
And sorry, but when you start with an "intuitive assumption" and then proceed to prove it as if it were a hypothesis, you've committed a cardinal sin in logic. If you assume the result you want, you can always prove the result you want.
That's how I got to the fact that the report does not prove what the summary claims it does.
implying a causal relationship is ALWAYS what these sorts of analysis do.
And I rather successfully argued that it did not prove that causal relationship. The claim was that the report has shown this causal relationship, not that no such causal relationship can exist.
Perhaps you were rushed to type your response and missed the detail that I said that the claim that the report showed some causality was false, not that no such possible causal relations could exist? Who doesn't look good?
Remember, "best" is always qualitative,
That is not true. Comparing identical services from two different companies and deciding which to pick based on price is a quantitative "better". (Make it three companies and you can say "best".)
The word you are possibly looking for is "subjective", which is also not really true. The "best" in the example I just used is still objective.
"Best" becomes subjective when different weights are applied to different criteria, and the things being compared are not essentially identical in all ways.
If their perception of what's "best" for them differs from yours, you have no real grounds to claim that your answer is "better" than theirs.
That is the significant part of your statement. People who claim others are 'voting against their own best interests' are assuming their evaluation of the situation is the only possible one. The word for that is "arrogance".
The point is not of causation or correlation. The point is that ISPs claim cheaper prices, when that isn't true.
That is not true. They don't claim cheaper prices. They claim that certain data does not count against any limits that apply to the plan you have. The PRICE stays the SAME no matter how much zero-rated data you use. That's the claim. That is a fact.
And yes, causation is required of you want to prove that zero-rating is costing people money.
They also claim that cheaper prices are due to zero rating,
No, they do not. The COSTS to a user can be lower if someone who has a limited data plan uses zero-rated sources instead of non-zero-rated ones, and the wireless companies are honest when they say that. The PRICE of the plan, however, does not change. It's like saying "the price per Gb is $1" and "you used 15 Gb so your COST is $15." The price is the same, the cost depends on what you do. In this example, using zero-rated data sources saves you $1/Gb of data you use, which saves you money -- even if the price doesn't change.
Emphasis mine. They also start with an "intuitive assumption" of what they want to prove, trying to later call it "the hypothesis".
Combined with the use of stupid graphs (where the abscissa has NO logical basis) instead of tables, the claim in the summary that the report "has found that zero rating business practices by wireless carriers have increased the cost of wireless data" is false. It implies a causal relationship that is not proven.
This. My first question was whether this study just shows correlation or does it truly show causation?
If it's contrast based then there could be problems.
There's a simple solution to all of this. Ahem, my solution, which is by Obfuscant, which is mine, is: don't Skype with secret crap on the wall behind you.
Apologies to Anne Elephant.
How many football fields is two thirds of a Manhattan?
Meaningless number. I want to know how many Libraries of Congress it is.
and apply other pressures to make the scientists there, and their government minders, stop doing this via embarrassment.
If the Chinese government has not been embarrassed by the public revelation of the justifications they are using to execute prisoners, is it really sane to think they'll be embarrassed because a few journals won't publish research that studies the results of transplant operations of organs harvested from the dead?
LibreOffice is perfect for occasional home use, or a student writing a term paper.
One assumes that the student writing a term paper is not doing so for fun, but for class credit. If he turns that paper in electronically and Word cannot read it, poof goes the credit.
As for another comment about forcing students to pay for copies of MS Word -- good unis have bulk licensing and students get the tools they need. Like Word, Matlab, etc...
Yes, but I certainly didn't read my email on both at the same time.
You don't need to be reading the same email at the same time on both devices to be using the NETWORK at the same time on both devices. Or even using both devices connected to the LTE network at the same time. The point is that the claim that you cannot use both at the same time anyway is patently absurd.
You can use only one of both at the same time anyway.
You've never made a phone call while using your laptop? Or read your email on your phone while using your laptop on the net?
I think that one of the child bot ads were hocking TurboTax, but I'm not sure of that. It wasn't exactly all that memorable.
The "child-bot" couldn't be a TurboTax online real-person CPA because it didn't have the emotions necessary. As if CPAs were supposed to be really emotional while reviewing your tax return.
I thought the Alexa ad with failed integration attempts was funny. The electric toothbrush that played a podcast in someone's mouth, and Harrison Ford's dog ordering a pallet load of dog food (and sausages and gravy ...) was prescient of where Amazon will be trying to put Alexa over time.
They stop talking about it because it's an embarrassing failure?
The news stops talking about it because the hoopla and hysteria die down after everyone realizes the story was only written to get clickthroughs to the advertisers on the news website, and they've posted the next sensational story of hypothetical outrageous dangers intended to grab everyone's attention.
The job of "news" is to provide people to the advertisers. That's why nobody ever sees the page 7 retraction of a front page story about the latest outrage -- nobody buys papers or goes to websites to read retractions.
How is paying somebody less than what they need to live for a job that society doesn't even need getting done treating that person with any respect?
Paying a person for the work they've done is not treating them with respect, according to you. If a job can be automated but isn't because it would be cheaper to pay someone, and even if it is not cheaper it is a way of paying back to the community that the business is in, it is disrespectful to the employee to pay him to do it. What malarky.
High school students who are holding part-time jobs to save money for college are being paid money that they don't need AT ALL to live, because they're still living at home supported by their parents. Thus I can pay that person ZERO dollars per hour because they need ZERO dollars per hour to live, in your utopian workplace.
That job serves society because it is an education in how to work for that employee, which he will use for the rest of his life no matter where he works eventually. It serves the employee because it gives him money (and the education). It serves the company who provides the job because it creates something of value for the company. It's just ridiculous to claim that someone should be paid with no regard to the value that the person brings to the job, and that any job that cannot pay as much as a full-time employee providing for a living needs should be eliminated.
Sorry, I realize I've been feeding the troll.
then any human that does it should not ever be paid less per hour than whatever a minimal living wage happens to be in that municipality.
So, if anyone in the "municipality" is a breadwinner with a family of four, ALL your employees make enough per hour to provide for a family of four, no matter what they do or how many people it feeds? Do you realize that some people have, or claim to have, really high "minimal living wage", like the guy who claimed that he makes $10k/month and needs every penny of that just to live? You're minimal wage is now $120k/year. Yes, please, sign me up for that.
Do you realize the havoc that would create when one of your "burger flippers" realizes he's getting just $10/hour while the guy doing the same job standing next to him is getting $40/hour, just because he's married and has kids and the cheap labor guy doesn't? Do you realize the problems this creates in hiring "expensive" employees? Why hire a guy with a family when you can cut your costs by hiring a single guy?
I would want to eliminate people being paid less, per hour, than what a human being fairly needs to live on if they were doing that job full time.
Then yes, you would eliminate all jobs that don't produce enough return to justify paying that much.
Maybe you don't realize that not every job is intended to be done by the breadwinner of a family of four?
If they are not doing the job full time, they could reasonably make less than a person needs to live on doing that job, but their effective hourly wage should still never be less than the minimal living wage that I am advocating.
So every job that doesn't return the investment in the wage will simply go away, or the increased costs of doing that job will be passed on to the consumer. A burger flipper who works where he can produce a value of $10/hour but has to be paid $15 because of your "minimal wage" law will be subsidized by the consumer until it does return $15/hour.
Or the job is automated and nobody is paid to do it.
This is Good, you think?
In other words, if you have a dedicated line to an ISP and have fixed 56.k modems at each end, you have "broadband", according to this bill. Or a fixed T1 service (1.544 Mbps). Anything except dial-up is "broadband". Is that a good definition?
Now, that's not saying that NN in the bill is wrong, it's just a stupid use of the word "broadband" where it does not belong. They could have omitted that word and referred simply to "internet access service", but they chose not to.
But isn't it nice to know, your dial-up service in California is not covered by the NN law, and the ISP is free to diddle with your traffic as they desire. All due to a stupid definition of a simple concept.
Only if by minimum wage you mean the exact legislated amount that is the minimum you can pay a worker,
That's what the phrase means, and is what Amazon means when they say it.
If a job isn't worth paying a human being a living wage to do, then you shouldn't be paying human beings to do it in the first place.
Your entire argument eliminates every part-time job open to high school and college students, along with a lot of others. And every entry level job that would cost more to automate than it returns in production.
Are you trying to increase unemployment and poverty?
Fortunately, it doesn't matter whether or not we agree on a definition, because a clear and straightforward definition already exists, helpfully posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what the EFF posts, or gets tattooed on their chests, or anything else. The definition that will count will be the definition in the law itself.
I predict that it will be a bad definition, based on historical bad definitions of technical things in laws, and then it will become a political football as some people vote against it because the definition doesn't really match what NN really is, and the opponents start yelling about how the first group "opposes net neutrality" because they voted against something that wasn't NN to start with.
If you think laws have good definitions of anything, remember the California NN law that defined "broadband" to cover dial-up modem service.
Why do Comcast, Verizon, et al have near-monopolies? Because the local goverments gave it to them.
Cable companies got exclusive franchises more than 20 years ago. Federal law prohibits this today, and has for more than 20 years. That's longer than any existing franchise agreement. If you know of an existing exclusive franchise, notify DOJ so the perps can be prosecuted.
ISPs have NEVER, as ISPs, been granted any monopoly status. Perhaps that's why you can usually find another one, if you don't put strict limitations on what you would accept as an ISP. Like cost. Or the specific service medium.
The governments like it because it gives them control over the telecoms
The same laws that prohibit exclusive franchises also wrested control over the cable companies away from local governments. I know, I was there when it happened, on the commission that "controlled" the local cable company.
If you want to fix this, just rescind the government-granted monopolies.
The government-granted monopolies on cable companies went away more than two decades ago. You're demanding something that happened before a lot of /.ers were born. There has never been a government-granted monopoly for an ISP.
Just elect people to your city or county government in favor of allowing multiple cable companies to compete in your area.
It doesn't matter what they want, it's federal law they have to allow it. And you're stuck now referring to cable companies, and cable companies are not the only possible method of ISP service delivery. You also can't force another cable company to come compete in your area, even now that they could if they wanted to.
One obvious answer that everybody on slashdot should already know; mail can be sent from systems with the right hosts file!
And being /., the pedantic answer to that is that's resolving the name into an address -- just not using public name servers. One assumes, however, that when one seeks to determine if an address is "in use", or tries sending email to it and it is not locally controlled, the public DNS system will be used.
Or in general, you don't have to send mail out through a mail gateway, your mail client can instead connect directly to the recipient server.
And if the domain does not resolve, how does one determine the recipient server? Yes, yes, local systems can do a lot of things locally.
You might have a setup where email can be routed normally inside a private network, but from the outside you have to know the IP.
So the name resolves -- locally -- but not globally, and then I'll ask again, if the name does not resolve to any IP address, how does it get email?
Not saying it is common or recommended, just that there are lots of obvious places that an IP address might come from.
A name that doesn't resolve to an IP address isn't getting an IP address from anywhere.
Sorry, for me two paychecks a month is $10,000. If I lost my job I do not have $10,000 in the bank to cover a month of no income,
I believe the commonly stated goal is that you should have three months backup.
Perhaps a short-term goal should be for you to figure out how not to spend $10,000/month, even if you keep doing it. If you have to spend that much just to survive, then you have overextended yourself somewhere. Maybe too big a mortgage, too big a car payment, or you're a wage slave to the credit card company finance charges.
Of course, if you lost your job you become eligible for unemployment.
Too soon.