I was just about to write the same thing. This was something that was already brought up weeks ago in an Ask Slashdot. People who who don't have much exposure to the web hosting business (and that includes most Slashdotters) don't understand that web hosting falls into two major categories:
1) Unmanaged
2) Managed
Unmanaged hosting means you have full control over all of the software on your machine. (And by "machine" I mean both a real machine and a VPS or cloud node.) Nobody touches your configuration in the slightest once control has been handed over to you. If something goes wrong, including hardware failure, it's the customer's responsibility to notice it and either fix it or get it fixed. Any technical support beyond typical datacenter stuff usually incurs an hourly fee. Unmanaged hosting is ideal for people who want to admin their setup 100% on their own.
Managed hosting means the web hosting provider monitors the machine which can include external probes (checking for a response on various TCP ports) and internal metrics like system load and disk utilization. When a red flag pops up, a technician logs into the machine and tries to fix whatever is happening. You can call them up with all manner of ridiculous requests ("install WordPress for me and apply this theme") and they have to do it because, well, that's what the customers expect with a managed hosting account. Managed hosting is awesome for people who want a web server but don't have the expertise or will to actually configure and maintain it.
What the submitter ran into is that he though he had unmanaged hosting but actually has managed hosting. I don't completely blame him, because a lot of hosting providers don't explicitly state which style they provide. Sometimes it's even hard to tell after you've purchased the product. But its something you have to figure out or else you're going to be deeply dissatisfied with the company's technical support, as the submitter was.
Could find which FA you were referring to, but the first ComputerWorld article said this:
The consent order, which was agreed to by lawyers of both parties, also prevents Lower Merion officials from communicating with students and parents regarding the lawsuit; if the district wants to update parents on the case, it must submit the text of the announcement to the Robbins' attorneys at least six hours before sending out the information.
If even half of what the allegations and reported actions of the school are true, this school is well and truly fucked.
Dammit Chris, it's bad enough that your company is doing good things for the Internet like early IPv6 and DNSSEC adoption. Now you have the gall to come onto my Slashdot with your polite and informative answers. It's really starting to threaten my rage-induced perception of Comcast as World's Most Evil Cable Company and that's not something I'll give up without a fight!
The placebo effect is interesting, but it is fully psychological. No placebo can cure a serious physical disease like cancer or hepatitis, although some homeopathic remedies claim to. The article you linked to discusses placebos in the context of antidepressants and pain relievers, and even then mainly in an experimental setting. No doctor is ever going to prescribe a placebo or homeopathy to a patient, even if he thinks the patient's symptoms are imaginary.
The biggest danger of homeopathy is that while the majority of available creams and tinctures are advertised to treat minor symptoms like muscle pain and itchy skin, some unscrupulous (or incredibly deluded) practitioners of homeopathy will "prescribe" cures for even seriously injured or ill patients thus delaying or preventing real, science-based medical care.
I laugh at how none of the requirements included disaster recovery. No single point of failure does not preclude failing at every point simultaneously. EMP bomb at your primary datacenter anyone?
1) They never said they didn't plan for disaster recovery. It's silly to deride them for not discussing the entirety of their backups and disaster recovery efforts when the whole topic of the article was their move to Cassandra as a primary data store.
2) Disaster recovery looks at realistic threat scenarios. Fire, sabotage, natural disaster, and so on. "EMP bomb at your primary datacenter" is wholly unlikely. Nobody can plan for failure at all points simultaneously because "all points" includes everything in their entire operation including backups and redundant systems. What do you want them to do, make hourly offline backups and bury the tapes under a mountain in China? The point of DR is to make your systems diverse, redundant, and operable against a broad category of general failures. Not fully invulnerable to every random specific movie plot threat someone happens to come up with.
Apple prefers (and fight VIGOROUSLY for) DRM free content. The ONLY content DRM's on the Apple store is content the PROVIDER INSISTS is encrypted, not just by Apple, but by EVERY SINGLE METHOD OF LEGALLY GETTING IT. Apple is largely considered an industry leader in the DRM free content battle you moron.
DRM isn't just about movies and music. They may ask their business partners to provide content in non-DRM formats but when it comes to their own products Apple makes extensive use of DRM to control how the software is used. The classic case here is the iPhone. You can only install new software through the App Store, you can't download and save content from the Internet directly to the device, and you can't upload content to the device without going through Apple's own software. All of these are enforced not to make the device more secure or user-friendly but because they force the user into doing everything through iTunes, an Apple profit center. There are numerous ways that Apple could have left a key under the carpet for power users and hobbyists, but they didn't. In order to have full control over the device that you purchased, you have to jailbreak it by exploiting an obscure bug and turning off the kernel-level encryption that prevents unsigned binaries from being executed. And then hope that nothing happens to the device in the near future because simply by modifying the software you've voided the warranty, son.
So don't talk to me about Apple being the good guy when it comes to DRM.
I KNOW that when iPhone 4 comes out, all apps i have on the iPhone now will either work, or require a minor patch that I'll get for free guaranteed. I know this because if the app isn't supported on the latest release, apple pulls it from the store, cutting that dev off from all future revenue on the app if they don't fix it, and updates are always free.
It sounds a bit unfair to have your potentially revenue-generating app (for both you and Apple) pulled from the store every time Apple updates the OS. The developer didn't break the app, Apple did. Doesn't strike you as just a bit, you know, mafia? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but an Android application written for an older version of Android automatically works in a newer version. So if I write an application for 1.5, it will run just fine on 1.6, 2.0, and 2.1. No break-hurry-fix-upload cycle to contend with, an application can be updated to use newer OS features at the developer's leisure.
If I want an app for my generic Linux box, I'm jumping head-long down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out which version will work with my particular distro and what other dependencies I might need and often a good few hours of arsing around trying to configure the thing to work properly with some horribly cryptic config files to edit.
Uh, no. Don't blame Linux for your lack of understanding of how it works. To install software in Linux, you install it through your package manager. Which is typically one command or a few mouse clicks at most, as opposed to the myriad wizards, options screens, and rebooting you inevitably run into while installing proprietary software on proprietary systems.
If you try to go compiling software from source then yeah, you're on your own but I would have thought that was obvious.
Uh oh, another confused commenter. To the Slashdot FAQ!
Why did you post story X?
Slashdot is many things to many people. Some people think it's a Linux site. To others, it's a geek hangout. I've always worked very hard to make sure that Slashdot matches up with my interests and the interests of my authors. We think we're pretty typical Slashdot readers... but that does mean that occasionally one of us might post something that you think is inappropriate. You might be interested in my Omelette rant.
Personally, I have a pet peeve when people post comments saying things like "That's not News For Nerds!" and "That's not Stuff that Matters!" Slashdot has been running for almost 5 years, and over that time, I have always been the final decision maker on what ends up on the homepage. It turns out that a lot of people agree with me: Linux, Legos, Penguins, Sci (both real and fiction). If you've been reading Slashdot, you know what the subjects commonly are, but we might deviate occasionally. It's just more fun that way. Variety Is The Spice Of Life and all that, right? We've been running Slashdot for a long time, and if we occasionally want to post something that someone doesn't think is right for Slashdot, well, we're the ones who get to make the call. It's the mix of stories that makes Slashdot the fun place that it is.
I don't want to time share. Just like I don't buy a time sharing condo in Florida. Maybe you're both to young to remember Token Ring networks and true time share but they were SSSLLLOOOWWW.
Hello there ye from the realm of outdated misconceptions. Who told you terminal servers were slow? A few years ago, I set up a 20-seat Linux terminal server network. One terminal server (which was about as powerful as a high-end desktop machine at the time) was enough to handle all of the clients simultaneously and not break a sweat. We're talking P2-era technology on the client side. Each desktop was just as responsive as if the input devices were connected directly to the server itself. I talked to more than one person who absolutely could not believe that the applications they were using were actually being run on another machine over the network.
And please quit assuming that everybody but Slashdot people only need a web browser. That's one of the most arrogant and incorrect statements. Do you honestly believe that Customer Service people only need a browser?
Strawman argument, nobody said either of those things. Even if they were true, the point is moot. LTSP-enabled distributions provide complete Linux desktop environments. You get sound, access to local devices, and all of the applications that run on Linux. About the only applications I wouldn't recommend for terminal servers would be those with demanding video requirements like 3D games, CAD, and video editing.
In a previous job, our whole office ran off a terminal server and it worked great for years. I did system administration and web development, never had a single task that the setup couldn't handle. We even ran dual-screen on the thin clients and never had a problem.
I honestly believe that 95% of the posters on Slashdot either don't have a job or are trolls that live in the sewers because a good majority of you have no idea how WORK works.
My Twitter account is for communicating with my co-workers. Organizing get-togethers, recommending articles, music, local news, etc. My Facebook account is strictly family and close friends. I use it to keep in touch with them in between phone calls, share family photos and videos, and so on. There are lots of people who have accounts on social networking sites who use the sites for their actual purpose: social activity. Just because you haven't found a worthwhile use for social networking doesn't mean social networking sites are altogether useless.
Hate to burst your corporate, free-market and capitalism-bashing bubble, but asking your employees to work for 18 months and then skipping town is illegal in the US.
Also I'm not sure how much sympathy I have for anyone whose paycheck for a full year and a half consisted entirely of hopes and dreams. Especially in game development, where these kinds of stories are a weekly event.
Not everyone is a crook and we should all strive to not be crooks, it is better for everyone. There used to be a time when everyone left there doors unlocked and trusted the community to not rob them. [...] We shouldn't have to hide our information, people should just respect each other enough not to steal their stuff.
Yes, yes, pining for the Norman Rockwell version of the 1950's is fun but in reality, the probability of having something stolen from you has never been zero. Some percentage of your neighbors are willing to steal from you no matter where (or when) you live. The only thing that stands in their way is opportunity. If they are able to go in and take something with a very low chance of being spotted or caught, they're going to try it. The rational response of a property owner is to take reasonable steps to secure his or her things to reduce the opportunity for theft, even if they overall relative risk seems low. These are some things that a rational person does not (or should not) do if they care at all about their security and know the consequences of them:
* Go to the store and leave the garage door open * Give out your personal details to anyone who asks * Ask a stranger to hold your car keys * Set an empty or easily-guessed root password * Put your wallet down in a crowded area * Broadcast your exact whereabouts on Twitter
If you do any of these things, don't act surprised at the consequences. Not that it would do any good anyway. The criminal has your data or property and you just look foolish for not protecting it. The problem here is that almost nobody using FourSquare understands the consequences of posting their exact physical location to the Internet at large because the media hasn't told them yet. Sometimes it takes a bold statement to get the media to pay attention to an underlying important message and it's hard to get any bolder than a site named pleaserobme.com. The site is just a pretty wrapper around something that's already available to criminals everywhere through Twitter itself. (Does mentioning that fact make me an asshole as well?)
If this kind of thing is wrong, then where is the line drawn? If someone discovers a critical weakness in a popular encryption algorithm with too many vendors to enumerate let alone contact, is it wrong to describe it in public, even though criminals could make use of it to steal data? Doesn't everyone have the right to know that the security of their data is potentially in jeopardy? In forming my own answer, I'm reminded of the old security maxim: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Non-profits are often "non-profit" only in the sense that they don't follow the traditional business model and the organization itself doesn't keep the donations given to it. The employees who work for non-profits, however, can be compensated very well for their time.
(Disclaimer: I'm not dogging all non-profits here. I'm sure there are many that are run almost entirely on volunteers, have little overhead, and do a lot of good for the cause that they serve. But as an I.T. consultant, I've had an up-close view of how the majority of non-profits operate and that is in a word: self-sustaining.)
I live in a city with a major university on one side of town. On the other side is a community college. Almost all of their associates degrees are specifically tailored to be transferable to the University's bachelor programs. This way, people who don't qualify for full-ride scholarships or don't have daddy paying their way can get the first two years of their education under their belt for between 1/3 and 1/2 of what it would cost for four full years at a University.
I went to this community college and more than half of my instructors for those two years were also professors at the University. So I don't think the argument could be made that there might have been a significant quality delta between the two. (And for what its worth, the community college had a far superior library.)
Check out Leo LaPorte's TWiT lineup. Only one podcast is directly to do with open source (FLOSS Weekly, hosted by Leo, Randal Schwartz, and on occasion Jono Bacon) but all of his shows are extremely well produced. Leo is a "real" geek and a bona fide on-air radio personality as well, a rare combination. My other favorite on the network is Security Now with Steve Gibson. It's a good podcast if you like in-depth discussions on crypto, CPU architecture, network protocols, and other low-level topics.
Yeah, because that really seems to be working out so far. Clearly the competition between the major providers is pushing them to improve and excel.
For what it's worth, most cable companies now offer speeds of around 20Mbps in metropolitan areas in the near absence of competition. DSL and wireless can't touch that. The only viable last-mile competitor to cable at those speeds is fiber and that's taking forever to roll out nationally.
I think you missed the OP's main point, though. A fast Internet is 100% worthless if it's controlled by commercial interests. An open Internet is more fundamentally critical to innovation than blazing speeds.
Some are wondering how the DoJ and law enforcement will react to a major upsurge in fully encrypted traffic.
With glee, probably. Since Skype won't talk about how its protocols and software work, it's entirely possible that they have methods of monitoring all calls made on the network. (In fact, one Austrian official admitted that they have no problem intercepting Skype communications.) Even if the full encryption spec is published for cryptographic review and is found to be sturdy, the clients are closed-source, meaning they could simply wait for a specific kind of packet and switch the call into an unencrypted or poorly-encrypted mode for easy wiretapping.
Metered bandwidth would be an even bigger blow to innovation on the Internet than lack of net neutrality. If all Internet users were forced onto metered bandwidth plans, these things would all be dead:
User-driven video upload sites like YouTube
Streaming video services like Hulu and Netflix
Streaming music services like Pandora, Slacker, and independent stations like SomaFM
Many forms of online gaming
Advertising
That last one is the real kicker. The Internet basically runs on advertising. When Internet access is billed by the byte, everyone is going to look to cut their costs by installing ad blocking software. Google and Yahoo would fold overnight. Facebook would become the exclusive realm of the well-to-do. The "printed" news industry would fall into an even deeper hole than its already in. I could list examples all day, but the key thing to take away here is that the Internet as we know it would cease to exist.
Now also think about who have thus far been the major proponents of metered bandwidth: Cable and phone companies. They have an interest in restricting how their customers use the Internet, because they believe it competes with their other services. And they would be right. They can see a future where Hulu is just the beginning of streaming content distribution on the Internet. Eventually, services will come along that offer a cable-TV-like experience for a fraction of the price. All the customer needs is an Internet connection and a little set-top box. Companies like Comcast and AT&T will simply become ISPs, which is the exact opposite direction that they want to go: they want direct control and supervision over their customers' experience because that's where the money is. Any whining noises they make about peer-to-peer killing their networking infrastructure is bullshit, they just don't want to be cut out of a direct content relationship with their customers.
Seriously.. If I am curious about my power usage, I can walk outside, look at the meter, and figure out pretty close to what I owe.
Power and gas are utilities. They are easy to quantify and are used for specific obvious purposes, so it makes sense to bill based on how much is consumed. The Internet, however, is a communications medium. Apples and oranges, my friend.
A couple weeks back, the Comcast and NBC CEOs went in front of Congress to argue their cases on why their companies should be merged. A while back, Comcast went to court to for the right to say (basically) that the FCC held no power over how Comcast operates their business. But when questioned about how Comcast would avoid falling into monopolistic practices, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said the FCC would keep them in check. Al Franken publicly lambasted Roberts for about five straight minutes for blatantly lying to him. (Here's the video. It's a good watch even if you don't care for Franken.) Now here's the best part. When it was Roberts' turn to speak, it went something like this:
Roberts: Senator, ah, first of all, our company has been in business for a very long time and I think our reputation... Franken: Your reputation...?
Franken lets him continue and Roberts basically starts mumbling that he got confused about what exactly the question was about. Priceless. Franken then goes on the criticize the NBC CEO on their past shady dealings. It's a good show. Just sad to think that even with this severe public shaming, there's enough bribing and palm-greasing going on that the two media behemoths will still merge to become one. No matter how intense the negative pressure from the public and lawmakers, these deals always seem to go through to the detriment of the consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
Then why is it a story?
I was just about to write the same thing. This was something that was already brought up weeks ago in an Ask Slashdot. People who who don't have much exposure to the web hosting business (and that includes most Slashdotters) don't understand that web hosting falls into two major categories:
1) Unmanaged
2) Managed
Unmanaged hosting means you have full control over all of the software on your machine. (And by "machine" I mean both a real machine and a VPS or cloud node.) Nobody touches your configuration in the slightest once control has been handed over to you. If something goes wrong, including hardware failure, it's the customer's responsibility to notice it and either fix it or get it fixed. Any technical support beyond typical datacenter stuff usually incurs an hourly fee. Unmanaged hosting is ideal for people who want to admin their setup 100% on their own.
Managed hosting means the web hosting provider monitors the machine which can include external probes (checking for a response on various TCP ports) and internal metrics like system load and disk utilization. When a red flag pops up, a technician logs into the machine and tries to fix whatever is happening. You can call them up with all manner of ridiculous requests ("install WordPress for me and apply this theme") and they have to do it because, well, that's what the customers expect with a managed hosting account. Managed hosting is awesome for people who want a web server but don't have the expertise or will to actually configure and maintain it.
What the submitter ran into is that he though he had unmanaged hosting but actually has managed hosting. I don't completely blame him, because a lot of hosting providers don't explicitly state which style they provide. Sometimes it's even hard to tell after you've purchased the product. But its something you have to figure out or else you're going to be deeply dissatisfied with the company's technical support, as the submitter was.
Could find which FA you were referring to, but the first ComputerWorld article said this:
If even half of what the allegations and reported actions of the school are true, this school is well and truly fucked.
Dammit Chris, it's bad enough that your company is doing good things for the Internet like early IPv6 and DNSSEC adoption. Now you have the gall to come onto my Slashdot with your polite and informative answers. It's really starting to threaten my rage-induced perception of Comcast as World's Most Evil Cable Company and that's not something I'll give up without a fight!
The placebo effect is interesting, but it is fully psychological. No placebo can cure a serious physical disease like cancer or hepatitis, although some homeopathic remedies claim to. The article you linked to discusses placebos in the context of antidepressants and pain relievers, and even then mainly in an experimental setting. No doctor is ever going to prescribe a placebo or homeopathy to a patient, even if he thinks the patient's symptoms are imaginary.
The biggest danger of homeopathy is that while the majority of available creams and tinctures are advertised to treat minor symptoms like muscle pain and itchy skin, some unscrupulous (or incredibly deluded) practitioners of homeopathy will "prescribe" cures for even seriously injured or ill patients thus delaying or preventing real, science-based medical care.
1) They never said they didn't plan for disaster recovery. It's silly to deride them for not discussing the entirety of their backups and disaster recovery efforts when the whole topic of the article was their move to Cassandra as a primary data store.
2) Disaster recovery looks at realistic threat scenarios. Fire, sabotage, natural disaster, and so on. "EMP bomb at your primary datacenter" is wholly unlikely. Nobody can plan for failure at all points simultaneously because "all points" includes everything in their entire operation including backups and redundant systems. What do you want them to do, make hourly offline backups and bury the tapes under a mountain in China? The point of DR is to make your systems diverse, redundant, and operable against a broad category of general failures. Not fully invulnerable to every random specific movie plot threat someone happens to come up with.
Just like there is no universal programming language for every type of software, there is no universal database engine for every type of data storage.
DRM isn't just about movies and music. They may ask their business partners to provide content in non-DRM formats but when it comes to their own products Apple makes extensive use of DRM to control how the software is used. The classic case here is the iPhone. You can only install new software through the App Store, you can't download and save content from the Internet directly to the device, and you can't upload content to the device without going through Apple's own software. All of these are enforced not to make the device more secure or user-friendly but because they force the user into doing everything through iTunes, an Apple profit center. There are numerous ways that Apple could have left a key under the carpet for power users and hobbyists, but they didn't. In order to have full control over the device that you purchased, you have to jailbreak it by exploiting an obscure bug and turning off the kernel-level encryption that prevents unsigned binaries from being executed. And then hope that nothing happens to the device in the near future because simply by modifying the software you've voided the warranty, son.
So don't talk to me about Apple being the good guy when it comes to DRM.
It sounds a bit unfair to have your potentially revenue-generating app (for both you and Apple) pulled from the store every time Apple updates the OS. The developer didn't break the app, Apple did. Doesn't strike you as just a bit, you know, mafia? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but an Android application written for an older version of Android automatically works in a newer version. So if I write an application for 1.5, it will run just fine on 1.6, 2.0, and 2.1. No break-hurry-fix-upload cycle to contend with, an application can be updated to use newer OS features at the developer's leisure.
Uh, no. Don't blame Linux for your lack of understanding of how it works. To install software in Linux, you install it through your package manager. Which is typically one command or a few mouse clicks at most, as opposed to the myriad wizards, options screens, and rebooting you inevitably run into while installing proprietary software on proprietary systems.
If you try to go compiling software from source then yeah, you're on your own but I would have thought that was obvious.
It's probably hard to be impressed by anything at all when your formal title and name works out to be Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge.
Uh oh, another confused commenter. To the Slashdot FAQ!
(Emphasis mine.)
Yeah, how *dare* he try to appeal to his most ardent followers...
Hello there ye from the realm of outdated misconceptions. Who told you terminal servers were slow? A few years ago, I set up a 20-seat Linux terminal server network. One terminal server (which was about as powerful as a high-end desktop machine at the time) was enough to handle all of the clients simultaneously and not break a sweat. We're talking P2-era technology on the client side. Each desktop was just as responsive as if the input devices were connected directly to the server itself. I talked to more than one person who absolutely could not believe that the applications they were using were actually being run on another machine over the network.
Strawman argument, nobody said either of those things. Even if they were true, the point is moot. LTSP-enabled distributions provide complete Linux desktop environments. You get sound, access to local devices, and all of the applications that run on Linux. About the only applications I wouldn't recommend for terminal servers would be those with demanding video requirements like 3D games, CAD, and video editing.
In a previous job, our whole office ran off a terminal server and it worked great for years. I did system administration and web development, never had a single task that the setup couldn't handle. We even ran dual-screen on the thin clients and never had a problem.
Be sure you count yourself in that 95%.
My Twitter account is for communicating with my co-workers. Organizing get-togethers, recommending articles, music, local news, etc. My Facebook account is strictly family and close friends. I use it to keep in touch with them in between phone calls, share family photos and videos, and so on. There are lots of people who have accounts on social networking sites who use the sites for their actual purpose: social activity. Just because you haven't found a worthwhile use for social networking doesn't mean social networking sites are altogether useless.
Hate to burst your corporate, free-market and capitalism-bashing bubble, but asking your employees to work for 18 months and then skipping town is illegal in the US.
Also I'm not sure how much sympathy I have for anyone whose paycheck for a full year and a half consisted entirely of hopes and dreams. Especially in game development, where these kinds of stories are a weekly event.
Yes, yes, pining for the Norman Rockwell version of the 1950's is fun but in reality, the probability of having something stolen from you has never been zero. Some percentage of your neighbors are willing to steal from you no matter where (or when) you live. The only thing that stands in their way is opportunity. If they are able to go in and take something with a very low chance of being spotted or caught, they're going to try it. The rational response of a property owner is to take reasonable steps to secure his or her things to reduce the opportunity for theft, even if they overall relative risk seems low. These are some things that a rational person does not (or should not) do if they care at all about their security and know the consequences of them:
* Go to the store and leave the garage door open
* Give out your personal details to anyone who asks
* Ask a stranger to hold your car keys
* Set an empty or easily-guessed root password
* Put your wallet down in a crowded area
* Broadcast your exact whereabouts on Twitter
If you do any of these things, don't act surprised at the consequences. Not that it would do any good anyway. The criminal has your data or property and you just look foolish for not protecting it. The problem here is that almost nobody using FourSquare understands the consequences of posting their exact physical location to the Internet at large because the media hasn't told them yet. Sometimes it takes a bold statement to get the media to pay attention to an underlying important message and it's hard to get any bolder than a site named pleaserobme.com. The site is just a pretty wrapper around something that's already available to criminals everywhere through Twitter itself. (Does mentioning that fact make me an asshole as well?)
If this kind of thing is wrong, then where is the line drawn? If someone discovers a critical weakness in a popular encryption algorithm with too many vendors to enumerate let alone contact, is it wrong to describe it in public, even though criminals could make use of it to steal data? Doesn't everyone have the right to know that the security of their data is potentially in jeopardy? In forming my own answer, I'm reminded of the old security maxim: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Non-profits are often "non-profit" only in the sense that they don't follow the traditional business model and the organization itself doesn't keep the donations given to it. The employees who work for non-profits, however, can be compensated very well for their time.
(Disclaimer: I'm not dogging all non-profits here. I'm sure there are many that are run almost entirely on volunteers, have little overhead, and do a lot of good for the cause that they serve. But as an I.T. consultant, I've had an up-close view of how the majority of non-profits operate and that is in a word: self-sustaining.)
community college != low-end education
I live in a city with a major university on one side of town. On the other side is a community college. Almost all of their associates degrees are specifically tailored to be transferable to the University's bachelor programs. This way, people who don't qualify for full-ride scholarships or don't have daddy paying their way can get the first two years of their education under their belt for between 1/3 and 1/2 of what it would cost for four full years at a University.
I went to this community college and more than half of my instructors for those two years were also professors at the University. So I don't think the argument could be made that there might have been a significant quality delta between the two. (And for what its worth, the community college had a far superior library.)
Check out Leo LaPorte's TWiT lineup. Only one podcast is directly to do with open source (FLOSS Weekly, hosted by Leo, Randal Schwartz, and on occasion Jono Bacon) but all of his shows are extremely well produced. Leo is a "real" geek and a bona fide on-air radio personality as well, a rare combination. My other favorite on the network is Security Now with Steve Gibson. It's a good podcast if you like in-depth discussions on crypto, CPU architecture, network protocols, and other low-level topics.
I'd be curious to know what there is to deliberate about. Why wouldn't the White House archive all non-classified records and communications?
For what it's worth, most cable companies now offer speeds of around 20Mbps in metropolitan areas in the near absence of competition. DSL and wireless can't touch that. The only viable last-mile competitor to cable at those speeds is fiber and that's taking forever to roll out nationally.
I think you missed the OP's main point, though. A fast Internet is 100% worthless if it's controlled by commercial interests. An open Internet is more fundamentally critical to innovation than blazing speeds.
Huh? Why would they need/want to hide their legal non-citizen employees? Was that an anti-immigration jab?
With glee, probably. Since Skype won't talk about how its protocols and software work, it's entirely possible that they have methods of monitoring all calls made on the network. (In fact, one Austrian official admitted that they have no problem intercepting Skype communications.) Even if the full encryption spec is published for cryptographic review and is found to be sturdy, the clients are closed-source, meaning they could simply wait for a specific kind of packet and switch the call into an unencrypted or poorly-encrypted mode for easy wiretapping.
Metered bandwidth would be an even bigger blow to innovation on the Internet than lack of net neutrality. If all Internet users were forced onto metered bandwidth plans, these things would all be dead:
That last one is the real kicker. The Internet basically runs on advertising. When Internet access is billed by the byte, everyone is going to look to cut their costs by installing ad blocking software. Google and Yahoo would fold overnight. Facebook would become the exclusive realm of the well-to-do. The "printed" news industry would fall into an even deeper hole than its already in. I could list examples all day, but the key thing to take away here is that the Internet as we know it would cease to exist.
Now also think about who have thus far been the major proponents of metered bandwidth: Cable and phone companies. They have an interest in restricting how their customers use the Internet, because they believe it competes with their other services. And they would be right. They can see a future where Hulu is just the beginning of streaming content distribution on the Internet. Eventually, services will come along that offer a cable-TV-like experience for a fraction of the price. All the customer needs is an Internet connection and a little set-top box. Companies like Comcast and AT&T will simply become ISPs, which is the exact opposite direction that they want to go: they want direct control and supervision over their customers' experience because that's where the money is. Any whining noises they make about peer-to-peer killing their networking infrastructure is bullshit, they just don't want to be cut out of a direct content relationship with their customers.
Power and gas are utilities. They are easy to quantify and are used for specific obvious purposes, so it makes sense to bill based on how much is consumed. The Internet, however, is a communications medium. Apples and oranges, my friend.
A couple weeks back, the Comcast and NBC CEOs went in front of Congress to argue their cases on why their companies should be merged. A while back, Comcast went to court to for the right to say (basically) that the FCC held no power over how Comcast operates their business. But when questioned about how Comcast would avoid falling into monopolistic practices, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said the FCC would keep them in check. Al Franken publicly lambasted Roberts for about five straight minutes for blatantly lying to him. (Here's the video. It's a good watch even if you don't care for Franken.) Now here's the best part. When it was Roberts' turn to speak, it went something like this:
Roberts: Senator, ah, first of all, our company has been in business for a very long time and I think our reputation...
Franken: Your reputation...?
Franken lets him continue and Roberts basically starts mumbling that he got confused about what exactly the question was about. Priceless. Franken then goes on the criticize the NBC CEO on their past shady dealings. It's a good show. Just sad to think that even with this severe public shaming, there's enough bribing and palm-greasing going on that the two media behemoths will still merge to become one. No matter how intense the negative pressure from the public and lawmakers, these deals always seem to go through to the detriment of the consumer.