I think AT&T's network issues must be highly localized in the northeast, because I've been an AT&T user since before they were using GSM, and I've never had an unexplainable dropped call anywhere I've traveled. My cell is and has always been my only phone; I don't have a landline. However, I keep hearing about all these dropped calls on AT&T.
Sure, if I'm way out in the woods and I lose signal, it drops. If I go through a deep tunnel and lose signal, it drops. But if I've got signal, the call goes through and the line stays open.
I've never used anything but a free-with-contract handset with the service, either. I HAVE developed a deep loathing for LG handsets, though. My first 3g handset was a free Cu575 that was absolute shit - laggy buggy interface, OS crashes, strange "call failed" messages, etc.. I actually went back to using my old 2g Motorola rather than wait out the 2 year contract with that thing. I could not replace it fast enough when the contract expired. My fiance had similar problems on her Verizon LG handset.
This form of financing is actually legit, and a common practice. It's been dying out as credit got cheaper and easier to get, but has been starting to make a comeback recently.
The scam part is where they didn't actually send out the computer after the 13th payment. And the part where they charge thousands of dollars for a bottom-of-the-line dell.
Of course, it's foolish to get a computer on layaway - by the time you've made the payments and recieved the computer, it's probably outdated. Not like a vacuum cleaner or something.
Having worked in retail and foodservice industry, I hate checks. I'm flabbergasted that any retail outlets still take them.
The rate of fraudulent checks accepted at retail is astronomical; in foodservice it's even worse. The last check-accepting restaurant I worked at that had nearly a 50% rate of fraud on them; mostly from checks being written against closed accounts. The vast majority of these bad checks we never saw a cent from.
The corporate office required that we accept checks as a form of payment; they were located in some rural ghost town, where debit card use still hasn't caught on, and set national policy based on that. In a modern urban area, Visa/MC logo'd debit cards have all but replaced paper checks, and the only people who still use them are the fraudsters.
Checks are terrible, for both those using them and those accepting them.
Why would they possibly look at 30 Million people who aren't buying their product and support a bill that will require everyone, by force of law, to buy their product?
Because it would also require them to insure the sick. It would end lifetime benefit caps, too. Go ahead and get cancer right now, then see how fast you hit the lifetime cap on your insurance policy. If you're lucky it might take a few years. If your unlucky, they'll just drop your coverage before you can start racking up the bills.
Insurance companies discovered a long time ago that their product is only profitable to sell if they target the healthy and exclude the sick.
BPL also wipes out CB, which is meaningless unless you are a trucker
Or one of the unwashed masses who is not a radio enthusiast, and only owns a CB radio for emergency purposes. Many people purchase handheld CB's just so they can call for help on channel 9 in an emergency.
You are assuming that the oil company executives do not believe their own propaganda about how oil will never run out.
Given their recent behavior, and the ultra-slim portion of their R&D budgets that goes into green fuel, I'm starting to fear that they believe their own bullshit.
Basically he confirms all the speculation that AT&T blocked 4chan because of ACK bouncebacks from a DDOS. Real/b/tards probably already had off-network proxies at the ready to deal with it.
Also, being on AT&T and unable to access 4chan doesn't necessarily mean that it's been blocked. 4chan is up and down all the time, because they're under constant DDOS attacks, at pretty much all times, from various sources. It seems that DDOSing 4chan is a basic holding pattern for botnets that aren't otherwise occupied.
Here's what happened:
For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack. We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.
Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.
In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org IPs (which serve/b/ &/r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.
In the end, this wasn't a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T's part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn't anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.
We're glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorshipâ"two very important issues that don't get nearly enough attentionâ"so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.
Aside from that, I'll also add that there is some big news due later this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message for updates.
As always, I can be reached at moot@4chan.org.
---
PS: If any companies would like to hook us up with some better hardware, feel free! The architecture we've got powering this large and influential beast is really quite embarrassing. (._.)
IIRC, Google doesn't use top-end "server" chips in their servers. They use consumer grade, midrange chips that they can get at cheap commodity prices, and load balance everything across a ton of machines.
He implies the problems are due to Intel and AMD not delivering with their server chips; these are not the chips that Google is using.
In the automotive industry, where they have been dealing with 12vdc power in long cable runs for a century, they have dealt with that by having the voltage regulator sense and adjust the voltage based on reading taken at the largest load, rather than at the source. Thus the voltage drop in long, thin cable runs is automatically compensated for. The alternator just puts out more voltage.
Here in the US, public schools are typically surrounded by barbed wire, and not a small number have metal detectors at the doors. There's typically even a local police officer patrolling the halls in addition to the hired security.
The general perception of a school in the US as a locked-down secure facility really blurs the line. "Reasonable" persons have a completely different frame of reference over here than they do over there..
Or are your schools just as fucked up as ours? If they are, my hypothesis is totally wrong.
I remember when people with Fords were hacking the "proprietary" OBD-1 service connector on the newfangled fuel injected cars with the EEC-IV.
People just jammed jumpers and multimeters in the connectors and figured out how to make it output the codes.
Of course, it helped that the super-secret Ford diagnostic tool was a push button connected to two pins, and a lamp connected to the another two pins. Service technicians pushed the button, and counted the flashes.
Of course, Ford didn't raise a stink when people published instructions on how to read the codes without buying the tool. And third parties make boxes that just display the number, which Ford continues to allow.
But that may have simply been a marketing decision, made in a day when a lot of mechanics mistrusted electronic engine management. However, nowadays it's an assumption; no one wants to go back to fiddling with carburetors and distributors. Manufacturers can start to lock them down and try to wrangle more money from the independent mechanics.
If the mix is rich, and the computer KNOWS that the mix is rich, that narrows it down quite a bit. Then the only possibilities are the airflow sensor, or possibly the fuel pressure regulator. (Of course, if it's a car without an airflow sensor, it could potentially be the throttle position sensor or maybe the manifold air pressure sensor. But most cars rely on a MAF sensor nowdays.)
If the mix is rich, and the computer claims "fuel mixture lean" or believes nothing at all is wrong, the problem is most likely the O2 sensor, and the computer is being fooled into enriching the mix.
I think the codes are quite useful. They let you know what the car is thinking.
The only way you're going to end up in the top 2% is if you're downloading massive quantities of information (not webpages!)
Actually, it's been shown (and discussed here on Slashdot multiple times) that the heaviest bandwidth users are typically video streaming users on mainstream sites like Youtube, Hulu, and Netflix. These are likely to be pretty casual users, with no idea of how much bandwidth is involved in streaming a full-length movie from Netflix. A casual user with a 10 or 20 gig cap would be quite surprised at hitting their cap after a few movies.
The problem with drunk driving law is not primarily one of testing. It is that it presumes someone is incapable of driving with even trace amounts of alcohol,
Actually, it takes 2 to 4 drinks to put a person over.08 BAC, depending on a number of factors.
I can chug a tallboy and hit the road legally.
My heavyset boss could knock back 4 shots of whiskey and still be under the legal limit.
other forms of more dangerous driving (such as driving while texting or on the phone) as being OK or far far less severe.
Drunk driving is really low hanging fruit. Easy to spot, easy to prosecute. Driving while texting or not using a handsfree device is also illegal in my state, and is also low hanging fruit.
Laws that are easy to enforce are always written first. Laws that require superhuman cops either aren't written, or aren't enforced, even if they would have a beneficial impact..
one should always refuse a breathalyzer test even if you haven't been drinking
It's already been said in this thread, but I'll say it again for emphasis.
In most American states, refusing a field sobriety test (electronic or otherwise) results in the immediate suspension of your license. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. You can't appeal and have your license reinstated, the act of refusing the test is enough to revoke your license.
It's far better to take the test and risk blowing >0.08%, and then immediately laywer up.
To be fair, most officers don't use the breathalyser as their first filtering method to investigate suspected DUIs. Typically officers rely on the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, which is a far more accurate method of measuring intoxication levels around the legal maximum. However, that test generates no evidence which you can present in court, other than the sworn testimony of the officer who administered it. So once a DUI suspect has failed the HGN test, the officer will administer a breathalyser, so they have something to submit as evidence.
And I am one of many people who WILL buy from Steam, because I find the benefits far outweigh the idealogical downside of purchasing DRMed software.
I don't need to go to a retail store and buy a physical box. This is huge for me. If I want a game, I can just press a button on a website and have it playing on my computer in a matter of minutes.
If I want to show a friend a game, all I have to do is log in to my Steam account from their computer; all of my games are instantly available to install and play. This is a big one. They'll continue to be able to play my games until I log in back on my PC, and I don't have to tell them my password.
Streamlined, built in auto-updating; it updates my games in the background, so the game is patched and ready to go by the time I want to launch it.
Being able to instantly join a friend's online game by clicking one button in my friends list.
Easy reinstalls in case of disaster, no storing a binder of CD's and keeping track of ugly product keys.
Never having someone else's keygen stumbling onto my product key and blocking me from online play. Fuck yeah no CD keys.
All this in exchange for the risk that if Valve goes out of business, in a worst case scenario I might have to apply a 3rd party crack to my games. Yeah, I think I'll continue taking that risk.
Because even under American style at-will employment, it's still illegal to fire someone in cases of discrimination or retaliation.
This could be considered both, either discrimination on basis of political views, or retaliation for working politically against his corporate overlords.
I gave up my car when I went back to college, mainly to save on insurance costs. After college was over, I didn't have any money to re-insure my car, so I kept commuting by bus. And then, I just never stopped.
Practicality & Convenience:
Now, my commute to work is just under 3 miles. It takes 10-20 minutes by car, depending on traffic, and 20 minutes by bus no matter what. Times of day with heavy traffic, the bus moves faster than general traffic, because the city has dedicated lanes in places, dedicated traffic lights in others, and various other advantages designed to keep the bus moving when traffic is gridlocked.
There are several bus routes with stops within a quarter mile of my home. From "my" stop, it's about 5 minutes to a major transit hub, where I can transfer to virtually anywhere. However, "my" buses only run at 30 minute intervals (and are synchronized in their departure times by some perverse coincidence), so I have an average of a 15 minute wait for the bus, each way. Most of the buses I transfer to at the transit hub run with much more reasonable 10 or 15 minute intervals, so I rarely have downtime waiting for a transfer. So time-wise, I don't lose much more than I would looking for parking.
I can read while I ride. Can't do that while I drive. Many of the buses have free wifi; I can post to/. while riding.
The buses run from 5 AM until to 1 AM, leaving me a 4 hour dead-zone. Obviously I can't haul large objects on the bus.
For these inconvenient occasions, I have a couple options. I can call a taxi if I'm in a hurry or the buses aren't running. For hauling things, I can rent a pickup or a van from a nearby U-Haul. I can always just walk. And I can always (illegally) drive my uninsured car.
Financially:
Insurance on my cheap, heavily depreciated American economy car costs just over $100/mo. That price is for only liability and "uninsured motorist" coverage. I'm sure full coverage with a low deductable on a newer vehicle would be at least twice as much. There's of course gas prices, as well as regular maintenance, which can about double that price, but insurance is really the big cost (for me). I have free street parking at home, but monthly parking around most workplaces can run upwards of $100.
A monthly bus pass, on the other hand, costs $63 a month. That buys me unlimited rides anywhere in the city. On the occasions when I leave the city, I pay a highly reduced rate, usually $.50, but it can be a full dollar or more if I cross a county line. Obviously, that's not part of my daily commute.
Taxis for special trips are affordable, at a rate of $2 + 2.50/mile. For extended downtown errands, it's often cheaper to call a cab than it would be to pay for garage parking, with a car. And if I'm running late and miss my bus to work, it's only a $10 cab fare to get me there. So I can ride a taxi to work several times a month, and still come out on top versus a car.
Renting a pickup, or van, or even a box truck only costs $19.95 plus $0.70/mile. Well worth it on the very rare occasions that it is necessary; I don't have to register, insure, and store a pickup truck just for making dump runs or buying furniture. Most furniture and appliance stores offer free or highly discounted delivery, anyway.
As for these people complaining that transit doesn't work for them, because their service is lousy: That's not a problem with transit in general, that's a problem with your local government. Get your government to fund and implement a reasonable, modern transit system, and you will find it practical and useful.
Unless you're one of the people with a 1-hour by car freeway commute. Jesus Christ, you seriously give up 2 hours of your day every day for nothing? Damn. I couldn't stand a fraction of that. ANY commute option for you is going to suck; you made that lifestyle choice already. Lobby your local government to implement express inter-city bus routes or something. Or just move to a reasonable distance from your workplace.
if I get called up for jury duty, say, without my car I'm taking a taxi for as long as the trial lasts.
I don't know what backwards, limited-service municipality you live in, but here in Seattle, they send you a bus ticket with your jury duty notice, and give you more for every day of the your service.
It would be silly for the government to require you under penalty of law to serve as a juror, but not provide you a way to get there.
which companies does Obama think could afford to pay those taxes?
The US taxes corporate profits, not revenue. Companies with small profits pay equally small taxes. So any companies in the US who "can't afford" to pay taxes are not going to pay much at all.
Companies operating in the red pay no corporate taxes at all; we already don't get any taxes from companies that are being bailed out. Companies running with a thin profit margin pay significantly less tax than those with huge profits.
No US company will be driven out of business by corporate taxes, simply because once they are doing poorly, they don't have to pay them anymore.
Easy, legal way for US companies to avoid paying taxes: Invest 100% of their profits in R&D. Boom, now they have a 0% tax rate.
Increasing executive pay or shareholder dividends works too.
Any company bitching about how corporate taxes keep them from being "competitive" obviously isn't spending enough money on their products. All you have to to is quickly reinvest your profits in research or expansion, and you suddenly have no taxable profits.
And besides, all you free-market idealists, I thought competition was supposed to keep profits tiny, anyway!
What is to keep that agency from just hijacking and *keeping* the botnet?
A: My country's defense department is incredibly well financed and equipped. They can just build a server farm of extremely high power and high bandwidth, and all sorts of varied and ever-changing IP addresses that would be far better, and that they would have much more control over. DoD doesn't need a botnet of worm-riddled, broadband connected civilian computers.
B: Using civilian resources for military reasons is generally considered to be unwise. Mostly because it makes your civilian infrastructure a higher priority military target. Also because you would reveal too much about your activities to a smart person who is carefully observing one of your bots.
Unless you're talking about intelligence gathering through the machines, but then the government would be faced with the enormous task of identifying the users of all 180,000 machines. Which is technically possible, but a task significantly harder than building the botnet in the first place. It would probably be easier and more efficient to just install a trojan of their own design on a specific target, rather than sifting through an existing botnet.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, a real waste of a billion dollars. We could have spent that on, what, a month in Iraq?
Actually, about one day in Iraq at the peak of the war. Closer to 2 days in Iraq now.
I think AT&T's network issues must be highly localized in the northeast, because I've been an AT&T user since before they were using GSM, and I've never had an unexplainable dropped call anywhere I've traveled. My cell is and has always been my only phone; I don't have a landline. However, I keep hearing about all these dropped calls on AT&T.
Sure, if I'm way out in the woods and I lose signal, it drops. If I go through a deep tunnel and lose signal, it drops. But if I've got signal, the call goes through and the line stays open.
I've never used anything but a free-with-contract handset with the service, either. I HAVE developed a deep loathing for LG handsets, though. My first 3g handset was a free Cu575 that was absolute shit - laggy buggy interface, OS crashes, strange "call failed" messages, etc.. I actually went back to using my old 2g Motorola rather than wait out the 2 year contract with that thing. I could not replace it fast enough when the contract expired. My fiance had similar problems on her Verizon LG handset.
I've primarily used my phone in Seattle.
According to the linked PDF from the FTC, about 2,500 of the 35,000 made enough payments to get a computer.
This form of financing is actually legit, and a common practice. It's been dying out as credit got cheaper and easier to get, but has been starting to make a comeback recently.
The scam part is where they didn't actually send out the computer after the 13th payment. And the part where they charge thousands of dollars for a bottom-of-the-line dell.
Of course, it's foolish to get a computer on layaway - by the time you've made the payments and recieved the computer, it's probably outdated. Not like a vacuum cleaner or something.
Having worked in retail and foodservice industry, I hate checks. I'm flabbergasted that any retail outlets still take them.
The rate of fraudulent checks accepted at retail is astronomical; in foodservice it's even worse. The last check-accepting restaurant I worked at that had nearly a 50% rate of fraud on them; mostly from checks being written against closed accounts. The vast majority of these bad checks we never saw a cent from.
The corporate office required that we accept checks as a form of payment; they were located in some rural ghost town, where debit card use still hasn't caught on, and set national policy based on that. In a modern urban area, Visa/MC logo'd debit cards have all but replaced paper checks, and the only people who still use them are the fraudsters.
Checks are terrible, for both those using them and those accepting them.
Why would they possibly look at 30 Million people who aren't buying their product and support a bill that will require everyone, by force of law, to buy their product?
Because it would also require them to insure the sick. It would end lifetime benefit caps, too. Go ahead and get cancer right now, then see how fast you hit the lifetime cap on your insurance policy. If you're lucky it might take a few years. If your unlucky, they'll just drop your coverage before you can start racking up the bills.
Insurance companies discovered a long time ago that their product is only profitable to sell if they target the healthy and exclude the sick.
BPL also wipes out CB, which is meaningless unless you are a trucker
Or one of the unwashed masses who is not a radio enthusiast, and only owns a CB radio for emergency purposes. Many people purchase handheld CB's just so they can call for help on channel 9 in an emergency.
You are assuming that the oil company executives do not believe their own propaganda about how oil will never run out.
Given their recent behavior, and the ultra-slim portion of their R&D budgets that goes into green fuel, I'm starting to fear that they believe their own bullshit.
moot has posted the details on status.4chan.org.
Basically he confirms all the speculation that AT&T blocked 4chan because of ACK bouncebacks from a DDOS. Real /b/tards probably already had off-network proxies at the ready to deal with it.
Also, being on AT&T and unable to access 4chan doesn't necessarily mean that it's been blocked. 4chan is up and down all the time, because they're under constant DDOS attacks, at pretty much all times, from various sources. It seems that DDOSing 4chan is a basic holding pattern for botnets that aren't otherwise occupied.
Here's what happened:
For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack. We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.
Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.
In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org IPs (which serve /b/ & /r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.
In the end, this wasn't a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T's part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn't anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.
We're glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorshipâ"two very important issues that don't get nearly enough attentionâ"so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.
Aside from that, I'll also add that there is some big news due later this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message for updates.
As always, I can be reached at moot@4chan.org.
---
PS: If any companies would like to hook us up with some better hardware, feel free! The architecture we've got powering this large and influential beast is really quite embarrassing. ( ._.)
IIRC, Google doesn't use top-end "server" chips in their servers. They use consumer grade, midrange chips that they can get at cheap commodity prices, and load balance everything across a ton of machines.
He implies the problems are due to Intel and AMD not delivering with their server chips; these are not the chips that Google is using.
In the automotive industry, where they have been dealing with 12vdc power in long cable runs for a century, they have dealt with that by having the voltage regulator sense and adjust the voltage based on reading taken at the largest load, rather than at the source. Thus the voltage drop in long, thin cable runs is automatically compensated for. The alternator just puts out more voltage.
Here in the US, public schools are typically surrounded by barbed wire, and not a small number have metal detectors at the doors. There's typically even a local police officer patrolling the halls in addition to the hired security.
The general perception of a school in the US as a locked-down secure facility really blurs the line. "Reasonable" persons have a completely different frame of reference over here than they do over there..
Or are your schools just as fucked up as ours? If they are, my hypothesis is totally wrong.
And they both cost <$5 to produce.
I remember when people with Fords were hacking the "proprietary" OBD-1 service connector on the newfangled fuel injected cars with the EEC-IV.
People just jammed jumpers and multimeters in the connectors and figured out how to make it output the codes.
Of course, it helped that the super-secret Ford diagnostic tool was a push button connected to two pins, and a lamp connected to the another two pins. Service technicians pushed the button, and counted the flashes.
Of course, Ford didn't raise a stink when people published instructions on how to read the codes without buying the tool. And third parties make boxes that just display the number, which Ford continues to allow.
But that may have simply been a marketing decision, made in a day when a lot of mechanics mistrusted electronic engine management. However, nowadays it's an assumption; no one wants to go back to fiddling with carburetors and distributors. Manufacturers can start to lock them down and try to wrangle more money from the independent mechanics.
If the mix is rich, and the computer KNOWS that the mix is rich, that narrows it down quite a bit. Then the only possibilities are the airflow sensor, or possibly the fuel pressure regulator. (Of course, if it's a car without an airflow sensor, it could potentially be the throttle position sensor or maybe the manifold air pressure sensor. But most cars rely on a MAF sensor nowdays.)
If the mix is rich, and the computer claims "fuel mixture lean" or believes nothing at all is wrong, the problem is most likely the O2 sensor, and the computer is being fooled into enriching the mix.
I think the codes are quite useful. They let you know what the car is thinking.
The only way you're going to end up in the top 2% is if you're downloading massive quantities of information (not webpages!)
Actually, it's been shown (and discussed here on Slashdot multiple times) that the heaviest bandwidth users are typically video streaming users on mainstream sites like Youtube, Hulu, and Netflix. These are likely to be pretty casual users, with no idea of how much bandwidth is involved in streaming a full-length movie from Netflix. A casual user with a 10 or 20 gig cap would be quite surprised at hitting their cap after a few movies.
The problem with drunk driving law is not primarily one of testing. It is that it presumes someone is incapable of driving with even trace amounts of alcohol,
Actually, it takes 2 to 4 drinks to put a person over .08 BAC, depending on a number of factors.
I can chug a tallboy and hit the road legally.
My heavyset boss could knock back 4 shots of whiskey and still be under the legal limit.
other forms of more dangerous driving (such as driving while texting or on the phone) as being OK or far far less severe.
Drunk driving is really low hanging fruit. Easy to spot, easy to prosecute. Driving while texting or not using a handsfree device is also illegal in my state, and is also low hanging fruit.
Laws that are easy to enforce are always written first. Laws that require superhuman cops either aren't written, or aren't enforced, even if they would have a beneficial impact..
one should always refuse a breathalyzer test even if you haven't been drinking
It's already been said in this thread, but I'll say it again for emphasis.
In most American states, refusing a field sobriety test (electronic or otherwise) results in the immediate suspension of your license. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. You can't appeal and have your license reinstated, the act of refusing the test is enough to revoke your license.
It's far better to take the test and risk blowing >0.08%, and then immediately laywer up.
To be fair, most officers don't use the breathalyser as their first filtering method to investigate suspected DUIs. Typically officers rely on the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, which is a far more accurate method of measuring intoxication levels around the legal maximum. However, that test generates no evidence which you can present in court, other than the sworn testimony of the officer who administered it. So once a DUI suspect has failed the HGN test, the officer will administer a breathalyser, so they have something to submit as evidence.
And I am one of many people who WILL buy from Steam, because I find the benefits far outweigh the idealogical downside of purchasing DRMed software.
I don't need to go to a retail store and buy a physical box. This is huge for me. If I want a game, I can just press a button on a website and have it playing on my computer in a matter of minutes.
If I want to show a friend a game, all I have to do is log in to my Steam account from their computer; all of my games are instantly available to install and play. This is a big one. They'll continue to be able to play my games until I log in back on my PC, and I don't have to tell them my password.
Streamlined, built in auto-updating; it updates my games in the background, so the game is patched and ready to go by the time I want to launch it.
Being able to instantly join a friend's online game by clicking one button in my friends list.
Easy reinstalls in case of disaster, no storing a binder of CD's and keeping track of ugly product keys.
Never having someone else's keygen stumbling onto my product key and blocking me from online play. Fuck yeah no CD keys.
All this in exchange for the risk that if Valve goes out of business, in a worst case scenario I might have to apply a 3rd party crack to my games. Yeah, I think I'll continue taking that risk.
Additionally, doesn't the US taxpayer now literally own GM?
No, no it does not.
The US government has only extended a sizable loan to GM.
Watch less Faux News.
Because even under American style at-will employment, it's still illegal to fire someone in cases of discrimination or retaliation.
This could be considered both, either discrimination on basis of political views, or retaliation for working politically against his corporate overlords.
I live and work in Seattle.
I gave up my car when I went back to college, mainly to save on insurance costs. After college was over, I didn't have any money to re-insure my car, so I kept commuting by bus. And then, I just never stopped.
Practicality & Convenience:
Now, my commute to work is just under 3 miles. It takes 10-20 minutes by car, depending on traffic, and 20 minutes by bus no matter what. Times of day with heavy traffic, the bus moves faster than general traffic, because the city has dedicated lanes in places, dedicated traffic lights in others, and various other advantages designed to keep the bus moving when traffic is gridlocked.
There are several bus routes with stops within a quarter mile of my home. From "my" stop, it's about 5 minutes to a major transit hub, where I can transfer to virtually anywhere. However, "my" buses only run at 30 minute intervals (and are synchronized in their departure times by some perverse coincidence), so I have an average of a 15 minute wait for the bus, each way. Most of the buses I transfer to at the transit hub run with much more reasonable 10 or 15 minute intervals, so I rarely have downtime waiting for a transfer. So time-wise, I don't lose much more than I would looking for parking.
I can read while I ride. Can't do that while I drive. Many of the buses have free wifi; I can post to /. while riding.
The buses run from 5 AM until to 1 AM, leaving me a 4 hour dead-zone. Obviously I can't haul large objects on the bus.
For these inconvenient occasions, I have a couple options. I can call a taxi if I'm in a hurry or the buses aren't running. For hauling things, I can rent a pickup or a van from a nearby U-Haul.
I can always just walk. And I can always (illegally) drive my uninsured car.
Financially:
Insurance on my cheap, heavily depreciated American economy car costs just over $100/mo. That price is for only liability and "uninsured motorist" coverage. I'm sure full coverage with a low deductable on a newer vehicle would be at least twice as much. There's of course gas prices, as well as regular maintenance, which can about double that price, but insurance is really the big cost (for me). I have free street parking at home, but monthly parking around most workplaces can run upwards of $100.
A monthly bus pass, on the other hand, costs $63 a month. That buys me unlimited rides anywhere in the city. On the occasions when I leave the city, I pay a highly reduced rate, usually $.50, but it can be a full dollar or more if I cross a county line. Obviously, that's not part of my daily commute.
Taxis for special trips are affordable, at a rate of $2 + 2.50/mile. For extended downtown errands, it's often cheaper to call a cab than it would be to pay for garage parking, with a car. And if I'm running late and miss my bus to work, it's only a $10 cab fare to get me there. So I can ride a taxi to work several times a month, and still come out on top versus a car.
Renting a pickup, or van, or even a box truck only costs $19.95 plus $0.70/mile. Well worth it on the very rare occasions that it is necessary; I don't have to register, insure, and store a pickup truck just for making dump runs or buying furniture. Most furniture and appliance stores offer free or highly discounted delivery, anyway.
As for these people complaining that transit doesn't work for them, because their service is lousy:
That's not a problem with transit in general, that's a problem with your local government. Get your government to fund and implement a reasonable, modern transit system, and you will find it practical and useful.
Unless you're one of the people with a 1-hour by car freeway commute. Jesus Christ, you seriously give up 2 hours of your day every day for nothing? Damn. I couldn't stand a fraction of that. ANY commute option for you is going to suck; you made that lifestyle choice already. Lobby your local government to implement express inter-city bus routes or something. Or just move to a reasonable distance from your workplace.
if I get called up for jury duty, say, without my car I'm taking a taxi for as long as the trial lasts.
I don't know what backwards, limited-service municipality you live in, but here in Seattle, they send you a bus ticket with your jury duty notice, and give you more for every day of the your service.
It would be silly for the government to require you under penalty of law to serve as a juror, but not provide you a way to get there.
which companies does Obama think could afford to pay those taxes?
The US taxes corporate profits, not revenue. Companies with small profits pay equally small taxes. So any companies in the US who "can't afford" to pay taxes are not going to pay much at all.
Companies operating in the red pay no corporate taxes at all; we already don't get any taxes from companies that are being bailed out. Companies running with a thin profit margin pay significantly less tax than those with huge profits.
No US company will be driven out of business by corporate taxes, simply because once they are doing poorly, they don't have to pay them anymore.
Easy, legal way for US companies to avoid paying taxes: Invest 100% of their profits in R&D. Boom, now they have a 0% tax rate.
Increasing executive pay or shareholder dividends works too.
Any company bitching about how corporate taxes keep them from being "competitive" obviously isn't spending enough money on their products. All you have to to is quickly reinvest your profits in research or expansion, and you suddenly have no taxable profits.
And besides, all you free-market idealists, I thought competition was supposed to keep profits tiny, anyway!
What is to keep that agency from just hijacking and *keeping* the botnet?
A: My country's defense department is incredibly well financed and equipped. They can just build a server farm of extremely high power and high bandwidth, and all sorts of varied and ever-changing IP addresses that would be far better, and that they would have much more control over. DoD doesn't need a botnet of worm-riddled, broadband connected civilian computers.
B: Using civilian resources for military reasons is generally considered to be unwise. Mostly because it makes your civilian infrastructure a higher priority military target. Also because you would reveal too much about your activities to a smart person who is carefully observing one of your bots.
Unless you're talking about intelligence gathering through the machines, but then the government would be faced with the enormous task of identifying the users of all 180,000 machines. Which is technically possible, but a task significantly harder than building the botnet in the first place. It would probably be easier and more efficient to just install a trojan of their own design on a specific target, rather than sifting through an existing botnet.