... and find out what broadband is like in the private sector. It sucks like a tornado outside the major metropolitan areas. Between crummy bandwidth and data caps -- neither of which, I suspect, the researchers ever have to deal with -- physical DVDs are the easiest way to watch movies in many locations.

Did this just happen?

Ctrl-S/Ctrl-Q still work in my terminal windows. I'm not sure how useful it is as my response time can be slow enough that it doesn't usually let me stop the text display in time when I see something I want to take a closer look at. (Setting up a whopping big scrollback memory helps with that, though.)

... that sinking feeling that everything we know is swirling around the drain.

Bingo. "Mr. CEO, we'll push to have you removed if you waste your profits building out your infrastructure to be more modern. What you have now if making us huge profits. Mess with that at your own risk."

Someone needs to revisit this BS argument that -- as I currently understand it, came out of a controversial opinion in a state court proceeding that manage to make its way into business textbooks -- the only goal of a business it to make a profit for the shareholders. It's an important goal (or the company won't be around very long) but it shouldn't be the only goal. Making a quality product? Doing something for the community where you're based? Not polluting? It's all very nice if those things happen but don't you even think about spending one red cent of our profits on those activities. Heck, at one time, corporations had their charters revoked (the corporate death penalty) if their activities failed to provide for the public good. Remember the public? In theory, they're the ones who allow these legal fictions to even exist.

Don't forget the provisions -- that the telcos heavily lobbied for -- in the last major telecommunications act that made it legal for them to lock out all those smaller ISPs.

IMNSHO, the anti-trust actions should have started the day the first Baby Bell was being purchased to begin the reconstitution of Ma Bell. It's time to break up AT&T again.

And kudos to whoever it was who suggested that they (and the cable companies) need to divest themselves of any content creation companies they now own. Owning the pipe and the content seems like creation of a vertical monopoly to me. I don't need or want the ISP's "content". I'm struggling to think of any content that AT&T could provide to me that I would find valuable. In fact, I really don't want to deal with an internet service provider but, rather, an internet connection provider. That's what I have now through one of the companies that's managed to survive on the crumbs left over after AT&T started pricing access to their copper to the point that it killed off the little guys. It works fine although its tough to describe my connection as "broadband".

... we're going to pull up stakes and move to Galtville.

Innovation?! What innovation has AT&T come up with lately? Sure... they've come up with a web site that would make Franz Kafka run screaming into the night but beyond that, what innovation are they talking about?

That was but one data point but other coworkers were able to contribute others that allowed us to conclude that the director had virtually no sense of humor.

I used to work in an organization associated, primarily, with aviation. Many of the projects had nothing to do with actually doing any flying but the director of the organization was an avid pilot with a gazillion hours of instrument flight experience. Any projects that offered an opportunity for him to contribute by doing some flying seemed to always get his attention. My projects tended to be simulations or other studies that resulted in a lot of equations, charts, and graphs but no chances for flight time. One day, to pass the time during a flight to Washington, I took along a couple of binders of source code (printed on the old green bar paper, of course) that I annotated during the flight with notes about changes to make, places where more comments were needed... boring stuff like that. In the following monthly progress report I noted that my software had been flight tested and the results were promising. The director was not particularly amused.

``...try to make it fun and use lots of specific numbers, management types like that.''

Be careful, though. Some years ago someone in IT management where I was working invented a metric to be reported to upper management that, basically, was "disk space used". The (boneheaded) idea was that more disk space in use means business growth. The trouble was that when we asked for clarification about what disk space was to be reported the reply was that we were supposed to report ALL disk space used by the systems; not just the disk space used by the applications, databases, etc. So what happened was that nobody erased any files. Temp files? Keep 'em... makes IT look good. Multiple copies of files? Keep those, too. More disk utilization makes IT look good you know. You can imagine the gnashing of teeth that resulted when we got close to filling up a couple of disks and I whacked a ton of old junk files I found sitting out on those disks.

``Although we may not have the necessary social skill set to deal with an encounter of the third kind, scientists or astronauts might make the best candidates for the first alien conversation.''

... is to be able to tell dirty jokes for a couple of hours.

``... if they found their way into surface or ground water sources.''

If? IF? More like "when". How on earth could one prevent any substance from getting into the water supply?

I'm all for using technology that might increase the power efficiency or the speed of computing but not at the expense of our water supply. Better look into any possible side effects on the environment before rolling something like this out to the general consumer.

Bingo.

The same "technology" that allowed you to avoid wasting money on screensaver software in the 80s and 90s.

``You're allowed to ride your bicycle without a helmet. You're also allowed to text, make phone calls, do whatever on your whatever in your whatever while you go from wherever to wherever.''

If I ride my bike without a helmet I am the one who is at risk. If I'm stupid enough to be screwing around with a cellphone while I'm driving, I'm putting everyone in the car with me at risk along with everyone unlucky enough to be within range of the car as it travels along while I'm no longer fully in control of it.

Put your phone away while you're driving and stop spouting BS that you have some Constitutional right to text while you drive.