A government-based decision either way is shoving some answer down someone's throat. The best course of action is to get government out of the answer altogether and let people decide. That means, however, getting government all the way out of the answer, including not forcing people who make one decision pay for the actions of people who decide the other way.

Why should a private network waste time encrypting and decrypting stuff?

If you've got a hacker accessing your avionics network, you have more serious issues than just whether the data is encrypted or not.

While the two kinds of data are similar, they are not identical.

The flight schedule has to be online for the reasons you gave. But the flight schedule is not the flight plan, and the times can differ by a significant amount. Every time you've arrived or left early or late, you're comparing your watch to the scheduled time. The flight plan will be much more accurate and be based on existing conditions.

For example, the "book" time for a United flight from PDX (Portland OR) to ORD (Orchard, I mean O'Hare Chicago) is 3 hours 55 minutes. Depending on the position of the jetstream and other winds aloft, the flight can take as little as 3 hours 20 minutes. The flight plan will take into account the jetstream; the schedule does not.

Yes, for that camera, an area of approximately five square inches. Subtract one for the side that is mounted to something, so four left over.

Yes, the lens covers one face of the cube. That remove 1 square inch from the surface area of the camera.

Uhhh, 1/6. So? The statement was that the surface area of the camera will be larger than that of the lens. The lens is not just one face, it is a cylinder of some length and diameter. The ends of the cylinder will be used as entrance and exit for the lens so cannot be covered by pv cells. The surface of the cylindrical part, however, is available.

I have a 9mm lens on my desk which has a diameter of about 1.75" and a length of 2". The area of the cylinder is therefore 1.75*3.14*2, or 11 square inches. I think 11 square inches is greater than 4 square inches. Isn't it?

Random does not mean completely out of order, it means unpredictable. I can roll five dice and come up with a large straight (12345). The random comes from not being able to predict from the previous state (22222 Yahtzee!) what the next state (12356 chance) will be.

A perfect riffle shuffle is not a random process since you can observe the initial state (123456 e.g) and predict the result (142536). That's true for whatever the starting state is.

Why would they do that? They aren't a retailer for AMD products. They don't care what graphics chip you have, they just want to sell games. If the game doesn't support the graphics you have, that's just too damn bad. You've opened the product and you can't get your money back, and Steam won't let you transfer the registration so you can't resell the game to someone else to get your money back.

Been there, done that. Duke Nuke'm Forever looked like it would run on my system but did not. The dealer would exchange the physical medium (DVD) but not give me an unused registration code, and Steam said it was my problem, not theirs. No skin off their noses, the chance of me buying another Steam-based game were zero before they screwed me, so they've lost nothing by not helping.

This and several other models. The lenses used for these usually have much more surface area than the camera itself, and weigh significantly more to boot.

Al Gore's claims to the contrary, it was porn that drove the innovation of the internet.

Not for a riffle-shuffle, which is what most people do. For a riffle, the more you do IMPERFECT shuffles, the more random, but for every perfect riffle shuffle the output will be completely predictable.

A wash is a much more random shuffle, which is why casinos that don't have machines to shuffle and use a single deck will do a wash. I have no idea how the shuffle machines operate, they're literally a black box.

I'm sorry, but the price of free speech is being subject to taxation, even for non-profit organizations?

Do you also have issues with the Seventh Day Adventists who run their own publishing companies to produce their printed material? I'd say as a religion they are about as non-rabble rousing and least-troublesome as they come. Yet you'd happily strip their tax exemption from them because they use the right to free speech to publish their documents.

Where have you seen anything that says it isn't? The GAO is warning about something that might happen if ... The "demonstrated hack" of the 'satellite communications' wasn't the avionics, it was the satellite system used for WiFi and inflight video.

It's not like Die Hard and Scorpion show you. Really.

You'd lose, but you're doing very well at trying to marginalize opinions you don't agree with. Kind of like the algorithm that would allegedly identify trolls based on an unfriendly reception in social media. The FCC ruling being a bad idea is an unpopular opinion here, so of course anyone who expresses that opinion must be a troll or a shill.

Where is net neutrality when you need it?

I know exactly who Comcast is charging here, and it isn't their customers. They aren't double-charging anyone.

So you think that Netflix can demand that ISPs host their servers instead of paying for the upgrades so Netflix can run their own servers and let the ISPs run their own business? Why does Netflix get to dictate terms like that?

It is patently unfair to expect all of Comcast's customers to pay for upgrades so that Netflix can make a better profit from their high-bandwidth services. Either charge the Netflix customers more for their expanded bandwidth requirements, or get Netflix to pay and then Netflix can pass the costs along.

Yes, I think we know that.

Yes, we know that. What's the point you are trying to make? That Comcast as an ISP cannot ask a heavy outside user of their backbone to help pay for upgrades? Of course they can.

Comcast has its own backbone in addition to the last mile plant. It's two things in one. It has peering agreements with another backbone where Netflix the company gets its internet access. That border is congested because Netflix is sending data through it in large volumes. Netflix is profiting from this traffic, and is paying their ISP -- but not Comcast, who is now expected to upgrade their border connections to make Netflix happy and more profitable. Who pays for that?

In a traditional peering arrangement the traffic is bidirectional and costs would balance out. With Netflix traffic, that's no longer true. It's not one Comcast customer, and it isn't fair to all the Comcast customers to ask them to pay for someone else's huge use of bandwidth, so they're asking the source of the data. Comcast has a death by a thousand cuts. They can either go after the individual cuts, or find the guy wielding the knife.

Yes, when you talk about Netflix and Comcast in the same sentence, it most certainly is about peering. That's where the problem is.

Uhh, no. Neither "net neutrality" as a concept nor "net neutrality" as enacted by the FCC ruling is about cable companies. Both are about ISPs. Cable television is a different service. ONE method of internet delivery uses the cable television backbone. There are two other pre-existing wires that go to almost every home: power and telephone. Both are methods of internet delivery, too. And the FCC ruling applies to ISPs no matter what means of delivery is used. If your ISP uses carrier pidgeons, it is covered by the FCC ruling.

What an interesting statement.

So go to a different ISP. No, Suddenlink is wrong for doing that, but it has nothing to do with, and is in no way similar to, the Comcast/Netflix issue. Comcast isn't blocking anything.

Net neutrality as a concept is fine. When you refer to the FCC ruling as "net neutrality" that's where there's a problem. One can be a staunch advocate for net neutrality but still be opposed to the federal regulations now imposed on all ISPs in an attempt to solve the problems of a few.

And I said that when? Never. Maybe smaller words would help. 1) Comcast the cable company has not been granted a monopoly. It is a defacto monopoly through economic causes. 2) Comcast the ISP is not a monopoly of any kind. 3) The FCC ruling will not solve the issues created by large data sources clogging gateway routers. 4) The FCC ruling does allow ISPs to censor content. 5) The FCC ruling does nothing to break up or fix monopoly status for any defacto (or dejure) monopoly currently in existence.

The part that makes it not cost effective is not the incumbent or the politicians, it is the market itself.

Comcast has a city wired according to the franchise requirements. Charter decides they want to compete in that market. First, they have to wire it to the same franchise requirements. Then they have to find subscribers. Now, they COULD offer services much better than Comcast and hope they get a sufficient number of subs to cover the fixed costs. Maybe. Or they don't get enough subs and lose money until they shut down. The latter is much more likely when you're splitting a fixed market with another company.

The FACT remains that cable companies are not granted monopolies, and NO ISP has been granted one. Not a single one.