Example tile URLs from my squid log:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/io8g_Aj_Hm1kxRup7bzw0e2AtUOpGaINg_hTKPLIABKsN81SNaTC_EQ54Uw=x7-y2-z7
http://lh3.ggpht.com/io8g_Aj_Hm1kxRup7bzw0e2AtUOpGaINg_hTKPLIABKsN81SNaTC_EQ54Uw=x17-y4-z6
http://lh6.ggpht.com/io8g_Aj_Hm1kxRup7bzw0e2AtUOpGaINg_hTKPLIABKsN81SNaTC_EQ54Uw=x10-y1-z5
http://lh3.ggpht.com/io8g_Aj_Hm1kxRup7bzw0e2AtUOpGaINg_hTKPLIABKsN81SNaTC_EQ54Uw=x6-y1-z5

I think it's pretty obvious what part of the URL you need to replace if you want to download all tiles for a particular resolution.

Required liability insurance should not work as punishment. I can understand why insurance companies may want to increase the premium, but outright denying coverage should not be allowed.

This is similar to the issue of sex offender registration. If a guy has paid from his crimes (fine, driving ban, jail, whatever), then he should not have to suffer any more.

At which point students start questioning what they are paying their tuition for. I myself learned pretty much everything from reading online guides/howtos and manpages, and I do believe that this is the most effective way to go. It seems to me that the answer is that a Linux course does not belong to a university-level CS curriculum. Students will have to learn it anyway, usually by the time they take an OS course (typically because of programming projects involving libpthread). A good idea would be to have a TA install Linux and/or teach some basic command-line tools in a recitation, but wasting more time on it is not necessary.

Basically, it's Lawful Good vs. Chaotic Good.

Sure, someone who wants to claim ownership of a picture would never be able to insert desired metadata in the file.

You forgot terrorists. They also use printers.

Yes, there are legitimate uses for all these traitorware features in software/hardware. The point is that these features should be opt in and disabled by default, so that people who truly want them can enable them.

Yes, I forgot to mention that this scheme will only work when ISPs are unable to set such unreasonable pricing (either through free (perfect) market, or through heavy regulation / government control). Of course, this raises a question whether Internet access is a luxury or a basic need that needs to be provided to all citizens.

You are correct. In fact, charging per sent/received byte of data could fix a number of economical and technical problems in the network.

First, there is this problem of flat rates. For some reason, people seem to like them (is it because they are predictable?), but I don't see any logic behind this. Everyone hates prepaying parking some extra minutes to be safe, leaving earlier, and regretting wasted money. I don't see why this should be different with Internet plans. People who use the Internet to check emails and surf text web would not have to pay for the minimum plan (at least $40/mo). Of course, that would mean less profit for ISPs, which is why per-byte pricing is not popular.

Second, this will solve technical problem of flow fairness. The whole reason why "download accelerators" and (partially) p2p programs exist is because TCP fairness is inherently broken, as you can increase your speed on a congested link simply by opening more connections. Charging per byte would tie all flows to an economic entity, ensuring perfect fairness (you pay more -> you get bigger share of a congested link).

Third, pricing can be dynamic ("congestion pricing"). We can borrow ideas from power companies that charge (typically industrial/commercial) users less per KWh in off-peak hours when the network is underutilized, and similarly charge more during peak hours. While this works the best between end user and their ISP, it could be extended to relationships between ISPs.

Fourth, end users could have more control over prioritizing their traffic with respect to their own and other users' traffic. Suppose the network is congested, and I am willing to pay more to get my VoIP traffic delivered on time, but I don't care as much for p2p traffic (it can be delayed/rescheduled so I can save money).

In fact, this is something I'm working on as a mini-research project, so it would be interesting if it worked in reality.

I remember when people were concerned about their privacy and complained about Gmail mining their emails. Facebook will take it to a whole new level, complete with value-added features such as censorship. People have to understand that decentralization is the only way to go; putting all your eggs in one basket (facebook) will never lead to anything good.

Obligatory XKCD. But seriously, I also follow this strategy. It really amazes me how resource-hungry modern games have become. Fallout:NV lags on low settings on my NV 8800 GTS 512 that was considered top card only a couple of years ago, and no, I'm not spending another $1.3k on a new system any time soon. Back when CRT monitors were popular at least you could play on a lower resolution; now, non-native resolutions just look ugly.

There is nothing wrong with an application that doesn't conform to standard practices as long as system administrator is fully aware of what the application does, and knowingly chooses to install it. I may have my own reasons why I want to run a rootkit on my machine (honeypots, etc), and Google is not the one who should deprive me of this opportunity. Now, it would be unethical for me to install this app to spy on somebody, but this should be left to my conscience without Google being a moral police.

I thought the general consensus here on /. was that since I own the hardware, I should be able to use it as I please, so why is my opinion so unpopular?

I'm not the OP, but I used the same workaround. The answer is simple - I didn't know about XDG, the command needed to update directory, its parameters, where the config file is located, or whether the app in question is "good behaving". Doing rm & ln is simple, gets the job done, and doesn't require additional googling. The same thing really happened when I installed sun java and didn't know about the alternatives mechanism - manually overriding symlinks, or even prepending java's bin directory to your $PATH is easier than trying to figure out how to do it properly. Of course now that I know about these tools I will use them, but you shouldn't really blame the OP for using something he knows to quickly fix the problem instead of spending additional time learning about new tools.

Both universities I went to required international grad students to pass a spoken English test (typically more difficult to pass than TOEFL) before they were allowed to be TAs. I assume there are similar rules in other schools.