As long as you still get the speed you are paying for why should you care if someone else is using your wifi anymore than you care if your neighbor is also a comcast subscriber.

Because someone might attach to your Wi-fi and share something in a manner that infringes copyright. Then, the MPAA/RIAA will come after you.

Note, I completely agree that targeting people based on IP address is idiotic, but you would be the person who would either need to spend the time/money to fight this lawsuit or would need to settle with them (likely agreeing that you did the crime) to make it go away.

On the upside, it could add more dents into the "this IP address proves it was that person" claims of the MPAA/RIAA, but who would want to volunteer for this expense? Or, more accurately, who would want Comcast to volunteer them for this expense unless they go through technological measures to opt out?

And yet, tree ring data from California shows that region has been in drought for something like 1600 out of the last 2000 years.

Much of it significantly *before* modern technology and CO2 pollution.

Could it be the real problem is that we don't actually know what the average temperature was before 1700?

The problem is that the rules are phenomenally complex. It's easy to say that they should have just followed the rules, but IRS rules are a serious PITA to satisfy. It is quite likely that no matter what Xorg had done, the IRS could have found some error in their compliance that would enable them to revoke 501c3 status. So the real issue is that by making it so hard to comply with the rules, regulations, and laws, it raises the question of whether the government is using "selective enforcement" to punish people, organizations, and views that they don't like. Did this happen because of a general review of nonprofits, in which case this was a simple case of good enforcement, or are "hackers" being targeted by the government (for lots of reasons, e.g. resistance to NSA monitoring), and any one of a number of technical violations would have led to the IRS' actions? In that way it is similar to the Aaron Schwartz case, and is something that should be noted, if not actively resisted.

Backup and restore are new features in this latest version of the Oracle Database??

How on earth did they manage before?! Seriously? Is it just me or am I the only person who writes programs from scratch with data security, portability and safety in mind? Gosh, My data has been separate from the program since I was loading out to 90-minute Type II's!

I mean, seriously, from this article can we assume that mysqldump offered a more sensible backup than every version of the mega-expensive Oracle, until this version?

That would be a waste of time. Many jurisdictions are already paying for aerial imagery taken by aircraft flying and filming precise routes over their territory. They can clearly see when new structures appear or when existing structures are modified. In fact, automated algorithms can actually find the changes for them. With oblique imagery, jurisdictions can even measure the height of structures. Here is an example of a company that provides such services. Pictometry - Government - Assess

So how do you buy something larger than $50? You have to change payment methods?

I get charged $0.50 when I use my debit card. So I never use it as debit.

Maybe this is over my head. But how would one rung a "safe" DNS server then? My interpretation of the article basically says to let only specific people use your DNS server, but then how would a company run a public resolver?

For example, Google runs open public name servers on 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, same with OpenDNS, and many, many more. What is to stop those servers from being used in this sort of attack? Is this article really advocating a situation where you MUST use only your own ISP's resolver and trust them not to do what so many of them consistently do and mess with the results?

Or am I completely missing the point to this article?