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Comment Re:Initial Offer (Score 1) 232

Perhaps you're looking for "judgment-proof".

The problem arises not just from wasting the auctioneer's time, although that is certainly a problem. Allowing people not serious about paying also wastes the seller's time, the other bidders' time, the time of the banks and accountant of the other bidders if the price is high enough, and potentially the time of the courts. Another big problem is that it tends to waste the money of the winning bidder in favor of the seller as the only real reason to bid without the means to buy is to shill and run up the price.

Comment Re:"jody williams" is a paid commentor (Score 1) 253

Texas is a large state. It has more land than any state but Alaska and more people than any state but California. It also has one of the highest growth rates by percentage.

"Williams" is the third most common surname in the United States, behind just Smith and Johnson.

"Jody" is pretty regularly in the top 1000 most common given names and during the 1960s and 1970s was among the top two or three hundred for newborns of both sexes.

I happen to have an uncommon last name (fewer than 2 people per 100,000 in the US) and have run across a number of people with the same given name and surname in the US. At one time I lived in a city of about 120,000 people and there was another with the same first and last name across town who was, as far as I know, no near relation. I had moved from well outside that area.

Comment Re:First Contact (Score 1) 686

There are more hydrocarbons on some of the _moons_ of other planets in this system than on our planet. Food is a tricky thing. Would our food matter to someone who has solved interstellar travel, or would they have that problem solved?

Comment GoDaddy buys hosting accounts, too. (Score 2) 120

Various web hosting providers including GoDaddy have been known to buy hosting accounts at competitors. This is often done with a company credit card under the name of a company executive or division manager. They do it to see things like how much traffic a common application like WordPress or ZenCart can take on various price points for hosting at the competition. They may also check out customizations to the control panel software and choose which features they may want to implement for their customers, too. This is often not even frowned upon by the target company. It's an endorsement that you're of interest to the competition for one thing.

Figuring out how your performance compares to the competition is quite different from being able to improve your own performance without killing your margin. That said, with something as easily monitored as a server account any attempts to poke around under the hood too much are easier to stop than in hardware like Juniper/Cisco.

Comment Re:With a name like that... (Score 1) 257

It will never happen, but it'd be cool for them to come to market with something really revolutionary and launch with the end of "Guerrilla Radio". HP strikes me as quite too stodgy for this.

It has to start somewhere It has to start sometime
What better place than here, what better time than now?

All hell can't stop us now
All hell can't stop us now
All hell can't stop us now
All hell can't stop us now
All hell can't stop us now
All hell can't stop us now

As far as band names go, there are also Machine Gun Kelly, Florence and the Machine, Machinehead, Ghost in the Machine, The Suicide Machines, and Miami Sound Machine not including lots of drum and bass acts. I think a lyric or song title about machines would be more likely. It's all probably moot, because they won't market it under the lab's code name.

Comment Re: Is unix the last operating system? (Score 2) 257

Oddly enough I've never seen a taco pizza at a Taco Hut/Pizza Bell. It's usually a Pizza Hut Express that serves only cheese, pepperoni, sausage, and supreme along with breadsticks. Generally the pizzas are only "personal" size, too. The Taco Bell OTOH tends to have a full menu. I've also seen other Yum! Brands combinations, including a KFC/Pizza Hut ("Kentucky Fried Pizza") and a Pizza Hut/A&W.

Comment Re:You gotta love their style... (Score 1) 474

If you're not getting the speed you pay for, try another modem. I get more bandwidth than I pay for most of the time. Comcast is aware of this and says they don't care because they have plenty of backhaul built in my area. I switched out the cheap Ubee for $8/month for a Zoom Telephonics modem rated at 343 Mbps. I pay for 50 Mbps and often download from services like Steam or Origin at around 8 MBps average for 200 or 300 MB at a time.

Comment "essential apps like navigation and music" (Score 1) 148

The problem with "essential apps like navigation and music" being hidden in an overly complex control set is that navigation and music are neither one essential to drive a car. Windshield wipers, heater, defroster, and in some places air conditioning are the next most essential things to control after the throttle, brake, steering, and shifter. Mirrors, seats, steering column angle, and steering column length aren't even necessary to adjust during driving. They can and generally should be adjusted while stopped. Until pretty recently in the history of cars very few had adjustable steering columns.

Here's to wishing more people would learn to use the damned turn signals, the currently most common version of which Buick introduced in 1940 FFS.

Comment Re:Level playing field (Score 1) 347

In Springfield, Illinois for example the electric and water are both handled by City Water, Light, and Power which is a non-profit company owned by the city. They actually have deals with smaller cities and towns to sell them electricity. Those rates are less than some of the private companies were charging, but higher than those paid by city residents. The other deals are actually used to offset costs for the residents' utility provision, keeping their rates even lower.

Sewer is a utility. Show me a commercially operated one in the US. Just one.

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