Yeah, there aren't enough breaths of air in this world for all of the well-deserved "I told you so"s that will be thrown around...

Why would anybody favor such an expensive and ineffective option (with so many shortcomings) when the carriers could just be required to keep a database of unique identifiers (don't quote me--I think they're called IMEI numbers) of phones reported stolen and simply blacklist those phones from their networks.

Then, a person can report their phone stolen and the carriers make it useless because none of them are allowed to service it while it is in the "stolen" database.

No "kill-switch" required.

Yes, that's what co-location is: Somebody else pays you for physical access to your site for long-term deployment of equipment. So the "physical access" requirement isn't exactly some sort of "evil scheme" netflix invented to screw over Comcast.

This part is nonsensical:

Everything from physical access requirements to the ol' "By the way we may host other, non-Netflix content on these things in the future, and we'll charge people for the privilege, but you'll still have to treat it as Netflix data and not expect any money for carrying it on your network".

1) They already charge people to access their service now, and in a way that apparently harms Comcast/ISPs in general, so we have zero difference from the status quo--the ISPs already have accepted this as "normal" and I don't see how they can ever change that without essentially erasing the entire Internet and starting over.

2) If Netflix hosts other people's data on those systems... so what? It's to Comcast's benefit--the more content that users stream that way (as opposed to over their expensive peering links) the happier their customers will be.

3) Comcast already gets money to carry all of this data--they get it from their subscribers. They're caterwauling for a double-dip opportunity--the right to bill not just for bandwidth to users, but for the same bandwidth again to companies providing content.

Netflix has a program where they'll colocate some servers containing a content cache on a segment of the ISPs network so that their peering connections aren't getting beaten to death--why wouldn't these companies get involved in such a program other than as a means to squeeze more money from Netflix, their subscribers, or both.

But that's just the point: It is extremely rare for somebody outside of the C-suite to get such a privilege.

Outside of c-level executives, such lavish and generous severance packages are occasionally found in situations where the person worked at a place for decades and got laid off in year 25 or something like that. There is no other job category I can name where you can completely just ruin the business, screw the pooch utterly, and still not just get severance, but indeed, be contractually entitled to walk away with a multi-million dollar severance package. Most people fired for cause (i.e. incompetence) are not given fat severance packages--they may get 4-6 weeks pay in exchange for signing something saying they won't sue the company, but that would basically be it. But even if your professional bud gets three whole months salary, so what?

C-suite guys routinely get fired with millions in their pockets.

Not to mention that it also, over time, erodes and eventually destroys the value in these companies as they shed employees and shunt more and more of the profits to the C-suite for disbursement as bonuses, high salaries, and lavish perks. That massive largesse encourages the taking of huge risks to generate the short-term gains required to ring up the eye-popping bonuses.

When they fail, the company gets hurt, maybe goes bankrupt, but the price is payed by working people in the form of layoffs.

Once upon a time these earnings were effectively capped by vigorous oversight from boards of directors, and that didn't seem to create a mass-exodus of talent, nor did it in-any-way slow down innovation or competition.

Plus, if somebody is really so "talented" they have "earned" $100 million per year I would postulate their time would be better spent starting their own business so instead of just getting a "cut" of the company's profits he gets all of them. Certainly if he's actually worth $100 million he's got more than enough talent to make that happen.

If someone is paid too much the market takes care of that with something called a firing.

CEOs aren't "fired" the same way you and I are. You want them gone? Great! You trigger their golden parachute and they're set for life! Such total lack of accountability is what leads to blundering performers walking away richer than an oil tycoon for delivering zero value, or in some cases, erasing millions in value through mismanagement. Sears comes to mind, as the spectacular recent example of some arrogant hedge-fund asshole negotiating an enormous pay package for himself and then nearly putting the company under in just a couple short years.

And the fact that you'd try to conflate such masters of the universe with a salaryman's layoff sort of underscores why your point of view is more than a little half baked. Maybe quarter-baked? But even that's generous.

Everybody else's full-handle is used in their submissions (including people with SPACES and names 3-5x longer than mine) so why am I "Karl C" and not "Karl Cocknozzle?"

Truncating my last name is an insult to generations of Cocknozzles that have come before me.

Their comments fly in the face of logic and basic economics.

Once the ISPs can double-dip, charging twice for the same bandwidth, there will exist a tremendous disincentive to carrying any traffic they can't double-dip on. Worst case scenario, "startups" without enormous financial backing will simply be stuck on the Internet slow-lane.

"Help startups"? My ass!

Tell that to the several hundred New Yorkers arrested during Occupy Wall Street whose only crime was working adjacent to where Occupy was holding action that day. What's fallacious is the idea that people not following the protests, or protest movements, have any clue when, where, or why protests would be going on in order to "avoid" the area. Occupy was in Zucotti partk, but then they'd move around the city with announcements on Twitter--if I'm not protesting (or not "with" whatever movement they're protesting on behalf of) why would I be following them on Twitter?

As phone location information gets more accurate they just have to identify them by geographic location. Even with current technology this is going to cause far less collateral damage than shutting down whole cell towers. And I never said anything about only affecting the protestors. It's simple a case of limiting collateral damage.

Except we've already established that "geographic location" is insufficient in most major cities... Am I "on the list" because my phone is on my desk by the window and a protest is going on outside? How "good" do you think that location data is going to "get," and why would having it be better than it is now be necessary? Or even possible for consumer-gear? They hard-limited consumer GPS to accuracies no-better-than several hundred feet after 9/11 (apparently some idiot thought the terrorists used GPS to find the WTC rather than just looking for the tallest buildings in New York...) and I can't imagine that being lifted so we could pursue some hare-brained scheme like this.

But they don't sweep up everyone in a square mile of the protests which is the effect of shutting down cell towers. You seem to think if you can't completely eliminate collateral damage it's pointless to even try to limit it.

Correct, but so what? If we're assuming civil discourse and order has degenerated to the point where the police would consider "targeted shutdowns" of individual mobile phones to be "okay" I'm not sure why they'd care one iota about the non-protesters out there? Yeah, a phone shutoff might mobilize some people to action... But others might just assume their phone is goofed up and use a landline.

This is where you're really off base. Trampling on the rights of people who haven't done anything wrong engenders dissent. It certainly doesn't stifle it. At best it may limit people acting on their dissension out of fear but it certainly isn't going to endear them to the state more. The idea that abusing people will make them like you more is idiotic. Past police states worked through fear of voicing dissension. Any attempts at actually stifling it were laughable at best.

Yeah, I remember that time that San Francisco's BART turned off cell service to disrupt a protest and the government fell, all of those government officials were arrested and fired!

Oh, wait, it was a wet-fart: Protesters (who were already pissed off) got more pissed off than they already were. They had a protest over the protest. And that was it.

Government will start caring about "collateral damage" for mobile phone shutoffs when the blowback does some professional damage to them, personally--and not one second before. Keep in mind: This is the same government so ethically bankrupt it is willing to kill people based on "sim-card identification" alone, even though SIMs aren't actually a valid identifier.

I am not clear on why failing to return one solitary DVD would be a criminal matter in the first place. She didn't steal it: She violated her rental agreement. That would seem, sensibly, to be a civil matter in any sensible universe. The video store owner's remedy would be to sue her in small claims court and recover his $15-20 that way, rather than wasting thousands of dollars in police resources, jail facilities, and prosecutor's office resources to pursue a patently ludicrous criminal investigation, arrest, trial, and punishment.

The good news is that after three years it still tastes better than Dominos.

My recollection of the scientific method from 7th grade says that an idea you have no evidence for and wish to test is a hypothesis, not a theory.

Complicated, time-consuming, and inaccurate: How will the cops know "protester" from "person walking down the sidewalk on the way to work"? Or, more accurately, how will they know once the list of "protester phones" is compiled that the protesters won't whip out cash-bought drop-phones that aren't associated with their names? Frequently we hear about police dragnets grabbing up hundreds of people at a time, a significant portion of whom (predictably) weren't protesting and were simply walking down the sidewalk to go to work, school, or someplace else non-interesting.

Also, the point of cutting off phones isn't to target "people" individually, it is to prevent coordination among groups. An enumerated list does come with less "collateral damage" but also means anybody misidentified as "not a protester" who actually is can still use their phone to coordinate with others. The purpose is to stifle dissent, and in doing so, the police-state doesn't care if somebody who "hasn't done anything wrong" gets their rights trampled on. Indeed, such "even" applications of violence to everyone in the area are still useful as intimidation tactics aimed at people who "might" be willing to protest, but who have reservations.

Just cutting off mobile service to an area is heavy-handed, but it also guarantees the protesters can't use mobiles to coordinate their moves.