Nuggets of information like this are why i still like to read Slashdot. Thanks!

Post your search history, browsing history (thanks to Google Analytics), and Gmail contents (don't forget the headers!) and we'll see how relevant it is.

Read this carefully: A discount for X is equivalent to a surcharge for not X.

Seriously, how long do you think before the "discount" will be so large that only the rich will be able to afford to drive without Big Brother in the passenger's seat?

It's that last part we're sorely missing. Witness the line of compliant sheep waiting to be patted down on the way into sporting events, groped at the airport, or show their receipts on the way out of the Wal-Mart. Suggest that all this is unnecessary and the bleating in favor of whatever surveillance in the name of security drowns out any voice of reason.

then it's time for an "intellectual 'property' tax." Let them have their eternal copyright, but tax the living shit out of it.

Whoever uses "whomever" as a subject needs some serious English lessons.

The source of that quote, just happens to sell a solution to this horrible, dangerous threat. (scans article) Yup! Lieberman Software conveniently provides "Privileged Identity Management Solutions." But quis ipsos custodes custodiet? Who manages the privileged identity management solution manager? Or will they take that arduous task off the company's hands, too? Fscking charlatans.

That only applies to credit accounts, not to checking or savings accounts.

You go to your teen-aged daughters room and see a man - intruder or ill-behaved daughter's boyfriend?

Not really the best example for a shoot/don't shoot scenario :).

I understand completely -- but they have no right to pull the rug out from under people who already paid in advance for issues of a real, paper magazine. That, and even if I were happy with having the rest of my subscription filled with something that has no value to me (I can read about Linux on a computer all day long on lots of websites without paying for a subscription to anything) there are enough people who are going to cancel or not subscribe to begin with that "going digital" is just the first droplets of the magazine circling the drain. It's the beginning of the end, because not enough people are willing to pay for what is made redundant by the web.

Except that China has the advantage that they can shoot their rapacious capitalists if they threaten to crater the economy.

Republicans can point to the spiraling debt; Democrats can point to Tea party-driven Republican brinkmanship over raising the debt ceiling. I suspect the real answer lies in cui bono -- who is in a position to make money from the downgrade? Also, I wonder if we're about to see some criminal indictments "coincidentally" handed down or at least a nasty, intrusive investigation of S&P related to their high ratings on the mortgage-backed paper. Sure, it'd be a transparent case of retaliation, but it would take a while to wend its way through the courts and would serve pour l'encouragement des autres.

Good point -- I signed up with a mail service provider for IMAP/POP/webmail and SMTP after leaving Speakeasy -- the one I signed up with doesn't unbundle outbound MX but see upon looking that at least one offers the service for $20/year.

Two things that neither IMAP download nor Google's data liberation tools can't grab: chats (I saw some did a hack for this awhile back based on libgmail, but I doubt the code still works) or voice/SMS message archives from Google Voice) en masse. Losing those wouldn't be the end of the world, but if those could be backed up too, Google could shut me off and I'd be back in business inside the few hours it took to promulgate a new email address to friends and family.

That, and IPs identified as part of residential blocks (e.g. cable/DSL) are in DNS blacklists and a good number of mail servers will reject incoming mail from you even if you're doing everything right. So he needs to factor in the cost of a "business" account when making the decision. (I used to host my own MX on Speakeasy back before they started to suck about five years ago--at the time, they offered static IPs and update RDNS for their residential services.)