If an ISP built their business without special advantages over their competition, your point would be valid. However, in the U.S., most high-speed ISP's successfully lobbied for monopoly or duopoly positions as utilities where competitors were prohibited from stringing their own wires on utility poles and tunnels. In return for this advantage, they agreed to operate as regulated entities.

Perhaps as 4G and other high-speed wireless companies come to market, there will be more competition and those original companies can then lobby for removal of the regulatory environment. Until then, we will hear a lot of screaming from both sides.

This problem is not limited to "old" equipment.

My less-than-two-years-old top-of-the-line Panasonic microwave stops all wireless communications in the house when operating.

Assuming you dump twice and compare the output, lack of error checking should not be a problem.

With regard to do the transfer to a newer system, cables.com sells a 25-pin Serial-to-USB cable (http://www.cables.com/Products/USB-to-DB25-Serial-Adapter---USB-A-Male-to-DB25M__USB-DB25.aspx).

Have fun!

The first argument in favor of CFLs is that their total environmental impact (energy used plus manufacturing costs) are more favorable than incandescent bulbs. Maybe that is true in your home, but doubtful in mine. While most CFL packaging claim they should last 4 to 8 years with regular use, they seem to last less than year in my home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

While the power fluctuations here might be above average, my 3 televisions, 5 monitors, 3 desktops, 4 laptops, Xbox, Wii, and Playstation have not had shortened lifespans that I can recall.

With regard to your assumption that I am buying inferior product, I am buying the popular name brands offered by my Home Depot, Lowes, and Sears. If you are saying that the consumer needs to go online an search out some industrial-strength superior product, I volley back and say that CFLs are "not ready for primer time" in many parts of the US.

As an example, I have 5 "high hat" lights in my living room. Three are "dimmable" CFL flood lights rated for both indoor and outdoor use. As my control, I left two lights as incandescent. I replaced all five lights in January of 2009. All 5 lights failed and required replacement before Halloween.

I have other mixtures of CFL and incandescent lights in many rooms and outdoors as well. The only uniform observation that I have is that there is not a single month of the year that I am not required to change a CFL in my home.

As a result, I doubt if my switch to CFL has had any positive impact on the environment.

With ads - without ads - what a waste of argument when geeks could instead debate an interesting arms race.

The ad-blocking technologies work because the ads themselves are easily identified by the source web site as different from the main web page. A small change in architecture would allow ads to be funneled through the main presenting web page server and integrated with the main web site in real-time.

Current versions of Ad-block plus and No-script would then be rendered useless for the purpose of ad-blocking.

What the opposing side would then need to do is develop databases of ads, analyze screens and then repaint screens with blank space where the ads where.

No wait! The ad presenters would then need to problematically vary every ad as appearing to be unique.

No wait! The blockers could then use Bayesian logic to detect areas of presentation close enough to ads to be suppresses anyway.

Whole new levels point-counter-point spy-vs.-spy program evolution!

Whole new discussions, trolls, and flame-wars about the nuances of why one approach is SO MUCH BETTER at blocking (or overcoming blocking).

That would be the slash.dot, SourceForge, and Mozilla Add-on communities I have come to know and love.

Bwahahahahahahaahahh..........

Some of my users are either overwhelmed with multiple distractions or uncomfortable with technology or both. In any case, my team is responsible for figuring out what triggered error conditions and getting them fixed regardless of user cooperation or contribution.

When users do not give detailed and accurate information about an error condition and what they were doing prior to the error condition, there are some creative options available.

The CNET.com download site has any number of screen monitoring products (i.e e-Surveiller, The Best Keylogger, Shadow Keylogger, Local Keylogger Pro, etc.) for recording and monitoring PC activity. These products not only record keystrokes, but also provide screenshots and/or video.

For my users, I always let them know before installing such software and let them know that any performance impact will only be until we identify the error conditions and the activities that triggered the error conditions. (We also notified all employees in the employee handbook that we do this and also have the employees re-sign their understanding of this every year.)

By using these tools, we can reduce problem-solving time and associated user frustration.

While no-one cares in college, there are still people in the business world who become annoyed if you take notes on a PC during business meetings. For whatever reasons, pen-and-paper skills are still important at higher levels. (Something about body language, eye contact, and putting others at ease.)

I'm hoping the Apple iPad or the coming HP Slate will not incur this stupid prejudice, but need to be prepared in any environment.

Analogous to your professors' white board diagrams, business white boards also contain knowledge that your re-copying will lose as you struggle to keep up.

To deal with high level meetings, I bring my notebook, but also pen and paper and use that which is appropriate for the audience I am dealing with.

To deal with the whiteboard issue, my laptop case ALWAYS also has my camera. I photograph the white board at various times during the meeting. By definition, my photos are always 100% accurate. Oddly enough, the same people annoyed by computer note taking never seem to take offence at snapping pictures of the white board.

After the meeting, I'll scan any hand-written notes AND my digital images into a single Word document.

Good luck!

What sort of videos are we talking about? The only videos I've ever watched in an educational setting were pointless time wasters intended to give the teacher a break. If that's what we're talking about, they have a point. But there's really no loss as they're a waste of time anyway.
If we're talking about video recording of lectures given by professors, then the professors should have the copyright and should be able to distribute them any way they want. This would be far more useful than some generic educational video anyway.

Your understanding of the problem is close, but imprecise.

What is at stake here are professors whose lectures routinely use copyrighted materials.

One prior post speculated that the resulting video should be legal due to the "fair use" doctrine.

Another prior post speculated that due to a technicality, that lecture reproduction is fair use for an educational DVD, but specifically not legal (i.e. infringing) when used with streaming video.

As a result, rather than figure out which lectures are infringing and which are legal, the school has just banned everything to be safe.