Is it a requirement that cable company employees (probably above the level of grunt) must be utterly despicable {socio|psycho}paths, or is that the industry just doesn't attract anyone the rest of us wouldn't be better off without?

If there was any good chance of a reasoning being on the other end of her call to the police, it would have been worth it to let her call and then have the LEO "explain" to her the (unfortunately rare) consequences of filing a false complaint, then watching HER be arrested for disrupting the flight. As it is, of course, ...

I don't mind buying a copy of the content, but I dislike the disc experience as much as your children.

Suggestions for loading my discs into local storage?

Myopia is the effect of having an eyeball out-of-round. Astigmatism is the result of aberrations in the cornea. Why cut up the cornea to fix myopia? You got lucky with 20/15; most do not, and many have aberrations. No thanks.

If/when myopia-corrective lens implants give full vision range (and, incidentally, also correct presbyopia), I'll be down to the clinic to have it done. Until then, I have 20/15, 20/20 and astigmatism correction with contacts and no side effects.

It's not illegal, except, maybe, in California, and not tested all the way up there, AFAIK.

It's sleazy, but Verizon is a US telecom provider, so that is almost (exception , anyone?) a given.

None of the above. I have an old Denon DBP-2010CI that just plays discs (Blu-Ray, DVD, CD), but has a (at the time it was sold) spectacular scaling engine.

All of the other stuff would be handled by a WDTV, PC, Mac, ...

So far, I haven't found a 1080P, or less, disc it will not play, but the DVD players all eventually couldn't handle the menu formats of some disc, or other, so I suppose this one will, too.

I still need a good Linux BD->streamable file converter for backups, though, and I could also use the files with XBMC or one of the systems listed above.

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."

If you want to know that you can protect against/treat smallpox virus, even if mutated (un)naturally, you have to have some with which to work.

The question is fundamentally nonsense.

There's still the Comcast deal pending, and email will change then, anyway, so I might as well explore the options.

As a current TWC hostage, I need to move my email before this happens. Since the US government is unconcerned about collateral damage when taking down a hosting site, I'd like it to be in Europe (Germany, France, Netherlands, for example). I need POP/SMTP access, and a routable domain (name not yet selected) for incoming mail. If there MUST be a web service, a simple static "C" program returning "Access to this site not authorized." in a few languages (and, maybe, a suitable response for robots) should suffice.

Any suggestions for hosting provider/registrar there?

I sold my A2000, stripped, for $300 way back when. I still have the card set (RAM, '030, 7-port serial, two SCSI adapters, 8088 bridge board, video sync; even the two SCSI hard drives still work). Maybe I should buy one and put it back together to support 32-bit Linux. I have the CD32 and A500 for the games, I s'pose. Tricky bit is converting the old output to VGA, much less HDMI.

First cards were for a homebrew ZorroII expansion I built for the A1000. 2 additional Megabytes of RAM and the Amiga's yet-to-be-equaled ramdisk gave me a really usable system.

IFF the methods I listed are supported. Comment system doesn't parse Internet News to build threaded responses.

I get my email through POP/SMTP, so don't need a browser for that.

Nav's built into the car, and I use hardcopy, so no maps needed.

Buy from stores, unless literally impossible, and place 'phone orders, otherwise, so no ecommerce.

Give me the others and I happily pull the browsers, on top of which, it would reduce my security exposure.

I used the Internet, quite happily and successfully, for more than a decade, before HTTP (curse you, Tim Berners-Lee) began to intrude on the experience. I would be very happy to go back to those days. Throw in an IRC/FTP/RTP+RTSP "subscription" for content, and there's nothing I would miss.

The old adage about TV ("99 channels and nothing on") applies to the web, but with several orders more magnitude of noise to signal.

How stupid does ANYONE have to be to believe a positive (or, for that matter, negative) review online?

There's an ad on TV for a referral site for various services that claims that only "members" can post reviews. How many of the "members" are paid shills?

There's still the initial outlay to consider. You can buy quite a bit of expensive ZA power for the up-front cost of a new cluster (USD $25-30 million). Any work to create the facility is recoverable if/when they do choose a newer cluster. Additionally, there shouldn't be much in the way of "teething problems" if they can give it clean-enough power, so it becomes useful, almost on day 1.

Except, at least in the USA, the $1 your friend trasfers to you will be "discounted" by a bank transaction fee. How much does PayPal make on micro-transactions?