This is EXACTLY why we regulated the phone companies. We feel these services are needed by EVERYONE, so much so that we force the companies to provide reasonable access to every single address that is practically feasible. We do this so people can live anywhere in our great nation. It has nothing to do with market forces, We The People decided its too important to let companies pick winners and losers. Part of the deal with granting them right of way is that they have to do things that arent always profitable.

The default is to charge you the fee whether you have a tuner in your household or not. This may be less ridiculous now that they provide a lot of other services, but it was also true back when they didn't.

Then use a 5W CPU and set the disks to spin down after inactivity. Your argument only holds if the disks are spinning 100% of the time, which is only true if you have an incompetent idiot setting up your power-sensitive NAS, or are actually using it 100% of the time.

You are wrong. Amazon is a greater risk because there are more known unknowns and unknown unknowns. They can build a cloud. If I build my own, I can specify the MTBF myself. I can spec higher or lower equipment. Same reason why building my own PC is a lower risk. Rather than unknown components, I can specify specific components. This modifies risk.

Your stupid assertion is that risk is the same if you can't prove the risk is different. By that standard, parachuting without a chute is no more risky than snorkeling in a 5 ft pool. Neither are well defined risks, so we must accept them as equal.

No, I don't believe in that religion. I'll stick to more traditional risk management practices.

Or, to put it in the framework of your wrong religion, the risk is that the outsourcing company is lying to you. That is an additional risk that will always make outsourcing more risky than insourcing. It's the lazy and incompetent managers that mutter "core competency" while outsourcing the vital portions of the company. And the piles of consultants who make money writing rigged reports recommending outsourcing. Liars cheats and thieves.

And you there, leading the charge.

The guy in the story says that there were some wireless options but they were extremely expensive. Just fine them the cost of the wireless service until they install the cable.

Why, indeed?

What you use is noscript, and then you allow only the scripts necessary to get the portal working, and you don't run any flash or java from the portal, etc etc. And you keep your browser updated. It's not rocket surgery. It's not foolproof, but it's best to act as little like a fool as possible.

I'd be more concerned about a catastrophic software failure. Modern drone autopilots have fairly astounding limp home ability, you ought to be able to crash them in predefined locations fairly reliably. Unless, of course, something goes batshit with the electronics and/or software...

A romantic notion, but incorrect. Private fleets account for 80% of trucks and over 50% of OTR tonnage shipped.

I use Keepass backed up a cloud storage drive and my home server. Even if I lose everything on me I can still go to any random computer and access the database file, and open it with a quick download of Keepass. In the event that I lost everything at the airport I'm sure I could scrounge give minutes of computer time from somewhere.

Fine them enough to bring in that line from the telco, installation and service. If that means they're paying for a fiber pull so you can get a fractional T3, so be it. It makes it a simple cost decision. I'm tired of blatantly fraudulent coverage maps, too.

Sounds good. Let's set the fine to be twice the cost of installing the line.

So the law says they can't charge you more because you're on a line which was installed under this program.

Australia is a common law country, right? Is it even possible for them to put you in a position where discontinuing an action is illegal, effectively forcing you to do it? Obviously they passed the law, but would it stand up in court?

I'm trying to think of some legal basis to challenge it. What if the canary required signing with two PGP keys to be considered valid, and one of those keys was held by someone outside Australia? The victim in Australia wouldn't be able to force them to sign the canary, but might still be found guilty for setting up such a mechanism in the first place.

Other providers like Tencent are offering a few terabytes for free, so the only real reason to pay Amazon is for their guaranteed service level... Which appears to be non-existent. So, I'm not sure why you would pay $60/year for this.

I like having unlimited on-line encrypted backups. If good software is available that supports Amazon I suppose that would be a selling point.

You do realize that you can turn them off sometimes, right?