Just for the heck of it, I tried speed test to see what I was actually getting. It was 5.8mbps down/1.24mbps up. Now that I come to think of it, even though my plan was purchased at 3mpbs, they doubled everybody for free recently.

So. Not really upset by my bandwidth and rate caps--they are easy to track and I'm generally 10-15% usage at the end of the month. I'm more upset by them modifying content (e.g., redirecting dns to their search and blocking some sites without saying why). I'm also just a bit annoyed by them not sending a bill; but I discovered that when my service was cut off all I had to do is call them. They used caller ID to pull up the account, asked me to key in a verification, and then took my payment without me having to talk to a human being. The Internet was back on as soon as I got off the phone. It was stupid and smart at the same time--they should have sent me a billing reminder, but they recovered in a very astute way. This reminds me, I should probably call them and check my account st... NO CARRIER.

I wonder how many packs of mj cigarettes do the most "addicted" smokers smoke.

'cause everyone knows everclear has much higher alcohol content than beer but if you drink one shot of everclear, you won't be more drunk than after seven beers.

Seriously, I don't like coffee. I need coffee but I dislike it.
Why can't I have a glass of good caffeine-rich carrot juice?

I'm on 3mbps and unless I'm really pushing the quality of the video I find that the network isn't what's slowing me down. It's the software. Lately for some strange reason I've noticed that YouTube works better with Firefox than it does on Chrome. Some Chrome update in the past few weeks must have left in debug code or something. It chokes every 5 seconds, just freezes and becomes unresponsive. Firefox plays the video just fine. Once again though, I'm not pushing the quality. I guess if I were trying to push 1080p through this thing I'd care; but I don't.

That's the problem there, can you spot it?

On the one hand, it's Getty images. On the other, they're reducing the number of slide shows. Sorry. I have to side with Getty on this one. Anything that reduces the number of slideshows in the 'net is good.

You could start here.

Parent comment is living proof that the lameness filter on /. is broken.

It would be very interesting to run the numbers.

In government, inefficiency and bureaucracy and corruption cause friction, resulting in only $1 cents of every tax dollar to actually be spent on something.

In corporations, inefficiency, shareholder payouts and top-level management salaries (which have no equivalent in government) cause friction, resulting in only $2 cents of every dollar revenue to be spent on creating goods or services.

I wonder if $1 > $2 or the other way around. I do consider the evidence-free assumption that corporations are more efficient than government to be naive. Show me your evidence or shut up.

You know nothing about me and yet assume a lot.

Guns have nothing to do with it at all. Here in Europe, it is very clear. We have countries neighbouring each other with very similar culture and economy, one of them has lots of guns and the other has very little. Differences in wealth, political corruption or empowerment? Negliegable.

This "I have a rifle, fuck the government" romantic misconception is from a time when the rifle you had was a match for the weapons the government had. What, exactly, will it do for you when the government comes with an APC, assault rifles, drones and all that shit?

It's an eagle entertainment device.

This bears watching to see what happens.

You conveniently ignore the fact that in those years, that infrastructure was owned and/or maintained by communities, not by multinational corporations with a fanatical profit-maximizing agenda.

That is in one sentence what's wrong with our western society. Maximise profit at all costs, dodge responsibilities to the world around you, and then justify it all as being the proper way to do things.

The crux of the problem is the assumption that your responsibilities to society begin and end with the laws, interpreted to your advantage as much as possible.

Grants to existing scholars, scientists and researchers in their fields who are making actual scientific progress, instead of making their lives more difficult by founding some hot shot idea you found interesting.

Someone as allegedly smart as Gates, who spent all his life in a company whose success is first and foremost based on marketing and manipulation of perception could be expected to understand that if you read, hear or watch someone telling his great idea and you're fascinated with it afterwards, you can be sure that you have seen a good sales man, but you have no clue whether or not you've seen a good idea.

But to understand possible causal connections, timing is most helpful.

If you come across a theory that event A caused event B (via some intermediate links), but you know that event A happened in 1676 while event B happened in 1669, you don't have to scrutinize the causal links.

Likewise, if two wars between the same countries were fought 30 or 40 years apart, you know that it was the next generation fighting and that the cause must have been important enough to span that transition of power to the heir.