Gawwwd! Jerry Pournelle was one of the major reasons I canceled my subscription to Byte. The fact that the content was turning to drivel and the size of one issue ballooned to the same size as six issues from the early days, due to ads, was another.

Why on earth would anyone want to pay money to read Pournelle's whining about how someone didn't give him enough free stuff; his gloating about how much free stuff he got; the schilling for his kid's for fee software; and his ragging on people trying to make a living off their software by selling it?

In fact, in 1995 when Internet World started to have a Pournelle column, I wrote them and said that if they continued to push his drivel I would not only cancel my subscription, but would recommend to everyone I knew to not read their rag. I doubt very much that I was the prime cause, but enough other people must have felt the same way I did because they dropped his column.

I have Byte magazine from the first issue up into the early 1990's. They should leave the name to rest in peace.

Comcast is NOT a government created monopoly. In almost every locale where Comcast, or any other cable company, has a franchise, that franchise is NOT exclusive. Any other company can come in and establish a franchise to provide service as long as they meet the conditions of the franchise, such as providing access to everyone in the area that wants it and not cherry picking or redlining.

That franchise, by the way, applies only to Cable service and not to internet.

The report says that the towers result in 17.6 more births. I guess you can credit modern medicine for keeping all of those .6 babies alive, but really, what kind of existence will they have?

You have it backwards. As noted by tepples, the incumbents have sued many localities to prevent them from creating their own service provider, even when the incumbent had no plans to provide service in that local. In many case, the big telcos and cable companies have lobbied state legislators to pass laws making it very difficult, if not impossible, for localities to create a service provider.

And, it is the telcos and cable companies who want to use the city's right-of-way without paying for that use. They don't need eminent domain. Your legislature probably has already given them the ability to rip up your street and yard to run fiber and cable, and not pay a penny for that use! And, then you can try to fight them to get your street and yard put back the way it was.

Bits is bits! Bandwidth is not free, but it is only bandwidth that the carriers should be selling. They should not be charging different rates for different flavors of bits. They should not even be aware that the bits are reaching my phone from Google, or YouTube, or my e-mail server. All, they need to know is that I requested a specified number of bits to enter their network to be relayed through to my mobile device.

This is why the cellular carriers should not be omitted from any type of net neutrality rules put into place by the FCC. And this is why the Republicans actions to prevent the FCC from issuing net neutrality rulings needs to be prevented. See http://slashdot.org/story/10/12/17/2045244/Republicans-Create-Rider-To-Stop-Net-Neutrality

In the 1990's, after the small ISP's had invested their money into purchasing infrastructure and invested their time into fighting with the incumbent carriers to get that infrastructure working the way it was needed for internet access, Congress gave billions (with a 'b') dollars in credits to the cable and large telco providers to upgrade their networks for internet access. Where did that money go? Most likely to fund the consolidation in the telco and cable industries. But one place it didn't go, was to fund upgraded infrastructure.

Exactly!, or should I type EXACTLY! ? The position of the Caps Lock key is one of the worst examples of poor design. That is why one of the first things I do on a new PC is to reprogram the Caps Lock key to a Tab function and reprogram the Shift-PrntScr key (otherwise useless) to the Caps Lock function.

It would be nice if this didn't require registry editing, but it only needs to be done once per computer.

I still use the paid version. I believe in paying programmers for their work when I am happy with the product. I haven't really noticed a slowdown and I run it with everything turned on. Maybe the free version is different.

Norton, Symantec, whatever name they are hiding under these days is positively the worst when it comes to slowdowns and bloatware.

And, I absolutely wouldn't use MacAfee after their blue screen debacle with Internet Security Suite on Windows 2000. AVG at least admitted an issue and had fixes. After paying for an upgrade to MacAfee's Internet Security Suite and getting it partially installed, it caused the system to blue screen on boot. Since the software hadn't finished installing and wasn't registered, I couldn't get support without putting up cash up front. And then, they denied the problem. They continually took down posts on their forums from myself and others trying to get the problem resolved.

As far as trusting Microsoft to secure anything, give me a break.

AVG should have done more testing, but at least they didn't run from the problem.

Let's see, what year is this? Oh, yeah, 2010. That means that I have been programming computers for almost 35 years. And, I not burned out yet. I started with paper tape and punch cards and even programmed a line printer controller board, which involved implementing the program in wires. I have been through more programming languages than I want to remember, each one guaranteed to be the path to true programming enlightenment, if I just convert and drink the Kool-Aid. The key to staying in it and not sinking into the pit of despair over the drudge is getting to the place where you can have more control over the project and your role in it. Find or start a company with smart people that you like to work with. And, then create something that people not only use, but like to use. Because it makes their life easier and better.

I think that process is patented.

Yeah, it is going to be tough for you. I have been programming since the mid-1970's and over the last 10 years or so, I have found it difficult to get good paying jobs. And, these are jobs where I have the skill set and know the language. Companies want to pay noobs right out of school a pittance rather than pay an older, experienced programmer what their skill and experience is worth. Even if I can finish the job in a fraction of the time required by the noobs. If you are older, you need to be an owner in a software business if you want to get in coding time. And, if your skills aren't that current, you should just focus on the management end of it. You are going to make more money, faster, by putting on the blue jacket and practicing your smile and welcome.

Do you want a Hayes Smartmodem 1200 in the box?

Agreed. I almost registered on the site to bemoan the poor quality of the article and berate the author for doing such a shoddy job. But then I figured that I would just be feeding that beast, and they don't deserve it. How could anyone who ever managed a UUCP site in the late 1980's forget the TeleBit Trailblazers? Yet the article made no mention of the Trailblazers or even trellis encoding. I loved the fact that the Trailblazers could give me a graph of my phone lines at the various frequencies.

I agree with RMS. That is a sure sign of the Apocalypse. Time to restock the cabin in Utah.