This is true with one big caveat: the kernel still comes from the cromeOS partition, not the linux partition. I learned this the hard way with my chromebook....I could never get it to a 2.6 Kernel (never mind 3.x) because the system had actually booted the kernel from the chromeOS partition, but the rest of linux from my ubuntu partition.

I'm beginning to think that the lack of difference between the party policies isn't that they're the same party...I think the institutional attitudes of various agencies doesn't change with government rotation because most of the employees of the agencies don't change. That can be as good (if the party you disagree with is in power, it's hard for them to gut an agency they don't like), and it can be bad (an out of control agency can almost do whatever the hell they like, since they know they can outwait any mangement they disagree with).

I'm not sure how to solve this one, though...if you clean out the entire upper echelon of an agency at administration rollover, then you risk seriously politicising even the most bland agencies. On the other hand, some of these agencies clearly need an attitude adjustment, and I really do think the attitude problem is endemic to the entire culture of the agency, not just their leadership.

Maybe a max term for any federal employee that they can't work for any one agency for more than 10 years?

Agree. The moon's dust problem alone makes it problematic. I'd argue for L4 or L5 before the moon. There's still some dust at L4 & L5, but the sheer amount of it is much lower, and the gravity well to get there (and leave again) is much lower. It's not as inpsiring to say "we're on L4!", but it's also a first-person-gets-it kinda situation...you can have multiple moon bases, but really only one at L4 or L5.

The difference, which the summary alludes to, but doesn't call out, is that it's very typical for book contracts to contain a clause that reverts all copyrights back to the author after the book falls out of print for some period of time. Music contracts very rarely have that. Music contracts may or may not have covered the right to distribute the works digitally, but the music publishers still have *some* rights to old works, where the book publishers will have none.

It's not quite that simple. The GP post is correct that Cogent has a horrible reputation in the industry. Here's a synopsis of the most common Cogent dispute:

1) User in New York on ISP A requests data from Server in San Francisco on Cogent.
2) ISP A and Cogent interconnect in San Francisco and New York.
3) ISP A wants Cogent to carry the traffic to New York and drop it onto the ISP's network as close a possible to the customer (cold-potato routing), Cogent wants it off their network as soon as possible so they drop it onto the ISP A San Francisco interconnect (hot potato routing).

The question boils down to: which one of them is going to have to build a bigger national backbone to handle the extra traffic from the user in New York? Neither one wants to, and wants to force the other one to do it.

As to why ISPs are not blacklisting Cogent: they are. That's what all these bandwidth problems with Netflix are about: ISPs are playing chicken with Cogent, trying to force Cogent's customers to bully them into upgrading their network. ISPs aren't limiting Netflix: they're refusing to upgrade interconnects with Cogent until Cogent starts using cold-potato routing.

In this case, one of Cogent's customers blinked before Cogent did, and side-stepped the problem.

This week, I've played bridge, Texas Hold'em, Dominion, Race for the Galaxy, La Boca, Coup, and Cartagena.

Oh, you probably meant video games. None. I love video games, but they eat all my time and are usually antisocial.

now? Let's find out:
Piñata
Mötley Crüe
  €

Set, Spot It, Rummy, Carcassonne, LotR Confrontation, and many other board games and card games. Electronic games? She has found those on her own without any encouragement from me.

Baloney. We've been changing the length of lights, and drivers know it, which is why they run them all the time. We should make them standard based on length of the intersection, lanes, and speed limits throughout the US. Add in the RLC when the light length is well known, and it will help keep intersections safer.

Ahem. Trackball. No need to look down to see where the mouse has gotten to on my desk. Big fat ball that's always where I expected. Like all the balls in my life.

Quick, update the Drake Equation results to 100%!

Star Trek was "serious scifi"? Since when?

The original series had hot babes in filmy, barely-there outfits and paper-thin allegories about the cold war, but very little science. The next generation had morality plays, and tried (and failed) to do science by changing of the polarization of the deflector dish (or whatever "insert sciency bit here" they did that week). The others I didn't bother to watch (though I hear there's an episode where a character is "evolved" into a lizard and then back again.....really?).

Star Trek has always been terrible at the "serious" sci-fi. It's just terrible at serious scifi in a very different way than Star Wars is.

If you run an ISP and still don't understand that you're not the interesting part of the internet, then you have never understood your place on the 'net. ISPs exist for one reason, and one reason only: to allow people to access content. Period. The "Economic Balance" isn't "tipping towards content companies"...the content companies *are* *the* *things* *your* *customers* *want*. The only thing they want from you is to get to those companies (or each other). You are a conduit, a tube, even. Nothing more.

The regulations prohibit ISPs from charging more when content providers waste bandwidth

If your users want the traffic, then the content providers aren't "wasting" it...your customers (who are already paying you for those bits, I should point out) are using what they've paid for. Saying that content providers are wasting bandwidth is basically complaining that your users are actually *using* what you sold them...which is really not a winning argument.