(Er, that should have been "has *it*" and "getting *it*". Serves me right for posting before I've had my coffee. The point stands, though - I don't think Boxee is nearly as popular or important as the Slashdot editors seem to think.)

Why is Boxee the real question? I'd never even heard of it until they got blocked by Hulu, I don't know anyone who has one, and nobody I know is even thinking of getting one. Sure it was a lousy decision, but is it really so world-changingly lousy that Slashdot CANNOT EVER post about Hulu without bringing Boxee up?

Nowhere in your writeup do you say whether P2P is actually the problem here. If all you have is a bandwidth graph, then what else is your boss going to do but make assumptions? There are a number of excellent tools on the market to monitor traffic and tell you exactly what services are using how much bandwidth, as well as which individual customers are the largest users of your network. What happens if you implement shaping and packet inspection, then discover that most of your bandwidth is going to people using Hulu and other video sites? I doubt your boss is going to say "turn off the shaping", you'll just wind up adding ever more draconian restrictions.

I agree as well with the people who are saying that this is fighting a losing battle. Your customers' usage patterns are not going to stay the same. They will want to use more bandwidth as time goes on, even if their surfing habits don't change - their favorite sites will include more and more video and Silverlight and all sort of shit, and they will be very angry with YOU if they cannot continue to operate as they have been. Packet-shaping and such tricks will not be sufficient in the long run.

Wait. Does that mean that slashdotters are actually reading the article BEFORE commenting? That can't be right.

I know this is a joke, but I do wonder how many FOIA requests the FBI gets on subjects that they really don't have information on: UFOs, Batboy, etc. Do trash requests like that get counted?

Woah there, let's not get crazy!

Did I mention that I also had a kid in diapers to take care of?

Man, the freshmen get younger every year.

I slept occasionally in graduate school, but I think the best thing about graduating is that I no longer wake up with the thought in my head "Oh my god I have so much work to do."

I was just thinking the same thing - Google is in many ways an engine of innovation, and they bring a lot of cash to bear on a problem. But as you suggest, the same was true of Microsoft in the late 80s and early 90s. The only real difference is attitude, and attitudes change.

As someone who makes use of Google's services, I think this is great, but I can't help but wonder whether this is ultimately stifling advancement in the field. Google doesn't NEED to innovate in voice, it just WANTS to. In some ways, that results in a better product: they take risks a small software house dares not. But they're not as committed to innovating, and they drive a lot of people out of the market. Gmail is a great service, and Google continues to do new and interesting things. But I haven't seen a single new webmail service since Gmail went live, and that's a little worrisome.

As a software developer, I used to worry that Microsoft might find my particular niche potentially profitable. Now I worry that Google might think it's cool.

If he can still perform fine with that BAC, he probably wouldn't have been pulled over in the first place.

I don't think cops should be joking about police brutality or corruption, period, let alone in a public forum where they are apparently easily identified as cops. The police have a really lousy image right now, and anything that helps them to be seen as bullies or on a power trip is detrimental to everyone involved - they can't do their job unless we trust them, and it's just not enough anymore to ask that we trust them for our own good.

Set up a robots.txt file to tell the search engines not to index the site (or maybe only the front page), and then require a ZIP code to register. It's the find of information any local would know, and that relatively few outsiders would bother to look up - but could if they have a valid reason to want to use your site.

According to the linked article, that *is* the first step. The summary here conflicts in several places with the Campbell piece, and without the text of the legislation, it's hard to tell what the truth is.

Frequently it does seem that companies and the government are following the old plan: "Something must be done. This random thing is something. Therefore it must be done!" When the idea of due diligence comes into play, frequently that "something" seems to be just enough to keep the legal wolves (who often do not actually understand the businesses involved) at bay.

Some of the problem, it seems to me, stems from perception of international competition. How many times have we heard it said, "Sure, they can make thousands of cheap plastic widgets, but they're just copying, they don't have real creativity." That old slander can only be repeated so often before people decide that creativity is our *only* advantage, and must therefore be protected and sheltered and otherwise kept free from "harm", even if that means protecting it from being put to actual use.

Like I said, I don't think they should have gone down this path in the first place. PDFs were not a prime candidate for working DRM in the first place. But if they simply abandon it, then they open themselves up to lawsuits from the publishers who had been using the DRM and would be left high and dry. The harder a fight Adobe puts up now, the less they stand to lose in court. And since I strongly suspect that the people handling the cease-and-desist stuff are staff lawyers who get paid either way, I doubt it costs them anything extra to fight tools like this at this stage.