This would be the equivalent of going out in the streets in your car, shutting your eyes and hoping everyone else on the road is kind enough to honk their horn to signal their position.

Marco.

who will prosecute the suspects? A criminal trial is expensive and ends up importing criminals to whichever nation chooses to prosecute. That's the reason that the Somali pirates get turned loose. A similar situation would arise for trans-border cyber crime. Everyone would hope that someone else would prosecute.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. All of the free market crowd should recognize that a free market is predicated upon all participants having enough information to make informed decisions. So access to information is critical for the market participants to know what they are consenting to in an agreement. All of the arguments from economists about market efficiency are based upon perfect information by all parties. This is clearly an idealization, but it underscores the need for widely accessed, shared information in the running of a free market. A free market is not a natural state of the economy, it is a highly refined construction based upon thousands of years of social evolution. Communication and access to information are essential infrastructure.

Living in the rural Ozarks, we have decent broadband, with the exception of one provider that absolutely sucks.

It eventually comes down to property rights, though. The government lacks the legitimate moral authority to confiscate an individual's property to provide that property to someone else. Taxing one person to provide for someone else is theft, pure and simple.

I object to this for a different reason: I consider the concept of an organization with world jurisdiction intrinsically dangerous and unacceptable. It's like a monopoly: if you don't like their rules, where else are you going to go?

Please pronounce a hard 'g' in NOM... oh, wait ;)

Agreed. I've always just gone out, bought a new phone outright, and whacked my existing SIM card in it when I got home. None of this contract crap. But from what I can tell it is very hard/impossible to do that in the US? Which sucks ... I hate being tied to a particular carrier (and besides I have several SIM cards floating around that I tend to use in different situations).

Even worse, the US phones I've seen actually brand the phone hardware/firmware itself with the carriers logo and stuff. Wtf?! The phone should have NOTHING to do with the carrier. The analogy you made with brand X Wifi cards only working with brand X hotspots is a good one.

I can make perfectly readable jpgs of book pages with a Ricoh GX100, handheld, at 400 ISO. Soft edges? If my eyes don't see them when I'm zoomed in x16 I doubt it'd be a problem for any OCR software that can cope with normal quality printing.

Kit snob much?

Yeah, the fallout from Chernobyl isn't nearly as dangerous as the fallout from coal burning in the USA. (No sarcasm there)

Oh I forgot Graham Bell and the eugenism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell "By the late 1930s, about half the states in the U.S. had eugenics laws, and the California laws were used as a model for eugenics laws in Nazi Germany."

One of these days, ALICE. Wham! Pow! Straight to the Moon!

two words: Interstellar highway.

I believe the term is "Hyperspace Bypass."

There's a monkey in my pocket and he's stealing all my change! His stare is blank and glassy; I suspect that he's deranged...

and

For those cold, dark shipboard nights,
We've got boxers, briefs, and tights
Made from cotton, silk, or satin,
In styles Anglo, Dutch, and Latin,
When you sail don't take a chance
Wearing nothing neath your pants!
Trust...Silver's Long Johns! (They breathe!)

That's really interesting. I have the opposite reaction— my immune system doesn't recognise new pollens until I've been exposed to them for about a year. Living abroad was heaven.

I think the idea is sound, but the prices are way too high.

We currently pay about $50/month for cable modem (for four residents). If Time Warner cut their prices by two thirds—or even by half, as we don't come close to using 100GB/month—they'd essentially match Comcast, but I'd get a discount any month I don't hit the max. I'd switch over in a heartbeat.

Not that I expect them ever to do that.