Ok ok so the internet is not a series of tubes, but i think you are all missing the point. What if it WAS a series of Tubes? Think of it. Remember those old drive through banks where you got your money or made your deposit via a tube. Think of how many gigabytes, heck terabytes could be put inside a cylindrical hard drive shaped like one of those?. You could solve your bandwidth problem immediately, one terabyte would take a mere moment or two to receive (assuming your isp was within 30 feet or so of your computer). Ted was a genious.

Now, of course this system wouldn't work on a national level because those tubes would get too long, but if you were to combine it with my new projectile delivery service i think you might have something. want a youtube video? simple, put it on a flash drive, toss it in the morter set the trajectory and BAM there you are!

I thought i'd add my 2 cents here as i am currently working on a project that does exactly what you want, however it is not open source. The problem is that it costs money in order to use either Bing or Google maps and i have not seen a decent alternative yet. Also what seems like a simple coding project to make this new application is likely not as easy as you think for various reasons. We have a dedicated team of 7 coders and we have even hired a few outside contractors, if i were to guess i'd say we've spent over a million dollars so far developing this software and its not done yet. So here's your choice, spend a million developing your own software or buy a pre-made system.

I think it all kinda depends on where you are. sometimes you have no choice but to be a duck tape programmer. if they want it done next week or your job is on the line then you do what you have to to make it work. the problem comes when someone doesn't realize that there is another way. I'm sure your "Crufty Joe" was at his position long enough and had enough expertise to be able to convince the bosses "hey we need to spend some time and clean up this code" but instead he just kept going on his way.

I've had this same problem in the graphic design business. i spent a good portion of the last few years cleaning up designs made by my predecessor (and even ones made by me before i knew how to do it correctly) so i get it. but now that i'm trying to break into the programming world i find myself having to resort to duct-tape style coding just to get stuff done, what looks better on your resume? a website that you hacked together that looks like crap in the back end that someone else had to spend a year cleaning up, or no website at all?

yea thats completely true, i know this because i used to be a "guru" in a music store (which is all but extinct now) this is not an Apple specific idea. My question is why aren't all the employee's gurus?

You need to go on "The Lions Den"! ("its a show on BBC look it up, yes there are other channels besides Sci-Fi) you'll be right after the guy with the little floaty thing that helps toddlers learn to use the toilet!

Not sure in NY, but it is true in OC, although because of Disneyland you can not own a cab over 7 years old, and there are lots of fee's involved still.

Electric cars get 300mi a tank? that's not bad compared to the about 160 a tank that natural gas gets (at least the ones i used to drive back in '02) but still, what if you do get that 80 mile fare right at the end of your tank, your screwed, in my opinion if you have 300 miles per tank that means you fill up every 150 miles.

What you say about NY makes sense, In OC however i would get a 50-80 mile fare at least once per shift. And every once in a while you will get the 200+ mile fare, i had one 600 mile fare and at least 2 200+ fares in the few years that i worked there and if i had been unlucky enough to have natural gas or electric i would not have gotten any of those.

Also in OC there are no shifts, every driver is a contractor. all the cab company does is lease the car, its up to the driver to make his hours. leases are for 24 hours or 7-days, and it's illegal to share the vehicle with another driver

basically the point i'm trying to make here is if the cab companies really wanted to make it better for the drivers & passengers, they would treat the drivers better. I however don't think thats the case because drivers are a dime a dozen, they are simply trying to squeeze as much money out of the situation as they possibly can.

I what other industry do you see workers working 60-80 hours a week and making less than minimum wage? I knew several drivers who literally lived in their cabs, they would work all day every day when they weren't sleeping or eating and they would barely have enough at the end of the week to buy the cab for another week.

I'm sorry, i thought this was the Dr Phil forum...

As a former cab driver i can attest to that fact, electric simply will not work, and neither will natural gas. When i used to drive i would put in an average of 400-450 miles in a 24 hour shift. now with gas that means i had to fill up 2-3 times a day because you never want to be below half a tank (in case you get a long fare) When i switched to natural gas i had to fill up 5-6 times a day which was extremely annoying because in my area (orange county, CA) there are only about 6 natural gas pumps

I don't know about New York, but if its the same as my area, the single best thing that they could do to improve just about everything is charge a reasonable rate to lease a cab (to the driver) for a time period under 24 hours. Do you realize how F-ing crazy you go when you drive for 24 hours straight? and believe me if you do not drive for 24 hours straight then you will make less than minimum wage. It is absolutely rediculus. The taxi cab industry may not be run by a mafia, but it might as well be.

Side note (to the management of Yellow Cab of Orange county), BURN IN H*LL!! i will never EVER come back to your company, (as you insisted i would) i learned how to do something (IT/web) and now i make literally 5 times as much as i used to so screw off!

Ok, i know this is officially way off topic, but i can't resist. you need to check out http://www.sealandgov.org/ and its relation to the internet via HavenCo. It's pretty much what you are suggesting, except that it failed. but the history of Sealand is a good read.

Sad or not, i hope it happens fast because as soon as there is enough garbage that i can stand on it, i'm claiming it as my own nation. "I claim this floating island of crap in the name of Garbageland! All hail for i am the king of Garbageland!"

yes, an editor, such as notepad, or maybe textmate, but Dreamweaver attempts to do the WYSIWYG which is geared towards those people who don't really know how to code. Those people are better off with something like drupal where they can't accidentally go in and muck everything up, so they aren't using dreamweaver. Those of us who do know how to code however wouldn't waste their time learning how to use dreamweaver because we don't need it and it makes our code look like garbage. So yea, i think i agree. Dreamweaver should die.

I did realize that point (that DNS isn't completely anonymous) however I'm more referring to the reality that even though some prospective employer could do the further research to figure out who registered the domain and all that other stuff, the chances of them actually doing it is very low. What is much more likely is that they will look through their stack of 100 resumes and do just a basic check on all of them and eliminate half of them just on tertiary evidence of something being wrong

Another reality here, is that this point is almost moot, because there is almost no way of enforcing any laws regarding this in the first place

oh yeah, well me and the other 200 million other naked beer drinkers in this country disagree, and if we are going to have to pass an amendment, then let it be so.

the fact that you posted as "Anonymous Coward" should answer your question here. lets say your name is "Bob Smith" for example, now someone else, whom you don't like perhaps, purchases the domain name www.bobsmith.com and makes a site all about how you are recruiting for "young gay men who are willing to let themselves be eaten alive" or whatever would make you look bad. is it fair that an employer can now judge you based on this?

The problem is the internet is anonymous