You sir, beat me to it. Amazon Whispernet is what it's called, and it's exactly the right argument to make here. I was actually having a conversation with some coworkers the other day about something similar.

Amazon made a deal with one or more national cellular carriers to be able to deliver purchased books to user's Kindles. When Amazon pushes a book, I imagine they pay whatever carrier they used to deliver it a nickel or something. So figure an automotive update is what, maybe 2 GB? I can buy a 3 GB data plan from AT&T or Verizon for $30, so let's call the data rate $10/GB (and that's high because it's the consumer rate, auto manufacturers would quite positively get some sort of discount due to their buying power). So let's say it would cost the automaker $20 per car to push the update OTA. Now compare that with what they have to pay the dealership in labor to do the same update. Last time I checked dealer labor rates were something like $70/hr with an hour minimum. This saves them 71% on their costs to have the updates rolled out. So lets say Ford sells 50k F150s a year. If they have to push an update to all 50k of them, assuming the dealer update cost is $70 and the OTA cost is $20 then the dealer update cost is $3.5 million, OTA cost only $1 million. Savings of $2.5 million per update.

What percentage of modern cars don't have OnStar or something like it? I don't even think you can buy a GM vehicle that doesn't have the basic OnStar system which includes a cellular device capable of transmitting data. Your statement doesn't hold up.

How is pushing an update OTA any less safe than having that same update installed at a dealership? The end result is the same either way - if the update breaks the car then it's going to break the car regardless of the method used to install it. You seem to be implying that the process of using OTA updating makes the update itself less safe, but that's really not true if done properly. By 'properly', I mean using well established, common sense rules that have been around for ages. First, don't do anything with the update until it's done downloading. Second, when it's done downloading, verify the file you downloaded exactly matches the original source update file using a hashing algorithm. Just about every electronic device that receives automatic updates does this and those updates are no less safe because they were automatically downloaded over the Internet versus installed from a USB flash drive by a technician.

They must be using some kind of new-fangled routers because the ports on the ones I have only go to 100%. Bad wording there.

It sounds like you have something to hide. I'm just the opposite of you. I don't have a personal home phone, cell phone, laptop, etc because my employer provides all of that stuff to me and they don't care if I use it for personal stuff as long as it doesn't interfere with business use. I don't see any sense in paying for something I already have access to for free.

Email is free, so I do have a personal e-mail addres but I use my work e-mail for tons of personal correspondence just because it's a lot more convenient and I don't really care if my employer reads the day to day e-mail conversations I have with my friends and family.

Me. It's a lot more convenient to reach over and pick up my desk phone than it is to fish around in my pocket for my cell phone, unlock it, etc. Plus there are a lot of folks that have poor coverage on their cell phone at work and using their desk phone prevents them from having to get up and go outside. Personally, I have a work IP phone at home and use it almost exclusively because my cell coverage is spotty.

If you work at a company that would care about who you're calling, then how happy can you really be with your job? I wouldn't use a work phone to make a personal call to China or somewhere else where the long distance rate might be expensive, but for everyday personal calls I don't see any problem doing it. How much can your employer really find out from knowing who you talk to? If they were recording the calls, then that would be another deal entirely. Fortunately I live in a state where that would be illegal to do without my knowledge.

Wand everyone getting on the bus. If they have cameras, they don't get on. Put really dark tint on all the windows so people outside can't see in.

As usual, the title makes the story out to be something it's not. They're not trying to shut these places down, they're trying to bring them into compliance with laws and regulations.

While I'm not in favor of excessive regulation, that doesn't mean I can just go out and start a business that ignores the rules. It sounds like the rules were in place well before any of these places existed, they started doing business and ignored the rules, now they're being told they can't do that and someone is annoyed that they're getting called out.

In other news, I've never much cared for speed limits so I'm just going to start ignoring them because I can get home faster that way. When I get arrested I'll post a story to Slashdot about how the police are trying to destroy my life by putting me in jail.

While I agree that fiber is probably the most future proof way to implement a new network, gigabit Internet access doesn't really get me super excited. The average household simply doesn't have a compelling use case for it. In my area I get 30Mbps down / 2Mbps upfor about $60/mo and it works fine. My wife and I each have a smartphone and tablet, we have a computer, two Netflix-connected TVs (we don't have cable TV) and a Chromecast. It all works "good enough". The only time I really find I want more bandwidth is the rare occassion I upload a video to Youtube.

So yes gigabit Internet is great, and I wouldn't turn it down, but the problem is getting enough people excited about it. I think if you took 100 people from all over the USA and gave each of them a choice between 1) upgrading their Internet go gigabit for the same monthly price 2) filling up their gas tank or 3) dinner and a movie you wouldn't get more than a third of the folks taking the Internet offer.

In theory. You're assuming the shooter was the only one present.

Adderall.

Honestly, Boxee Box is probably one of the best STBs. It'll play just about anything and has an app for Netflix.

I had one and got rid of it because it was a bit flaky, but in terms of your requirements it's the only thing I've found that does everything you're looking for.

It seems like it ought to be simple enough to devise some sort of password safe. The purpose of this safe would be to contain your "master password". To determine the password to the safe, you would have to combine information many of your friends know. For instance, you might leave instructions for finding the password that say something like "what was the name of John's first pet", or "what was Mary's 3rd grade teacher's name". They would be questions for which only that person or people close to them would know the answer, and something that isn't available by Googling.

Assuming you spread your questions out over a large enough group of people (so there isn't overlap, i.e. not everyone the questions are targeted at know each other) you should be able to come up with a relatively secure password mechanism. The problem is that you'd either need to tell everyone the question's you're using and instruct them not to answer those questions for someone other than you, or you'd have to deal with the possibility of a 3rd party finding your instructions and going on a scavenger hunt to find the answers to unlock the password.

But in general, I think this idea is fairly solid. One down side is you'd have to keep your instructions up to date, if one of your friends dies and they're the only person that could answer a given question then you might end up locked out.

You realize that these two statements directly contradict each other, right?

So go work in retail and mail-order. What am I missing here? If all of these Amazon workers could go get these other jobs that supposedly pay more, why are they still working for Amazon? A company can only get away with what people are willing to work for. If nobody was willing to work for what they're paying then nobody would. The whole point of unions is to try and artificially force companies to pay more than what the market dictates.