... to pay for extra internet connection fees after Net Neutrality is just a memory from pre-Corporate Sovereignty times.

John Carlyle: What is going on? Why has production stopped?
Foreman: He's been exposed.
John Carlyle: Don't. Don't breathe on me. Cover your mouth.
Foreman: I'm sorry, sir.
John Carlyle: Does his skin fall off or something? I don't want to replace the bedding. Just get him out.
Foreman: Yes, sir.
John Carlyle: Great. Thank you.

Yes, and administrators, once career bureaucrats, are now actual "business people" seeking community props only to find that there's profit in rent-seeking Federal funds for children. These "business people" naturally demand a higher salary because they've closed some big deals. Unlike the deals they've closed for other employers, however -- these deals benefit other ... "business people," not the school district and certainly not the children. Except for the children whose parents benefit from the deals made by the "business people" who "serve" on the school board.
And that's leaving ALEC out of the equation.
We know that Eternal September began in 1993. When did Eternal Balance Sheet begin, i.e., when did We The People start believing that anything not turning a profit must be shut down? Some things simply cost money, e.g., public schools, the Post Office, ... Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. When did it become a good idea to put "business people" in charge of delicate things like educating children? Was it during one of the MBA gluts?

Yes, if an approved Change Record was not submitted by the (heh) deadline, in which case a Post-Mortem Change Record must be submitted. Bots with larger-than-expected "change logs" will be reviewed by the Ferguson Grand Jury on CourtTV, weeknights at 6 on your local myCW affiliate through our partnership with Vice TV.

Cloud storage's promise is *durability*. Availability is important, but secondary. Speed of access? You'll need to either study your cloud provider's documentation to optimize your indexing or get on with a provider that gives you a Technical Account Manager (TAM!tm) who can work with you and your data indexing methods. Even then you may be impacted by a fellow customer, or even a cloud engineer or two.
I agree that many have simply jumped onto the cloud bandwagon because it's new. Some cloud providers offer tertiary services atop their basic cloud, e.g. the things that end in "aaS" -- but those aren't cloud storage, just services/apps built on top of cloud storage.
In general, the understanding of what "cloud" really means in terms of actual use versus marketing is very cloudy. Recall that the first cloud was private and then made public for a low price -- and no one put critical data there besides the cloud's inventor. IMHO it was simply engineers moving between tech firms that caused the design to "migrate" back when the original cloud was simply replicated. Since then it's evolved; Amazon uses erasure encoding, Google's not telling, and who knows what's up with Azure? I, for one, see an obvious coincidence for a failure on Patch Tuesday.

... and durable.

This was floated on this past Sunday's TWiT. Leo Laporte aped Jonathan Schwartz saying, "Oh, and then there are these patents -- the engineers say they were really more of a joke than actual claims, but -- there's at least a few billion in there for settlement money, so after you pay the lawyers, you should clear a few milliion."

The new meaning of justice is revealed. It's "revenge," aka "closure."

This is the old "protecting our way of life" meme. It is not an inclusive use of "our." It is the government saying, "We and our cronies prefer it this way."

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. ~the Declaration of Independence

Agreed. The problem is with the term "first to market." Its meaning relies on perspective. What is the market? Retail space on Best Buy shelves? Direct marketing via late night television ads and browser pop-ups?

I remember a story about a guy who thought of dunking banana slices in chocolate and mixing them with banana flavoured ice cream. He showed this to some food company, which turned him down and then marketed it themselves. Many other examples abound. Maybe Robert Kearn's story (he patented his intermittent windscreen wiper design before approaching Ford, then Chrysler) is a better context for the question: Who was first to market? The inventor who tried to market to the corporation, or the corporation that stole the idea and marketed it to genpop?

Even if the good guys win -- whomever the good guys are, for you, in this squabble -- regulatory agencies in these United States are crack whores, fellating the same corporations that the legislature has put in charge. The rules are for show. Gives a whole new meaning to money talks, bullshit walks when the regulations are widely known to be unenforced, even unenforceable.

That, by the way, is the definition of corruption, i.e., the opposite of integrity. Integrity is much more than some soporific ideal about what is right. It's about strength, and durability. What is the integrity of the chair you're sitting in right now?

Given that the x axis represents time and the y axis represents knowledge and/or skill ... The curve is steep when one must get knowledge/skill to a high level in a short amount of time. Your point is well taken, though; I've used this description many times in the past without realizing that some really do spend more time mastering a tool. My vi learning curve looked more like a staircase. I'd dig in and figure out how to do whatever I needed next (the rise), then rely on that for as long as I could (the run).

Meh. Big, expensive, proprietary in-house solutions are rarely the best IMHO. The USAF could have made a deal with Sony.

Naked short selling is most certainly not illegal -- when such trades are executed by a market maker, and/or when the broker/trader believes that shares will be available. A temporary SEC order remains in place, originally designed to restrict trade on certain "systemically important" firms, and has since been expanded to cover all firms.

BTW, speeding is also illegal, and practiced as a normal method of driving by most licensed drivers. Given the difficulty in proving naked short selling, I doubt that the practice has decreased significantly, any more than criminalizing bookmaking has impacted the illegal gambling industry.

I'll grant that shares in a company are legally tangible.