Great book, well worth a read. I most enjoyed the descriptions of the packs of dogs. Of him riding his bike, trying to bring a fish home from the market and having dogs attempting to take it from him. Or later, when he is riding in a truck with his dog.

"to below what the customer paid for"
and
"This would prevent Comcast from screwing with torrent traffic"

I don't think it would prevent them for screwing with torrent traffic. Last I checked, most consumer-level cable connections such as what most have with comcast explicitly forbid running a "server" on the line in the contract. Torrents pretty much meet the definition of running a server. So comcast could completely block such traffic and still not be interferring with "what the customer paid for". Of course the consumer could opt for the much more expensive business line which allows servers.

Note: maybe this has changed I haven't had comcast in a few years and I do pay for a business fios line to my house, so I can do whatever I want on it.

"And before you go off all half-cocked, I am not naive enough to think that governments today aren't totally corrupted by corporate sourced money. That is a different issue, however"

I don't think it is a different issue, not one bit. You just argued for giving more power and control to the very entity you declared corrupt. I for one think our government has too much power already.

It seems to me the corporations have been doing a darn good job with it for awhile now. I don't have much in the way of complaints. But what the hell, I can't see how adding government regulations and control could hurt things. I mean, everybody I know loves the FCC. /s

Well you did say "no other language".

Also, the c# solution I linked to is really basic, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't run on Mono --it doesn't require any .dlls or windows components-- which would make it not a MS-only solution.

"The thing that still draws me here, after ten years of reading, is the community. "
^That.
and most especially this:
"We've probably lost a few great commentators over the years, but it's likely not because ./ isn't trendy enough for them. It's because the stories aren't nerdy enough anymore. Hey editors: we want more science stories. Challenge us. I'd personally like to see ./ pick up more cutting-edge research (like computer science and computer engineering journal articles), because that's when the broad base of knowledge in the readership really shows, and where ./'s value is head and shoulders above the other "social media" sites out there"

I've been coming here forever, nowhere near as much as I used to mainly because the majority of the stories don't interest me.

"I looked around and no other language has anything like this"
c#: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/DBXParser.aspx
using (DBX DBX = new DBX())
{
int count = DBX.Parse(@"test.dbx"); //specify your DBX file here
if (count > 0)
{
for (int i = 0; i {
DBX.Extract(i, (i + 1) + ".eml"); //specify file to extract to
//or just read the content to memory
//string content = DBX.Extract(i);
}
}
}

" If Microsoft had actually open-sourced .NET it would probably have blown Java out of the water. But they didn't and they probably won't"

Uhm. I have much of the .net framework source. You can too: http://referencesource.microsoft.com/netframework.aspx

I find it immensely saddening that you equate self-reliance with greed. It is a bit ironic because it is the exact opposite. The self-reliant attitude is that you want to work for what you want/need. And the history of the US disagrees with your claims; as the further our country has gone away from its self-reliant attitude, the more wars we have become involved in.

The government you seem to admire teaches that theft is morally ok, as long as it is the government doing it. I don't need a government to tell me to help somebody out that needs it, I know that because I have morals. You seem to believe we can have a benevolent government, where it does everything good. The sad fact is power corrupts. Government can't be efficient, especially big government. Why? Because it doesn't need to, it can take whatever it wants from you by force.

Well, debt is what happens when you go around empire-building. How many wars are Finland and Sweden involved in? How many military bases worldwide do they have? We're building a billion dollar embassy in England, and the one in Iraq is bigger than the vatican. It isn't the "pull-youself-up-with-your-own-bootstraps anti-welfare spirit" that is killing the american dream. It is that our nations rulers also think they need to rule the world (both parties). All empires come to end; of course the US was never supposed to be an empire.

"limited government" you say? That notion died in 1913 and it ain't ever coming back without a full-on revolution.

"but the head is appointed by the federal government."

The head is appointed/chosen from a pre-selected list of potential appointees by the federal. "reserve" board. And the fed says to the congress, "hey, technically you get to choose which of these people to appoint, but this is the one you are going to appoint." and they follow orders.

The government can't just appoint whomever they want.