It's worst than that. Lobbyists actually write most bills, then find a congresscritter to sponsor the lobbyists' pet bills. Congresscritters very rarely write legislation themselves (I don't have it to hand but I recall seeing a stat that put their share at something like 5%.)

I lived on fixed wireless for most of the past decade. It was down at least 10% of the time, and often more (like every time it rained). It was unreliable enough that I kept the dialup modem as a backup.

If good upload speeds were widely available, I suspect online backup would quickly become a mainstream market, especially as more people become aware of the need to back up (witness the solid market for flash drives and external hard drives, mostly to ordinary folks and largely used for personal backups).

I know I'd use it, but my paltry 600k up will not cut it.

The Founders had largely expected common sense to prevail. That it didn't is one reason why we have the Bill of Rights.

My boss was complaining about how he couldn't get some kindle book for work to be billed to his company card. The only options that come up for kindle books look to be to give it as a gift to someone else, use a gift card to buy it, or to buy it with 1 click which charges it straight to the card you have on file. I pointed out he just needed to change the 1 click card to the company card, buy it, then change the card back, but that was "too much work" (a man after me own heart).

"To be a great programmer, you need to write code that reads like English."

That's an interesting observation, and see what I (not a coder but an interested bystander) say above about two programs I know equally well as a user -- one in Pascal (I can pretty much grok what all the code does despite zero comments), the other in C (lots of comments, but still makes my brain hurt even when I can figure it out).

From the user standpoint (I'm not a programmer, but I take an interest, and have rooted around a bit in various source codes), these are my observations:

1) When a program written in C crashes, it may do damnear anything on its way out.

When a program written in Pascal/Delphi crashes, it simply closes down and returns you to the OS.

2) I have an ancient (1990) database program I can't live without. When it was retired from the market, its owner kindly shared source with me, which happened to be in Pascal. There's not a single comment in it, but as I know the program so well, I can tell what nearly all its code does.

I can't say that of the other antique program which I still use and know very well (and have perused much of the source), but is written in C.

I doubt it's entirely coincidence, or even relative marketshare, that's given us those marvelous Obfuscated and Underhanded Code contests for C, but no such for Pascal.

You want <ecode>:

if (x<5) {
  printf("Works for me!\n");
}

If the argument is that I as a consumer have a right to not have my ISP discriminate against my choice of content providers then where in that argument is the limiting principle that prevents me from forcing the content providers to provide the content on a device of my choosing rather than theirs?

Clearly these are exactly identical situations despite the fact that in the network neutrality argument there is a third party (the ISP) interfering with my choice of content provider, while in your argument there is no ISP interfering in my choice of content provider. The total and complete lack of third-party interference in your case (which is entirely what network neutrality is about) is what makes it different.

That's also how the believers work.

Clearly it's a violation of the separation of powers. Only the judicial branch can decide reality, like the judge ruling that deepwater horizon spilled 3.19 million barrels of oil.

Dear Dimit:

Thank you for taking the time to apply to our job. Unfortunately we are not able to extend an offer of employment to you as we feel you are overqualified for this position. Thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,
HR

his next bonus will suffer resulting in him not benefiting

Unless his next quarter is a negative bonus where he has to pay his ill-gotten gains back, he gets $10000 for hitting this quarter's target and gets only $1000 next quarter. As opposed to only getting $1000 both quarters. The behavior is a no-brainer.

He could later be considered for termination if the pattern continues.

Unless he's high enough up AND his behavior drives the company into bankruptcy, then the gets a $50000 retention bonus to help ensure his leadership through these tough times.

We get the same thing at bird dog field trials from popper loads (which can travel a couple hundred yards in a good wind) -- it's kinda like being spattered by light sleet.

After the fucking the internet has gotten by the NSA during this and the previous administration, I think it'd be more appropriate if Obama was to "kibbitz" with youporn stars.