No, no, no. It's just going to align with us and make it so we can jump and stay aloft for five minutes. I know it's true because I read it online somewhere.

Life in general finds a way, but that doesn't mean that specific species find a way. If it did then T-Rexes would be walking around today. Instead, we have birds which evolved from dinosaurs.

Great. Now we have GMO Cyborg Mosquitoes.

Thanks, scientists!

That's the beauty of this. While the anti-GMO folks are railing on about imagined long-term consequences, this shows that there really aren't any. It takes out a vast majority of the population for one generation. If you run this program for one year and then stop, these mosquitoes will either come back on their own or their niche will be taken over by other mosquito species. (Remember that not all mosquitoes are the same. There are 80 different mosquito species in Florida. This program is only targeting one of them.) Either way, the ecosystem survives even if this particular species doesn't and if this species survives, the GMO gene doesn't.

The problem is that people see "GMO", think "what's the worst thing that could happen" (whether or not that outcome is likely or even possible), and then assume that this has a strong chance of happening. At the vary least, they assume that scientists haven't ruled it out because the article they are reading online didn't specifically address what they thought of.

For example:

If a female mosquito mates with a GMO mosquito the genetic reactions could cause the next generation of mosquitoes to be twice as big!!!! (You need to include many exclamation points to make it scarier.) Now, the article doesn't specifically say that this can't happen so this means that it's not only possible but likely. If they release these GMO mosquitoes, we'll be overrun with giant, blood-sucking mosquitoes!!!!!!

(Never mind that this isn't genetically possible. It's likely because someone somewhere thought of it.)

Actually, Google has shown that you need to have deep pockets to get over incumbant efforts to keep you out. Many municipal broadband efforts have fizzled because the incumbents muscled them out (sometimes without even serving the area that the municipal broadband network would have covered).

I'd raise the question of price. Just because you have a 25 Mbps option doesn't mean it is priced in an affordable fashion. If your local ISP offers 25 Mbps a month for $300 a month it is available but not affordable. I'm not saying that it needs to be extremely inexpensive, but merely rolling out an "option" and then pricing it such that you know you'll rarely need to deploy it shouldn't give the ISPs the right to claim all of those users have this as an option.

Do you know how much tax payer money has been given to the telecoms for the very purpose of implementing broadband nationwide? We've already paid them and so far got very little in return.

We got exactly what they promised us*.

* Promises retroactively changed after the telecoms lobbied the government to declare the promises retroactively fulfilled even when they weren't really.

In many cases, these government sanctioned monopolies are the result of the dominant corporation buying influence in the local or state government and getting a law passed that outlaws competition (or places so many hurdles in front of it that it might as well be outlawed). For example, the state laws that say that local governments can't launch their own municipal broadband initiatives even if the big corporations don't serve these local areas. The state laws were bought and paid for by the corporations who simply don't want to compete against anyone else (especially not municipal broadband) even if "compete against" means the municipal broadband serves and area that they don't serve. (If they ever decide to one day serve that area then they'll have to compete and that can't be allowed!)

Either that or they'll add "Broadband Improvement Tax" to their below the fold charges. Of course, it won't really be a tax and the money won't really go to improving their broadband access. You can rest assured, though, that your price won't go up!*

* The advertised price, that is. Not counting all of the below the fold "taxes" and fees that they add in.

True. As much as people like knocking PHB's and management in general, there are some problems where a technological solution isn't appropriate and a management solution is.

If you're locked up for years, despite having done nothing wrong, I'm not sure I see much difference.

And that doesn't even get into how your life could be ruined after the "oops, sorry about the imprisonment. You're free to go." Your old job definitely won't be available and new job opportunities might be skittish about hiring someone who went to prison. Even if they've expunged your record, people might still know you went to prison, might still think of you as guilty, and treat you as such. In short, your suffering might not end once you get out of jail.

There's a good reason that our justice system is supposed to be stacked in favor of the defendant.

If the employees are turning on their personal hotspots and using that, you don't have a security problem. If they are both connecting to the hotspot and to your network, you can stop this by booting them off your network. What you can't do, though, is put a hotspot jamming device in place to knock out all personal hotspots.

Step 1. Don't complete repairs you are required to do. Pocket $X that you would have spent making the repairs.
Step 2. Get Fined $Y (where $Y $X).
Step 3. Pay fine.
Step 4. Add a below-the-fold "Rural Phone Investigation Tax" onto everyone's bill such that the incoming money from this is more than $X + $Y.
Step 5. Profit many times over!

(Actually making the repairs is optional.)

Corporations are people.

All people are equal.

Some people are more equal than others.