For what it's worth, this used to be the case, but is not any more. Many local channels have switched from "must-carry", where the cable company has to carry them, but doesn't have to pay, to "retransmission consent" where they can charge the cable company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry#United_States

It's never come up and we don't expect it to, so we don't have a formal policy on those ports. At our size, we can deal case-by-case. If someone had a legal use case, we'd make sure their needs were met; this may or may not involve unblocking the port(s). Using the port 25 blocking as an example... if someone says, "I can't send email from my Gmail address using Outlook.", we say, "Use port 587. Here's how...". This limits the number of exceptions and maintains as much of the security as is possible. However, if they say, "I use Linux and want a proper MTA setup.", we say "We'll unblock port 25. Please make sure to secure your mail server so it can't be use to send spam."

I work for a small, rural ISP. When we advertise X Mbps, a properly working (i.e. not virus laden or too old to get X Mbps on its own) computer will actually get X Mbps to our speed test. In other words, we overprovision the customer's service to account for not just access technology overhead (e.g. ATM for ADSL), but TCP/IP (+HTTP) overhead as well. Our speed test is from Ookla (a popular speed test vendor) and is not doctored in any way; we just can't guarantee speeds to random speed test servers on the Internet. Congestion within our network or on our upstream links would be considered a serious outage. However, if, for example in the case of DSL, your line is simply too long to get X Mbps, you won't; most customers in that position are grateful for whatever they can get. But if you felt we cheated you, canceled your service, and demanded a refund for that first month, you'd get it. (We only require contracts on one type of Internet service--terrestial, fixed location wireless--because of the cost of the equipment and the install, but we'd waive the contract term in such a case.)

Aside from enforcing the speed purchased, we don't shape, throttle, or do evil things to traffic on customer Internet connections, except by customer request. (We offer an *optional*, opt-in service that blocks porn sites using an HTTP proxy.) We don't prioritize or de-prioritize particular packets on customer Internet connections by source, destination, or anything else.

However, for security reasons, we block the Microsoft file and print sharing ports (which nobody should use directly over the Internet anyway) and outgoing port 25 (SMTP) traffic. The latter makes a huge difference in blocking spam from infected customer computers. If you ask for port 25 to be unblocked on your connection, we will unblock it.

Personally, I think this is exactly how ISPs should behave. Anything I should do differently? Is this an "Internet connection", or does the port blocking disqualify it?

Other random details: Our DNS servers verify DNSSEC, but accept expired signatures to avoid customer complaints every time an otherwise working domain forgets to rollover their keys. We unfortunately do not yet sign our own domains and don't yet support IPv6 everywhere, but are working on both. (We only finally got redundant IPv6 upstreams earlier this year after making significant changes to which networks we buy from because one upstream has ignored literally years of IPv6 requests from us.)

I wish that manufacturers would internally install an SD card or flash drive with the hardware write-protect switch set. This provides all the advantages of optical recovery media (write-protected and separate from the hard drive) plus the advantage of a recovery partition (it's not separate, so it can't get misplaced).

This isn't about spaceflight, so it isn't directly applicable here, but... I was always curious about a $1 bid, so I asked someone in the construction industry. He said that one of the requirements on every job is a "completion bond". This is a bond from an insurance company that will pay to have the project completed to the requirements if the bidder fails to do so themselves. So, if you get an insurance company to underwrite a bond on your $1 bid, the buyer doesn't care. If you don't build it, your insurance company will pay someone else to do so. Either way, they get what they requested for your bid of $1. If you don't get the bond, they'll never accept your bid in the first place.

How does the buyer ensure you're meeting the requirements? They have inspectors. As with any contract dispute, if you say you completed the project to requirements and the buyer says you didn't, ultimately a court will have to decide who's right.

My dishwasher has a timer delay feature. I use it already even though I don't have time-of-use billing because I can shift the noise to a time when I'm not near it.

If my washer had a timer, I could wash one load of clothes during the day and/or one during the night, depending on when the off-peak hours were. Likewise for drying. A given load could take up to two days to get washed and dried, but that's not a huge problem. In fact, I already prefer doing one (full) load at a time more often than batching it up and doing laundry all day.

How would you define "ex post facto law"? As it turns out, my definition seems to match Calder v. Bull, which is apparently the relevant precedent in the U.S.:

I will state what laws I consider ex post facto laws, within the words and the intent of the prohibition. 1st. Every law that makes an action , done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2nd. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3rd. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender.

-- Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. 386 (1798)

Retroactively granting someone immunity (which is a limited form of retroactively making something legal) is very different from making something retroactively illegal. For example, if Congress were to repeal the prohibitions on marijuana and apply that retroactively, people could be released from jail. On the other hand, if Congress made possession of ibuprofen illegal retroactively, the fact that someone owned Advil (and took it all) last year could land them in jail. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems that making something legal retroactively would not run afoul of the constitutional prohibition on ex post facto laws.

I'm not taking a position, in this post, on the wiretapping immunity law itself, the legality of said wiretapping, or the legality of Congress granting such immunity.

Urban areas are about the exact opposite of native, aren't they?

The plane won't crash: http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=12798

So for the rest of it, you just have to weigh the risk of someone getting hit by a stray bullet vs. the reduction of risk of the terrorist bringing down the plane. I'm not sure which way that would go, but if this is such a problem, why don't we hear about shootings on buses?

With respect to "no security", yes, if people can bring bombs on planes, that's bad. But regarding guns, why would Mr. Smith be more dangerous on a plane than on the ground (where his training can get him a permit to carry in most states)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title

Why do you need increasing sunset lengths? A statute against murder, for example, should be easy to renew. It'd take a few minutes at most, even if you require a voice reading of the full text. I'd imagine if you used unanimous consent or voice votes, you could renew all the obvious, non-controversial laws in a couple of days sessions, at most. Is someone really going to be the jerk that fillibusters the law against murdering the President (murder being a state issue and fillibusters being a federal Senate thing, I had to specify this more)? It seems like their party (since political parties aren't going to disappear any time soon) would quash any attempts at that because of how the public would react.

This would never work, because as you pointed out, it's impractical from the start. A better approach would be to pass a constitutional amendment that provides for a mandatory sunset of laws. Ideally, you'd also require codification of all laws.

So the amendment would say something like, "1) All new laws passed by Congress must be codified into titles. 2) Each title (or existing uncodified law) shall automatically sunset and be removed from the official record of titles after __ years from the later of its original passage or last renewal. 3) For the purposes of this amendment, laws existing at the time of this amendment's ratification which were originally passed over __ years previous shall be considered to have been last renewed at a date within the last __ years, with the date randomly assigned by the ____ office."

Thus, you'd cause all existing laws to sunset slowly over the next __ years (for whatever value you fill in), and they'd have to be codified when they were renewed.

Then, if you want to help keep laws simple (which seems good in theory, but may just push the complexity to the executive branch's rulemaking process) and ensure there's been adequate time to read them before voting (which I support), you could pass another amendment (or add another section) that says, "Any law passed by Congress must have been read aloud in full by a representative or senator, as appropriate, or it shall be null and void." Obviously, the exact wording of these amendments might need some tweaking, but it seems more sustainable.