Sometimes it's needed to help prevent a service being overwhelmed: our phone calls used to cost 4x more 9am to 1pm than 6pm to 8am because our phone service (government run) had limited available bandwidth. Now that is no longer an issue (largely c/o fibre optics) there is no pricing surcharge for the daytime peak.

In fact on a wholesale level from BT there still are three different time bands for pricing (daytime, off-peak, weekend) and different charges based on whether the call just goes through the local exchange, one regional ('single-tandem') exchange, or two ('double-tandem', which in turn is broken down into short, medium and long distances). Retail phone companies tend to lump them all together into a single rate, though - either an unlimited use bundle, or a simple flat-rate per minute.

For that matter, many of the better ISPs still have some time-based variation in charging: my previous one only charged for usage during the working day, my current one has three tariffs, one of which is much much cheaper outside working hours. (The worse ISPs tend to offer "unlimited" service, and accept that their network is congested and slow at busy times.)

They don't need script kiddies, they need social engineers. Question number one in the job interview should be "Is your native language Russian, Chinese, Farsi, Korean or Arabic?"

No, that's the beauty of global outsourcing: all they need's a Hindu accent. "Hello, I am being Sanj - I mean, Bob, from IT. I am needing you to be visiting TeamViewer to be fixing the Windows errors on your terrorist cell's PC..."

More seriously, I thought the offensive hacking was more an NSA/CIA operation: Army cybersecurity would be all about keeping the Windows systems patched and stopping generals replying to hot students who want naked sexy time over Skype in exchange for their passwords. (OK, it turned out that one should have been a CIA job too lately...) There's only a passing reference in TFA to the US having offensive capabilities, everything else is about securing DoD and contractor networks from attack, as I'd expect.

Yeah, my browser has a lot of opinions on my writing, but it's less judgmental than a lot of the feedback I get on my computer, so I ignore it a lot :)

I think your post achieves peak pun-ish meant.

So, your browser remarked on the replaceability of replaceability?

The weight difference is interesting. I wonder why they don't include average weight differences between lenses on the site when you're pricing it out? I suppose it is because the difference is so small that it would sell less upgrades. For my son's glasses I worry less about the frames and more about scratch resistance and lens replaceability (browser spellcheck claims that's not a word. Of course it also thinks spellcheck is not a word either, but I believe it's in common enough usage to be a full non-hyphened compound :) ). Of course, he's 7, so hopefully his lens care will get better over time. He hasn't complained about comfort from any of the glasses he's had yet, though he had them from age 2, so he has little non-glasses experience. I'm afraid to ask in case it makes him aware of discomforts he was happily tolerating pre-question.

That seems overly reductionist. I'd guess that onsite backups adequately cover over 90% of data loss situations.

"The Kanji isn't that bad, once you learn it."

Aye, there's the rub.

Mostly, but there is a significant Latin influence in Germanic languages, and Gaelic languages as well, and thus the Latin influence comes from pretty much every side. Much of the distinctively Greek influence is from Gaelic.

On a related note:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Seriously, in my opinion if an entity can declare in the USA (for example) earnings and other stuff as its own, borrow money using it as collateral, and decide how that $$$$ or stuff is used, then that entity actually owns the stuff and should pay the relevant taxes.

So many corporations are saying to shareholders and everyone else that the huge profits are theirs and yet turn to the tax dept and say no they didn't make any profit - the profits belong to some company in Ireland or wherever else. In my opinion that's fraudulent from an ethical point of view.

Say you tried to do the same thing - declare some $$$$$$ income in official public announcements/filings to everyone, borrow money using that income, order "unrelated people (who somehow have similar names as yours)" to use that income to buy stuff. Do you think you'd get away with telling the Tax Dept that the income isn't yours and you don't have to pay taxes on it?

Maybe this would cause some companies to fully move out from the USA to other countries. But at least they would no longer benefit from what the USA provides without paying their fair share.

Electromagnetic fields and public health: radars and human health, Fact sheet N226