If I get caught taking an audio CD from WalMart without paying, I MIGHT get a $50-200 fine. If I download those same 12 songs that were on the CD without paying and get caught, I may get charged $1000-15000 per song, that is about $100000-150000 total. How is the damages from one about 50000X more than the other? I "took" the SAME thing.

I love them.
- Hours and hours of cool information.
- Wildly different topics and "storylines" throughout the book. If you have no interest in a specific section, you can skip to the next section.
- You don't have to read it in an order
- Small and easy to carry around.

No really, a World Almanac!
http://www.worldalmanac.com/world-almanac.aspx

I watch most of my TV shows through Comcast on Demand. They seem to have about 1/2 the commercials compared to the broadcast version. I can still skip through them but I'm sure they can prevent me from doing that in the future. Similar to what I've seen on Hulu, a 30 second commercial here and there

Facebook has very little to lose and much to gain from getting into various hardware. This phone sales when compared to quantity sold of other models could be a bust but the real goal is not total sales. The more devices on the street that have Facebook integration, the harder or less likely people will be to switch to a competing social network. Think of all of the media boxes and internet connected televisions, blue ray players etc that have things like embedded like Netflix and Facebook. All of the companies with a Facebook presence, the +1 links etc.. IMO, this is why Netflix kept the the Netflix name on the streaming service and renamed the mail order spinoff. Facebook is turning into something similar to what AOL was, a semi walled interconnected community with some central control. They are building it in the other direction though, from open to closed.

I pay very little to no attention to a posts current mod status. I read through the sub threads that catch my eye and give a reply when I have something to add. I don't care if I'm replying to a +5 or a 0. I normally browse at 0 and I rarely see an obviously non troll post rated at 0 so I assume there is even less at -1. Temporary moderators are not picked because of their opinions so if groupthink or common trends are modded down, it truly is what a majority of people on /. would agree with. Not that I think people should moderate with opinion and I try not to but it does happen and different people view different comments differently. That's why I don't pay much very little attention to a comments current mod. As long as moderation system gets rid of the obvious trolls and spammers which it does, I'm perfectly happy with it. I do my part as well and post without the Karma bonus and let the system take my post where ever it needs to go.

Mortgage companies are required to state to you the percentage of loans they sell and I think the average time frame they hold a mortgages for or basically, the likelihood of your mortgage being sold. I seem to remember being explained that and signing something to that effect when I refinanced my house about 10 years ago.

Pick a lender that is less likely to sell it off? Of course their numbers or percentages could change drastically after you have your mortgage.

1:10 scale is the physical dimensions of the exterior or the "looks" and nothing else, it is in no way related to being 1:10 scale in performance and capability.

hundreds of millions of people do provide all that information to social networking sites without having their identities stolen should give you one clue

But not a single person that used a fake name had anything stolen. If I could use a fake name and address on my credit cards, my electric bill, any online shopping site, and with my bank, I would.

It might just be that Comcast and Verizon have much better peering partners (with respect to the targets of the tests) than Cablevision.

The uplink is part of the whole internet package that its customers are paying for and the service they expect. If their peering sucks and they have slow uplinks, maybe they should upgrade them or stop advertising 20mbps service when they absolutely know they can barely support 50% of that for many hours every day of the week. What stops Cablevision from offering a 40mbps service for more money knowing they can't support that either? It is unfair for the customers.

You can guarantee anything. If the guarantee is not met, you hand out some previously agreed on compensation. Without those checks and balances, the advertised rates are useless. For this scenario, Comcast and Verizon were able to maintain a certain speed to random sites that random users visited as a whole with their network but why couldn't Cablevision? The only two explanations are Cablevision users are going to vastly different sites online then Verizon and Comcast users OR Cablevision is grossly overrating and overselling their service cheating their customers.
That is the whole point of this FCC test.

The problem for the non technical folks, they still have a very weak link. Most hotel, cafe etc wireless is wide open and unencrypted. A boost disk like this and an encrypted ttunnel that you can connect to would be more useful. Why don't hotels at least use WPA and have the key displayed the default hotel tv channel or on a small sheet of paper when they hand you the room key or something. That would better than wide open although it might cause some support headaches.

There are laws that allow the prosecution of people that fraud and steal. There are existing practices and best methods to increase security and protect valuable data on public facing internet sites and intranets.

Passing yet another law and adding a "monitor layer" in at the internet pipe or DNS level in an attempt to limit hacking and stealing does not make sense (specially one controlled by the government or special interests) and will not work any better than existing methods.

This is another attempt at corporations trying to get the taxpayers to foot the bill for their own security and to help maintain their business models and their own negligent lack of security.
Why are my tax dollars going to protect the music and movie industries? Why is it being spent tracking down knock-off purses and rogue network switching gear? Why is being spent to help BOA improve their security?

I do not agree. The days of an physical desktop in the enterprise with all of your "stuff" on it are going away. The enterprises are moving in the direction of virtual machines and virtual applications. This provides the user with a BYOC (bring your own computer) option and still provide them with a consistent interface and a "computer" to them regardless of where they are connecting to it from, it could be their home laptop running XP, Windows 7, Apple, iPad, or even Linux, their moms desktop, an android device, some thin client on their desk at work. All they need is the receiver software installed on some compatible device which is a simple install and some type of network connectivity (an example here).

It is not a one size fits all, the dust is still settling and there are some issues that are a little less mature like checking out that virtual desktop or virtual applications and using them remotely without network connectivity but it will be solved.

I think this concept will start to break people away from the MS stranglehold where people want the same software products they have at home that they have at work. You will no longer NEED MS office at home or even to run Windows because you want to work from home and be productive. No more Citrix Presentation server where the apps are slightly different the icons are not the same as you "work" computer. No more GoToMyPC or what ever to connect to that physical desktop at your desk that you are familiar with.

People will not need native methods like MS office/Outlook etc on their tablet or phone any more to do work related stuff.
           

An asteroid hit, it wouldn't have to very large either. Maybe everything wouldn't die but it would instantly change the earth as we know it. It would probably take a 100,000 years or more to get things back to what we consider normal life on earth now.

Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot.

Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.