Basically we have 3 choices:
1, Say fuck the environment and install all kind of bird-choppers and fish shreaders as renewable energy generators, that usually take more energy to make and install than they'll ever produce.
2. Go big with fission, gen 4 uranium for now, thorium in the near future, that way we might get a hydrogen economy off the ground too and really protect the environment
3. Stay the present course, it hasn't warmed for over 18 years anyway.

Microsoft's empire has been crumbling since August 24, 1995 when Win95 was released, and that's slight before netcraft shown the demise of netBSD, and Linux was predicted to take over the desktop; and on a lighter note, Duke Nukem Forever has been released and we'll have fly cars any year now.

Tab Cola had several problems, one it tasted like cola unlike Coke and Pepsi, much more like RC Cola, it was purchased to compete with RC's Diet Rite cola, It used sodium saccharin, which has been the target of several attempts to be listed as a health hazard, but those commercials killed them, https://youtu.be/DJL4yQn_7qQ, everybody remembers the commercial, few remembered the product.

The area is very sparse when you factor in income and cost of living, they probably don't even count households below a defined level, so on that basis the households per square mile is far less than you would think.

Most likely they didn't fail, they just define success differently and that definition is backed by precedent when a town of 2000 used a $250.00/hr lawyer tried to sue them for the same thing.

I read an blog article written by Bob Metcalfe a few years ago where he mentioned that every building in Manhattan is within 150 feet of a fiber optic cable, and only a hardware install from being an OC768, if your curious that would be a monthly inernet bill of between $1.5 - 2.5M and carry 975 times the bandwidth of Verizon's FiOS. The one of biggest expense in putting in a fiber network is actually laying the fiber and laying 1 cable isn't significantly less expensive than laying 50, which is why most of the fiber is dark, it's cheaper to put it in now before labor costs go up.

The copyright owner/owners can always re-issue under any licence they choose at any time, the only complication that can arise is when there are multiple owners who can't or will not agree to change the licence. This is a problem with the Linux kernal because there have been so many contributions that have been added and removed over the decades that no one knows who all the copyright owners are.

Those guys are level 2 ISP, one notch below internet backbone, except AT&T which is level 1 too. There is a very good chance Sonic.net is peering with one or more of the 5. When they screw with the traffic, they're very likely screwing with your traffic too.

I would assume that a car insurance company would be a Covered Entity as most States require the insurance to cover the cost of health care necessary as the result of an accident.

Allstate's patent also said the invention has the potential to evaluate drivers' physiological data, including heart rate, blood pressure and electrocardiogram signals, which could be recorded from steering wheel sensors. ... The recorded data may also provide an objective behavioral data collection system for third parties, e.g., health insurance companies, lending institutions, credit-rating companies, product and service marketing companies, potential employers, to evaluate an individual's behavioral characteristics in a real-life and commonly experienced situation, i.e., driving a motor vehicle, Insurer monitoring your heart rate?

That's a lot of big words, but all I can hear is HIPAA violation!

Protected Health Information.
  The Privacy Rule protects all "individually identifiable health information" held or transmitted by a covered entity or its business associate, in any form or media, whether electronic, paper, or oral. The Privacy Rule calls this information "protected health information (PHI)."12

“Individually identifiable health information” is information, including demographic data, that relates to:

        the individual’s past, present or future physical or mental health or condition,
        the provision of health care to the individual, or
        the past, present, or future payment for the provision of health care to the individual,

and that identifies the individual or for which there is a reasonable basis to believe it can be used to identify the individual.13 Individually identifiable health information includes many common identifiers (e.g., name, address, birth date, Social Security Number).
Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule

People didn't starve to death when the lead was taken out of gasoline, when farmers can't afford fuel and fertilizer, the poor will not be able to afford food.

And usually they're on another line, so if you want to talk to me don't call, then ask me to hold please.

I'm curious why these computers so willingly accept connections from IP addresses willy nilly; whatever happens to
deny all
accept (Trusted host IP)
at the firewall?

Well lets see:

Transparent Data Encryption

Oracle Advanced Security Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) stops would-be attackers from bypassing the database and reading sensitive information from storage by enforcing data-at-rest encryption in the database layer. Applications and users authenticated to the database continue to have access to application data transparently (no application code or configuration changes are required), while attacks from OS users attempting to read sensitive data from tablespace files and attacks from thieves attempting to read information from acquired disks or backups are denied access to the clear text data. Transparent Data Encryption

Summary: With the introduction of transparent data encryption (TDE) in SQL Server 2008, users now have the choice between cell-level encryption as in SQL Server 2005, full database-level encryption by using TDE, or the file-level encryption options provided by Windows. TDE is the optimal choice for bulk encryption to meet regulatory compliance or corporate data security standards. TDE works at the file level, which is similar to two Windows® features: the Encrypting File System (EFS) and BitLocker Drive Encryption, the new volume-level encryption introduced in Windows Vista®, both of which also encrypt data on the hard drive. TDE does not replace cell-level encryption, EFS, or BitLocker. Database Encryption in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition

The major players seem to do it out of the box.

That should be

It's because consulting firms are unwilling to pay competitive wages for highly skilled computer experts in the US, so they must expand the H1-B program to bring in more foreigners to compensate for the lack of competent Americans willing to work for peon wages!