Well since you are getting connection to the internet for free...
Nope, not true.
I don't have Comcast's phone or TV service (both of which suck), and only have their internet service because that's what we're stuck with in this little town for broadband (at least until sat/wireless catches up in speed).
And doing so for a commercial purpose. Which, in theory, could make it criminal.
At the very least they are modifying user content, which should by all rights push them out of any DMCA safe harbor protections.
Agreed - I suspect that the translation from AT&T is as follows:
"Please don't up the definition... we suck, and don't want to have to explain why we can't provide "Broadband" to the majority of our customers anymore."
The sad part is, I bet that all the other ISPs are silently cheering AT&T on.
Oftentimes, they do that when the candidate has little-to-no experience in the office.
Kind of odd in this case, but with most political appointees the press likes it's a means to hedge against cries of nepotism, favoritism, or suchlike. Gives them a means to shout "...see? Mr. So-and-So is qualified for the job!!!!11!!"
No, the exact opposite of what we need right now is a series of executive orders enforcing implementations that hurt technology, rather than foster it.
Example? If one came down the pike demanding that all government agencies use only Microsoft-built operating systems (or worse, one forcing the use of
Depends if you have a license or not - $200 and a doc's note is pretty much all you need, then you're pretty much off to the races if you're growing for yourself. IF you're on disability, the $200 is discounted substantially (my in-laws had a license... it was weird going to their house for the first time and seeing ganja *trees* growing right next to their house... okay, maybe not real trees, but these bastards were 12' tall.)
Then again, if you don't want to do the paperwork, Vancouver, WA is only like 20 minutes' drive north of PDX.
There is a flip-side to that, though: The benefits are astounding for anyone who knows how to navigate the system.
Example? My father retired 3 years ago from the VA as a biomed engineer. His pay wasn't that great (though in Arkansas it was well above average given local cost-of-living). The real benefits came in when he was able to 'buy up' a full military retirement from his tour in Vietnam, add his full 30+ year retirement from the VA, and now pulls in something like $6k/mo in pensions after taxes... and this is *before* counting his rather massive 401k that still sits untapped. Oh, and he gets full medical/dental/vision benefits, paid-for.
Dunno about you, but the only way I can think of to get something similar is either to build your own business and sell it for a huge pile of cash, or spend an inordinate amount of time as a day-trader in your off-hours.
The closest I came to working for any government outside of military service was as a teacher (then later as a professor)... again, the pay wasn't the greatest, but the benefits were jaw-dropping (healthcare/vision/dental? free with ridiculously low co-pays. Before the tech school I taught at became a state college, I had three months off each year *with pay* - they had merely averaged my salary over 12 months. Even though I had only worked there six years, I'm still entitled to a small pro-rated pension from the state whenever I decide to retire since I was there at least 5 yrs.)
Notice that I never even mentioned the hours. Overtime is rare unless you're hourly and really want the extra dosh. Your day begins at 7-8am, and ends at 4pm - if that.
Also notice that as long as you never go into management, it's almost impossible for a federal employee to get fired or laid-off, even if you're a total fuck-up; that tends to appeal to the less competent among us. Even at the state level, I often stood with a dropped jaw as my two 'colleagues' demonstrated massive incompetence at CS, yet taught it (example? Every student workstation they had came with a public IP addy w/ no firewalls or proxy present, and they *all* ran Windows NT 4, then Win2k/XP. I was the lone *NIX teacher, but even on the infrastructure level, I never put up with that shit - one public IP addy fed the whole room nicely. My colleagues had to completely re-image their classrooms once every two days or so, mostly due to infections and zombification - and I had to build the imaging server for them, else they would have bought some expensive-assed 3rd-party solution to do it
Long story short? Yeah, civil service pay sucks, but it is a nice racket for those who want to get a whole lot for very little effort. You have to really love paper, though.
It's an oddity, but damn it's easy to get used to - especially in the winter.
The sad part is when you travel. I remember sitting at a gas station for something like three minutes in Atlanta... until my wife prompted me that I had to get out and pump my own damn gas.
Agreed - I held off until well into Quake 2 (Weapons Factory MOD) before I got the vidcard and OpenGL bump, and it difference was astounding...
And yeah, I did it because suddenly I kept getting sniped even in the darkest corners until I did upgrade.
If you can't bring yourself to care, why did you post?
That aside, it's good that it was recovered, though it is, to be fair, still a snapshot in time. Now if they had something over multiple years from that period, we could get a better picture.
Nota Bene: "way larger" isn't exactly precise, especially given any competent chart on sea ice coverage over periods as small as a couple of decades. We've seen sea ice grow like crazy over the past two years, after all.
Apple != Oranges - In your example, the band would likely get busted for trespassing on private property, then would go to court and have at least some semblance of due process. In TFA, dude got locked up for "disobeying a police officer", which is a bit more ephemeral (and way too generalized) than trespassing would be.
"people"? You misspelled "legislators" - in 2003/4, Qwest (now CenturyStink) and Comcast went nuts and brib^M convinced Utah legislators to abandon the UTOPIA multi-city municipal broadband project, then they began slathering on lawsuits and threats thereof.
heh - don't eat much? You should see the electrical and HVAC bills...
Everyone likes accountability when they have control over it. The cops would have control over the tapes, right? So they get to choose which parts to show and which parts to "inconveniently lose."
One small problem with that theory... if they "inconveniently lose" a critical bit of video evidence at trial, the defense would savage them for it, and the jury is likely to let that fact color their decision in a way that is not advantageous to the prosecution.
All said, since most prosecutions end up plea-bargains this may be moot, but for those that go to trial...?
If one cannot order it cheaply and easily on the web ala Amazon shopping experience, who is going to bother to go through a reseller? That was the model 40 years ago!
Unless you meant AWS or similar, err, WTF?
If you buy any actual server iron at most companies, you get to play with an RFQ/RFP, untangle the resulting bids, and deal with the PO process, courtesy of Accounts Payable (and Lord help you if you try and circumvent that!)
Seriously - a VAR is usually the only way to make comprehensible sense out of such a purchase, because usually you're not only buying the metal, but you're buying VMWare/Oracle/Whatever licenses to go along with it as well (and if you're dumb enough to do Windows and don't have an SA/EA, you get to buy that too).
Shit, man - the time saved by having a VAR bundle that mess and bid against each other is *way* more than worth the hassle sometimes...
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
