then it's time for an "intellectual 'property' tax." Let them have their eternal copyright, but tax the living shit out of it.

Whoever uses "whomever" as a subject needs some serious English lessons.

The source of that quote, just happens to sell a solution to this horrible, dangerous threat. (scans article) Yup! Lieberman Software conveniently provides "Privileged Identity Management Solutions." But quis ipsos custodes custodiet? Who manages the privileged identity management solution manager? Or will they take that arduous task off the company's hands, too? Fscking charlatans.

That only applies to credit accounts, not to checking or savings accounts.

You go to your teen-aged daughters room and see a man - intruder or ill-behaved daughter's boyfriend?

Not really the best example for a shoot/don't shoot scenario :).

I understand completely -- but they have no right to pull the rug out from under people who already paid in advance for issues of a real, paper magazine. That, and even if I were happy with having the rest of my subscription filled with something that has no value to me (I can read about Linux on a computer all day long on lots of websites without paying for a subscription to anything) there are enough people who are going to cancel or not subscribe to begin with that "going digital" is just the first droplets of the magazine circling the drain. It's the beginning of the end, because not enough people are willing to pay for what is made redundant by the web.

Except that China has the advantage that they can shoot their rapacious capitalists if they threaten to crater the economy.

Republicans can point to the spiraling debt; Democrats can point to Tea party-driven Republican brinkmanship over raising the debt ceiling. I suspect the real answer lies in cui bono -- who is in a position to make money from the downgrade? Also, I wonder if we're about to see some criminal indictments "coincidentally" handed down or at least a nasty, intrusive investigation of S&P related to their high ratings on the mortgage-backed paper. Sure, it'd be a transparent case of retaliation, but it would take a while to wend its way through the courts and would serve pour l'encouragement des autres.

Good point -- I signed up with a mail service provider for IMAP/POP/webmail and SMTP after leaving Speakeasy -- the one I signed up with doesn't unbundle outbound MX but see upon looking that at least one offers the service for $20/year.

Two things that neither IMAP download nor Google's data liberation tools can't grab: chats (I saw some did a hack for this awhile back based on libgmail, but I doubt the code still works) or voice/SMS message archives from Google Voice) en masse. Losing those wouldn't be the end of the world, but if those could be backed up too, Google could shut me off and I'd be back in business inside the few hours it took to promulgate a new email address to friends and family.

That, and IPs identified as part of residential blocks (e.g. cable/DSL) are in DNS blacklists and a good number of mail servers will reject incoming mail from you even if you're doing everything right. So he needs to factor in the cost of a "business" account when making the decision. (I used to host my own MX on Speakeasy back before they started to suck about five years ago--at the time, they offered static IPs and update RDNS for their residential services.)

I think a more common name (e.g. John Smith, Jim Jones) would be a more effective means of maintaining privacy in the face of the current and future mass personal information harvesting regimes than would an even more unique name.

Hey, it rained yesterday -- did you get sea pay? (Just kidding--tremendous respect for the USCG here!)

By your own argument, I assume you support government regulation on food intake and exercise, since those could also cause early deaths leaving widows and children for the poor insurance companies/the state to support? And no, I don't live with my parents, thank you very much.

The only thing the TSA (and our government as a whole in the same vein) has done is to encourage the terrorists even more.

While you can. The TSA has already set up shop at train and bus stations to test the waters. Driving is safe from groping and the nude-o-scope. For now.