That's because you're mistaking the states and transitions. The right description is "I have zero stone. I pick a stone. I have one stone. I pick a stone. I have two stones. I pick a stone. I have three stones and there a no stones left to pick". IOW, you see the three transition, or actions, of counting "one", "two" and "three", but you map these actions to the first three states (thus ending on the third state) instead of placing them between the four states (thus ending on the fourth one).

It is counted because it was expected and missing, or it was present then removed, or it is the lack of something expected to come. Think of someone who has a dept to pay but has no money, or who has a dept to pay and just enough money, or who starts his life with no possessions yes. In all three cases, a count of zero is considered, and even though Romans did not represent zero as they did other numbers, the concept of zero money was perfectly accessible to them, either in a comparison, or as a result of subtraction, or as the start of an accumulation.

I beg to differ on two accounts:

• A. Maybe you don't, but that does not apply to "programmers", only to an imaginary set of "programmers" which you consider yourself a member of.
• B. Iterating is not necessarily entirely different from counting.

After all, the whole calculus thing stems from the latin for "small stone", which was the way to count livestock, by enumerating them. Start with no stone in hand; pick one stone per animal when you lead them some place; drop one stone per animal when you take the animals back; make sure you have no stone left, none missing either when all animals have passed. IOW... count from zero up, and then back to zero. :)

re: reinvestment, I have not seen indications or amounts in the letter. However, considering the economy in France, I suspect part of the move is to save money in order for the agencies to compensate whatever budget cut they might be hit with. That some of the saving be reinvested is rather positive in this light.

Re: Open Office (actually Libre Office, but let's not be too picky): maybe to its full power it is a piece of crap compared to the full power of MS Office. However, my wife, who cannot be said to be a FOSS zealot in any way, uses Libre Office (and Ubuntu) daily on her home computer and so far has never complained about any shortcomings of LO. And the reason is, she does not use it to its full power, nor does she use MS Office to its full power, and when you compare the suites for daily mundane use, they perform just as well.

Re: Subversion: ever heard of Git? Again, maybe it doesn't fit everyone's bill. But for my OSS-related hobbies as well as my day job, Git has not exhibited any shortcoming so far -- quite the opposite in fact.

Actually, this law, or more precisely the HADOPI which the law has created, has come under criticism from the government for its costly inefficiency: so far, HADOPI managed only to bring a single case to court, and it was an textbook example of a non-voluntarily infringer who was found guilty mostly because he tried to prove his innocence and despite his obvious intent to comply with the law (details upon request) -- and was fined a gigantic EUR 150 (plus court fees I guess).

Besides, HADOPI did nothing regarding fostering legal music and video offers, which was the second half of its mission.

Analysts (usual caveats apply) here tend to think HADOPI as it stands will not survive.

Want some frogs with that? :)

Well, this is assuming that EUR 150 is all he'll have to pay.

However, in France (just like in many other places and possibly even yours), the losing side of the trial may have to pay a fine (here, the 150 euros), but also bears the costs of the trial, or "dépens"), which I think are the proceeds you are speaking of.

So I guess it (meaning your comment) is true... lacking in the fact-checking department. :)

Hope this (meaning my explanation) helps, if ever so slightly, a lessening of broad-prejudice-based commenting in the future.

What he wanted to say was this: Was sailing SSW at position 33 degrees N 72 degrees W. First mate, who you may recall was appointed in New Guinea against my wishes and is probably a head-hunter, indicated by signs that something was amiss. It appears that quite a vast expanse of seabed has risen up in the night. It contains a large number of buildings, many of which appear pyramid-like in structure. We are aground in the courtyard of one of these. There are some rather unpleasant statues. Amiable old men in long robes and diving helmets have come aboard the ship and are mingling happily with the passengers, who think we organized this. Please advise.

His questing finger moved slowly down the page, and stopped. Good old International Maritime Codes. They'd been devised eighty years before, but the men in those days had really thought hard about the kind of perils that might possibly be encountered on the deep. He picked up his pen and wrote down: "XXXV QVVX." Translated, it meant: "Have found Lost Continent of Atlantis. High Priest just won quoits contest."

in Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett.

So this model works on a strategy of waste and artificial pricing ?

Strategy (1) of always making sure that the resources are there just doe not work, because there will always be more demand than the available resources and these resources are ultimately limited.

Strategy (2) does not work because people downloading (and payingà more will still clog the net to the point that people paying less (and downloading less) won't be able to download what little they pay for.

Make sure to read the contract. What bandwidth exactly do they sell you? Usually, bandwidth is guaranteed, if it is at all, between you and them only. Beyond that, they cannot and will not guarantee anything.

It would be hard to say what you suggest, because of the N customers among whom the bandwidth should be shared, not all *require* 1/Nth of it. Some will happily use far less, and some will want far more. So in this model of equality, some bandwidth would be wasted to people who did not even ask for it, and will be unavailable to some people who could have made use of it.

Why do you think the saying "the Devil is in the details" exists? Because, precisely, any solution where you "leave the technical details to the specialists" means someone just *assumed* that what they see as a solution is feasible, whereas actually only the detailed analysis by a specialist will tell if it is -- and usually conclude it is not, at least not without a good load of devilling.

We French have a name for such holy solutions, we call them yakafokons ("Y'a qu'à - faut qu'on", i.e. "You just need to - Somebody should").

English-speaking people who ever read Murphy's Law book II also recognize the concept: a complex problem always has a simple, easy to understand, wrong solution.

So that would be an "equalize by IP address" rule. But not all IPs consume the same amount of data; so that would be "weighted equalize by IP address", or it would favor small traffic IPs -- not neutral.

But then, the weight for an IP would be provided by an IP... Honest IPs would send out their real needs (if they ever can determine that, actually) and dishonest IPs would send out exaggerated needs to be sure to get what they actually need, thus causing the honest ones to starve.

Doesn't seem neutral to me.

My question makes no sense only in a situation of infinite resource availability. Alas, such a situation is unrealistic (and a waste of resources which, at this point of our history, would seem quite inappropriate). Even a network which would be sized to withstand, on average, the current demand, occasional peaks are inevitable, and packets have to be dropped then -- how do we choose which packets to drop?

Or, IOW, how do we choose which packets to keep, and which ones do we send first? How do you "handle" competing packets in scarse resource situations? First come, first serve? That would favor heavy traffic and hurt lightweight protocols -- not to mention TCP vs UDP inequalities before packet latency. Equalize by port? That's calling for people to use nonstandard ports. Equalize by traffic? That hurts high traffic protocols. So what do you suggest?

So, again: what in technical terms, barring universals and ambuiguity, is net neutrality, i.e. how do you apply net neutrality in real conditions?