400GB a month is already unreasonable for some, and it's rapidly becoming unreasonable for higher percentages. Not only is online video here, but people want it in HD. 400GB is only 10-20 full Blurays. It's only 10 TV seasons at 1080p for 1hr shows with full length seasons. At least 1 of every 3 months I'll exceed 400, sometimes hitting 600GB+. And I'm just one person... imagine a family with a few teenage kids, or college students living together?

People who exclusively stream don't get full bitrate, but they will soon. In the meantime, people who like to download full quality video, because 4-6Mbps is simply not good enough (or because connection quality can't handle it smoothly despite available throughput), are already over the line of just about every capped provider. I'm not downloading things I never watch just to collect them either.
Even streaming alone... 5Mbps is 2.3GB/hr, or 400GB in 174hours: 3 people streaming Netflix HD for 2 hours a day average, and bam. That's not even considering all other internet activity. Hardly unreasonable, and becoming far more common as more and more people forego cable tv.

And even beyond that, capping total bandwidth has no justification other than to eventually move to metered usage (don't be fooled into thinking that means light users paying less-- the bottom 10% will pay what they're paying now, everyone else will pay more). Throttling connections temporarily if the network is congested is reasonable; but capping overall usage is not, since ISP-level connections are priced by link speed- it doesn't cost the ISP anything else extra. Fortunately my two ISP options are Cablevision (Optimum), and FiOS, and neither of them have usage caps.

Maybe they need to stop putting marketshare above all else? It's bad enough how every version is progressively dumbing down the UI in an attempt to attract mainstream users. They did just fine long before they had the marketshare they do today. And they sure as hell didn't get off the ground by marketing to the non-technophile masses.
Are there benefits to increased marketshare? Absolutely. But when did that become the most important factor in designing a web browser?

Since there is no thermostat on the wall, things can only be adjusted by the HVAC guy or a the one maintenance guy who knows how, getting on a ladder and doing something in the ceiling...

Whoever is friends with the HVAC guy. Management doesn't care, because their offices are on a different system.

Better yet, tell them the perp had a small amount of drugs. They'll be busting down the door with the SWAT team and shooting dogs in no time.

For speeding the 'status quo' is too far in the enforcement direction. Almost no one is advocating stopping any and all speed enforcement, but the way it's set up now has nothing to do with safety. It's all about generating revenue. Cops hide around blind corners to catch people going 5mph over on an nearly empty interstate. This 'equilibrium' is not acceptable.

You mean only drug offenses right? Because enforcing that is what brings money back into the department through asset forfeiture and Byrne grants (and undeclared cash into officers pockets). Other stuff costs money, and is hard. In the world of arrest quotas, low-level drug offenses are easy stat boosters. Murder/attempted isn't typically investigated unless it involves a rich (and usually white) victim.

The Win8 interface is only an improvement if you use a touch screen. It's intellectually dishonest and blatant corporate shilling to make a factual assertion that it's an improvement without qualifying for which use case, because for non-touch mouse and keyboard, whether it's an improvement is anything but objectively true. What's particularly sad is how many people would mod that up. In the old days that would have been modded into oblivion.

Assuming you can view every page and do what you need to do without ever turning on Javascript. Which is quite the tall order. For example, there is no e-mail service on this planet that allows signup and use without JS turned on for at least one step or payment (this sounds ridiculous, but go and try it. There used to be. They've all been changed or shut down.). And it's been clearly established all it takes is one malicious script to unmask your IP while on tor.

Actually they would have a picture of your face and could go from there. A component serial number is discovered, which leads to the manufacturer, which leads to what store sold it; then their inventory systems can tell you what time it was sold, then you can match that up to security camera footage. This has been documented with burner phones, no reason it couldn't be done with computers.

It's like you missed the last year and still think this stuff is the fantasy of conspiracy nuts. Or work for the NSA and want to lull everyone into thinking they're safe.

Yes because that's the weak part. *sigh*

It's a real shame that the original Visual Basic lineage was dumped in favor of .NET. It's like Windows XP... there's still plenty of people using VB6 to this day. I'm one of them. People never fail to underestimate the power of that language. The last version was released in 1998; yet I'm here on 64-bit Windows 7 and finding not only does the original stuff still work, but I have no trouble using API and Type Libraries to access all sorts of new Win7 things like libraries (music, docs, etc), damn near any other interface, and the latest common controls. Hell there's even a way to include straight assembly code if there was no other way for something. And adapting this ancient language to work with modern features is still light years easier than learning .NET.

We were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. The power at my house was out for 6 days. But cell towers were up the entire time (the closest one was down 12hrs, but calls could still be made with a weaker signal), and as soon as the water allowed physical access, Verizon rolled out trucks that parked at a few places in the neighborhood from 10am to 10pm where people could plug in power strips. About 100 people plugged in at any given time. Gave us a chance to talk to our neighbors, and recharge our devices to get on Facebook, which was the major method the city government used to communicate with us. Power updates, food/water relief, shelter info, transit updates, etc were all on Facebook. Not just government updates either; updates from people around town in the comments were critical. Phone numbers always had outdated info.
I used to live in a more rural area. Yeah we had working POTS, but nothing else. Hurricane Charlie hit us hard there; I wish we had cells and local government on facebook. I think people really overestimate the value of POTS, especially if you don't know what numbers to call or local government sucks at providing info. The resources used to maintain POTS could be put towards emergency restoration of more useful services.

Are you talking about quality? Because if you think Netflix 1080p (where they even offer it) even approaches Bluray quality, you've obviously never had experience with top quality viewed correctly (screen size/distance, etc).

But beyond that, even if Netflix did offer true 1080p, they still fall way short of what pirates offer:

• Selection Quantity. Netflix's selection is the widest, and is still god awful by any reasonable measure. Legit music stores have finally exceeded pirated selections. Why can't movies/tv?
• Permanence: If you only ever watch a movie or show once, this might not matter, but lots of people want to actually buy a movie or show so they can watch it again. Whenever. Nobody offers a DRM-free download of top quality besides pirates.
• Offline: Guess what? Sometimes I want to watch without being online. Maybe I'm traveling and a steady fast connection isn't there. Nothing beats a portable local copy that can be easily converted to any format. I have a 60Mbps connection in a major city, yet am still plagued by BUFFERING like it's RealPlayer ReBorn.
• Availability: All the legit players are constantly changing whats available. You see shows you like, you pay to subscribe, then at some point they just decide to stop carrying it. This is absolutely unacceptable.
• Experience: No legit store can compete with the quality of experience of downloading a file with no hassles, no drm, no ads, no previews, no commercials, no Silverlight bs... just download and play from a huge selection of formats and subtitles.

It took a long time, but legit music offerings are finally all around better than pirate offerings. And it's been a fantastic financial success. It's crystal clear what gets consumers to pay. Netflix is nowhere near satisfying for anyone who values the things I listed, which is a non-trivial percent of people. Everyone who comes over my house is absolutely astounded that I have 80+ full TV shows (nearly 1/3rd in HD, mostly because HD sources are not available) and 500+ HD movies all able to be played any time, on either my monitor or the tv, or copied to any device, going straight into the program, with a single click. They've never experienced anything like it. And there's no amount of money I could pay to have it legally. (although few consumers would even want a setup that requires 12TB of disk space and NAS, but they certainly would like the benefits on a smaller collection).
And right there is where they could rake in the cash from even a dedicated pirate like me: Offer me the dozens of shows in HD that aren't able to be pirated, and the other dozen that need remastering in hd... and I'd pay. I have paid. Unfortunately it was to a cyberlocker because no public torrent existed, no paid legit offer existed... but there it was, 5 seasons all in full HD, on uploaded.com.

What you're speaking of is jury nullification, something which is extraordinarily rare these days. If a juror indicates he's aware of it, he's dismissed (they WILL ask). If it comes out that he lied about awareness of it to get on the jury, it's a mistrial. Same if a lawyer for either side brings it up, which they don't even try because they'd face trouble. Judges are explicitly dishonest and instruct jurors they are not allowed to return not guilty for disagreeing with the law in general or the law in this case. If you tell a juror about it, or hand out literature where a juror is likely to see it, you can be arrested for jury tampering among other charges. All of these things have stood through appeals. The right to nullify is still there, but good luck trying to get off on those grounds.

I see you've had very limited interaction with the police, and certainly not outside of a majority white middle to upper class environment. If anything it would be underreported out of fear of retaliation.

Comments like that tend to get modded down because they're WRONG. Most cops are NOT good people. First off the notion that cops become cops to bring flowers and sunshine to the world is incredibly naive. At *best*, they're there to catch 'bad guys', not help their community. But motives aren't really important, actions are. All cops arrest and support obtaining criminal convictions for victimless, consensual acts at some point in their career. People like to say 'well, that's the law'... that's no different than 'just following orders'. It's wrong, period.
Even if you disagree with that point, you need to consider that while not all cops perpetrate illegal acts or civil rights violations, you better believe they know at least one other officer who has, and kept their mouth shut. Covering up for someone else's abuse makes you a bad person.

These cameras need to be on every officer, always rolling, and most important: if the camera "breaks" or the footage is "lost", the version of events given by the civilian should be considered more credible.

An important, relevant detail you skipped is that, to be held accountable in reality, an officer's behavior has to be so outrageously over the line, with overwhelming evidence that's not just civilian witnesses, that a normal citizen would get 30+ years for it. Then, MAYBE, the officer will be fired or sentenced to 5 or less. And holding an officer personally liable in a civil case? Even higher burden.