My ISP charges 3â to mail a monthly statement in the interest of cutting down on waste paper and mailing costs, so I switched to online billing a long time ago. I don't really miss it because they were kind enough to keep sending an extra envelope with advertisements and "tell your friends" incentives every month, completely free!

And if you liked Stephenson try Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is another one of my favorites, plus Accelerando by Charles Stross, A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge and almost any book by Alastair Reynolds for some hard sci-fi. Last but not least, Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence is not bad, Vacuum Diagrams is a nice introduction to the universe and its 5 million year timeline.

Don't forget you're also developing the F-35 JSF, which seems to be a more versatile F-22 at the cost of some air superiority (which is already far superior to every other nation's air force). The bill for that program seems to be around $380 billion.

I'm sure that would work, but it's still disgusting considering the people already pay taxes for just that reason.

The problem is because the bill is so broad and vague it opens the door for selective enforcement, both in who you target and how you target them. This was brought up a few times at the hearing, and dutifully ignored. Out of all the amendments I saw proposed the only one that was voted through allowed ISPs and other institutions (like universities for example) to block an entire website rather than just the infringing content on it, if it's easier or cheaper for them to do so. A few congressmen pointed out that most websites these days run on user generated content, and that it's unbelievably stupid to encourage ISPs to block the entire site on the actions of a few of its contributors, but nobody listened.

Never mind the fact that under the bill non-profit entities like universities (which often have their own internal DNS system which qualifies them as "service providers" under the bill) would have to block websites just like an ISP would. Someone introduced an amendment to give non-profits the same protections from this clause as commercial entities get in the bill, but of course that was voted down.

I thought it was a lot more ridiculous that they spent a full 30 minutes afterward arguing over whether or not to strike the word "offensive" from the record. In the end she agreed to replace it with "impolitic and unkind". I'm surprised they didn't take a break for juice boxes and Dunkaroos while they waited.

Basically, at several points during the hearing some congressmen (usually Mr. Chaffetz and a couple others) pushed the committee to bring in some high level tech experts from various branches of the government to talk about the possible implications to DNSSec and general cyber security that SOPA might have, hence the classified briefing. They also pushed for more public hearings over and over again. It got to the point where Mr. Chaffetz offered to withdraw an amendment he made if the chairman would consider holding the classified briefing and, ideally, at least one other public briefing with "internet experts". He said he would consider it, but he didn't sound very sincere about it ("Oh, yeah ok, sure I'll consider it. Are you withdrawing your amendment now? Good, lets move on.").

According to Issa's Twitter feed the next hearing is scheduled for Dec. 21.

I just posted this in the other thread, but I'll go ahead and repost it here too, that way I can feel like I didn't waste my time on it. I actually watched most of the judiciary hearing yesterday and while I was probably in the middle of a stroke for most of it the parts I remember paint a pretty clear picture.

On the one side you had a few (very few) congressmen/women, namely Mr. Issa, Mr. Polis, Mr. Chaffetz, Ms. Lofgren and Ms. Jackson. They spent the entire hearing pleading with the chairman and the rest of the committee to allow experts (nerds as they often said) to essentially come in and explain the internet to them, because it was obvious that 99% of the members of the committee had no idea what they were talking about. They made reasonable, logical arguments and put forth one amendment after the other trying to clarify some really vague areas of the bill, all of which were shot down by the rest of the committee usually by a vote of ~6 to 24.

On the other side you had 5 or 6 members of the committee who also admitted several times that they had zero understanding of the technical aspects of the bill, but that the bill was awesome anyway. This group was mainly the chairman of the committee Mr. Smith, Mr. Berman, Mr. Watt, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Goodlatte and Ms. Waters. They made no arguments beyond "We have to do something. This is something. Therefor we should do this". Unlike the first group they didn't care that they were ignorant on the subject, they just wanted to get the damn thing passed. I doubt anyone here would be surprised to learn they all received large campaign contributions from the TV/Music/Film industry. Check the contributions of the first group and you'll find the same industry conspicuously absent. It's also worth noting that more than half the committee never said a word during the entire session that wasn't "No" in response to an amendment vote. This third group cared so little they couldn't even be bothered to take part in the debate.

So when you're condemning this committee for being willfully ignorant just keep in mind that 5 or 6 of them don't deserve to be thrown in with the rest like that. I'll end with a quote from a frustrated Darrell Issa, speaking to the chairman of the committee half way through the second day:

I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.

Probably too late here, but I actually watched most of the judiciary hearing yesterday and while I was probably in the middle of a stroke for most of it the parts I remember paint a pretty clear picture.

On the one side you had a few (very few) congressmen/women, namely Mr. Issa, Mr. Polis, Mr. Chaffetz, Ms. Lofgren and Ms. Jackson. They spent the entire hearing pleading with the chairman and the rest of the committee to allow experts (nerds as they often said) to essentially come in and explain the internet to them, because it was obvious that 99% of the members of the committee had no idea what they were talking about. They made reasonable, logical arguments and put forth one amendment after the other trying to clarify some really vague areas of the bill, all of which were shot down by the rest of the committee usually by a vote of ~6 to 24.

On the other side you had 5 or 6 members of the committee who also admitted several times that they had zero understanding of the technical aspects of the bill, but that the bill was awesome anyway. This group was mainly the chairman of the committee Mr. Smith, Mr. Berman, Mr. Watt, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Goodlatte and Ms. Waters. They made no arguments beyond "We have to do something. This is something. Therefor we should do this". Unlike the first group they didn't care that they were ignorant on the subject, they just wanted to get the damn thing passed. I doubt anyone here would be surprised to learn they all received large campaign contributions from the TV/Music/Film industry. Check the contributions of the first group and you'll find the same industry conspicuously absent. It's also worth noting that more than half the committee never said a word during the entire session that wasn't "No" in response to an amendment vote. This third group cared so little they couldn't even be bothered to take part in the debate.

So when you're condemning this committee for being willfully ignorant just keep in mind that 5 or 6 of them don't deserve to be thrown in with the rest like that. I'll end with a quote from a frustrated Darrell Issa, speaking to the chairman of the committee half way through the second day:

I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.

I have a lot of confidence in modern nuclear technology, but I have very little confidence in the companies building and maintaining it. No matter how theoretically safe you make a reactor you're always going to be up against the cost cutting, profit oriented ethic that forms the basis of capitalism. I just don't think it's practical to regulate the industry enough to ensure it's safe.

That said, I would still take the minute risk of a nuclear disaster over the continuous disaster of fossil fuels. There are better alternatives, but it seems like the prevailing attitude in the industry is "Don't want nuclear? Fine, we'll go back to coal".

It might be useless today, but now that they've got that first step of forcing an ISP to block a website they have all the time in the world to work out more effective alternatives to DNS filtering. I don't think they'll ever find something 100% effective, but they can do some real damage to the internet as we know it in the search. And as an added bonus they can say they've "exhausted all legal avenues" in their valiant struggle against piracy, that should help their cause some the next time they push for new legislation don't you think?

Come to think of it, what happened to the Google Cache links? And who's idea was it to remove the search box at the bottom of the page?

For those that are interested in a closer look behind the scenes of the Frostbite 2 engine DICE recently held a 1 hour talk about the inner workings of the graphics in BF3. It's pretty amazing what can be done with DX 11 these days.

The last 3 accepted stories have had clearly misleading titles or summaries. I don't normally complain about editing on /. but christ guys, get it together.

Asking the rich to focus less on their individual wealth is simply too much to ask, it goes against the core ideals of capitalism and the reason they were able to get rich in the first place (assuming they weren't born into wealth). It's just not realistic on anything but the long term.

Instead you should find a balance between capitalism and effective regulation. Corporations should try to maximize their profits, but there absolutely have to be rules laid down to keep things sane. One of the most important rules is to keep capitalism and democracy separate. Nobody should be able to buy anything legislatively, as soon as you allow that everything else goes down the shitter. Try this: All the campaign money is taken from tax dollars and thrown into a giant pot, every party gets a share of it based on their "size" (quantify that how you will), and that's all they get. Throw in some harsh new penalties on corruption and see if things don't start to improve.

I'd argue the main reason things have gotten so bad over the past few decades is the utter lack of rules. They either don't exist, or they're so ineffective and full of holes that they may as well not be there at all. Don't wait for the protestors to draft a nice list of "demands" for the evening news to regurgitate, the problems are obvious enough. Tax loopholes need to be closed, justice needs to be applied to the rich just as equally as to the poor, campaign finance needs to be reformed, corporate rights need to be reformed, fines need to be based on percentage of revenue instead of fixed sums, military budgets need to be scaled back dramatically, the education system needs more investment, people need to be trained and put to work on infrastructure projects, the list goes on and on and on. Take your pick and get started. It's hard and it's complicated, but for god's sake it has to get done.

Now for the caveat: don't ask me how, because I haven't got a clue.