That has not and will NEVER stop $TELCO from selling services across this with "UP TO" marketingspeak which means "we fuck you royally for a service which is online but effectively unuseable".

.... when I say "shaddup and take my money already!" (where do I sign up for this magical island experience)

People are happy to "go explore and the consequences can go fuck themselves". In fact, some people are HAPPIEST in such circumstances.

Long before there was ever proposed a ONE WAY Mars Mission I was saying that the NASA/US insistence on human safety during exploration missions was THE WRONG ATTITUDE.

I said that should such a mission be proposed, with a well explained and clearly stated intention to NEVER even ATTEMPT to return these pioneers to earth (yes folks, you're gonna die out there - one way or another) they'd STILL have squilliions more applicants than they could ever accept.

And I was proven right.

The Same Goes for this (as yet hypothetical) 'Google Island', there's be literally thousands of people who would rationally consider all the possible negative outcomes and despite everything still choose to explore-the-possibilities.

To deny such a thing is true is to completely misunderstand something fundamental about what it is to be human.

For some opportunities the reward is so great that it is worth any risk.

And before anyone tries to belittle such an atitude, remember folks that without such a pioneering risk-accepting attitude The US of A would never have been discovered (by anyone). In fact without such attitudes your great-to-the-umpteenth primate ancestors would never have left the trees (ditto THEIR great-to-the-umpteenth fishlike ancestors and water).

Shaddup And Take My Money Already!

Somebody confused the difference between DATA and INFORMATION.

To stop the terrorists we need MORE INFORMATION, not MORE DATA.

See: Signal To Noise Ratio.

Or, perhaps (ie MORE LIKELY) this has NOTHING to do with Catching The BadGuys and EVERYTHING to do with BEING SEEN TO BE DOING SOMETHING (aka Security Theater, The ONLY thing we have to fear is fear itself, The BEST way for a government to control the people is keep them in a constant state of fear)

Absolutely! And now their teacher should invite some random scientist/professor to teach the class a lesson on "the scientific method, research bias, double-blind testing, proper control cases". Could easily be covered (at a very basic level) in one class.

THEN walk the students through an extended version of the experiment, at least attempting to identify a potential cause for the lack of germination.

What these students did was excellent, while they're still excited about it someone should show them how to make it even more awesome.

Did you miss the part where the government TRIED TO do exactly that last year, and THE NRA LOBBYISTS SHOT THE LEGISLATION DOWN.

Yeah, but so does Mickey Mouse - and NOBODY takes him seriously as A World Power either.

The vast overwhelming majority of users would look for accurate fast repeatable action.

After all, The Internet Is For Porn.

You, sir, are mentally deficient.

VDSL technologies do NOT provide a 100Mbps service.

They provide an UP TO 100Mbps service.

As the bandwidth capacity of the service is dependent on copper-length and quality the provider MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEES REGARDING SERVICE QUALITY.

However, with a fibre service, they DO provide guarantees, because fibre in the last mile is a truly digital service, either it works or it doesn't.

And when it works, it works at the full service specification, none of that WEASEL WORDING like "up to" which means they can charge you for 100Mbps service but if all you can get is 2Mbps YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO RECOURSE.

This is ONE of the MAJOR problems with ALL copper-in-the-last-mile services, it's all about THE PROVIDER legally being able to provide a FUCKING AWFUL SERVICE and still charge you premium service pricing.

AAAAND don't get me started on the MASSIVELY HUGE difference in upload speed between copper vs fibre in the last mile.

I have no reference to show for it but I read an article last year where there was DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE (someone did a study somewhere) that "feeding bees corn syrup" was most likely one of the factors contributing to CCD.

Again, this news was shouted down with "well if you can't prove that it absolutely in all cases leads CCD then we're not gonna change our practices".

Here in Australia a recent report showed that Coal Seam Gas exploration in this country was waved past all the usual environmental checks-and-balances by over-eager Government departments promised literally thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue.

And when I say "waved past" for example there was a specific case of an "environmental impact study" which *completely dopped* an entire chapter (er, the only chapter) evaluating contamination of the water table, which (oddly enough) was actually THE PRIMARY ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN.

Time and time again we see The Industry just bypassing ALL concerns in the interest of "but but but we'll make bazillions in profit".

Let me say this clearly: UNBRIDLED GREED AND LACK OF CARE FOR THE FUTURE WILL MAKE THE ENVIRONMENT UNABLE TO SUSTAIN HUMAN LIFE.

Identifying the skin-color of Dinosaurs will only serve to prove that Western Society STILL has fundamental issues with racial discrimination, ever after millions of years.

DRM was NEVER about "for the customers", nor was it EVER about "for the producers" , it's about how the content DISTRIBUTORS screw the paying public.

Unfortunately the reality of the situation is "won't somebody think of THE CHILDREN" (er,I mean The Starving Artists) arguments are all BALONEY.

DRM doesn't help starving anybodies, because it only takes ONE Copyright Violation and The Cat (er I mean The Content) Is Out Of The Bag and it's a free-for all.

The End Result is that DRM is NOTHING more than a major inconvenience to legitimate users.

DRM as a concept is EVIL, just like CENSORSHIP as a concept is EVIL.

Sure you can always think of some argument based on "in a pure and perfect world, this makes good sense", but IN PRACTICE all that happens is that perfectly good and upright citizens GET ROYALLY FUCKED OVER.

EVERY SINGLE TIME, LEGITIMATE USERS GET ROYALLY FUCKED OVER.

Seriously? You HONESTLY believe what you wrote?

I don't often bite back on such OBVIOUS BULLSHIT but you, sir are a complete ASSHAT.

The PRIMARY reason there is blatant and comprehensive copyright violation is because THE INDUSTRY HEAVYWEIGHTS (RIAA/MPAA,and friends) have a ridiculous stranglehold on distribution. And by RIDICULOUS I mean literally impossible for some customers (eg outside the USofA) to legally purchase some content.

LITERALLY impossible to purchase. In some cases literally FOR EVER, in most cases "what the hell do you mean I have to wait YEARS before I can legally purchase this content". And NO, for the record, I'm NOT only talking about "purchasing online", some content you CANNOT purchase even on "original media" (DVD or whatever) outside the US; for NO REASON other than "I control the distribution and I could not be bothered distributing THAT".

The Music/Movie distribution industry constantly sends a big FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU ALL to literally millions of customers - but STILL insists they have a right to cry UNFAIR.

Seriously folks, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY.

Let me say this again, there is ABSOLUTELY NO VALID MORAL ARGUMENT IN DEFENSE OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE MUSIC AND MOVIE INDUSTRY.

They have literally gone out of their way, time and time again, to make it actually impossible to purchase content (either at all, or online, or they simply restrict it to some obscure almost unused format, or they excessively compress it so it's ONY worth watching on the postage-stamp that is a 10 yr old phone).

...

To be fair (and even handed) lets be clear, the MPAA/RIAA "claim" to be "the industry body" but IN PRACTICE they act in the interests of existing distribution channels (and NOT "the movie/music industry" as a whole).

100Gbps is inadequate today for a core system interconnect.

You can buy 100Gbps NETWORK interfaces (although, obviously not for your desktop PC, because, as per above THE BUS IS TOO SLOW)

I'll say it again, releasing technology to deliver 100Gbps interconnects at the system core is holding back innovation TODAY, not "in the future" - TODAY FOLKS!