I just visited a link on the dailyrecord.co.uk and received some kind of cookie notice. The notice appeared as a pop up in the bottom right corner (the last place an english speaker will scan to) with text in pale grey. The notice was clearly designed to be difficult to notice. Even though I saw it pop up right away, I didn't have a chance to read the text or see which link to use to opt out before the notice disappeared. It was clear from the first sentence that if I did nothing I was consenting to be tracked.

I guess the law, which clearly had good intentions, has been eviscerated so that now the websites can just briefly display a hard to notice blob of text, remove it before you have a chance to read it, and continue tracking you with impunity.

But what about instances where private for-profit companies provide poor quality unreliable service? Should a municipality, if petitioned by the citizens, respond "We're sorry, but a private company is already providing that service."?

We live in a rural community. People consider themselves lucky to get DSL. There is no cable option. Some people get long range WiFi. We consider ourselves to be extremely lucky because we can get 3mb DSL service. The service is, for the most part, fairly reliable, but we have periods of very poor throughput and lots of dropped packets. The local telco has shown very little interest in building out to provide faster more reliable service.

Our local co-op owned power company is looking seriously at building out a strong, fast, reliable broadband system. They already have a good chunk of fiber in place throughout the area for use by the county and a few businesses. They want to build out using wireless solutions for the last mile. Except for a few "Wi-Fi is damaging my brains" type people, the local folks are strongly in favor of it.

Rural infrastructure problems are exactly the areas where the standard municipality Vs business issues break down. Businesses don't see enough profit to warrant expanding or even maintaining the services. If municipalities don't step in, then people have to do with substandard service or no service at all.

I've always stopped whatever I'm doing during take off and landing. It doesn't matter if I'm in a really good spot in a book, or engrossed in a great conversation; at these times I stop. Even if I were allowed to used a portable electronic device, I'd still stop for landings and take offs.

Why? This will sound strange. Take offs and landings are the riskiest phase of a flight. I don't want to die and miss out on the experience. For whatever reason, I want to be in the here and now in the event of a catastrophic failure. I think it would be a shame to leave the present plain of existence (no pun intended) without being aware of the events that led up to the departure.

Everybody is different, and all family situations are different. In my case I have a wife who works full time, no kids, and no dogs. So these were the rules that worked for me. They might not work for you.

1) Have an office. A room set aside from the rest of the house that other family members don't need to access.
2) Treat your home office like a work office. You have times that you start and times that you end... more or less.
3) Get dressed for work. I don't mean tie and jacket, unless that's what floats your boat. I would wear jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers. The idea being that you want to mentally differentiate "lounging" from "working". This also helps protect your lounging times.
4) When your are at work, you are at work. We quickly settled on the rule that my wife would come into the office to let me know she was home, then head off. When I was done at work I would leave the office and walk into what ever room she was in announcing "Honey, I'm home."
5) I took breaks. For the first time in years I actually ate lunch someplace other than working at my desk. I'd go downstairs and make coffee when I wanted it. When you're hitting your head against a brick wall (I did software development) take a walk around the neighborhood. You don't need to explain yourself to anybody but yourself.
6) And this is important; when you are not at work, don't work. My office was also my household office so it was where I did bills, email, etc. But I was always careful to not just take a quick peak at whatever I'd been working on earlier. In my case, this was the hardest part. I'd get an idea on something to try that might solve a problem. The temptation is to sneak away for a just a few minutes... next thing you know it's 11:00pm and your wife is asking if you're ever coming to bed.

Good luck. I enjoyed working from my home office. But it all came to an end when I hired my first employee and my wife said "No employees working in the house." So then I was back to a downtown office again.

It was a bit heavy handed, but if you read the article (Yeah, yeah. I know. Slashdot readers never....) you would fine the quote "...fueling speculation that Penguin’s actions may be directed at Amazon,"

But heavy handed or not, the point is a valid one.

I ordered a new hard drive because I needed more space. Potential price increases had nothing to do with it.

Because he isn't looking for a compatibility list. krinderlin said "So what 802.11n routers do you have with DD-WRT? What would you recommend for PCIe x1 and USB adapters?" Notice that he said "what ... do you have ..." not what will work with.

Yeah I got the same message after submitting my survey responses.

Maybe the response to what would you like changed should be a survey that doesn't think you've already taken it when you haven't.