Given how many people have abandoned their landlines for cell-only service, I would think G.SHDSL wouldn't be so uneconomical given how many idle pairs there are.

I'm not a software developer, but as a long-time network admin it always struck me that shared libraries were a great idea except when they weren't.

Before I switched to FreeBSD, Linux always seemed to have headaches with shared library problems, with some apps not working with some versions of shared libraries and a general nuisance being made with multiple versions of shared libraries being around.

Windows, of course, has its reputation for DLL hell, which I think was more of an issue in really old versions than it is now.

Given the size of storage generally available now, is it really so bad to have statically linked binaries? It greatly increases application portability and version independence and probably makes package management a lot simpler and more risk-free since you don't have to worry about shared libraries.

I've always been tempted to do a statically linked buildworld to see just how much extra space it takes.

Instead of telling people they can't have kids or trying to punish them if they do, why not offer them incentives?

I can think of two ways to approach this, short-term (long-term implantable contraceptives) and long-term (sterilization).

On the short-term side, you could offer a cash payment for any woman willing to use an implantable birth control device. Subdermal implants last for three years, some IUDs as long as five years.

On the long-term side, you could offer a more substantial payment for vasectomies or tubal ligations.

The short-term ones may have longer-term effects since they might delay any pregnancies until later in life when women may be less interested in having children and may cause them to have fewer children over all.

Both options would probably have meaningful social effects since you might greatly reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and the negative social consequences associated with low-incoming single parents.

Didn't you have a chimp as Persident of the United States a few years ago? /me ducks and runs...

Nah, not at all... Plenty of choice and they are now coming more and more on Sandy/Ivy bridge Celeron models. (Dropping the Atom. I was a huge Atom fan, but they do have a lot of downsides for the applications I wanted to use them) At my local supermarket netbooks tend to be Acer Aspire One. Those sold there are Celeron 847 based machines, which are relly quite good chips.

Me? I went Ultra book, but only because I could get the Acer Aspire S3 for dirt cheap.

Is that really the motivation? Strong gravity? How the heck do neutron stars fit into such a scheme?!

Calculus isn't science.

Statute of limitations only applies to when a case can be filed. A trial can go on for years past the statute.

Me no write good. I meant that in the age of Doom I never knew anyone who did what OP did and paid to make a pirate copy legit. I am contending the notion that people are mostly honest about paying up for pirated stuff. Everyone I knew pirated everything and paid nothing.

Surprisingly, Bob Dylan can a little. See Nashville Skyline.

Everybody hates existing internet providers for all the usual reasons, inflated prices, crappy services and restrictive and sometimes secretive rules designed to limit actual use of the service along with degradation of connections delivering services that compete with the services provided by the internet provider. I'll agree to that.

But why do I have a suspicion that while Google's fiber product is currently presented as some kind of benevolent, monopoly disrupting service, is it really going to stay that way long term, or is it eventually going to be another flavor of cable internet with restrictions that serve to promote Google's service and inhibit competitors?

While I think that AT&T is just foot dragging to avoid losing business here, I think there's something to the idea that Google wants to look like a telecom but not play by the same rules.

Until very recently, though, booking photos were funcitonally private. It took digital photography combined with modern record keeping systems for them to be widely available, and even now you can't simply browse the police department's web site (at least here in Minneapolis) and grab the photos. You have to go down to the department to get a copy, and it wouldn't surprise me if the copy you get is a printout.

So even though booking photos have a legal status as public informaiton, the idea of running a web site where you "publish" them and then offer to remove them for a fee seems to be not much different than "revenge porn" at least in terms of the extortion component.

Both kinds of sites are making private photos which could be damaging to the people in question. I'd even wager that booking photo sites do more real harm in some ways than revenge porn does.

The legal bar for being arrested is pretty low and lots of people are arrested and quickly released without ever having been charged with a crime, let alone tried and found guilty of one. Yet the mere fact that you were arrested can be used against you to prevent you from getting a job or housing by people who don't know or care to differentiate between arrest and conviction, or simply believe that anyone who was arrested must be guilty of something. It's trivial to think of situations where you could be arrested just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time or because of mistaken identity with someone who is a criminal.

Some revenge porn may be pictures of people indulging in sexual behavior which could negatively influence their reputatons, but I would bet a lot of it are merely nude photos many of which could have been taken surrepitiously. Even the most petty HR department isn't going to deny a job to a woman just because a photo exists that documents the fact that she does indeed have breasts and a vagina. The harm that results in these photos being public is purely psychological, except where the photos reveal unusual sexual taste or the site further crosses the line by trying to link the photo to pesonal information like addresses and phone numbers.

"A buddy of mine and I played Doom forever, heck we still do on occasion."

This checks out.

I never new anyone that paid for a pirated game.

Holy crap, when you start a level and hear a cyber demon, that was terrifying.