What I want is a committed rate and the option to pay in advance for a higher committed rate.

My cell's data plan includes 500 MB of data per month. That's not a lot, but it's enough for my push E-Mail, some browsing, Android Market downloads and whatnot. Each month spans a duration of some 2.5 Million seconds. If I had a commited rate, my data plan would be equivalent to (less than) 200 bps. A 2 MB Download would take three hours. Downloading Skype (at some 15 MB) would take approximately a day. And actually using Skype, I might transmit a second of audio every ten and receive another every other ten seconds.
I prefer to download Skype in a minute and tone back the data use for the rest of the day. Or use the bandwidth I won't be using while asleep for an hour-long call while I'm awake. Long story short, there's a reason server(-style) bandwidth is sold and metered in mbps and consumer bandwidth is sold in GB/month: completely different usage patterns.

Oh come on, people, please. Have a bit of imagination. Telephone systems and printed CAPTCHAS? This is the precise situation interpretive dance was invented for. Also, since this is France: mimes!

That snipped looks bad. But, if the model was implemented right*, it may be close to best practice.
Rails allows you to overload functions. Ideally, Album#destroy would check if the current user is allowed to delete the object and either delete itself or ignore the request if the user isn't authorized to delete it. Implementing security checks at the model level has the great advantage of limiting all security-related functions to a single, easily audit-able, consistent code path. The snippet still lacks reporting for permission (or missing album) errors, so it's not really nice, but possibly still secure.
Additionally, photos_controller could be using a before_filter checking if the user is authorized to do whatever he's trying to do. Given the snippet, a matching filter function would have to be rather strange, but it could be done.

* Two problems: The code lacks any exception handling and, as far as I know, relying on the user credentials gathered from the session object in a model is not considered best (or even good) practice. This could be somewhat mitigated if Album#destroy were to allow an optional parameter providing a user [id].

(Spoiler alert)

The first paragraph of page 4 answers the question of gender. It's quite fun to get through the first three pages assuming the opposite and finding some aspects of that dynamic quite odd.

Consumers would be far better off if the labelling was required to carry the standard name (HDMI 1.3 or HDMI 1.4 with whatever add-on) and a URI pointing to the standards documentation.

Even simpler: Require the (required/tested) bandwidth to be printed on all devices and cables. Cables would be advertised as capable of 5, 10.2 or however many Gbps, devices would sport a table along the lines of 720p = 4 Gbps, 1080i = 6 Gbps, 1080p = 8 Gbps, 1080p60+3D (highest quality) = Over 9000 Gbps. To pick a cable, consumers could look at the packaging, manual or sticker on their devices, pick the greatest mode both devices support and buy a cable capable of at least that throughput. Problem solved, maximum compatibility achieved.

That was either a couple of decades ago or they eased up on you because of the pre-existing license. As of now, you'll take a written exam consisting of some 40 questions, most about road signs, some about the right of way on strange intersections. Passing that grants you a learner's permit with which you're expected to take about 15 lessons of driver's ed and a mandatory training programme spanning some three evenings before taking the actual exam of some 45 minutes of driving around with an examiner in the passenger seat who will be watching you quite critically.
Passing that, you get a license for three years during which you'll have to visit two whole days of training. Finally, at the end of those three years, if you haven't had your license withdrawn, you'll finally get the definitive one. Total cost starts at at least $1k (just exam fees and trainings), usually around $2-3k (including driver's ed).

[...] for 12,000 people, eliminating any chance that they will pay Valve for it [...]

They actually seem to have handed out two copies to every affected account, i.e. 24'000 copies total. If even half of the gift ones end up with people who'll play them, Valve gets an 18'000 player boost to their L4D2 community and 18'000 people who might potentially mention L4D2 to their friends and invite them for a round of play.
Valve gets goodwill by the truckload, a large expansion of their player base and tons of inexpensive (but highly valuable word-of-mouth) marketing, those affected by the ban get a free game to play and one to give away -- everybody wins.

Does not. Windows will gladly do everything related to screen rotation, including adjusting ClearType.
Just be sure to configure them through the Screen Resolution application in your Control Panel, not the driver configuration window. Tested in 7, for other versions: Upgrade and run whatever legacy apps you've around in a VM.

now he has a three-monitor setup with that in the middle and the dual 2007FPs on the sides.

Same here, except with two NEC 2080UXis flanking an HP LP3065. The 20" panel width quite perfectly matches the 30" panel's height, and the awesome mounts of the NECs allow for rotating and matching to the center display with, well, no work at all.
You'll need four DVI channels, though. Two (through a dual-link cable and plug) for the 30" and one each for both 20" displays. I'm not sure if you could handle them both through a dual-link interface, so i threw in a second video card and attached a 1920x1080 projector, which brings the whole system to just above 10 MPixels of display space on 4 sq meters or so.

20" UXGA displays do have one advantage to 21.3"s: Rotate 'em by 90 degrees and they neatly flank a 30" WQXGA display. 4960x1600 perfectly lined up Pixels is what awesome looks like.
And if you arrange them right (20", 30", 20" side-by-side), you get a huge center area for whatever you're focusing on plus enough screen real estate for whatever you're monitoring in the background (Or need to have an occasional look at.)