Thanks to a warmer winter this year, we had un-seasonal strawberries in December. We also get fresh vegetables all winter long.

Apparently that and other tangible and intangible perks end up being worth about 30k/yr for me. Yes, I've made this choice consciously.

What you just described there is a leisure activity. But what sense is there in going into $100k+ debt to fund this leisure activity, with zero expected economic return? How is getting a degree in Art History different from going to Rock Star school or Race Car Driver school?

In these days of $40k/year tuition, the value of such an investment (a college education) should lie in return on investment.

This. Please mod parent up.

I think the right to communicate is the superset of right to speech, right to press, right to internet.

It is the ability to communicate with others (as enabled by internet as well as cell phones) that brought forth the "Arab Spring". In countries like North Korea, where communication is severely restricted (no cell phones except for the ruling class, no unrestricted travel, no phones to outside of North korea, etc) it becomes extremely easy to oppress the people.

The tone of your post suggests your mind is made up, and facts will not bother you. Still, let me point out:

Both Bush2 and Obama cut taxes and increased spending. Some big ticket items were
Bush:
- War in Iraq (1 trillion + ~1 trillion "more")
- Medicare Part D (500 billion)
- Tax cuts (1 trillion)
- TARP (1 trillion)

Obama:
- Stimulus (1 trillion, half in tax cuts, half in spending)
- War in Afghanistan (500 billion)

Stuff like the Detroit Bailout was pretty cheap (60 billion). Obama didn't actually "tax and spend" because of republican resistance in congress. Stuff that did get passed hadbroad bipartisan support (like the recent payroll tax cut extension).

Furthermore, unlike the popular conservative rhetoric, government share of GDP has very little to do with economic growth. Rather, it has everything to do with investments in technology and people by both private and government. The current boom/bust cycle has very little to do with the size of government, but rather is a symptom of market failure. I would suggest reading about the history of banks in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Banking_Era#1837.E2.80.931862:_.22Free_Banking.22_Era)

Or maybe I use linux for development? You know, like a proper geek?

Hashing is not enough. Proper security is only obtained by salting the passwords before hashing. Without salting, password hashes are only slightly better than clear text, as they are vulnerable to rainbow table attacks. Rainbow tables for 11 character passwords already exist.

Drupal (a popular PHP CMS software) did not salt their password hashes until version 7 (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5031662/what-is-drupals-default-password-encryption-method), and version 7 came out in 2011. This means most drupal users' passwords have never been secure from attack. And if a popular, widely used have gaping holes like this, all of the home grown websites are probably worse.

Basically, most people are clueless about password security, even if they are know they shouldn't store clear text passwords. Much better to not trust the websites and have different passwords for your "important" stuff.

After this and other "bombshell" revelations by Bloomberg this year, they are apparently the only financial news organization worth its salt in the US. Kudos to them, and shame on everyone else (WSJ, FT, Economist, etc etc).

The spectrum was called MediaFLO, owned by Qualcomm to deploy digital TV. ATT will be repurposing it for LTE (4G) only, which is the same technology used by both CDMA or GSM carriers as their next generation technology. In 4G (real 4g, not the marketing 3G+ stuff) all carriers are using the same technology.

This means with 4g, US may get phone compatibility from different carriers finally. It might take them a while, though, as LTE only phones wouldn't exist for another 5-6 years.

Unlike 3G, 4G (LTE) networks can carry both data and voice on the same channel, as well as being more spectrum efficient. It would be wise for ATT to deploy LTE as fast as they can while removing the less efficient 3G phones from the market. This means eventually LTE would be deployed everywhere, and whet it does, even the dumb phones will use LTE for voice, leaving much more room for data for others.

The spectrum is about 6MHz wide across the country, and 12MHz in NY, Boston, Philly, SF, and LA, in the 700Mhz band. Because of the narrow channel, this spectrum is most likely to deploy LTE (4G) networks outside these areas. It would possible to deploy 3G networks on this spectrum in those four areas, but I would guess not because 4G is more spectrum efficient than 3G.

So, unless you have an LTE phone, it wouldn't improve your coverage.

Verizon has been very aggressive in buying larger, contiguous chunks of spectrum (>10Mhz wide) in the last decade, even if they had to pay more money to get them. T-mobile got some (that's why ATT wanted to buy them), but AT&T often sat out (or was out bid). Based on just that, I would guess Verizon's coverage would be better for the next decade.

In fact, I have noticed AT&T has a history of under investing in their infrastructure in the last decade. Instead of planning ahead, they defer infrastructure upgrades until the last minute, which costs more but get less return (or no return, in the case of T-mobile acquisition). YMMV.