Pretty much. In most organizations is a parasitic function; the organization's main role isn't propagation of IT systems. Nor is the organization's role good free coffee, clean restrooms, etc. They're things that increase productivity towards core business functions. IT people lose sight of that.

Infosec people are worse about it; infosec is a parasitic function to a parasitic function.

They can't just arbitrarily do that. If they try, the courts have remedies. "Yes, Mister Vice President, I realize we were advised not to do this, but, like, the President told us to, now we have to pay billions to Verizon, AT&T, and Time-Warner. You told us to do this."
"Really."
"Yep. I'm just glad that @$$ judge didn't hold us in contempt."
"We would have come and bailed you out."

Thank you for reciting the trolltastic NN lines, and provide where, exactly in either act, internet service is defined as a telecommunications service.

If you can't find it, you've hit upon the problem. It's not the FCC's job to make the distinction between what is and is not a telecommunications service.

if they could make up those rules on the whim of whichever party is in office, there's virtually no limit in what they might be able to regulate.

Congress has to explicitly grant them the authority. Congress hasn't done that (and likely won't now that the NN bobbleheads' ranks have been significantly thinned).

You want a connection with NN compliance? Contract for it. It's called a business-class connection. Put it in the contract terms. If they violate it, you terminate the contract. It's pretty simple.

This is how an essentially political administrative agency works.

We've seen it other places (see: FDA with nicotine delivery, EPA with carbon emissions).

Verizon will win this case, but the politicians in charge of the FCC probably still won't the the message. They certainly didn't the last time they lost in court.

And Congress could have fixed it, but they didn't. It's not at the top of the list of things they failed to do, but it's up there.

....and it's probably sufficient for many people.

That said, having something that could automatically adjust projection on the retina would be better for most people.....glasses with automatically adjusting correction, based on whatever the lens is doing, not just what direction the glance is focused.

Still, even that wouldn't be help for people like me; refractive correction is one thing, understanding how the nerves transmit that information is anoteher thing. (Optic neuritis is a symptom of another medical condition I have. Even getting corrective lenses is difficult, because it's tough to figure out whether the blurry vision is due to ON, or a refractive problem. Complicating matters is unpredictable eye movement....)

Pretty much all of them, when consulting about what materials are covered by Executive Privilege. :-)

I tried several times while we were dating. She would be doing pretty well, stall it out, then start crying. :-) "I'm afraid I'm gonna break your car!"

There's also ergonomic issues (she's not very tall).

But I've pretty much given up on it at this point. As I said, I have "physical issues" (I have multiple sclerosis....left leg is dodgy sometimes lately) that might prevent *me* from driving one soon.

They'll probably try to sell a lot of the Unlimited models as 2WDs with the cheapo automatic transmission. I'm sure there's a market; it's easy to pay more than that for a far less substantial vehicle.

But, it's probably a good move for Chrysler, considering prior to the bankruptcy, the Wrangler was one of two vehicles they actually made a profit on (the other being the Ddoge Viper).

I've owned two Wranglers; I probably won't buy another, despite whatever marketing ploys there are. Not so much because I think it's a bad vehicle, but because I don't need the capabilities any more at this stage of my life. (Married, thinking about kids, wife can't drive a manual transmission, live in a place with tough parking, I may not be able to drive much longer due to physical issues, etc. etc.)

A thousand times this.

But, then, I suppose the people who wrote TFA, or are commenting here, don't have a single unpatched copy of Acrobat Reader or JRE around. Am I right?

Cluestick time: while there's problems in government IT, I can guarantee you that many, many large corporations would have fared worse on a similar audit.

They get all defensive (no pun intended) when you point out that this was one of Mark Warner's crowning achievements as governor......

Yeah, this was all at a radio station, so the important stuff was on conditioned power. Still doesn't like getting wet. :-) Luckily, most of the broadcast equipment stayed dry. The sales floor, where nothing was on UPS power, well....

Let's just say that it was really a good thing that a local equipment company we did lots of work through happened to have ten PCs in stock.

On a similar note, when the power company would near peake capacity, we'd have to go to generator on a couple of our transmitters (one 100 kW, one 50 kW). I'd assume the power company had similar deals with lots of other big-time consumers (hospitals, data centers, etc.).

....where they don't have hurricanes.

My summer IT disaster story? Imagine a large office building. Now imagine A/C units fed by a central chiller pipe. Now imagine 20 floors' worth of chiller water coming out on the floor above yours. Then imagine water cascading down the windows, and across the drop ceiling.....

This was me in July 2005. One of the few times I didn't get dirty looks for wearing shorts and tevas in the office.

WW1 was the big dog for a long time, but much of their reach was through the CBS and Mutual (how's that name for a blast from the past?) radio affiliates. Many of the music stations don't have any network connections at all these days. Many of the shorter network features that stations used to buy sat equipment for now come via mp3. Why spend #20k setting up a dish and a receiver, when you can just download all the history of rock morning prep clips over the internets? Pretty simple economics, unfortunately.

But the radio networks have also undergone several major upheavals. I can remember scanning the SEDAT channels back in the late 90s for talk programs. Today, pretty much everything's encrypted, and there's only four shows on live -- Premiere/CC, CBS/WW1, and then the sports networks. There's probably 150 stations in the US with the same lineups 0900-1900 Eastern (9-n Beck, n-3 Limbaugh, and 3-7 Hannity). Certainly didn't see that back when Dr. Demento was getting syndicated.

Nice write-up.

I agree he'll be missed, but, really, he hasn't been around for most stations since he left WW1. Music radio today doesn't even begin to resemble music radio in 1990. By the late 80s, most music stations didn't have network affiliations, much less run regular programming. The AOR formats of the 70s put a nail into that, as well as shows like Dr. Demento's. The stations who still do have significant network ties are overwhelmingly news/talk outlets. Why put on Dr. Demento when you can run three hours of Art Bell repeats free of charge?

I used to listen to him as a kid on AFRTS. Was always enjoyable. At nearly 70 years old, the Doc probably should be hanging it up, and enjoying retirement.

Wonder if he could guest with Joey Reynolds; that would be a ton of radio history to hear!