20Mbps up / 20Mbps down with no caps.

The money collected would have to count as income, so it would be a wash at best.

If you think that is a winning strategy, then you go start a video streaming business and then try that.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Just to play devil's advocate, "exclusive Right" here can be taken to mean that the recipient of the granted right (the author or inventor) also could have the right to transfer their right to some other party.

Do you seriously think the original Linux kernal, that is without any subsequent updates with more recent copyright dates, would be all that useful on a computer from 2010? Oracle's "trifles" would have comprise all of the functionality added by the twenty years of modification that has been made to the original work, or it would have no chance competing against modern offerings.

Seriously, IMO, everyone should just fire their bank and join a credit union. This shit would never happen with a credit union.

Public pensions and "regulation" are not infrastructure. Roads, power lines, schools, public transportation and such things are infrastructure, and businesses of the kind that we are talking about could not exist without it.

Not if you've never seen a spreadsheet program before. It takes longer than that to learn to use a mouse. What's more you don't progress to advanced use of a spreadsheet in under an hour. In fact effective use of a calculator or spreadsheet software takes years to master. I learn new things on Excel quite regularly. You're quite simply being disingenuous.

I beg to differ. I would be shocked if it took the average ten year old more than five minutes to learn how to use a mouse. Basic functionality in Excel is *super* simple and for most Excel users, it is all the functionality that is required. If you are expecting kids to come out of high school knowing Excel VBA then that's just crazy. That being said, I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be computer based classes in school, but rather that computers should be used as tools only in the limited domains where there is evidence that they improve the learning process. These are probably programming, typing, graphic design, drafting, perhaps a few other things. There is likely no useful roll for computers in K-12 math, english, history/social studies, or physical sciences. The money spent to outfit every student with laptops is wasted if the only times they will benefit from having them is in a few specific classes. Better off spending that money on other things, like lab equipment and supplies for basic scineces, art supplies, books, and, yes, pencils and paper. Then you just need to fill one classroom with the most basic possible computers, for the few classes where they are useful.

If you understand math, it takes about a half hour to learn how to use a spreadsheet program. It is not necessarily a bad idea to teach programing in school, but besides that (and a few other specific domains where computers have a logical role) students in K-12 should be using pencil and paper. If you think kids today are anything like older people in how they relate to technology, you haven't been around kids much lately, there is no danger of producing a generation of "Almish".

My phone service is fiber to the home, and they installed a box inside that has a UPS battery to supply power to the legacy phone hardware, and to keep it running through power outages. My guess is that the alarm hardware will have to include a bigger UPS because they probably draw more power than an ordinary telephone headset.