Well, the definition of pipes varies a bit on different OS's (even among Unix systems), but certainly on Windows you can use named pipes that are message-oriented and won't scramble up messages from multiple clients.

Unix FIFOs (which can be considered a specialized pipe) also support atomic writes if the message isn't longer than the pipe buffer (PIPE_BUF). Typically a client creates a private FIFO and then sends it's path to the well-known server FIFO. Thus a one-to-many (server to clients) capability is created. See UNIX Network Programming, Interprocess Communications Volume 2, Second Edition by W.Richard Stevens, Chapter 4.

How unfortunate that we are forced to even think of these measures.

They advertise it as "up to" and not "at least". It is confusing, but it's not misleading. That's why I've proposed a better transparency standard http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/09/the-need-for-a-broadband-transparency-standard/.

From the actual PDF:

• ... create two Quality of Service ("QoS") levels for Internet traffic going to and from the cable modem: (1) "Priority Best-Effort" traffic ("PBE"); and (2) "Best-Effort" traffic ("BE").
• During the time that a subscriber's traffic is assigned the lower priority status, such traffic will not be delayed so long as the network segment is not actually congested. If, however, the network segment becomes congested, such traffic could be delayed.
• Given our experience so far, we have determined that a starting point for the upstream Port Utilization Threshold should be 70 percent and the downstream Port Utilization Threshold should be 80 percent. (The term "port" as used here generally contemplates single channels on a CMTS, but these statements will apply to virtual channels, also known as "bonded groups," in a DOCSIS 3.0 environment.) -- (Basically, a "port" is the neighborhood connection.)
• (Given the above) When a subscriber uses an average of 70 percent or more of his or her (individually) provisioned upstream or downstream bandwidth over a particular 15-minute period, that user will be in an Extended High Consumption State.

Simply put, there are four steps to determining whether the traffic associated with a particular cable modem is designated as PBE or BE:

1. Determine if the CMTS port is in a Near Congestion State.
2. If yes, determine whether any users are in an Extended High Consumption State.
3. If yes, change those users' traffic to BE from PBE. If the answer at either step one or step two is no, no action is taken.
4. If a user's traffic has been designated BE, check user consumption at next interval. If user consumption has declined below predetermined threshold, reassign the user's traffic as PBE. If not, recheck at next interval

If you prefer, imagine a choice between two doors: behind door A is the job of your dreams, behind door B is the woman of your dreams. There isn't a right answer.

The woman in my dreams is always rich ... therefore no need to even consider door A.

BTW an American plug can handle 15 amps easily; it's how I run my spare heater.

Yeah. But 15 amps on a 110V socket isn't as much power as 15 amps on a 220V socket.

Of course, you can change the breaker that's in use to increase the current that the socket can handle. Check that it's rated for the increased power draw, but you can get 30A, 45A, 60A and 100A breakers in North America to replace the standard 15A breaker that most sockets run on.

No because our fool politicians granted Comcast a monopoly.

That monopoly needs to be revoked so competitors like Cox, Time-Warner, AppleTV, Charter Cable, and so on can move in. When Comcast screws the customer, the customer can abandon ship to another provider..... precisely the way cellphones operate.

>>>when the Cable Modem Termination System you're hooked-up to - along with up to 15,000 other Comcast subscribers - gets congested, and your traffic is somehow identified as being responsible.
>>>

What if it's prime-time and all 15000 people decided to watch Heroes at the same time. Why should I be targeted just because I decided to watch both Heroes and CSI on two separate windows? This is a case of everybody being at fault, not just one person.

What people presume to know, sheesh! Bandwidth Aggregation: Combining Internet Connections to Incrementally Increase Bandwidth Capacity Bandwidth aggregation combines two or more Internet connections and gives Internet applications access to their total available bandwidth and increases reliability with link redundancy. PowerLink, ShieldLink and ClariLink bandwidth aggregation techniques (also known as multi-homing) support load balancing to route Internet sessions from congested links, to links with more available bandwidth. They also provide automatic failover of Internet sessions from failed links to functional connections to eliminate the Internet as a point of failure. http://www.ecessa.com/pages/solutions/solutions_technology_bandwidth.php

Probably not - it's doing something far more important than that.

It's already been known for a few years now that the "junk" scales directly with complexity of the organism - unlike number of genes, which does not. It's becoming increasingly apparent that huge numbers of "junk" sections of DNA are actually transcribed to RNA, and play essential roles in regulating what gets made into protein.

The new hypothesis is that RNA is the computational engine of the cell, allowing it to rapidly process information and react appropriately, and the non-protein-coding "junk" sections are what it uses to do this.

There's a guy called John Mattick from the University of Queensland who has done a lot of really exciting work in this area, and gives a fantastic talk on the subject - here's an abstract for a version of it. Sample quote:

the extent of non-protein-coding DNA increases with increasing complexity, reaching 98.8% in humans, suggesting that much of the information required to program development may reside in these sequences. Moreover it is now evident the majority of the mammalian genome is transcribed, mainly into non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), and that there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of long and short RNAs in mammals that show specific expression patterns and subcellular locations. Our studies indicate that these RNAs form a massive hidden network of regulatory information that regulates epigenetic processes and directs the precise patterns of gene expression during growth and development.

Using the argument that cells are RNA machines, there is most likely no junk whatsoever in the human genome.

Swimming is the best all over muscle workout, combine that with a 10% decrease in what you consume and you will loose weight and tone up all over.