The broadband requirement is to stream high quality video, not "enough for a lot of people." Cell phones have already broken past 1080p screens, and in the US you can get a 4k TV for $350 (plus shipping). A 4Mbps video stream isn't enough to satisfy such screens, and 1Mbps upload is laughable as high quality video streaming when you consider there are services like Skype.

You can buy 4k TV's for under $350 (plus tax/shipping). I don't think 1080p should stand as high-quality video for much longer, since even cell phones are passing that mark.

I have a 23" screen that does 1080p, and I'm tired of seeing subpixel artifacts from the rgb arrangement (purples are quite odd with the gap in the middle). Don't tell me 720p is fine. Steve Jobs nearly started a war against high resolution screens based on studies of people with mediocre vision (see Why Retina Isn't Enough). With good vision 1080p is around the useful limit for a 23" display at 10 feet or a 1080p phone with a 2.3" screen, though there is some evidence to support that human vision can see quality beyond even these numbers that are based on Snellen tests.

BTW, I just checked Newegg, Target and Nebraska Furniture Mart (the most mainstream stores I could find to properly split 1080p and 720p inventory). At Target 1080p sets outnumbered 720p by 77 to 25. At Newegg 1080p/4k sets outnumbered 720p by 445 to 91. At Nebraska Furniture Mart, 4k televisions alone outnumber 720p by nearly 4 to 1. You can even pick up a 4k TV from Amazon for under $350. I'm not sure what you're calling modern, but it doesn't match what's in the stores. If we're coming out with new specification guidelines, it should at least be on par with what is being sold now (if not future sales). ATSC was foolish and short-sighted for not including 1080p.

I can especially guarantee you're not streaming high quality video to someone else over Skype w/ the upload speeds an ISP will provide on a 10-20mbps connection.

It didn't stop VeriSign from selling lower priced MD5 certificates when the algorithm had known vulnerabilities. They finally stopped when somebody publicly announced the ability to forge a verifiable certificate for any website in 1-2 days using a cluster of 200 PS3's.

You can download them as a Microsoft document. If the formatting is off, then just blame it on being a different version of Office. Everyone in business knows Microsoft Office is only partially compatible across product generations. In fact, I've wasted over 12 hours because an important Excel function stopped working correctly in 2013 (or possibly earlier), and I still have no fix.

Apparently the DMV missed the report that the only accident ever caused by one of Google's self driving car was due to human error while a person was controlling it. Actually, I'm hoping the requirement is for cases like one way streets or bicycle only paths that the car decides to drive down incorrectly. However, all you would need is a break pedal (because that's what panicking are used to) and some sort of correction interface (e.g. a couple of buttons on the UI).

Dora the Explorer's chant of "Swiper no swiping" doesn't work in the real world where evils actually exist. We do our best to raise people into good citizens, and it seems to be helping (rape peaked in 1992). However, I don't expect the world to ever stop having horrible people in it. Some places are always going to be safer than others (e.g. church singles mixer vs wild frat party). When I would visit my grandparents in small-town Mississippi a few years ago, we never locked the door because no one even knew where a key was, but it was never once robbed. If I go to someplace dangerous like Baghdad, Iraq; Mogadishu, Somalia; or Kabul, Afghanistan, then I would be quite foolish not to take extra precautions and expect things still may go badly.

I find it amazing that a group of men worked together to find a way for women to help protect themselves, and women get upset about it. *sigh* I would never blame the victim, but I miss the days when we read children stories about little pigs that got eaten because they were too lazy to protect themselves against any old wolf.

Apparently not... According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2008, there were 3,188,620 cases of household burglaries, another 13+ million cases of theft and 203,830 cases of rape/attempted rape/sexual assault. (www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus08.pdf) You have a study that cites 1.3 million women, which is MUCH higher (and I'm not disputing it), but still well below the number of burglaries. I'm aware that crime rates have been falling, but not by that much between 2008 and 2010.

Actually, one of the top hits is for this article. Apparently, it's mentioned in the comments.

I should point out that on multicore x86 machines Oracle counts 1 processor license needed per 2 processing cores. You're probably looking at 4-6+ CPU licenses for a dual processor system.

What about MySQL/MariaDB? Facebook doesn't even need a full time person for their production MySQL database cluster. It doesn't use shared storage, but if a shared storage system handles your workload, you're not all that big anymore.

How big is big enough that nothing but Oracle will do? Facebook is on MySQL, Wikipedia is on MariaDB and Google is using Bigtable.

I want a steady job instead of opening a business because I want to spend my time writing software instead of engaging in government bureaucracy, handling the first tier of customer support and marketing things to customers.

Hope you weren't planning on downloading much of anything with that mobile access to your laptop/desktop/console. With 20-40+ GB game downloads and 1+ GB/hr movies, even the largest 12 GB/month plans go REALLY quickly. Even the 250 GB/month of U-verse is easy for me to blow through with a family and working from home.

Currently, I pay Time Warner $42/month for 15 Mbps Earthlink service. My other "option" is to pay AT&T $95/month (introductory price w/ overage fees) for 18 Mbps U-verse and get slower service where it matter most to me (ping times). Not much of a competition.