The fisheries off the coast of Somalia were destroyed by years of European countries dumping toxic waste and over fishing off the coast. What the fuck else are they supposed to do?

Support the Somali volunteer coast guard

I lived in Africa for about a year. We shared a 14.4k modem connection between about 10 people. It that stayed up about half the time. In another place I lived, we had about 30 people sharing a 1.5Mbps satellite link with 350MB/day quota.

In both cases, internet access was possible for basic things like sending emails (without attachments), text browsing, etc., but the latency was so high and bandwidth so low that it took all pleasure out of internet use.

The danger of disconnecting completely is that you'll find something for which you "need" internet and make a visit to the local coffee shop or library where they have high speed access. You can spend a lot of money on gas and coffee that way. Having internet that's just slow and painful to use helps to avoid that.

So, maybe you should invest in a 9600 baud modem and find a dial-up ISP?

Also, as a tip, make sure you have a phone book and some road maps for your area.

PBS is a private non-profit organization. WGBH (which produces Frontline) is owned by private foundation.

Where does the government come in here?

No, it's not better unless it also takes into account the mass of the vehicle. Road wear increases with the cube of vehicle mass. A 5400 lbs Hummer causes 8x as much wear on the roadway as my 2700 lbs compact car. If we're taxing by miles driven, I demand to tax by the amount of wear caused during those miles. In which case, the Hummer can pay 8x taxes per mile.

We actually have a system in place that's more fair than tax by mileage. More massive vehicles require more energy to accelerate to speed (a result of physics) and typically need more energy to maintain speed (a result of styling). Through fuel taxes, we charge the more massive vehicles at a higher rate per mile driven-- as we should.

I don't know what is the paranoia about tax by miles driven. It would be a stupid and unfair tax. Perhaps people are concerned about wholesale surveillance. Well, you shouldn't be. Your movements are already tracked just fine through your mobile phone and other implements of the surveillance state. Why bother tracking a car when you want to track the driver and occupants?

Printing massive amounts of money has the fortunate effect of wiping out all of the mortgage, medical, education, auto, and credit card debt held by people like me and the rest of the working class. It also has the beneficial effect of wiping out the dollar denominated debt of the exploited countries of the global south.

I guess it's tough shit for you, but I'll be dancing in the streets when the dollar collapses.

Several months ago, my boss bought a Sony Vaio laptop with Windows 7 Home on it. I was tasked with installing various work software on it. As part of that, I did a clean install of Win 7 Enterprise. While installing drivers (and trying to get the various hotkeys to work), I installed some power management software from Sony. After installation, there was continually a dialog box coming up saying that the battery is not properly connected. The only option was 'Click OK to hibernate.' Nothing was wrong with the laptop or battery. It had been purchased two days before. Fixing the problem was just a matter of killing the process raising the dialog and removing it from startup.

I did a bit of research, and I found that the sole purpose of that program is to prevent people from installing third party batteries. That's all it does. It's there to allow Sony to charge whatever it wants for batteries.

Aside from a walkman, I haven't had much experience with Sony, but after seeing their business practice, I don't think I will ever buy anything from them.

Sure you can-- just keep sending lawyers until they run out of bullets. It would be a good start!

Agreed. GP post is a great idea.

Regarding Freenet, if I recall correctly, it's possible to configure who can manage the freenet node by IP address or subnet. It should be in text config file. So, if you put your machines on 192.168.1.0/24 and guests on 192.168.10.0/24, you can allow access from 192.168.0.0/16 but only allow management from 192.168.1.0/24.