A big problem for us is that there are usually just 2 players with the ability to deliver "the last mile" of connectivity for broadband. And data is NOT their main line of business.

The cable company main business is delivering video. Data was an add-on they could do because they have wires to the home. Now they want it to make money the same way as the main business.
The phone company main business is delivering voice communications. Data was an add-on because they have wires to the home. Now they want it to make money the same way as the main business.

What we really need is a company whose main purpose is data services with wires to the home.

Over and over we go through this.

Metering has the eternal problem that ends with a enraged customer calling customer support over the shocking bill at the end of the month. AOL used metered services for years. When they finally went flat-rate, their business exploded with more customers than they could handle. When AT&T shifted from metered and offered flat-rate data for iPhone, they got more customers than they could handle.

Metered services can be good alternatives or add-ons to a flat-rate service, but they will be filling specific needs. A serious gamer may want low-latency. A serious file sender may want high-bandwidth on-demand. (I need to get this huge file sent to the office NOW.)

Metered services also have one big sore-spot: the meter itself.
      - when do you get to see the meter? Just once per month at billing time?
      - who verifies the meter is accurate?
      - how are ISPs prevented from abusing the meter? Recall that long ago, laws had to be written to stop phone companies from charging for calls before they were actually answered.
      - how are bytes being counted? Bytes are not counted like phone minutes. Packets are re-transmitted out of necessity. Do they count twice?

I grew up reading early because of comics. I did read appropriate ones with my children, but also read a lot of novels to them (Harry Potter for instance.)

It felt strange to find that their favorites were not mine. I did find that smaller publishers did better with them than Marvel and DC.

My daughter loved titles like "Elf Quest" by the Pini's.
My son liked "Dynamo Joe"

You are lucky that many comics are available cheap or free on the internet, but appropriateness varies sharply. I have quite a few in the iPad Comixology app, which has deals with both DC and Marvel as well as others. (You can get more freebies in Marvel and DC's own apps however.)

With electronic comics, there is no collectible, but it usually is cheaper. And you can share without worry about anyone destroying a paper collectible.

And of course, you can get huge collections on the cheap via ebay and Craig's list.

Google's real travel project: an ultra-deep, very large tunnels, starting with San Francisco to Dulles, VA.

Once complete they will have
- Self-driving, high-speed long-range passenger "delivery", as long as synthetic light for 8 or 10 hours is tolerable (great wifi though)
- Same for freight delivery.
- Just as a bonus, easy to build long-haul network connections.

The sheer amount of time required to just read NDA's required me to find a way to stop that, or at least get paid for it.

I charged an upfront fixed fee to evaluate all NDA's or other contracts. At the time, I also offered to refund the fee on completion of the first milestone of any project they pay for. (Now I'm a regular employee again.)

Then I offered the option to hear the idea for free with verbal promise to not steal the idea provided I had not already worked on it. Some people took the option.

In conversations I've heard, many conservatives express the notion that some thoughts should NOT be questioned.

This is not accepted by people who prefer thoughts that can withstand (survive) questioning.

The Mach-5 was the first thing I thought about when I read the title, but this is definitely something else.

The second thing I thought: "Do not give this to my children. I'll be climbing on the roof every day."

Its nice for an author to be recognized.

It would also be nice to see success for eBooks that can't succeed as paper.

Fingerprints can identify you.

DNA can identify you, your parents, your children and other family members.
DNA can show your genetic odds for diseases like diabetes or alcoholism.

Once your DNA is in the public record:
- Your health insurance rates might go way up because you have good odds of diabetes.
- Your car insurance rates might go up because you fit the DNA profile of a drunk, even if you don't drink.

And what do you do if you happen to be an identical twin, triplet, etc, whose sibling committed the crime?

Even if your DNA was never taken, it may suddenly be difficult to get certain jobs because now employer background checks might run a DNA scan on public databases and find out you have a relative convicted of fraud. (I might feel better about this if DNA-based background checks were required to be a candidate in an election.)

Getting Http/1.1 Service Unavailable from their site just minutes after the press event ended.

You can say "I worked there" but its harder to get a bunch of other people to say the same, especially people with active profiles.

I trust a LinkedIn reference more when a person has several links to people who also worked there.

I heard someone say the looked at candidates' "net tracks". They looked for forum contributions, blog entries, Google results, etc.

The user of the phone is the one who chooses between:

-Use cell tower or wifi for internet?
-Upload the pictures or Not?
-Get email 20 times per day or just once?
etc.

The developer can save some data by spending 80% more time to get 20% more efficiency. But in the end, that's just some savings per transaction. If a user decides to use it an outrageous number of times per day, how could a developer do anything about it?

Would you be responsible for the data bill for everyone using a tool you created? Of course not.

More important, if AT&T was billing YOU for someone else's data, would you just accept whatever number they decided to say? NO.

When you start billing everyone, they start wanting to see exactly HOW you got that number. There will be all kinds of fighting over things like:
- Apple's iOS sent that packet, not my app.
- I'm not paying for a rebroadcast of data packets that AT&T dropped.

So they want a cut? Maybe they should have thought about that while they were renegotiating their deal with Steve Jobs. AT&T was probably all happy with themselves... still got iPhone exclusive... paying Apple less per new customer... Let them keep the money from those "app" things.

Most developers get 2/3 of 99 cents. So how much data access is 66 cents supposed to by for each customer?

A long time ago (around 1996) I read an interview of the executive of an ISP company. The magazine asked if they were scared of AT&T (or one of the Bell companies) getting into the internet business. The answer they got was "No, those guys can't get out of their own way." and "They are genetically wired to metered services".

I guess he was right.

(Disclosure: I have a professional educator in my immediate family.)
Finally discussing the MERIT of releasing the "merit" results....

Cons:
- This is a precedent that every employee's job evaluation should be public record.
- Very good odds that this will lower the job satisfaction of teachers even further, making it yet harder to keep good teachers.
- Any discussions that come about from publishing these measurements will be pointless. The publication will out of context from the GOALS and METHODS of making them.

Pros:
- A few teachers who do well in the evaluations will have more ability to show they are being under-paid.
- Arguments to improve the measurement system can be made and will get more attention.

The teacher has many job requirements and those sometimes conflict.

This does lead to no-win situations for the teacher, especially when other peoples' agendas want to shift responsibility.

In the end you can be sure of this: It gets close to impossible for teachers to have high job satisfaction.