Funny, I live in a fairly populated county. I have 2 choices and one of those is >5 Mbps.

Until there is a choice in who I get to use as my provider, then the company providing service has no right determining what I can and cannot see. If they can, then they are most definitely no longer a provider of the internet and are no better than AOL was back in the early 1990's.

Exactly this!

If I order a product from Amazon (I'm also in WA State) and ship it to my house, I get charged the 8.8% sales tax that includes my city/county taxes. If I ship that same package to my daughter's dorm, I get charged 8.3% sales tax. It doesn't matter that Amazon is in Seattle, it matters where the final product will be delivered.

IIRC, you pay the state, along with a report of where the goods were sold to just like a photographer does when they shoot at different locations, as it's based on where the photos are delivered to. The state then distributes the city and county portions of sales tax to those municipalities.

see: Washington Photography Tax Guide

Bring up tax evasion charges, then request that MO arrest you on said charges and extradite you to NM?

The problem is that it's not 50 different tax rates. It's sometimes several hundred per state. If I drive one town over and purchase a 99c taxable item, it'll cost me $1.07 due to taxes. If I drive two towns over and by the same 99c item, it'll cost me $1.08 because the tax rate is different due to city and county taxes. Unless the rules state that it needs to be the base state tax, and the local municipalities are not going to get their share, you're looking at a large number of tax districts.

Look at Seattle and their sugary drink tax. If I drive a little further to Tukwila, I don't have to pay that extra tax. So, if I have that same bottle of Pepsi or Coke delivered to my house, will I have to pay that tax or not?

That's where it will get interesting. Photographers have been dealing with this for as long as sales tax has been around. If you take a picture that you plan to sell, you have to collect the sales tax based on where the photo was taken a lot of the time.

True, but most states require it quarterly at a minimum, which can be a pain.

But that doesn't mean we won't prioritize someone else over you.

I could care less if they don't block and don't throttle, but they will still prioritize those that pay ahead of all others. That's part of the problem. Paid prioritization is just as bad as throttling the other guys. If someone searches a video and it's glitchy because the version on YouTube is faster, then they accomplish the same goal.

The *ONLY* exception to prioritization should be life saving services. E911 calls should be given priority on all networks that carry VoIP. Telemedicine should also be given priority. As should traffic from first responders in an emergency situation.

However, that's where it should end. There shouldn't be a reason that HBO can deliver 4k content without buffering from time to time, yet Showtime can't. There's no reason I should be able to watch an NFL game on Amazon and have it look, sound, seem better than the same game on Twitter (unless of course they have insufficient bandwidth on their end, then that's up to them to fix as a part of doing business).

Because you live in an area where that is feasible. Rural communities, in many areas, still don't have anything better than 56k dialup or slow DSL. There are still areas that I drive in where no cell service exists. Companies only put money where populations are, and therefore can skip other areas because the "average" coverage for the state, county, or region is enough.

This is why you see municipal broadband taking off in areas where it can (e.g. Colorado). The big telco/cable monopolies don't want to run wire where they think it won't be profitable within a very short time, so they just neglect that area.

I'd like to see more communities nullify the monopoly deals that a large provider has and be allowed to set up their own networks. There's no reason the PUD in my area couldn't offer broadband, except for the fact that CenturyLink and Comcast have agreements with too many cities in the area and it gives them monopolies in coverage.

Mine has that on it, as well, as do my kids' SSN cards. To my knowledge, it's on all SSN cards, though I haven't seen any that are newer than 11 years ago.

I've had my credit frozen for 2 years now and haven't had an issue getting a loan. I go to the site of the reporting agency they use, request a pin, give the pin to the lender, then done. Not sure where there'd be an issue. I highly recommend a freeze. It's been the most painless thing I've had to deal with in getting a refinance on my mortgage, 2 car loans, a personal loan, and a new credit card.

Granted, you won't be able to simply go to Best Buy and request a new card, but if you need to do that, then you should re-check your finances before getting a new gadget from them.

I agree. If you're a company such as the big 3 creditors, even without a breach, you should be required to provide these services free of charge to those whose data you hold. You have that data, it's your responsibility to ensure it is not misused. If you can't do that, then you shouldn't be a provider of a service that is as critical to life in the US as the air that is breathed by those that live there.

For example, you can use: http://www.monoprice.com/Produ...
that will get you the HDMI over a distance using CAT6
Then you would use something like:
http://www.monoprice.com/Produ...

The second is only usb 1.1, but for a mouse and keyboard you probably don't need much more than that. You would need to wire each end directly to each side using CAT6 and there might be other devices to run USB 2.0/3.0 over CAT, but these work fine for me. I run them about 85' between my kids' room and the living room so they can watch netflix and play minecraft.

The problem with that is where I am at, there's typically no voice coverage, either. There are huge areas in rural Western, WA that you can't get a cell signal because there's hills and mountains between you and any towers. What's even more funny is that when I'm at home, I get service from one tower that is 40 miles away. If the power goes out, there's no other tower nearby to take the calls, and there's no plan for any of the telco's to put one in. Heck, the one tower that feeds 4 towns (one having a population of 4 - 5000) is typically down for a total of about a month out of the year. Instead of putting a little money into upgrading it and it's capacity, they simply put money into fixing an EDGE tower, where a 3G or LTE tower would make more sense.

The problem isn't that they can't upgrade the tower, it's that they don't want to because the other company that uses their bands would also reap the benefits of the newer tower and access due to sharing agreements. For them, keeping us on limited voice + EDGE is the best way to go, I guess.

Good old "Sokka-ism" with that one.. makes it nice and fitting.