It's governments that enforce the current monopolies and dualopies, what they call a "franchise".

Do you really want government "competing", keeping ie Google fiber out while they offer up government service that works as well as Congress does, with DMV style customer service, and healthcare.gov quality? The way government would "compete" would be to simply deny permits to any company offering a better service that what government bureaucrats and theirlobbyist friends throw together.

The only large-scale success of modern broadband in the US lately has been Google Fiber. They go where local governments have decided to get the heck out of the way, often after wasting huge amounts of taxpayer money on failed attempts to have an ISP run by politicians.

A $10 / month Amerinoc hosting account for their web site will include MySQL. If that MySql allows finders to query just one item per second, that's tens of thousands of queries per day. Their PHP script then emails the registered owner. I don't see anything here that requires more than a few dollars per month, so leaving the service up until subscriptions run out shouldn't be a problem.

I'm assuming they don't get a large volume of phone calls every day for some reason.

The first several replies here aren't too useful. If that continues, ask band roadies on an appropriate forum. The band I used to do lights for did up to three shows per weekend, so there was plenty of opportunity for an expensive cable to end up in the wrong person's case and that sort of thing.

Something as simple as a stripe of blue paint on ALL of your gear will really help avoid accidents. For intentional theft, if you want the pawn shop to _maybe_ notice it, engraving is probably the only way to go.

I use several programming languages, and I can read about 3 human languages. While there are some similarities, I'd say the two things are quite different. However, that doesn't settle the question of what should be taught in school.

I've gone back to school. I'm getting a degree from WGU. For my degree, I could take either American history or sociology. By giving me the choice, the school isn't implying that history and sociology are the same thing. They are saying that either one will improve my education. I see foreign language and programming the same way. Learning either creates a more well-rounded and employable student. I see it as "take either foreign language or programming, not just basket weaving and bird watching".

> And the root problem here is that (thanks, FCC) email is *still* not considered a communication the way POTS or USmail is. ...
> they'd go to jail. Same goes for voice comms. But e-mail somehow magically belongs to the owners

When you use the company's telephone network, the same information is logged. Since virtually all systems do so, there's a standard data format they use, called CDR (call detail record). This has been the case for at least 40 years. You need logs to debug problems in the system, for capacity planning, etc. Does the company need to place an order now to have more lines to the outside world installed two months from now? The admin queries the logs to find out. Why is the company suddenly spending so much money on international calls? Again, they query the logs. If you send packages or letters using the company's FedEx account they have records of that too. They need to know how their money is being spent.

I'm shocked and amazed. A company running their own messaging server on their own network can see how it's being used?!
Next you'll tell me that my company's email administrator can see email I send at work, through the server they administer.

> it can't possibly cost them anything.

A server in New York wants to stream data to a user in California. Someone has to pay for a nationwide fiber network to move the traffic. Both Cogent and Verizon have presence in New York and California. Who carries the packets from New York to California? Very often, that's what peering disputes come down to.

  In general, neither party wants to carry the traffic across the country. Cogent wants to instantly hand the traffic to Verizon right there in the same building where they got the traffic from Netflix, so they don't have to carry the packets more than 100 meters. That's reasonable to them - they are delivering the packets to the company they are addressed to. Verizon would want to receive California packets in California. When Cogent is charging Netflix for transit, it's reasonable for Verizon to ask Cogent to provide that transit to California. Both have reasonable positions. They'll negotiate a mutually acceptable arrangement after first staking out their starting positions.

> You have no idea what you're talking about.

Then you're trying so hard to defend stupid that you've made yourself dense.
According to your link, US citizens send $2.9 trillion to Washington, who sends $500 billion to states, who send $100 billion back to the same localities it came from.

If that seems like a good idea to you, I've got something you'll love. I'm sure you'll get excited about this. You send me$1,000 and I'll send $250 of it to my wife, who will send $100 to you! Yay, you get $100! I'll pm my address to you.

They SELL connections to their customers. Cogent isn't paying Verizon. The peering they're talking about is an even trade with neither company paying the other. When it ceases to be an even trade, it's time for negotiations.

How did you reheat the fly to 220C while casting? And why?

You're not referring to just softening the plastic to shape it, are you? That's not what the article is talking about. The article is talking about setting it up so that it moves back and forth based on temperature. You heat it up, it shortens. When you stop applying heat it lengthens.

School lunches are a big part, yes. Also her proposals include things like having the FCC limit advertising of foods that the government considers to be suboptimal choices. There's a lot of food related stuff, more food related than exercise related.

Personally , I think the local school should serve healthy food. I'm glad that decades ago the FDA started putting out guidance, suggestions, that assist local school districts with healthy menu planning. I don't see any need for local citizens to pay $10,000 in taxes to Washington, who takes their cut before sending $7,000 to the state, who takes their cut before sending $5,000 back to the local area. Federal bureaucracy to buy lunch is just silly.

It's also the local dieticians who are best able to work with local needs and tastes. Here in Texas, kids will eat burritos, they won't eat fish and chips. I bet in Massachusetts it's the other way around. Federal bureaucrats making more menu decisions for local schools isn't going to work too well, I don't think.

I was joking obviously, but no, that's simply incorrect. She outlines her agenda in a document about 20 pages long entitled "summary of recommendations". You'll notice the word "food" appears four times as often as the word "exercise". In fact, she mentions "screen time" as often as she mentions exercise.

Her agenda items include "the federal government should pursue actionable items [to create] food boards ... set food policy". Whether you agree with her or not, her stated mission is to have the federal government decide what you eat and what you don't, see to it that you eat healthly food. Maybe that's what Washington should be doing, maybe it's not. It's absolutely what Mrs. Obama is seeking to have Washington do. Go read her web site.

Three hundred euro? The contest sparks my interest, but 300 is about what it would take to get me to fill out the entry form. To develop an effective NEW algorithm, code it, and test it in HOPES of winning the prize? Maybe for 300,000, maybe. 3,000,000 would be more like it.

I've developed exactly two truly innovative products. One I sold over $1 million worth, the other still provides $3,000 / month in net income . Why would I, or anyone skilled and innovative, touch this for 300 euro?

I can't decide if that's a great point or off the mark.

The patent office bureaucracy has approved a bunch of bad patents.Improving
  that bureaucratic process may well improve the results. On the other hand:

We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.
Albert Einstein

Perhaps a bold, strong new leader at the patent office who did a lot of new things, including soliciting public comment, could make a big difference. Someone like Robert Gates, for example, could probably greatly improve things without any fundamental changes to the underlying law. Just ACTUALLY deny patents where there is prior art, etc.

That would be rather inconsistent. Isn't the first lady's big thing getting sweets banned?