You're making up "facts" to support your preconceived conclusuons. As I told you in GP, the local independent provider in Portland is Steakhouse. Here's their pricing page:
http://www.stephouse.net/resid...

You'll notice they don't offer television service. You just made that up, to pretend that the facts match up with the conclusions that Stephen Colbert told you to believe.

Your conclusions are as sound as the completely fictional facts you've based them on.

It would be interesting to do it for a week.

You can microwave (or fry) those tortillas until crispy, if you like crispy. A quick. Light spray of oil (Pam) before microwaving or pan frying makes them EXACTLY like the packaged taco shells, except they are fresh. I prefer tacos with seasoned black beans rather than greasy meat.

Tortillas are about a dollar for 25. Beans, $2 per dry pound, rice less tha. $1 per dry pound. All together, I think tacos for a family of four is about $5.

AAnyone saying fast food is cheap obviously hasn't been an assistant manager at a restaurant. The food cost is 20-30% of sales. Which means, buying the same food at the store would cost 80% less. You can then choose how much salt you want to use, if you want seasoned black beans or greasy beef, etc.

> a McMeal on the way home from work (they have some sort of deal going now where you can get 4 burgers, some fries, and 4 soft drinks for $9.99)

> burn $5 or so in gas to get proper food at the nearest decent grocery store 10 miles away

Don't ever go on "The Price Is Right". You'll embarrass yourself. The four large sodas are $9.99, you don't get four burgers and fries too. Also for $9.99, you can get 5 pounds of bananas l, plus 2 pounds of carrots, us 1 pound of apples, 2 pounds of rice, 1 pound of beans, and half a pound of chicken.

Hamburger meat: $3.72 / pound
Bananas: 59Â / pound
Apples: $1.30 / pound
Romaine lettuce: $2.72 / pound
Ice cream: $5

People who go for instant gratification cut school, walk out on the job when they get mad, and eat Oreos. People who think though the long-term effects of their decisions work their way through college, bite their tongue and discuss problems when calm, eat fruits and vegetables, and exercise - even though they don't WANT to do those things I.the moment, they think long term.

Short-term thinking results in a person being poor and unhealthy. Long term thinking tends to lead to financial success and a healthy lifestyle. I have done, and still do, some of both. I worked late last night, and I'm headed in to my high-paying job, where I'll work hard at serving the needs of the organization. First, I'm going to finish smoking this cigarette. I know each of those choices will probably effect me five years from now.

Also, each customer getting the independent service at 20 Mbps will save $75 / month if they switch to Google. That's an extra $75 / month per household ($10 million total) that residents can now spend at other local businesses. $10 million more in sales means that those other businesses will be hiring about 100 more people.

> was there any thought to the local jobs created and maintained,

Those employees at Stephouse, the independent ISP, currently maintain a network that delivers up to 20 Mbps. If those employees instead help build and maintain Google's local gigabit equipment, that means they provide 50 times as much bandwidth in the same 8 hour workday. A person who provides your house with a 1,000 Mb connection provides more value than the same person providing a 20 Mbps connection, so they can get paid more.

Some employees probably will upgrade their skills and work on the new gigabit plant, making more money. Other employees now have "free" gigabit, so they are in a better position to start their own web-based business. Either way, they can so something more productive than maintaining a slow legacy network.

> We are betting off investing in creating more moral men and woman

Attempts to do that have a not been as successful as we'd like. Religions, for example, have that as a primary goal. Unfortunately, religions are run by the same selfish, power-hungry humans who run all of our other systems.

Some of the founding fathers of the US wrote about attempting to create a system whereby the individual quest for money and power ends up benefiting the common good. Some native American tribes had such a system. In their tradition, every few years neighboring groups would gather to redistribute rankings - power and prestige. The ranking of each leader was determined by how much he gave away. A man of prestige would work a few years, carefully managing his capital to try to produce as much good stuff as he could in order to give away more than his neighbor, thereby retaining his title.

    Free and open source software is similar - one gains prestige by contributing a lot. Recruiters have computer programs thatlook for people with a lot of commits on Github and elsewhere. My own contribution to the Linux kernel gives me some cachet that helps with getting a good job, etc.

Some US founders wanted to use that idea as much as possible, and they succeeded in one way. They reasoned that the President would want to keep his power, so he'd resist any attempt by the senate to increase their relative power. Similarly, the house would want to be powerful, so they wouldn't let senate or president roll over them. That worked pretty well for 200 years, then presidential power increased vis-a-vis Congress. Each house of Congress is still pretty powerful, though, so they do keep the president in check to some extent.

Perhaps we could find more eways to make doing "right" also be the most profitable / prestigious. If someone controls a capital asset such as a large cargo ship, they'll WANT to do good thing X because the benefit to them is Y. What might X and Y be? Alternatively, people want (money/power/recognition/sex), in order to get what they want, they might need to do (something that benefits society). How can society benefit from people's attempt to get money, or power, or sex?

Don't say it can't be done. For thousands of years societies traded sex for marriage. People wanted sex, society wanted stability, and it was decided that the society would expect you to get married before having sex. Most people complied.

In shopping malls, guests frequently leave bags in the restroom inadvertently. In some malls, the stalls have a little spring-loaded shelf that folds down to set your bag on. The thing is, the shelf blocks the door. You CAN'T leave the stall without picking up your bag to raise the shelf out the way. Nobody has ever accidentally left a bag on one of those shelves.

Another common "oops" used to be leaving one's ATM card in the ATM. You'd insert your card, hwy the money you came for, then leave without the card. Some machines were reprogrammed so that it wouldn't give you your money until you took the card out. The money is the whole reason you're standing there, so people rarely left without their money. By requiring them to take the card back to get the money, technology fixed stupid. Later ARMs have you SWIPE the card, so it never leaves your fingers . You can't leave the card in the machine if you never put it in the machine. Another, better, technological solution for an act of stupid.

Other examples include cases where peoplewho weren't paying attention would press the wrong button. Making the wrong button look and feel completely different from the right button largely fixes that. Remember when forms on web pages used to have the "reset" button , which cleared everything you'd just entered in the form. People frequently made the stupid mistake of clicking "reset" rather than "submit". Removing the "reset" button fixed that stupid mistake..

See "The Design of Everyday Things" for more technologies that prevent or reduce stupid mistakes, as well as a good analysis of the psychology of stupid . It covers what types of stupid mistakes there are (such as doing the right thing with the wrong object ie tossing "it" in the trash, then realizing your left hand is still holding the empty can, while your right hand is no longer holding your keys).

From the beginning of the article:

> HTTPA, designed to fight the "inadvertent misuse" of data by people authorized to access it.

It sounds to me that it's more similar to labeling a paper file "confidential, for xyz use only". By attaching the confidentiality information directly to the data, you seek to avoid having someone absent-mindedly email the information to a vendor, without thinking about the fact that the information is supposed to be kept confidential.

I think you've missed the point. Quoting the beginning of the article:

> HTTPA,designed to fight the "inadvertent misuse" of data by people authorized to access it.

I've had this conversation more than once:

Bob - Why did you tell people about ___. That was supposed to be a secret.
Sally - Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that was supposed to be kept confidential.

Also this thought "oops, what I just said was supposed to be kept confidential. I messed up."

Those are the situations the protocol is supposed to address, the INADVERTENT release of confidential data. It's the digital equivalent of stamping a paper "confidential, for abc use only". Any time the system accesses the data, it is also reminded of the confidentiality rules attached to that data. This so they can, through processes and software, avoid mistakes. For example, a client could be set so that an attempt to copy confidential data to clipboard instead copies the reminder "this is confidential information", so someone copying it into an email without thinking gets reminded.

It's not a matter of CPU load. Suppose you have one checksum block for every eight data blocks. In order to verify the checksum on read, you have to read the checksum block and all eight data blocks. So you have to read a total of nine blocks instead of one. Reading from the disk is one if the slowest operations in a computer, so ddoing it nine times instead of one slows things down considerably.

> In the case of internet, there's more of an issue with first-to-enter-wins.

Yep, and the phone companies were the first, since they already had both local and long haul cabling. So everyone used isdn and dial up. Until someone offered something better and cheaper (cable modems). Most people used cable modems until someone offered something better.

Local franchises (government enforced monopolies) meant that you weren't allowed to offer a better cable modem service, because the government granted one company the exclusive right to offer cable modems. It was under these franchises that new companies could come in only by offering a completely new technology. In a few areas, there are no such government restrictions and there actually are two cable companies competing with each other.

Here is the statute. Notice the race stuff is surrounded by the word "or" twice. That has been held to mean it applies if your rights or violated OR if you are punished on the basis of race.

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years , or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

Also section 242 makes it a crime to violate someone's civil rights under color of law, with sentences ranging from one year to the death penalty.

During settlement negotiations, his lawyer could mention that she has an appointment with federal prosecutors to discuss the case. The mayor, judge, and chief of police may sell their houses and cars to pay a settlement which makes the Curtin happy enough that he doesn't feel the need to press for a federal criminal case.

Section 107 sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair use:

The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes

The nature of the copyrighted work

The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

1 and 4 have to do with profit. #1 asks "is the person copying doing so for profit?" #4 asks "how does that effect the profits due the author or their assigns?"