No, this is how they train for interviewing. The stated idea is to always raise the bar, meaning is the person being interviewed better than 50% of the people currently in that role. The issues with this approach are, 1. It is subjective, 2. Why would an interviewer recommend hiring someone better then they are, resulting in later unregrettable attrition when letting go the interviewer (or targeting employees meeting current requirement but have stock vesting soon) 3. This will create a gap in levels and skills if the person hired is always better than the 50%. Eventually entry level becomes equivalent to much hire levels. So, more work for less pay.

There is a difference, they would not be standing up to the Chinese Government, and they would be an enabler for the Chinese Government. This may not be their intent, but there are ancillary consequences to their users that Google should take into account.

Whats is interesting is this article is saying... show me the statistical proof that it actually is affecting the performance of the network for other customers (not a scenario of my buddy and I share a router in our apartment & he slows my connection). Additionally, if you are sold a service at up to 5 mbps, you shouldn't be able to affect the performance of the network for other customers.

Where in the world did you get the concept of what was in mind when these systems were designed. Torrents, web browsers, ftp... they all just transfer data, and the application manipulates the data. For the sake of networking level transmissions, the only thing remotely different with torrents then a standard ftp transfer is using multiple sources, like say.... a web browsers does with linked images & misc. The data, uploading or downloading is not a novel concept with networking. Not are you given a max download cap, usually it is accompanied by a max up load speed cap. This argument goes beyond torrents. What about ISO downloading (like Linux). Content providing to other locations, VPN connections, streaming Video (Hulu/YouTube), etc.

This is a horrible comparison for many reasons. However, running with your analogy, if you go to a sale that says up to 50% off. You see a sweater you want marked as "50% off" and pay for it before going to grab it. Then as you go to grab it, you are told that you can not have the entire sweater because too many people have bought it. Now I guess a fairer comparison would be a sale sign saying, up to an entire sweater for full price, and they hand you part of a sleeve. I think the article is talking about something even worse. It is saying that you go to grab your paid-for sweater from a warehouse full of sweaters, and no other buyers in sight, and you are told are told that you can no longer buy from them because you are purchasing and expecting to use too much of that sweater at the detriment of other sweater purchasers in a time of a sweater scarcity. It is disingenuous and possibly deceptive business practices.

Good analogy, if you are driving and the speed limit is 60 mph on the highway, and you drive 60 mph, but after 15 mins, your speed is required to drop to 30 mph. In this scenario (based on the first trigger),we are not even assuming/considering if there is additional traffic, only if you are going the full speed limit. The cable company's description of their service is disingenuous. The first trigger is only checking how much of the allotted bandwidth you are using, not that if your bandwidth is affecting other local users. This seems wrong when you are advertised to have up to speeds but don't respect the availability based on corporate self imposed limits. The only thing that should affect your speed for this trigger is network congestion, not artificial limitations. The second trigger sounds better, except when a company like Comcast check their Cable Modem Termination System to determine throttling, they have no incentive to limit the number of users/households per system. This causes lower transfers based on the poor infrastructure implementation by Comcast. These two triggers are rigged twice to hurt the consumer. A better solution would have been to check the Cable Modem Termination System if it is reaching its max bandwidth or a high percent, and then have it adjust a households bandwidth for the largest users sudo dynamically. This would affect the people using the most when the resources are "truly" limited, and only limit enough to keep traffic moving. - The beauty with this plan is if they put too many people on a System at the same time, everyone's traffic will be affected. This is not good from the consumer perspective, but it would cause people to complain, hopefully leading to Comcast getting their act together and invest in better infrastructure and to not overload the connections to their system. This is standard network administration. I think you could see why the Cable companies wouldn't go with this method. Since we are limited to the up to speed they advertise, I think that when they throttle down the bandwidth, they should throttle down the cost we pay for service until they get their act together.

The ultimate gateway "drug" is prohibition. The more you ban something, the more some people are interested in try it. That is when the real danger occurs. Then when they find out something, such as pot, isn't as bad as it was made to be (again reference the movie Refer Madness), the more they are willing to try other things. That is why simple drugs, such as pot, can lead to bad things such as meth or coke, but it is because of the outrageous claims and prohibition. If society is going to speak of the psychology of gateway drugs, they need to look at the whole picture, instead of villainizing something that is probably safer to use than alcohol.

Who said anything about underage drinkers? If you were an underage drinker, you would need a fake id, and if it scans, you have no worries. This article affects law-abiding citizen who enjoy alcohol, and it tracks where they are, and potentially how much they drink. With respect your drunks not being protected, I think you are missing the point. What happens if someone socially drinks a beer after work every night with a coworker, responsible waits unacceptable period of time, and then goes home. If he were to apply for another job, the employer may disqualify the potential employee based on this information because if looks like he goes to the bar every night and gets drunk. People should have some level of privacy, and when information is collected through State Identification card, and can be redistributed to third parties, I see a problem.