Thank you.

You just don't get it. People have a right to keep doing whatever they want. When I bought my house, I thought I had property rights, but nope. My neighbor Sam was allowed to come in without knocking and raid the fridge from the previous home owner, so of course I can't lock my doors or expect Sam to stop. I was going to put a fence up to protect my lawn, but it turns out kids are in the habit of cutting across it, so I'll just have to leave it unfenced. I think the thing that most shocked me was that the previous home owner still parks his car in my garage. He did that before so I guess I have to keep letting him. The bed does get a little crowded, but hey, he slept there before I bought the house so who am I to kick him out?

Some movies are data dumps of information.

Casablanca and Citizen Kane were movies I watched because I wanted the knowledge of the cultural impact, not because they were movies I would enjoy watching. I wish I'd had fast playback when I watched them. If I can ever force myself to watch Gone With The Wind, you can trust that I won't do it at original speed.

Other times, when I'm re-watching a movie, there is no suspense, no questions waiting for answers. In most of those cases, I'm just trying to refresh my brain on all the bits. Nothing is gained by introducing an artificial limit to that type of viewing.

I really don't want to agree with you. I regularly make the argument that one guy with a match is having an impact and causing some tiny amount of climate change, while the real questions are the significance of the impact and what we can reasonably do about it. Climate change is happening, and rational people should take steps to deal with that fact. However, you don't have to agree with the impact that scare mongers are preaching, and you don't have to agree with what politicians or pundits say we should do about it.

When I first became interested in the subject, I talked to someone with a degree and experience in meteorology. He didn't want to go on the record, but he didn't think global warning was something to worry about. (Back in those days, everyone called it global warming. It has been a while.)

Rational people can be misinformed and we can disagree. We can also change our minds. It does no good to mock each other if you actually want to see change. Even worse is the flat dismissal of any disagreement or dissension because you treat your opinions like religious doctrine.

I pay my ISP for internet access at a certain bandwidth. That's what they advertise and what I agreed to pay for. If they block or slow things, they are cheating me. Some ISPs want to redefine internet access as pieces and speeds but not sell it that way. That dishonesty is why net neutrality matters.

Cable TV could come with internet service, but when I agree to pay for cable and not internet, they block internet service. That is not cheating because they aren't failing to provide what I pay for.

I don't think I'm paying for any service from Bittorrent, so how can they cheat me? As soon as they take my money for something they fail to provide, then this net neutrality analogy can make sense, but until then, it is irrelevant.

For fifteen years governments and corporations have been trying to shut down citizen access to thepiratebay. I just checked to see if it was still up before starting this post and thepiratebay.org didn't load. For half a second I thought maybe they had lost the battle, but then I searched for them and pulled up another domain instantly. In a perfect world* we wouldn't need profit driven organizations fighting government and corporate rage, but until I'm elected, I'm glad there are people working out how to make a service resist all forms of censorship.

I expect that all sorts of dumb criminals will be caught and innocent citizens will have their privacy invaded as these sorts of government oppression succeed. I'm glad that math exists and is well enough disseminated that even as it becomes harder, those of us with pencil, paper, and knowledge can remain immune. I understand the cost to freedom this represents, but thankfully highly motivated criminals are out there fighting for our ability to resist the evils of government.

* Vote for me as supreme world dictator for life and I'll promise whatever lie you currently accept from your politicians.

Why argue technicalities? Oh yeah, that's what this account is for. So, you're saying that the law targets the things I mentioned, but that's not the same thing as being able to enforce it. Enforcement effectiveness is what I was questioning, not targets. Either they'll fail to enforce the law consistently or they'll effectively kill off internet access. I personally think the voters would revolt if they instituted a white-list internet access system, so I think enforcement will fail.

The voters have been deceived? So what? You must think voters actually care about issues more than making sure their team wins. How cute.

I see your frustration and disillusionment and I raise you four decades worth of cynicism.

Good question. The other one I'm curious about is whether they can enforce it against all the other apps that offer end to end encryption. Even if they manage to block the ones that do now, will they be able to keep up with all the new ones that spring up? How about every web page that takes a message and a public key to create encrypted text?

The sad thing is going to be how successful this sounds in the press releases put out by government representatives. There are plenty of stupid and petty criminals who won't know or bother to use something secure, and they'll get caught. Law enforcement and politicians will point to this as a shining example of success. Will the voters feel happy about that or will they actually care about their privacy?

I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Nobody but Hillary could have lost to Trump. If the Democratic party had run a 35 yr old potato, we'd have a potato-in-chief right now. Imagine how many Republicans voted, holding their nose in distaste, just out of hatred for Hillary. They'd have stayed home in droves if they hadn't been so motivated to vote against her. Gore would have won. Bernie would have won. Even Tim Kaine would have won. I'd have voted for Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice and among the demographic of people who've never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, I know for certain I'm not alone. I might not have voted for an actual potato, but I'd have been heavily conflicted between that and the third party vote I did cast.

For a decade or more, I voted for Republican candidates because I agreed more with their platform. After observing their self interested voting records and broken promises for a while, that changed. Mostly I voted for Libertarians, and I still disagree with the Democrat platform, but I'm planning to vote in 2019 based on which candidate is most likely to have a chance to vote for net neutrality so hey, congratulations liberals, you got a convert.

Dozens of policies I disagree with have no chance of changing, and neither do the ones I support, so screw standing on principle. I'm casting my next vote based on something I thoroughly understand and have the tiniest hope of seeing change. This is my new philosophy: vote based on any hope you can sustain that something might change, provided you don't actually vomit in the voting booth. I still won't vote for Hillary, but give me Mrs. Potatohead versus the Angry Cheeto and you've got my vote.

Oops, still forgot to uncheck the "Post Anonymously" box.

That much scotch. Salud.

Yeah, yeah, lots of CAPS to EMPHASIZE your ideas....

The point of your comment is that there is an obligation on those companies that succeed in the US environment to contribute back to the economy. That's sweet. Also, that's naive.

It isn't about some social empathy issue, it's a math problem. How much does it cost to stay in Seattle vs how much does it cost to move to someplace else? The answer is what determines what a company should do in order to maximize profit... and make no mistake, that is all a company cares about. If it's more profitable to move, they'll move. This news is about the negotiation between a company with the objective to be profitable and the local city to get all the money they can out of said company without totally tanking their future.

It should be non-news. "Huge company negotiates with home city to determine tax structure agreeable to both" is hardly a catchy headline. Thus we see many emotional responses to what is really soulless math.

Funny.

Not as funny as "We value your privacy - the folks we sell your privacy to value it even more."

That sentence deserves a Pulitzer or something.

3 of 5 stars! (Minus 1 for not being a news headline, minus another for not linking to your newsletter.)

There with you, but slightly different experience.

We went from Openfire to Skype for Business as part of a move to Office 365. It wasn't entirely smooth, but that was partly on me, I treated our employees like people who understood the basics of computing, but they proved me drastically wrong. *Sigh.*

Some history first. When we started with O365 years before, we had recently finished moving from Communicator on our server to O365 based S4B. I had been experimenting with alternative options and had an Openfire server set up in testing but no real plan to utilize it when S4B had an outage. Our company was left without an IM client suddenly and we depended on it. It took me a matter of minutes to roll out Openfire and we were up and running. It was successful enough that when the outage ended, we didn't switch back. Fast forward a few years and the new boss moved us back onto what was now a much more reliable S4B service. We've been with it and mostly satisfied... so when I heard MS had transitioned some O365 companies to Teams involuntarily, I kinda panicked. Now a sane response might be to revisit Openfire, but no, the new boss is MS all the way. (What's up with that??) So, I tested Teams and found it better in some ways that interested me. It is superior in MFA, multiple sign on locations, and a couple other things. I had the conversation where I said "MS is moving to teams, it's not an option, so we had best get a jump on this while we still have a choice" and similar such.

We're doing some other transitions so our IT team moved to Teams... for about 5 minutes. That was all it took for us to determine that the Teams was not going to be anywhere remotely close to a smooth transition for the majority of our company employees. Thus we're still S4B and sticking with it until MS forces us off or MS actually makes Teams a usable replacement for our average employee. You mentioned Teams not "letting us know if someone is online, away, or offline" which is something Teams actually can and does do, but it's not obvious to our average user. That's the issue. It's not that it can't or doesn't but rather that it's not easy for the average user to see how to do.

If someone from MS is reading this, I have this to say to you: Please, please make Teams easy to use for someone who has been using Communicator/Lync for a decade.

Why? Having a fresh black eye myself makes me more empathetic and concerned when I see someone else with a fresh bruise.

America is very much like a person. We hold ideals that we completely fail to live up to. We proclaim that all men are created equal, but in the same breath we make sure that everyone understands we mean only white male land owners. Slowly we mature, maybe people who don't own land can have a vote. Maybe black people are nearly people so they get part of a vote. Women? They're kinda people, fine. You know what? Black people get to vote too. Everybody gets a vote, how do you like that? (No, of course we don't mean everybody, we do have standards! You can't be treating people who committed a felony as a kid like real people or filthy foreigners have a voice.)

Everybody gets guns so they can shoot government officials. Well on second thought, maybe only "good" people. Also, maybe just some kinds of guns. Now that we government officials think about it, no shooting government officials.

America is your racist, misogynist, bigoted great uncle Sal who is slowly, ever so slowly, realizing that people are people. Sure he still steals the silverware and punches other family members, but at least he is trying to improve himself. Still, despite all his stupid quirks and frankly evil past, you kinda love the guy. He really does seem to love everybody if you can see past his failings. He's slowly turning into a decent human being. He could even be a mature, respectable adult that you're glad came to the reunion... if he lives long enough. And would quit getting in drunken fights. And would stop trying to steal your wallet. And maybe quit spitting on your friends.

Meanwhile you just noticed Auntie Sarah started taking silverware too. Come on Sarah, you need to set an example here, for everybody, but especially for Sal!

I honestly cannot tell if you're trolling or not. If you are, then kudos for the subtlety, that's brilliant. If you aren't, then I might suggest a little research into the subject. You'll discover that practically every style and grammar guide disagrees with you while there are still really valid arguments in favor of double or at least larger spaces.

I was taught to double space when I learned to type, and back then we learned on a typewriter. Later in life I had to do some professional writing and I learned that I shouldn't. It was at that point that I ruthlessly broke the habit. Still later, I learned there is an interesting history behind the conflicting ideas. Anyone who double spaces and holds a strong opinion that it is "right" is an ignorant and apathetic reader whose opinion can be handily dismissed. Anyone who double spaces because it is "proven" to be better is someone to watch. They may be someone to watch because they're a person who reads to learn or they may be someone to watch because they're a liar, but either way, you should keep an eye on them.