One solution to this is simple; do you feel buckeyballs (which is a very loose trademark considering the name has been around more than 20 years) is abusing the DMCA and being anticompetitive? If so, then go to http://zenmagnets.com/ and buy a small set of magnets (which are cool by the way). I did! Support the little guy and vote with the dollars you spend! Tell your friends on Facebook about the cool magnets you just bought and that they should buy some too! Let word of mouth get around. Let your actions be the PR and send the message to buckeyballs.

Hey slashdot, tell ThinkGeek to carry ZenMagnets and drop buckeyballs instead.

I remember severe issues with the SFF GX150 some years ago. If you ever had one fry and need a motherboard replacement, that is because the Power Supply's fan was reversed; instead of pulling hot air out, it forced hot air into the case. I informed Dell and more than 80% of the GX150's I had were like this. They never owned up to the problem and just kept going, replacing dozens of motherboards along the way. Idiots!

OK, I can see trademarking the NBC Chimes and the MGM Lion. These sounds are CONSISTENT and definitely identify the brand. It is the same audio through and through time and time again. The duck call is not the same sound time and again. The sound will be different based on who does it, how they hold the duck call, etc. Unless they have the sound on a speaker and pipe it out that way, this lawsuit should fail.

This is no different than Harley Davidson attempting to trademark the sound of their engines. It's an engine! No matter how good you are, the engines will just sound different from bike to bike. I should note that Harley Davidson ultimately failed in their bid to trademark the sound of their engines.

- How much spam reaches your inbox? Will the ISP apply their usage limits to your incoming mailbox as well? I guarantee you there is some bean counter who has already thought of this and is just grinning at the prospect!

  - How much do you get scanned? I'm sorry folks, but you are using a REAL IP to access the internet. And there is nothing to prevent ANYBODY from scanning that IP address. And I guarantee you that TW, ATT, Cox, whoever, is going to allow that packet through. Multiply by a few million and BLAM, you have a $20K bill!!!

  - How many advertisements do you see on an average web page? How many are now FLASH? Do I get to decide which advertisement makes it and which one doesn't? Why should I have to pay my hard earned cash to see advertisements? I've seen websites that were more adverts than content. So basically, more than 50% of the cash I had to use was wasted because the website uses heavy FLASH! How is that fair?

Those are the reasons that Usage Fees are bad. And let us not forget about the cable TV suggestion I heard recently; let me pick and choose my programming without having to pay for the bloody HGTV that I never watch, and then we can start talking about usage fees. Until then, shut it! It is either an "All you can eat Buffet" of the Cable Companies can dump the forced "Buffet of crap programming I don't want or would ever want!"

And while power and water are definitely utilities. The Internet is most definitely not a utility in the classic sense. It's a communications medium. You can get unlimited phone usage, you can get unlimited cell phone usage. And you basically get unlimited TV (the cable company doesn't hold you to 5 hours a week afterall); as it should be with the Internet.

Putting a limit is no different than Net Neutrality. You are effectively limiting the amount of news, entertainment, etc I can enjoy. How is it any different than saying I can't hit this website or that? You are now forcing me to prioritize the entertainment I wish to pursue.

Are you guys really admins?

Script what you would do manually. It's not that hard to determine your distro and thus which app to use to update. Determine how you manage manually and just start BASH'ing it out in a script to do the same thing remotely. SSH keys will be required. Then set up sudo on each system to allow you to run certain commands passwordless. Just be sure to use ssh -t when connecting so that sudo will work properly.

Really, this is admin 101. Any good admin should be able to script. If you can't, then start learning; Or you will only ever be a mediocre admin.