The Internet may have augmented people's minds with the ability to find solutions to problems people already found solutions for. It's also, through things like BOINC and other distributed computing schemes, able to complete repetitive tasks on enormous amounts of data. The Internet, though, still can't actually solve a problem that nobody else has solved. It still requires people to do the actual thinking.

You're right, though, that the Internet can't be killed, at least not without wiping out a significant amount of our technology (massive EMP would do it). Even if a bunch of governments got together to strictly control, or completely wipe out the Internet people would band together and, within a few months or years, there would be a more robust, more independent Internet. Perhaps instead of using wires it'd use HAM radio (this idea already exists as the Hinternet). The Internet, as an idea, can't be killed. Things ON the Internet are also hard to kill (they killed suprnova only to be replaced a few days later with ten or fifteen copies, which were killed and replaced by more)

The Internet is like a virus or bacteria. What doesn't kill it makes it stronger, and since nothing can kill it (besides the aforementioned world-wide EMP) it's always getting stronger.

I think you're getting electrical power and computing power confused. Computing power has increased exponentially without any kind of correlation in electrical power, either increase or decrease. In some cases the electrical requirements are increased, in many others it's decreased. My phone runs on a 3.7v Li-ion battery and is far more powerful than the building-sized computers of the early computing years which used incredible amounts of energy.

It's entirely plausible that we could increase computing power almost indefinitely without significantly increasing the energy requirements. At some point we'll reach a wall, then we'll need some new scientific discovery to push beyond it (faster than light communication would decrease the latency so much as to make computing speeds almost limitless, assuming such a thing is possible).

The problem with most of those "close this frame" or "view only main frame" or whatever links/buttons tend to just go to whatever the frame was originally. This doesn't work if you've navigated away from the original page. It also will be painful if there's a half-filled out form on the page.

What we need is the ability to remove frames without reloading the page.

Also, Firefox has a "view this frame only" option in the context menu (right click), this is usually better than the site-provided buttons since it stays on the same page if you've browsed around (though it still reloads the page).

I haven't RTFA, but I think they're talking about trace amounts already existing in the water supply, not additives. Though it does sound like something someone might do as a result of hearing about this study.

That's where lithium comes in. Life will still suck, but you won't notice because you're a mindless drone with no memory.

Insects are easier to kill than dinosaurs. Or, so I assume as I've never actually tried to kill a dinosaur by smacking it with a newspaper.

Dewd, ur carma jst run ovr mai dawgma.

I know you're joking, but just ask Woody, he knows what to be scared of.

Myan calendar needs a new digit in 2012, not 2018.

Hey now, Dr. Who was reversing polarity years before Star Trek! Besides Jon Pertwee pronounced it better, also his ship was a small box made of wood.

Oh, obviously there is a ton of physics laws they bent and broke. But you also have to look at it from the point of view of someone in 1987-1994 not someone in 2009.

Besides, they TRIED to make it more scientific. That alone skews it drastically towards sci-fi.

I am curious as to why you're implying space elevators are impossible.

A space elevator at ground level is most likely impossible with current technology, and would certainly be unfeasible (the center would have to be very large in order to keep the whole thing together). A space elevator that can be reached by standard aircraft, however, might just be possible, and with stronger material a ground level one might be as well.

Why would you say Star Trek is fantasy?

Cell phones are a reality that did not exist when TOS aired, yet they imagined mobile, hand-held communication devices. Is that fantasy?

There are far more examples in TNG, especially when it comes to physics ideas. The fact that it explored how and why, or at the very least attempted to explain it makes it Science Fiction to me.

Star Wars, on the other hand, is about as far from Science Fiction as The Lord of The Rings.

Only on slashdot would such a post be modded insightful. Not that I disagree.

I hate you for making me say this as I'm usually a critic of the way corporations misuse capitalism. However I don't think this would be considered price gouging. There's a limited supply and a high demand, this means that higher prices are not only acceptable, they're required.

Now if they were artificially limiting supply (like what oil companies do) I might have a problem with it. Unfortunately it does cost a lot to deploy cellular systems. Now, if we could have an extremely high capacity satellite communication network we might be able to deploy high speed wireless Internet much cheaper and faster. Of course this would need a huge amount of initial investment, cellular networks, while expensive, can be deployed in tiny sections, satellites have a lower area/$ cost, but cover a much larger area. Also it would require a major change in technology. You probably couldn't use standard cell phones and would probably require higher powered handsets, causing more cancer causing brain frizzle.