Speaking as a Finn I find this ridiculous. We have a population density of 16/km2 or 41/sq mi for you who go by the imperial system, that is 201st in the world. The United states has 33.7/km2 or 87.4/sq mi.

In Finland we, in contrary to Sweden, have the industry building out the networks for their own money. Very little is subsidized unlike in Sweden. Still we are able to have really good internet connections. Currently we pay around 30-50euro/month for 24 / 2mbit ADSL (depending on where you live and ISP) in most places where fiber isn't avaliable but fibre is in general being expanded in most population centers and then some local areas such as small municipalities build their own fiber networks.

Where you can get access to fiber you pay the same for a significantly faster connection. I know for example that in my appartment building I would get 250mbit for 50/euro month.

As a matter of fact we are aiming at being able to provide 100mbit to everyone by 2015 source from the finnish broadcasting company

It doesn't matter how you reason, there's absolutely no reason what so ever that the major population centers in the US wouldn't have high speed internet access for affordable prices except the telco cartels.

Pollutes? Well that's a really extrem term. The used up energy to no end. But that's not directly pollution. With headlines like this it feels like slashdot is becoming a tabloid.

Most of us here at slashdot know that energy is produced anyway and we are fairly unable to store it. If anything we're unable to store it in any efficient way. If it is like the first post here says too, that it was produced with hydro-power, then where's the problem?

Actually they managed to sell the company at ten times the market price. The estimated value of the company according to valuation terms used in finance would have been $10bn and the company sold for over $100bn. The valuation is made on the basis of the profits a company is making and market price is a max of 10 times that so Facebook was a huge bubble when it had its IPO at 100 times the profits of the previous year. That said, the early stakeholders in FB made a great deal when the IPO was done.

Ok, so we have a Full HD standard at the moment which is pretty much the same quality as a better computer monitor from a generic brand. Why are the computer manufacturers lagging so far behind? Ok, Apple has launched their retina displays which do have a really good resolution but where's the rest of the industry? I myself have two laptops and they've both got pretty much the same resolution even though it's been six years between the times I bought them. IT-industry, get your heads out of your asses and start pushing out those really HD monitors already, this includes for both desktops and laptops!

damn you, you beat me to the Santorum reference. :D

I can't really see the point at all in why we in the nordic countries would need to change at all ... its stupid as shit since we need to heat our homes 8 months of the year anyway.

So what if they incandescent light-bulbs only produce light from 5% of the energy used. The rest go to heat ... to heat our homes ... which we would have done anyway. The rest of the year we don't use lights indoor that much since we've 18-24h sunlight here anyway.

"A Modest Proposal" is not a part of the curriculum in Finland, hence I wasn't aware of it absolutely being satire. I'm not making excuses, i'm just explaining the situation.

Oh please let this be satire and not something serious

A disturbence in the force I sense. Like the scream of millions of star wars fans suffering it sounds.

I too was a bit shocked by getting 5 for insightful. But yeah, I do have other contributions to /. that have been of more value than that obvious post, so don't worry. I'm not just here to steal your mod points. ;-)

The iPad is made in China too, your argument is invalid.

But printed charts and manuals don't have an 8-10 hour battery time ...

As a marketer I can tell you that we have been doing this in one way or the other for the last 50 years or so ... the only thing interesting here is that they're doing it with more advanced algorithms. This is stuff we had in the basic course of consumer behavior. The only real difference is that today you OFTEN do these studies in person instead of having computers to do it for you. Results and findings will most probably be the same from this as it is from regular observation studies.

Besides, when doing observation studies the point is not to disturb consumers so they are usually done from a surveillance room or such to monitor consumers movements. Marketers are very seldom interested in individual interactions but when consumers do stand out from the norm it's good to have the possibility to interact with said consumer.

I see this as a possible solution for very large shopping centers and their likes but I don't think there's anything special about this thing in particular.

facebook put sponsored ads timeline newsfeed january 2012

you can buy them at almost every other electronics store. A google search for Parrot RC drones will give you tons of hits for places where you can buy them.