The 'government agencies' that we're concerned about the most don't give a flying fuck about what 'courts' or 'judges' have to say, they're going to do whatever the hell they want to do, regardless; that's the nature of organizations who deal in 'secret' things, and it's the nature of the cancer that plagues our current government.

Now, the question is: What should we use as chemo to cure this cancer?

I in no way meant to imply that. They obviously aren't upgrading the core of their networks, which is where the bottlenecks occur. It's exactly like how cable companies advertise "1080p HD", but what they don't tell you is that they've compressed the living hell out of the video, so while it's technically 1080p, it's so blocky and grainy that it's irrelevant what the resolution is. They can and will sell someone 100mbps to their house, but what's the point when their own core network and/or backbone connections are too small and/or overbooked to the point where it only takes a fraction of people using what they are paying for to load down the network as a whole to the point where it's noticeably slower.

I hope you're not implying that ISPs already have all the bandwidth they need and that we're paying fair prices for it? Are you for or against net neutrality?

If there's sufficient bandwidth for everyone then net neutrality won't be a problem now will it? Either someone light a fire under these goddamn ISPs and make them stop stalling on upgrading shit, or force them to stop lying to their customers about how much bandwidth they're actually paying for. Also Cisco is a shit company and can go fuck themselves.

NEVER use what Comcast provides, buy your own equipment and don't allow ANYONE else access to it!

Probably not, but I'd lay odds we could manage to get a coherent graviton beam out of it.

20KW? Sounds to me like the Elephant In The Room is a small on-board nuclear reactor to power the craft.

Aww, poor NSA, their systems are too complex for them to control according to the law? What a terrible 1st world problem to have! Fear not NSA, I have a solution that will take this horrible burden off your shoulders, and make the rest of us happy at the same time: simplify your goddamn systems to the point where you can 'control' them and be in accordance with the law. Either that or maybe we need to take a chainsaw to your 'systems' and just chop them down to a reasonable size. Here, here's an abacus, that's about all I'd trust you motherfuckers with at this point.

Actually, I want to amend my suggestion:
"If a computer can explain why a joke is or is not funny, then it's intelligent."

How about this for 'raising the bar' on Artificial Intelligence:
"If a computer can understand why a joke is (or is not) funny, then it's intelligent"

I think whatever focus group recommended this to Mercedes has trolled them very successfully. I'd think that this 'feature' would freak out people riding in the car and not be pleasurable.

Tell me again why we even need 'smart TVs' in the first place?
I'd rather spend the money on a basic TV with better picture quality and get the 'smart' part from what I connect to it (DVR in my case).

..and I was supposed to continue reading past the point of you calling me an asshole? Fuck you. Also, hypocrite and projecting much? You're ranting at me, and your entire 'comment' (if it can be called such) just screams 'I'm an asshole!' at the world. Apparently you don't understand the entire concept of 'conversation'. Go back to 4chan/b, jerk, that's about the only place your (low) level of behaviour is acceptable.

I got sad news for you, friend: The United States that you and I both thought existed when we were growing up? It was nothing more than a fantasy. The U.S. that the Founding Fathers envisioned and laid the groundwork for existed, maybe, for a few decades past it's initial creation, but past that greedy and power-hungry people (like the entire Bush family of traitors, for instance) began subverting and twisting it into something else, while still waving the Patriotic flag and claiming what a wonderful democratic republic we were. Sad, but true. Sure, we were the Good Guys in WWII, but that was probably the last time we were, and it sure as hell started all going down hill from there.

When you say 'our greatest dreams', I'm pretty sure you're referring to maybe, at best, 1% of the population. I'm of the opinion that the vast majority of people, at best, when presented with all the work being done to discover exoplanets, search for life outside our solar system, and to generally understand the Universe as a whole, will say 'gee, that's nice, but how does it make my cellphone battery last longer?', or 'gee, that's nice, but how does it make gasoline prices cheaper?', or 'gee, that's nice, but how does it make my grocery bill lower?'. At worst they say 'why are we wasting money on stupid things like that, nobody cares!'. In other words, I am of the opinion that the majority of people are lacking in vision and imagination.

I'm not even going to respond to the guy who commented above you since he doesn't seem to understand, as you pointed out, basic terminology when discussing batteries.

So far as my post being 'ranty': How so? I'm asking valid questions about this development, not dismissing it and insulting people or anything like that.

Sadly, you don't seem to understand all that well the difference between 'rechargable' and 'not rechargable' either. If you have to dismantle it and completely remanufacture it, then it's most definitely 'not rechargable' any more than a common 1.5V alkaline D-cell battery is 'rechargable'

If you're not going to take any of the questions and points I raised seriously, then please stop commenting, it's counter-productive to having a conversation about this technology.