In some places, with some providers, perhaps. But it's not that bad everywhere: in Melbourne, I pay $60 per month for a cable connection (about 10 to 14 mbps) with 50 gb peak and 70 gb off-peak. And that's with Optus, certainly not the best or cheapest ISP.

Where are your numbers from?

Bugger! I stand corrected... thanks :)

Nope, he was pretty close. Your figure is way out - there's no way a gallon of fuel put into a cargo ship would move 1 ton 500 miles (or the inverse).

Witness the largest (and possibly most efficient) marine engine in the world:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA96-C

Fuel consumption is listed as 3.80 litres per second, or 1 gallon per second (3600 gallons/hour). That's a hell of a lot of fuel, and far off your 1 gallon = 1 ton moved 500 miles.

Cargo ships use fairly insane amounts of fuel, compared to how much we consumer-types are used to putting in our cars or even trucks.

Are you serious?

Are you really serious?

Do you honestly believe that any point that's more complex than a one line description doesn't deserve to exist?

I defy you to explain the point of quantum mechanics in one sentence. Or why we should/shouldn't (your choice) allow doctors to refuse to perform risky operations on people who continue risk-increasing habits. Or why electric power generation should/shouldn't (your choice) be managed by selling power on a market. *Without* assuming a massive amount of prior reading done by whoever you're speaking to.

Ideas that can't be expressed in one sentence are even worth bothering with? A super ignorant version of TL;DR? Absolutely priceless... are you sure you want to be posting here? Perhaps you should go over and post on Yahoo! Answers for a bit, instead. Some of us here like to explore slightly more complicated issues, because life is actually quite interesting once you get a proper attention span.

And yes, my tone is harsh, because this sort of attitude is a poor one. I find it depressing.

To me, this is the point. He has a right to be a dick. It's music he has written, and under the law he has control over who copies it. He is trying to stop people - by asking, not DRMing - from copying his work, without his permission, which is what he has, under the law.

His personal justifications or thought processes -

- are his own, too, and your belief in the correctness, legitimacy, or defensibility of those personal justifications has no affect on his right to control, under the law, how his music is copied.

I agree with the composer entirely in this case. If this young girl doesn't want to follow the rules, set by the composer as is his right under the law, then she can go and write the music she wants to perform herself. What's stopping her? Just that immature attitude toward the law that she has?

[And if she doesn't like the law, then she can do something about that too - study law, and work to have the laws changed. Welcome to what's called "civilization", with all its processes and structures... it's the main reason you exist today. Without it the world population wouldn't be what it is, and you wouldn't have been born, by a massive likelihood.]

Then this ain't necessarily the best solution for big cities.

Big cities usually have at least the beginnings of electrical distribution infrastructure; the solution in a big city is to improve the transmission infrastructure, and the generation infrastructure. An investment in these two things will give benefit to a relatively high number of people for each (say) coal fired plant you turn into a reliable generating station, or whatever your source of power is. The centralisation that defines the big city helps here.

But where there aren't any wires around for miles, then this is a low-cost way of starting to get around the problems of lack of lighting after dark.

Nah, you just whack on bigger lights.

And if they're not enough, BIGGER ONES!!!

(and a second alternator :> )

And an additional useful side effect: the other cars on the road, which are far more dangerous than the pedestrians and animals that might be out there, will also know you're there, from a *very long* way away.

Which is quite useful, really.

Sorry?

1 x 100 mbps ethernet (Alix)
                        vs.
5 x 1000 mbps ethernet (Asus), on a router

      = comparison FAIL.

Seriously, it's a router. Without decent network I/O, what use is it?

I've just bought one of these, and it's brilliantly quick.

I understand your point (and agree with it).

But in the longer term, there are two good reasons to add high speed rail to the system:

1) a train station can be built in many, many more places than an airport can
2) Oil will eventually be a problem. You can't electrify an airplane.

Come to Australia, mate. Here our biggest (and ex-government-owned) telco, Telstra, has two sorts of plans:

- Those that are "unlimited", i.e. standard allowance + speed limiting beyond the allowance;
- and plans that have a data allowance, and then they charge you 15 cents *per megabyte*. Yep, that's $150 per gig. So you pay (say) $39.95 per month for 2 gb allowance, then if you use 3 gb, your bill is $189.95 for that month :>

Oh! One concession though... Telstra thoughtfully adds to their T's & C's that "excess usage charges for the Turbo 2GB and Elite 2GB plans are capped at $300 per bill cycle". How generous of them!

Insane. I mean, I love a sunburnt country, but Telstra is just rubbish.

Eh? Are you serious?

A tooth bud, made from adult stem cells - do you have any idea how hard it is to harvest adult stem cells, then wind them back into seedable stem cells?

And then ultrasonically stimulate them. Using certain frequencies and powers of ultrasound (disclaimer: I'm a sonographer). For certain duty cycles.

Do you really think all this stuff is obvious, to *anyone*? Whatever you might spout out, the stuff you're casually mentioning *is* pretty close to rocket science. If you don't believe me, go off and do the procedure yourself, on your own. Sheesh!

I agree regarding the likelihood of there being intelligent life on other planets.

The way I look at it, there's a fantastically small chance - as near as may as well be zero, dammit - of there being another planet with life out there. And every planet we find that *doesn't* have life simply decreases the odds of "life on another planet" by 1/(n+1). :>