I have been to Antarctica and I have seen the effects of global warming. The glacier in the bay where Shakeleton left his men is a good 100 yard further from the sea than it was in his time. We made it far enough south in a non-icebreaker to see Emperor penguins. That shouldn't be happening. Believe me it's real.

In a competitive market, the price will be determined by the cost. Each firm must charge enough to cover not just the marginal cost but also the capital investment to offer the product. The fees that the phone companies paid for spectrum are part of their costs and must be covered in their pricing.

Now, you could argue that this is not a competitive market and the phone companies are charging monopolistic prices. Then the price is set to maximize profit and may well be more than is required to cover costs.

My guess is that the price of the spectrum is pushing up the prices we are paying.

Last I checked REI wasn't public property. I suspect they would have the right to tell you to stop taking pictures. On the other hand, I doubt that the ATM guys represented REI.

Nope, I've had the same problem with Dell. I spent the better part of two hours on the phone with various Dell employees on various continents before I found somebody who would sell me the disk caddy for my Dell Workstation. (I am not the original owner.) Even these days their phone bill must have been more than the cost of the plastic part.

I do. I don't want it on the plane and it weighs enough to be a nuisance. I pack it in the middle of the suitcase, protected by clothes and, so far, haven't had any trouble. Any data that I'd worry about is encrypted and the laptop is an old, slow, one that I use just for travel. Someday, I suppose it will be stolen or broken. Until then, I'm more than happy not to be lugging it around and putting it in a separate tray for security.

It looks to me as though IE 8 does just this. The matched part of the url is in a bolder face than the rest of the address. Cool!

Suppose that a year or two from now a computer passes this test. Does that mean that the computer is intelligent? Does it mean that the computer is conscious?

To my mind no computer as they are now conceived will ever be either intelligent or conscious. It's going to take some radically different hardware before I'd be convinced. My guess is highly parallel processing with lots of dedicated circuits for special purposes.