I may still be connected to the grid, but solar power usage already provides net benefits to the company:

• The reduction in demand allows the company to reduce its capital needs since they have less need to string new cable, less need for new generating capacity, land acquisition and attendant zoning/legal fees, etc.
• The reduction in demand allows the company to reduce its consumption of fossil fuel - lessening both its direct fuel costs and its need to potentially purchase costly carbon offsets.

And yet they still want to chage customers more money?

Many offices, courthouses, etc. ban cameras from the premises. "Excuse me ma'am -- you'll have to take off all your clothes before we'll let you in ... "

The RIAA, MPAA, etc. all claim insanely high valuations for copyrighted content; witness the latest verdic against now-convicted "pirate" Jamie Thomas-Rasset who is now on the hook for 1.92 million. Fine. Let them copyright to their heart's content.

But let's also update the tax code to capture the full monetary value of these copyrighted works. Oh, and since "intellectual property" does not deteriorate over time as would a piece of real property, the tax code should explicitly disallow depreciation.

I suggest we start collecting back taxes on all of those old "Steamboat Willie" cartoons that Disney started putting out in the early part of the 20th century, along with old music catalogs and so forth. Let's see how truly valuable these IP assets are, and how many are suddenly not worth keeping copyrighted.

They could instead have had some real fun with this:

http://www.rafelandia.com/mas863/urinecontrol.html

Hopefully the Sci-Fi guys will help the cops and bureaucrats learn the difference between real threats and advertisements for a TV show:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_Scare.

When they mentioned bringing the natural predator from another continent, I imagined this. Now, that would be a cool animal to set loose in Texas!

Won't be long before we have a recipie for that...

My business selling stone axes, spears, hide scrapers and other primitive tools will make a killing once the grid goes down!

Fortunately I've never had worse than a moving violation, and so was unaware that a misdemeanor could involve incarceration. Thanks for the education!

For a "crime" described as a misdemeanor? Isn't that whole "cruel and unusual punishment" clause still in effect somewhere?

What if they find the SATAN particle instead?

Get large bore conduits like the stuff used for electrical wiring. Run the fiber through that. That should at least slow them down a bit, yes?

Well, there was Clippy...

Show them how quickly discovered vulnerabilities are patched and how much discussion each bug receives. Ask the competitors to provide access to their discussion groups and bug logs. Compare. Contrast.

That we're all living on a small anti-counterfeiting patch on God's MasterCard?