While this is a common view of how DSL technology works, it's really only true in dense urban areas with relatively new wiring. The truth is that it's actually quite complex to transmit broadband signals over telephone lines, and any number of things can interfere.

For starters, in most cases the DSLAM has to be within about 3 miles of the customer, and this is not measured as a bird flies. Sometimes the wires may twist around in all sorts of bizarre ways depending on historical construction. This makes it extremely costly for telecoms to provide broadband outside of densely populated areas, since you're looking at installing a DSLAM and the facilities to protect, support, and maintain it for a handful of houses in some rural areas. There's no way for those costs to ever be recovered. Now there are some ways to cut these costs using remote terminals rather than full DSLAMs, but this still costs vastly more than the customers can repay.

Although plain old distance-based attenuation is the biggest limiting factor, there are all kinds of other problems as well. Things like the gauge of the telephone wiring can make a big difference, and many areas historically had signal-boosting equipment installed on phone lines which produces acceptable voice quality on a flaky line, but makes broadband signal transmission all but impossible. At that point telecoms are looking at major engineering work to remove that equipment without degrading voice quality for the affected customers, all before they can even think about providing broadband service.

Without addressing these major engineering issues first, the most common results of offering broadband to customers in these areas is that they get 1/10th of the intended speed and the service cuts out every 10 minutes due to attenuation and poor signal to noise ratio. This predictably results in furious customers and repair techs trying to patch things together on an individual customer basis, and usually failing since these tend to be major jobs that can't just be fixed with duct tape. So generally the telecoms simply don't offer the service in these areas because they don't want the hassle.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm no shill for the telecoms. I know all about federal funding they've received which has gone to questionable use, and there are various things I think should be done differently. However, looking purely at the technology involved, it is not in any way a simple task to roll out rural broadband. Pretending it's easy won't help anyone; it can be done, but it will take a long time and cost a lot of money. Even assuming unlimited funding I doubt it could be finished by 2012, simply because there aren't enough field techs/engineers to complete the vast amount of requisite infrastructure work in that timeframe.

Oh, so kids are only discouraged from being brainy for the first 14 years of their education then? Got it, no problem.

The primary benefit we get out of NASA and similar agencies is not the science done in orbit around Jupiter or Saturn. Sure we can learn some interesting stuff that way, but ultimately the exact composition of Titan will have almost zero beneficial effect on human life.

The primary benefit is that in solving very difficult engineering problems, NASA produces interesting solutions which may also be applicable to related terrestrial issues. These resulting spinoffs are much more valuable.

Eliminating human spaceflight would make things a lot easier. That's the problem. You learn less from something that's easy.

Try entering "next" when viewing the most recent comic. Then try "enable time travel".

Public domain? That's communist talk!

Wait, what?

First you say that Vista doesn't run programs slower than XP. Then you say that Vista requires a faster processor and more memory than XP to keep up, because newer software needs more resources. How do you imagine that these two statements can coexist?

Amazing that in the face of one known problem, someone knowledgeable about the issues can remain aware of another problem. This silly guy would be much better off to ignore all other issues when examining a problem, regardless of whether proposed solutions would have other undesired consequences.

You're looking for Runescape. It's designed so that you can fight using melee, magic, or ranged/archery depending on your preference of the day, and you can eventually master all three. Similar with non-combat skills. In fact a few upper-level monsters and bosses are designed such that to defeat them you must switch combat styles mid-fight by swapping out your equipment.

Seriously guys, anyone blaming MySpace for this isn't grasping what has happened. This is like if you are going bankrupt, so you hold a yard sale to pay off your debts. John Doe buys some of your stuff. In the end you still can't pay all your debts, so the people you haven't paid go after the guy who stopped by your yard sale? Wait, what?

If the contents of this treaty are so abhorrent that politicians cannot survive being associated with it, then that seems like a great reason why everyone should walk away from the table.

Also, tonsils and the appendix are useless. Since we've figured everything out, we could design much better humans! Oh wait...

"The ideal tool in my mind should be something that is independent of any application, browser, or computer; something that is easily carried, but which if lost poses no risk of compromise. What does the Slashdot crowd like in password tools?"

It sounds like you're describing this: Mandylion Password Manager. ThinkGeek's out of stock at the moment, but you can probably find one elsewhere.

Less convenient than some options since you can't copy & paste. On the other hand, more secure since the list of passwords never gets to the PC's RAM.