I'm in GA. My choices are only AT&T and Comcast; No Verizon, and the competing cable company doesn't service my area. I pay about $80/month just for internet, no cable TV. Sadly, even if Google decides to come here, it'll both take forever and probably not reach out to the area I live in. Comcast is about 5 times faster than AT&T. I'd use AT&T anyway, but we use Netflix (which now runs great on Comcast for some strange reason), and my son is online gaming at every free moment (except right now... we're watching world cup).

+1 Informative... too bad I have no mod points, but it's an incredibly interesting graph. As a Netflix/Comcast subscriber, with no viable alternative to high speed internet service, I've always argued against Netflix's caving into Comcast's extortion. Of course, the date is supplied by Netflix, but it echoes what we've experienced at home.... it used to work just fine, then suddenly it was terrible and we were always getting "rebuffering" messages, and often enough Netflix would just give up and not play.

I know people counter that this was a result of Netflix's service provider not having decent connections to the rest of the net, but the graph tells all...

Too many bugs.

It's true but, nevertheless, SW has been one of the best selling lines since it's introduction and, personally, while I don't like every license, I'm glad they licensed sets - I think a lot of them are absolutely awesome.

In fact, one of my favorites was this fairly simple steam engine from The Lone Ranger: Constituion., I put the figures away, I just liked the train. I never even saw the movie.

I can (and do), but you're missing the point - there's a HUGE amount of variety for male minifigure parts compared to females, and because of that, often enough, the female faces and hair are often priced higher. You just don't have the variety. Now, maybe if they stuck with the basic smiley face LEGO it wouldn't be a problem... but they didn't.

They still do! That's the problem... you probably just don't know they're out there because LEGO is largely off your radar these days.

Examples:

Forest Animals (new this year)

Bike Shop and Cafe (new this year)

Twin Rotor Helicopter

Palace Cinema

Horizon Express

The Emerald Night (the most beautiful train set LEGO has ever made)

Green Grocer

Haunted House

None of these are licensed, and they are all awesome LEGO sets. Yes, it'd different from when we were kids, but it's certainly not worse. On top of all that, look at the parts you wished you had as a kid... I've been able to make remote control cars and tanks, among other things:

Power Functions

Is that sparking any creative ideas?

This... The LEGO Group has been failing miserably at trying to attract girls (well, I guess those friends sets are selling, probably purchased by dads who wish their daughters were into LEGO). The fact is, they get berated for for selling "girl" sets with pink and purple bricks, but instead of adding a decent mix of female minifigures into ordinary sets, they come up with things like "Friends," where we're right back to the pink and purple and "girl" jobs, like Vet and fluff reporter for TV (yes, she's not reporting on politics in the set, she's reporting on a giant birthday cake!).

Of course whenever I've discussed it, the conclusion was not to force gender equality in a police force or fire department - that's simply a fake reality, but it's not to make bricks pink and purple either. Most women even agreed they just wanted more female figures in sets... I don't think that's too much to ask for, and putting in alternative heads/hair is probably the best idea I've heard on the subject.

As an adult LEGO enthusiast, I actually like a lot of the friends sets... except, as the poster you're responding to pointed out, it's all pink and purple and the minidolls (as opposed to the minifigs) are terrible, IMO. At the same time, that same post made some wildly inaccurate claims... it was never the case that, given the entire "library" of sets released in any year, that it was 99% male, even given that licensed sets reflect the movies (mostly males).

Still, for those of us that make town layouts, women ARE underrepresented, so I'm glad for these sets, personally. I build with my daughter all the time, we're making a carnival... it's hard to get as many little girls as boys into the scene because the variety of heads and hair just isn't as large for girls.

Agreed... it's true that a couple of decades ago The LEGO Group started releasing less versatile sets with larger molded pieces... and they still do, if you look at some of the train and plane sets... but they're not all like that; they release sets for varying levels of difficulty, and many sets are amazingly beautiful without those big, specialized pieces. Some trains and planes are completely brick built, and the larger sets (especially the creator sets) are very versatile. And it never ceases to amaze me how many people complain about it when you can still just buy buckets of bricks.

What's hilarious is that this is a post about... guess what? A non-LEGO set someone came up with on their own and submitted to LEGO Ideas to have it made into an official set. According to you, that's plainly not possible. Moreover, why don't you peruse some of the other ideas on the site (linked to in the summary), and other sites like ReBrickable.? Maybe you'd see that, while it may be true that sets have gotten more specific, your conclusion that you can't build unique things anymore is completely wrong!

And I remember when The LEGO Group was about to go bankrupt... you know, before they started licensing Star Wars?

For the record, they've released a number of space themes, city themes, castle themes while doing these licenses... and for the other whiners out there, you always still buy tubs of just bricks.

You people will complain about anything.... you sound like your parents and grandparents now, I hope you realize that! "When I was a kid...!!!!"

No, it looks like there are three sets, each with one minifigure, but that's just what it looks like. The set is not final yet, but it's assumed there will be one "Research Institute" set with three "vignettes," each with a figure and some other model to go with it (a desk, a dinosaur, a telescope).

I can look at that two ways... I can watch TV and it requires no thought. Or I can choose specific interesting things on politics, nature, or other sciences, and actually think about it.

So LEGO sets come with instructions, and require little thought to put the sets together the way they've laid it out in the book. That doesn't differ from how it used to be. Oh, you used to be able to just buy buckets of bricks, though! Which, of course, you can still do. The imagination happened when you took those bricks, and you took those sets apart, and made what you wanted instead of what you were told you could make.

That's the same as it is today. Why don't you visit the ideas site (link in TFS) and see where people's imaginations take them. They're not all works of art by any stretch, but some of the sets offered there are phenomenal. Also take a look at ReBrickable for other models people have created.

It's true they make some simpler sets aimed at younger kids, things with big molded pieces that "real" LEGO enthusiasts hate, but that's not representative of all that's available.

Now you're just being disingenuous... I never said that's what the revolution was about, I said owning firearms is part of the reason we have the U.S. and the bill of rights to begin with. IOW, we wouldn't have won without them. And the founders of this country, noting that that was the case, codified the right, not just own, but to bear arms, in the bill of rights.

Well said, anonymous coward. Listening to some of these idiots, you'd think people would just be dropping dead every time someone just went and purchased a gun.