Well, the people on the planet now (including us) did not create the problem. The problem was created a long time ago when it was decided to build our infrastructure based on the use of fossil fuels as the main energy source. At the moment, the idea is to determine what the best course of action is. To me, it seems like the best way to handle the situation is to get as much low hanging fruit as possible (change light bulbs, etc, etc) in the short term. Things like this reduce energy usage and also don't really add an economic cost. In the long term, switching to nuclear power would probably be the best way to go. At some point, fossil fuels will be expensive enough that alternative energy sources will be competitive without any help. The trade-off of this approach is that it does not solve the problem of global warming. We would have to deal with the costs of it later.

Even if we were to go back to pre-industrial revolution levels of CO2 emissions tomorrow, it wouldn't stop the warming that would occur because of previous activities. At this point(really, probably as of 30 years ago, at least), it seems like significant warming is inevitable. Does it make more sense to screw our economy up now, or to come up with something else? Even if we don't find an answer, we are better off letting our civilization collapse in 50 years rather than now. Because to stop global warming we would have to stop human caused CO2 emissions entirely AND we would have to come up with a way to reverse the warming that's already going to happen. We don't have a way of doing that in a short amount of time that won't also bankrupt every country on the planet.

Also (I understand WHY they could consider this an anti-trust issue) but at what point does something become core functionality of an OS? Internet accessibility is vital to personal computing, so it seems reasonable for them to bundle something that helps make the vast majority of that content reachable.

How is the average computer illiterate going to download a browser if Microsoft is not allowed to bundle one? Buy a disc?

Correct, and the manner in which the different frequencies interact with matter is what makes them different. To say that they are the same isn't strictly true.

Sure... Except that from an engineering perspective, you would have to implement different systems to effectively utilize the two different portions of the EM spectrum.

Sure, but at the same time many other technologies were developed in the non-totalitarian country (aka US) that provided tangible and immediate benefits to the people living in it. On top of that, technologies were developed that greatly increased productivity which helped to ensure future economic gains that would be extremely difficult to match.

You missed the part where he said "And killed a hell of a lot of people doing it." That's poor engineering.

Its only better if you define the concept of "better world" to mean "a place without the things humans do." "Better" is a completely arbitrary and subjective concept.

Guess what, a word can have different meanings in different contexts. If you were to use your brain rather than be an ignorant asshole, you would understand this. Given the history of the Americas, the name "The United States of America" seems like a perfectly reasonable name for the country that developed. Within the context of referring to an individual country, "America" seems like a perfectly reasonable and clear way to shorten that name. Now if it were not clear that you were referring to a specific country, then the word America would not be sufficiently specific.

"Due to pressure from the EU ;-)." Uhhhh, no. I don't live in the UK. The official system of the federal government of the US is SI. The military uses it exclusively, I believe. That was the official policy at least a decade before I was born. However, its all voluntary. In the commercial world, most things are labeled with both systems. I don't know WHY they do this, maybe so they can use the same packaging in other markets? On the beef example, I realize your multiplication is slightly easier, but that's not a significant difficultly. Its an extra 2 seconds out of my day. Not worth spending billions of my tax dollars to force everyone to use a system they might not want to use.

You have demonstrated a loss of $125 million due to an error by human beings. There are many ways you can correct that without forcing millions of people to do something they don't want to do. It would probably cost billions to re-educate 300 million people to understand a different system of measurement with the same level of understanding as their native system. If they don't have that same level of understanding, it seems like forcing that system on them could cause just as many inefficiencies as using a poorly defined system. Again, do the benefits really outweigh the costs?

I disagree. Doing nothing should not result in the state having control over your body when you die.

I am confident in making this statement: Engineers in the US that would do things like designing large LCD screens would use SI units. The traditional system of measurement that exists here rarely causes significant difficulties in every day life. I don't really see how the benefits would outweigh the costs of forcing people to switch over. Many things are already labeled with both sets of units anyways. Other than things like road signs, its pretty much a choice. I have a set of SI wrenches and a set of "standard" wrenches. Any product that is sold in some sort of measurable quantity is usually labeled with both sets of units.

The yellow line is for television broadcasts. It has no impact on the actual game. It does not exist in the NFL rulebook. However, your idea wouldn't work anyways even if implemented as a system of determining the position of the ball. You would have to have a mechanism to determine where the ball is when a player is tackled or goes out of bounds. Basically, you would have to determine the position of the ball when any part of the person carrying the ball touches the ground, except their hands or feet. You would also have to determine the position of the ball when any part of the body of the person carrying the ball touches the white out of bounds lines. So if I have the ball and get tackled but then stretch my arm out with the ball to get more distance, the ball does not move forward. Good luck developing a system to handle that. Maybe its possible, but i doubt it would be cheap enough to be worth it in the near future.