Unreliable as in you get no guarantees if and when a message will actually be delivered. Try to find a carrier anywhere that offers you a contract with an SLA on SMS delivery. Granted, you won't often run into problems with SMS, but if you are bound by an SLA with a customer, you'd better have your underpinning contracts (yay for ITIL terminology) at the same level as that SLA.

In The Netherlands we also (used to? I emigrated quite some time ago) have such a copyright tax on many media

We still have that copyright tax on cassette tape, cd-rom and dvd-r, but not on mp3 players, flash cards or hardrives. BUMA/STEMRA is pushing for it, but for now the politicians have put the plans on hold. At least until BUMA/STEMRA can show what they are actually doing with the money they get from this scheme, as it becomes more and more clear that it's all just sitting in a savings account without the artists seeing a penny of it.

It's not just that they are fed up with the slander.

The FTD software used to have what they called an 'NZB Button'. On the page with the information about the content you were looking for (filenames, size, description, etc.), there'd be a button which if clicked on directed you to an external usenet search engine, with the correct search terms already filled in. After talks between FTD and BREIN, FTD decided to remove this button, and to not allow their users to post direct links to nzb files, or nzb search engines. FTD did this to prevent BREIN from coming after them, they are not linking to any content whatsoever anymore. There's just users telling you what filenames to look for in which newsgroups.

So, here's FTD talking to BREIN, agreeing on taking these actions, taking away any shred of doubt that what they're doing is completely legal under Dutch law, when Tim Kuik comes along and happily continues to call them criminals.

In all fairness, there are third party plugins to the FTD software that re-enable this NZB button, but those are beyond FTD's control.

It's the same over here in the Netherlands. If you're lucky, you can find a 7" Xandros Eeepc, but that's about it. I found an online shop that imported from the UK, they had one 10" model with Linux on it. But when I ordered it, they weren't able to get them anymore.
I ended up paying the MS tax, just because I wanted a netbook.

It doesn't really matter if we cannot travel faster than the speed of light so long as we can live long enough to get there.
Who cares if it takes 50 years to fly to Alpha Centauri if we can engineer ourselves to live for a thousand!

Either that, or we can just figure out how to get really close to the speed of light, and reap the benefits of time dilation to make the journey only last hours from the traveller's point of view.

You call it hyperbole, I call it pointing out the slippery slope.

If you have to hide your number you are likely up to no good, why not just make it illegal to hide your caller id

If you don't let the police into your house, you are likeley up to no good. Why not just get rid of search warrants and make it illegal to deny the police entry to your house?

Plasma is also an energy hog - typical 42" Plasma can suck 400w down, while same LCD takes 180w or so.

Although that LCD continuously uses that 180w, while the plasma only uses that 400w when showing a completely white screen. Energy use by plasma screens drops when displaying dark images, so make sure not to mistake peak usage for actual usage.