Ummm... Yeah, 'cause I know a lot of boyscouts who can cover 3 million square miles of territory in 9 hours... I'd say the point was to see how people would use technology to build quick awareness of events over a large area. Seeking out insurgents or terrorist cells might be a practical military application of this technology.

And obviously slashdot has readers who don't know about TCP/IP.

Actually, based on profit margin, Wal-mart is not nearly as effective at retailing as many other companies (like Kohls). The difference is, they're a lot bigger. For example, to make $5 profit, Wal-mart needs to sell something like $95, but Kohls, for example only needs to sell something like $50. Wal-mart is in the same boat K-mart was in about 20 years ago and sinking pretty fast. It's just not obvious because they have such a huge share of the market. Discount retail is interesting right now because the biggest companies seem to have forgotten that customers have choices.