You can still buy high quality stuff (like car door handles) but there isn't much of a demand for it
because most people aren't willing to pay the premium for the product.
As a raw material, plastic is basically free but a chunk of aluminum is only a few dollars so it's
not the raw materials. It's most likely that the equipment to manufacture aluminum molds is
much more costly than the equipment to manufacture plastic molds because even in places
where there is sufficient demand and competition you still see a significant price jump to get
metal vs plastic.

Ok, a figerprint scanner might be overly complicated but then why did you then proceed to invent
an even more complicated system using picture ids, payment cards, pin numbers, touch screens, etc..
Seems like your system is alot more complicated than a simple finger scan. Kids are notorious
about losing things among other reasons.

The main reason I would object to a fingerprint scan would be because I don't want the fingerprint to
go elsewhere and the precendence of getting kids used to giving away their biometrics.

Our school uses a pin number. In kindergarten they all learn a 6 digit student number then they all
type it in to eat lunch. They don't have problem with stolen pin numbers because it pops up the
name to the cashier who quickly learns the kids names. Might not work in a larger school but even
in a larger school if it said the name out loud then their classmates would easily recognise if it
said a different name.

This is exactly right. Their business model doesn't include tech support. I read somewhere that facebook makes something like
50 cents a month per user. You can't do much tech support for that. They would have have to completely change their business
model. I run a website with a completely different business model and we include a phone number. It's amazing how often we
end up having to diagnose 3rd party software whether it is a virus or a virus scanner that is interfering with our customer's use
of our website. We could tell them "not our problem" but then we would potentially lose them as a customer.

There are also plenty of "dual-use" trails which allow both bikes and pedestrians which don't seem to have a problem
with both coexisting on a single path.

In the town I live in there are zero pedestrians. Building codes must have even changed as some of the newer neighborhoods don't even have
sidewalks. As most neighborhoods do still have sideways and noone uses them, it would be much safer to beef up the sidewalks for bicycles
than add bike lanes. Sidewalks are several feet from the curb and you are much less likely to end up getting ran over by a car or hit a car door
that is being opened. A sidewalk is also less likely to collect broken bottles and debris like bike paths built on the shoulder do. Bicycles are
also generally slow enough that if there is a pedestrian that either the bike or the pedestrian can get out of the way and a pedestrian is much
less likely to get seriously injured getting hit by a bike than a biker is getting hit by a car. It would be cheaper, safer, and make more sense to
convert sidewalks into bike paths than it would be to convert the shoulder into a bike path which is what most cities seem to be trying to do now.

That's exactly what they want. It's the same reason that scammers say they are from nigeria even when they aren't.
They don't want to talk to you. They want the non-gullible to hang up as quickly as possible so they can quickly find
the little old lady who they can steal from. They called my mom and luckily she had 2 things going for her. First,
she doesn't know enough to actually follow their instructions and second, she called me. Otherwise she would
probably be out some money and I would be left cleaning up the mess. So sure, it's easier to hang up on them but
you are actually doing them a favor and helping them out by doing so.

Of course I'm one of slashdot's customers. Slashdot would be out of business if we (the customers) stopped coming to their website.
I tend to use the term "user" instead of "customer" but it's the same thing. Slashdot has a business model where instead of charging
their customers $5/month they have found advertisers that are willing to foot the bill in exchange for advertisements but that doesn't
really change who they are providing a service to just who is paying for it.

Yes, but unfortunately there is still a lot of "not my department" going on there too. Our company is a large enough advertiser (several thousand a month)
that not only can we call them but they will actually call us if we shut our account off. So if we have a problem directly related to our advertising account
then it is easy to get someone on the phone that attempts to help us. Unfortunately, if we have a problem with gmail, we are still up a creek because they
don't seem to have any ability to either help you or connect you with a different department that can help you. I'm assuming if our accounts were a couple
order of magnitudes bigger that they would be able to find the phone numbers of the people in the other departments but as it stands we're in the same
boat as everyone else outside of that one department.

Practically noone stores natural gas. There is LNG and CNG but it's not really very common especially not for households.
You're probably thinking of propane. Many rural people not connected to natural gas have a propane tank in their yards.

It's actually a rather decent book. You should read it. It has other insights which are equally
intriguing. Like the fact that most people's friends and coworkers tend to be close in intelligence,
socioeconomics, etc... Most people with college degrees are surrounded by people with
college degrees. Heck, 1 in 5 people don't graduate from HS but if you have a college degree
I doubt you can name a single friend you have that doesn't have a HS degree and I would be
very surprised if you could name 5 unless you happen to work in an occupation that crosses
boundaries. This clumping is probably just as much a factor as many other factors people
tend to look at. We try to pretend we have a classless society but when a person with a
130 IQ only hangs around with other people with a 130 IQ they get a very skewed view of the
world.

I don't think the point is to trust them. The point is to let them out a little early to save money while also keeping them
in line while they reestablish themself in society. A person who has a house, a job, a girlfriend, etc... is much less
likely to slip back into crime when the monitoring device eventually comes off than someone who is dropped on the
street the day after their sentence is up with nothing to their name.

This is completely backwards. The cpu, antenna, and trasmitter are the bulky items as well as the power hungry items that need bulky batteries.
That's the part (along with the large display) that needs to be tucked away. The watch should basically just be a fancy remote display and remote
buttons for the phone. A small VNC type remote display protocol would probably work perfectly. The cpu hungry app can run on the phone and
export it's display to the watch (obviously taking into account the smaller screen size). The apps would still be android/iphone apps. It would
just be that now your android/iphone has a 2nd virtual screen and a few extra buttons that it can interact with.

Yeah, that would be a real problem if building only had elevators. Buildings are required to have stairs and in most cases they are
publicly accessible. The summary specifically mentions a "leisurely 5 minute walk" so it may be as simple as walking to the
restroom/coffee and back once an hour. If that doesn't take quite long enough then go to the coffee/restroom one floor down.
I know when I worked at HP which wasn't a too big of building just getting from one end of the building to the other took more
than 5 minutes so you could just probably just walk to the end of the building and back. In most cases people will just think you
are going to another office to talk to someone.

I would hope that a computerized car that swerved or pulled over would make sure to at least hit less obstructions than the original obstruction.

Again, I would hope that a computerized car would be able to know how fast it can safely swerve so that it never rolls and would
only swerve it it knew it could do it safely.

This is a valid point if it is truly quicker to stop than it is to change lanes. I kindof doubt that is the case at highway speeds though.

The correct solution for an "unusual event" is almost always either "stop or pull over". If there is something on the highway
that's not suppose to be there then you should avoid it and/or stop. A decent camera should be able to spot an accident,
weather, or road construction a long ways off and find a safe spot to pull over and disengage.
For sudden events like a tire blowout, the correct solution is almost always to immediately stop the vehicle and/or safely pull over.

Basically, you don't have to plan for 100% of unknown or unusual events if you have a decent failsafe that can detect
that something is out of place and can immediately bring the vehicle to a safe stopping place.