I remember my Dad's first Datsun pickup (77? 79?) rusted through the bed in a little over a year. Road salt (VT) and non-galvanised steel. He's since bought three more ;)

I'm curious what road salt will do to aluminium. Your john-boat can handle oak leaves, but has it been in salt water?

Repair is the other big issue. Body shops (panel beaters here in NZ) will require new tools and techniques, and the learning curve will be steep with inevitable poor quality work at first. The big pushback here may be from the insurance industry.

Trying to regulate this, as others have pointed out, won't work. There will always be those who can and will find a way around it. I remember Ben and Jerry's attempt at a 5:1 ratio - they had to give it up after they couldn't find/retain high level staff to work for them. Better would be a "name and shame" campaign, offering consumers a chance to take their business to companies who were closer to 20:1 than 400:1. If consumers don't care enough to make that decision in numbers great enough to have an effect, than they are effectively endorsing the high salaries. Not to mention the fact that something like this could NEVER get passed in the US, with the 1% having such a tight control on the way things run.

Only on Slashdot, where people value their privacy, does a question about someone's personal life get modded plus 2.

I was making living arrangements so I could leave my wife. I'll make no apologies as it turned out to be the single best choice I've made in my life in years. Anyone who's lived through a bad marriage could probably sympathise.

You're missing the point. These locations already exist, have leases, power, data, and a visual presence. Hopefully paid data will help subsidise these dinosaurs. I haven't used one in almost a decade; it was before I had a cell phone and wanted to call someone that did have a cell phone without my (then) wife knowing about it. Even then the phone didn't take coins, so I had to go into the adjoining dairy (convenience store) to buy card, which I never used up. I sympathise a bit - just a bit - with Telecom as in our neighbourhood these phone boxes are routinely etched or the glass smashed. I have no idea how they've been making money for the last few years.

They did set this network up as free to use for all in the Canterbury area after the quakes, which I thought was nice.

They may have been serving up crap but people have been buying it. This has been true for years - the popular stuff is rubbish but is hugely popular. The blame does not lie entirely with the provider.

Well, I've spent over ten hours on three different distros trying to get Jack to work, I've given up. I know I'm not alone.

Also found Amarok to be buggy, now listen using Audacious with a winamp skin I've used since the 90's (tubeamp).

The Hobbit films being filmed in NZ was not a foregone conclusion. The studios got the NZ government to change labour laws in their favour under the threat of filming somewhere else (Eastern Europe).

Just let me take the train to Vermont and actually bring baggage with me. Seriously.

We're looking at visiting family in Vermont from overseas and cannot take the train from NY to VT as Amtrak won't accept checked baggage, so another puddle-jumper flight it is. Sorry Amtrak, no tourist money for you!

So they probably have nothing. How is this legal?!

Because America.

I'll have to agree with geekoid. I moved to NZ in 2002. Not having any computer qualifications I decided to pursue an adult apprenticeship as a machinist (Fitter/Turner to those of us in the Commonwealth). Two years of night school and two more years of dealing with the adage of "those that can't, teach". While I enjoy working with my hands and the equipment I get to play with is great, it's hard work with the constant danger of losing fingers or worse. It's hard on 40+ year-old bodies, and the pay is not that great. I'm taking time out to raise our daughter, while my well-paid accountant wife earns the money. I decided to learn a hobby as a profession, and that was a mistake. Should have gone back to school to learn programming or systems administration but getting late for that now.

If you really want a trade, do your market research first. I also suggest a trade where you can fit all your tools in a van; this means you can work for yourself (plumber, sparky). Machinists need rooms full of expensive gear and are forever tied to an employer.

You mean to say automotive leaf spring?

I have nothing to add to this discussion other than if you get a chance to see Taj Mahal the musician, you should.

Wow, what timing. Just discovered this museum an hour ago as this morning I was given a Cox-Cavendish Galvanic Battery (I think) by my physiotherapist and was doing some Googling about it. What a great site, though it does have me wanting to start a new collecting hobby. Great to see that someone who collects these also opens his collection to others, documents it, and puts it on the web. If only more collectors would do the same.

I've been out of the TV loop for a while. Every time I get tempted to start watching again, I'm put off by the overabundance of hype and the poor signal to noise ratio - see other poster's comment about stretching two minutes of substance into half an hour.

That said, I'm looking forward to the day when we have giant mechatronic "robots" fighting in arenas. By "giant" I mean big enough that you'll need to host these in stadiums - think monster-truck shows, and attendant audiences. This would, of course, be vastly expensive, but at $30/seat in a 30,000 seat stadium plus corporate sponsorship, it could work. I'm talking fire-breathing, metal crunching, roaring beasts, twenty or thirty feet tall. Burning Man meets Survival Research Labs meets Mythbusters, with enough WWF to keep the seats full of hollering fans full of two percent beer.

THEN I'd watch TV.