The universe is indeed full of life. And life becomes intelligent and thrives. And every ten million years or so...
Gets hit by a meteor.
Another meteor.
Comet this time.
Solar flare.
Nearby nova, supernova or far-away hypernova fries them.
Ice age.
Heat age.
Bacteria this time.
Here comes some volcanoes.
Food poisoning.
Drought.
Floods come.
War.
Mutations.
And finally, time happens, if nothing else. The universe is full of life - BUT NOT ALL AT THE SAME TIME, and not all at a time that happens, in each case, to emit radiation that arrives at our sensors at this tiny opportunity of ours to detect it. The universe is full of little flashes of life in the dark that wink on and off like fireflies, and we can't possibly see them - in time. We are alone, and we had better damned well take care of ourselves.
PS: what makes people think that successful life stays on a planet? That's a surefire way to die, by the list of events above. Successful life gets off the planet, builds terraria in orbit, and sends some off into the darkness to spread and survive the death of the home planet. At the very least. At the most, they spread into adjacent universes or dimensions. Or even travel in time, whatever that is. Life, successful life that lives a long time, grows up and gets out of the petri dish. Or dies with all the other failed flashes of life.

A TV that's just a TV:
http://www.seiki.com/
buy 'em here:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb...
Robert Heron reviews:
http://www.heronfidelity.com/b...

No smart anything. Just 1080p or 2196p, various sizes. Good prices. Good picture. No camera. No mic. No spyware. No need to hook it to the internet. A TV, not a computer, at least not the kind of computer the others want you to have. A 4K 30fps 39 inch display/TV for $499? Bit more for more screen space. Why not? Good enough for movies.

No one. But the blame isn't the CEO's, which is all that matters.

And bosses love employees who live in terror of losing their jobs at any time. Keeps the complaints and wages down. And you still get to sack them, in the end. And get a bonus and a raise.

The problems which ensue are the cloud company's problem, so win-win-win-win for the MBAs.

The decision will be made by MBAs. Sanity has little to do with it.

I have a mental image of the cloud servers being managed by a gaggle of nearly-homeless sysadmins the IT manager picks up in an unmarked van every morning at five in front of the local Home Depot.

I replace the word "cloud" with mainframe. 'Cause that's what a mainframe is. Amazing to think that the Hollywood movie script writers are getting it right by accident now.

And yup, it means a lot of people are out of jobs. Nope, it doesn't mean they work for the mainframe companies, as they obviously don't require as much staff. And a boon for the NSA, FBI, IRS and other Three Letter Names, as now we are all nicely lined up like humans in a Matrix power tower, oblivious to the complete exposure of our data to any schmuck with power who wants to access it.

Their bosses.

Let's build a few miles of solar roads and find out.

The road-surface lights go on in an emergency situation, I'd think. Not really necessary. But the roads could power the overhead lights at night.

Rush Limbaugh posts here?

Republican states, almost invariably, pay less to the federal kitty than the federal kitty pays back. They've great roads because they're on federal road welfare.

We've too many roads going to too many places that don't justify the expense of dropping 40 million a mile. And it is about aging.

It's a rolling problem. We started out with town roads, then county roads, then state roads, then interstates. And we happily kept building more. But the roads fall apart on a steady schedule even as we merrily throw down more. What happens is you spend more every year just to keep up what your great-grandfather made, your grandfather made, your father made, and eventually the backlog of the rebuilding costs more than you can pay - and your infrastructure falls apart, slowly at first, then the process accelerates.

You can either let it die, or raise taxes, and of course lower costs by eliminating unions, using immigrant labor, removing health benefits from labor and taking advantage of new road-laying tech. But it's obvious by gross evidence that we can't keep up. We don't want to be taxed enough to maintain the backlog.

Question about this glass isn't about how much it costs - the first part of the cost accounting problem - but how much it saves over time. If the glass wears longer and as a grid produces three times more power than the entire nation requires, then it is worth more than the asphalt roads made of oil.

The road lasts longer. It self-lights. New energy grid. More power than we need, with over-production used to melt snow. Acts as a information highway, literally. Needs no new land. Could self-plow. Hell, it could power electric vehicles by induction. Remember, a stretch of highway can use more power than it produces because is part of a grid of all roads, some of which overproduce electricity.

Rain.