That's funny!

Especially considering that in a modern CO the blade(s) that is serve as the DSLAM is also the point where the analog signal is split out from the network and is in some instances responsible for providing dial tone. So if the DSL goes down, often times your POTS will go down with it!

I have to disagree with this. Currently, the two biggest cellular providers are Verizon and AT&T

Verizon was created from GTE + Bell Atlantic. AT&T is from Ameritech + NYNEX + Bell South + Pacific Telesis + SBC(changed name to AT&T).

Likely, only one of these entities would exist if AT&T continued to operate as a monopoly because I don't know if GTE had the clout to be as big as Verizon currently is by itself because moving cellular traffic depends mainly on access to fiber (T1s in days of yore). Which would mean that we would all have one technology for cell phones, with one option for a carrier. The other thing that came from the breakup, the Baby Bells had two work with each other to ensure that their new broken up networks would switch traffic after moving forward with independent network upgrades, which gave way to for more open/non proprietary standards to be implemented in the telecom industry and working interconnected networks with multiple routes and diverse locations (TCP/IP networks/slow rise of the Internet, respectively).

I don't think most people are under a false belief that big cars are necessarily less fuel efficient. Math points out that they are correct in that assumption.

I am thinking back to something I learned in statics class... If a car gets bigger, it will have a greater distance between the supports, frame, etc. Therefore we need to account for that Force applied will be the same, but the magnitude of that moment will be higher, aka: M=Fd Therefore, an Engineer would have to account for that moment to meet safety standards and would do so by increasing the mass of the supports, frame, etc to counteract the moment. This in turn, makes a car inherently heavier.

Sounds like the content providers are starting to work as an oligopoly and extracting the maximum cash out of Netflix, either that or Netfix is starting to cash in on the growing customer base.

Another thought just popped into my head, and that might be that Netflix is trying to actively fracture their customer base to beat on their chest to the content providers that streaming or on demand content is the only means people will access media, or it could be that they are going to sell off the DVD distribution side and focus on the lower costs associated without having to warehouse, sort, ship, receive, and resort DVDs.

What?

Seriously, how does a person make the leap from either making the economic decision of, "If I buy this game, I will have to play it through and it has no resale value nor can I restart where I left off. If I don't buy this game I will have the $50 in my pocket to buy another game without those features" to "Screw this, I am now going to spend $50 on the game and use $400 of my time to learn C, become proficient, start spending $700 of my time to reverse engineering how the memory works in the console, and finally use another $800 of my time to break the encryption systems, etc. that store the key codes for the game status, etc."?

I don't think your scenario is reality for 99.999% of the game purchasing public, most people don't want to spend $1600 in their own time to become a hacker, just to break the encryption on a $50 game . I think the choice much simpler: Buy the game or don't buy the game based on the opportunity costs associated with not being able to resell or restart the game.