When I used to work in the wireless Internet world, I had an associate who had much the same problem with idiots shooting at his antennas. After he had been forced to change antennas on several occasions, I told to him that the simple way to fix the problem was to mount a bullseye somewhere else on his towers and give these lunatics something different to aim at. The last time I talked to him his antennas were bullet hole free but he did have to replace a few of the targets due to them taking some serious damage. Come on, Google, put some creative thought into solving these problems..

Using this scale of damage assessment, (developed by the seized marijuana assaying department) I'm guessing BP owes the world roughly eleventy brazillion dollars.

Instead of thinking advertising, how about this? Revenue is generated by capturing call termination fees (on both ends with Google voice) - but that's nothing compared to the big payoff, mobile payments through Google Checkout. So, Google gets to pillage and plunder both the telephone companies and the credit card companies, making them the hero of this generation and the next. And then there is the possibility of selling the mobile media data (a la Nielsen/Arbitron) for extra cash, if they feel they need it.

You'd think this attack was completely deserved, wouldn't you?

The real question is did the votes make it to Karl Rove's IT manager's server before they were counted? After all, that might appear to be suspicious, you know, if the guy died in a plane crash before he testified.

Americas Waste-to-Energy http://www.aw2e.com/index.jsp generates electricity, distills potable water and gasifies trash, all the while reclaiming landfills. Is this a perfect solution? Probably not, but I would suggest it is a damn sight better than what we have now. Add to that the need to move toward a distributed generation policy, a concept that can cut down on ling line transmission losses (of up to 80% of the generated electricity we produce) and this really might be the technology of the future. http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/

Wireless Philadelphia (and no, I don't want to discuss how unsuccessful it has been to date) was formed because almost half of the city had no broadband coverage - nothing, not even DSL which barely qualifies as broadband, in many places.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=709

And let's not forget that the citizens of Pennsylvania gave some huge tax breaks to Bell Atlantic to deploy broadband which never materialized, if you believe one side of the story.

http://www.tispa.org/node/14

Now, how about those wonderful laws that discourage municipalities that wish to build a network?

http://www.baller.com/comm_broadband.html

I know, I know, the telecoms are a for profit companies and are just protecting their interests.

But the reality is that in many places in this country there are too many miles of wire and too few customers to pay for the service.

Perhaps you are one in one of them.