300 amps? Are you going by what your circuit breaker panel says? Most drops are 60 - 100 amps. And even if the drop wire can handle that power, the local transformer (on the pole or the green box on the ground) likely can't.

Furthermore, the utility, much like ISPs, over-provision - the average household is each expected to draw around 3 or so KW peak, not 20+ KW. Everyone using fast-chargers at home isn't feasible, and hence the push of slow-chargers, which are cheap, and the current grid can handle just fine.

Circles, roundabouts, or whatever term is in vogue these days can be worthwhile, but aren't a cure all - they may increase capacity a little, but ultimately, the best way to increase capacity is adding more lanes / converting into a limited access highway.

With that said, Pennsylvania PennDOT agrees with your sentiments - they're on a "roundabout" building spree with many in the pipeline, including locations where they are not appropriate (ie. Rt 222 between Reading and Allentown) - that will likely result in a public backlash with many being ripped out in 20 years.

That's already happened in New Jersey with many ripped out. Though, ironically, adding them in other locations - NJ DOT planners don't seem to know what to do.

Many people in the U.S. hate "circles" (I know there are different terms depending on configuration and approach rules, but anyways I call them all circles) ... and it's not just because Americans are ignorant or whatever, there are some legitimate gripes with circles, one of which being they don't work well for multi-lane roads coming together with equally high levels of traffic and/or traffic that consists of many large full-size tractor-trailers and heavy, possibly even over-loaded, dump trucks.

Rt 222 in Pennsylvania between Reading and Allentown is a highly traveled road that's mostly all two lanes (one lane each way) with traffic lights and much cross traffic.

PennDOT's solution is building circles at some of the intersections instead of upgrading it into a wider highway. Circles may help with flow, though that's debatable when one throws lots of big rigs into the mix, but doesn't solve the volume problem - two lanes carries a lot less vehicles than a four lane, limited access highway.

Among the main reasons for highways being needed, seemingly, most everywhere is the lack of planning. Though many states are now encouraging regional zoning; communities need to look beyond their borders when approving new construction.

Much of the challenge in building new highways is the lack of money combined with excess regulation that often greatly inflates the costs. For example, it took 40 years to expand Rt 222 between Reading, Pa to the Lancaster County line roughly 7 or so miles away - and that was even in despite of most all the land needed for it already being condemned decades before - so that wasn't the hold up. It was strictly environmental combined with lack of funds.

A similar issue occurred with the Blue Route near Philadelphia - another road that was started in the 1960s and then stopped for lack of funds, then held up by environmentalists until it was finally completed (though not as designed, which has caused problems ever since - 3 lanes merging into 2 at a very busy section) around 1990.

Rambling on, but in a nutshell, reducing the standard of living, which many environmentalists seem to advocate, isn't the answer. New and/or improved highways in many places *are* needed.

Much like how the U.S. government has seemingly gone over the top with airline security, drones is likely going be the next security threat requiring a very aggressive response to protect buildings, and more to the point, the power-elite from assassination.

To digress a bit, airline security seems over the top until one realizes it's not to protect the passengers, but rather the important structures full of important people the planes could potentially fly into.

I expect likewise will be the response to drones when some baddies are able to easily acquire some and start killing important people.

Even the smallest drones with on-board guidance, perhaps combined with facial recognition and other tools, are more than adequate to deliver a deadly strike (utilizing a firearm, explosives, etc) to kill rich, powerful people, even in relatively secure compounds, which generally rely on walls, guards, and cameras providing security - none of those are much use against a fast flying, relatively quiet drone.

Sure helium could improve performance and be beneficial for some uses, but anyone buying these need to ask what happens when the helium inevitably leaks out...

To me it looks another example of planned obsolescence at work. Though, perhaps, WD will take the razor blade approach and sell helium refill kits.

Snopes has a lot of useful information, but they are a for-profit site that utilizes seemingly desperate ad tactics, including pop-unders of seemingly shady advertisers.

One has to wonder what other compromises Snopes is making; who is their master? Snopes is not the end all be all when it comes to authoritative information contrary to what many believe - no one source is.

I'm running Firefox 3.6.28 with no significant issues. Sure javascript is sluggish, which new versions address, and lacks some of the latest technical stuff, but so far not a showstopper - all the sites I regularly use work fine.

If people want "visually-appealing", they already can find plenty of that on YouTube...

"mentos and coke" About 18,500 results
"lasers burning stuff" About 909 results

And zillions of other related science related video can be easily found there. The Slashdot "TV" section, in its current incarnation, seems redundant to many visitors.

No need for a separate "TV" section. A better approach would be to link videos, audio, etc to posted articles, as needed. And make the TV section simply a different view of articles that emphasizes / lists all attached videos.

Text based articles is what most visitors of Slashdot expect. Slashdot might as well just move the "TV" section over to a YouTube channel and be done with it.

Airline security is *not* about protecting the passengers (though that's a nice extra benefit), but rather protecting strategic structures and the power-elite that reside in them from hijacked aircraft.

In the distant future, airline security for passengers will likely be relaxed when technological methods are widely deployed to remotely limit where aircraft can fly / ability to take over control.

As of now, there's no cost effective way to protect structures / people on the ground from aircraft attacks other than prevention; stopping a hijacking before it occurs.

An armed revolution wasn't that realistic back in 1794 either - i.e the failed Whiskey Rebellion.

However, if enough people feel revolution is the only option, they'll find a way. Technology makes the government stronger, but does so likewise with individuals...

It's only a matter of time before revolutionaries, or terrorists depending on how one views the situation, obtains nuclear weapons - the great equalizer ... not just for nations, but also for disenfranchised groups within.

Furthermore, RAID can potentially *increase* the chance of data loss.

I've seen multiple instances of a RAID controller corrupting data throughout the RAID. Also, recovery isn't a sure thing on a RAID depending on the number of drives and the configuration used, especially if being performed by someone who lacks experience in that realm.

On a related note, RAID can sometimes be more expensive - people who run small home RAIDs, in particular, often don't have exact spare drives on hand, which they should! Attempting to swap in a different brand / model drive doesn't always work well sometimes necessitating swapping out additional perfectly good drives in the RAID to get it running again.

True. However, many young people rely on social networking sites to meet up and coordinate activities, as well as, chat directly through them - the major ones, in particular, Facebook and Google+, have similar age restrictions to that of GMail.

In reply to some comments / sentiments in this thread regarding how quick Google is to delete accounts, be wary of creating a Google+ account / user profile.

There have been many reports of Google+ accounts being flagged for various reasons (username choosen, duplicate acct, complaints from others, etc) resulting in the linked services, such as, GMail being suspended / terminated too.

Imho, avoid creating a Google+ account - not so easy now that Google is rolling that out across services, so the next best option is not create a profile; leave it as empty as possible. And keep services separate ... don't use the same Google+ account for GMail as one does for other services (ie. YouTube).

Absolutely agree. Not faulting the websites, services, etc for the age restrictions. Google is in a no-win situation due to the law.

Effectively creating a "don't ask, don't tell" situation, which seems to be very commonplace in life. Many activities are technically restricted, forbidden, etc ... but overlooked as long as both sides play along ...

An example is Facebook one user / one account policy - long as the user keeps their duplicate accounts / usernames on the down-low, and don't cause problems, Facebook, despite automated ways to catch many dups (Google+ is reportedly more aggressive), usually overlooks the extra accounts.