Only thing?

Nonsense. To make orbital solar a reasonable solution you have to posit cheap orbital transport.

It could posit room temperature superconductors and solve the same problem with a world wide electric grid and rooftop solar. America could supply it's energy needs with infinite capital and it's roof tops (in gross, not time specific).

Adults understand that energy supply will continue to be from a mix of sources and that there is no magic bullet.

Nope, you've proven you're a typical moronic American who thinks there's a difference between the "blue team" and the "red team".

Do you know there are systems that listen to customers on hold, and if they seem angry, puts them to the front of the queue?

People in support encourage that behavior, reward it, by doing things for people when they get angry. They reward anger, even when not talking to anyone! As a result, people pretend to be angry. I know a guy, who, I've never seen get angry ever.......but when he called support once, I saw him pretend to be angry. Because that gets results.

I say whatever you do, maintain gridlock. Look what both parties do when they have the power and gridlock DC. It's simply the best realistic option.

There is no competition because the local governments in most of the areas Comcast services has given them a government-approved monopoly. The market has nothing to do with this because the government has deliberately eliminated market forces.

Anyone who explodes here in rage probably never worked in support. You get your share of assholes. Actually, you get more than your share of assholes. Because you are in the mind of some people the source and reason of everything that ever befouled them. If you treat the customer support badly, don't expect good service. Your 5 bucks a month are not paying his paycheck, your call is not his reason to exist and you are essentially of no particular interest to said customer service rep. He's there to HELP you. With a problem that may or may not be caused by you, but one that absolutely certainly was not caused by him or her.

I can only guess what happened here. My guess is that Comcast suits forced support to be nice to even the most obnoxious waste of oxygen calling, and this is their only outlet. If you ask me, a very, very tame reaction. I've seen people actually resort to physical violence.

Indeed, my comment was aimed more at the Slashdot summary than anything.

Although complaining about the Slashdot summary around here is as useless as it is common.

Your sample is definitely not representative.

My sympathies are with the Comcast tech support on this one. As bad as Comcast can be, which is at least 300 milli-Hitlers bad, the tail-end of the worst people to call customer support can be worse still. Or just too stupid to be allowed to own a computer.

if you ever are the victim of a newsworthy accident/ crime, you will get cold called by a number of lawyers, who want to represent you pro bono

because such cases gild their CV, get their name out there. free advertising

They represent you pro bono because they think you have a good chance of winning, and standard lawyer's fee is 33% of any award or settlement. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. The dozen or so lawyers in the $200 billion tobacco company master settlement became instant billionaires.

The LG Prada was like the other smartphones of the day, but used touch (NOT multitouch) instead of a stylus. There was nothing about it like the iPhone save for superficial appearance (and some of that was obviously tweaked in response to the iPhone pre-launch demo).

Perhaps your problem is the definition of nothing, but to me that part is accurate since Apple did not sell any kind of phone or touchscreen device up until that point... and it really was a dramatically different device than any smartphone sold at the time.

From the standpoint of what Apple had done until then, it was from nothing. Resource wise, they had some money coming in from the iPod at that point, but they were tiny compared to all other companies making smartphones at the time. Lots of people dismissed the chances of Apple's making any kind of dent in the market based on that alone...

Sometimes the world gets more tolerant, sometimes less tolerant. The word is 'whore' and not even the Parent's Television Council thinks it needs to be censored.

And I'm sure the names 'dummy' and 'asshole' do apply to some of the customers. And whore, for that matter, in a literal sense.

Close, but you're not thinking big enough. Microsoft committed the same blunder as the Maginot line. They built their empire on PC (x86+x64) dominance - making sure Windows dominated the architecture, and making sure their software dominated Windows. Their defenses were built around x86, and their warning tripwires were set up to detect anyone encroaching on their x86 territory.

They were blindsided when iOS and Android sprang up outside of x86, essentially creating their own Microsoft-free playing fields. They actually had a mobile OS long before iOS and Android (Windows CE, which eventually became Windows Phone after about 5 different renamings), but they were so focused on bringing it into the x86 fold (some of the WinCE PDAs look like Win XP clones) that they completely missed the opportunity for a new mobile sector.