That's sheer nonsense. I have yet to find a single ad on Delicious. On second thought, this is perhaps why Yahoo made this business decision.

I guess it depends on how you use the service. Personally, I never bothered to open an account there, but I'm subscribed to several bookmark RSS feeds, such as this one belonging to the Open Society Institute (aka Soros Foundation).

Ironically enough, you answered your own question. 140 liters is a number I simply picked from thin air. I googled a bit and found out that a typical bathtub actually has roughly double this capacity.

Numbers and parameters don't say anything without a context. People buy stuff because they need to fulfill a need, at least in theory. Spelling out what needs a particular product solves is simply more efficient.

And by the way, this translation act also has some tangible consumer benefits. Let's presume that you do buy the damn bathtub, advertised only through its capacity and you get it delivered. You can't blame the company for anything since the product is exactly as advertised, although it doesn't fulfill your needs. If on the other hand, it advertises the benefits as well, you can now legitimately claim that the company misled you. See the mechanism?

I think you forgot the "stuff that matters" part. I don't know about you, but a story about a real case scenario involving nuclear warfare seems pretty worthy of attention.

You should try republic vs tyranny. Some odd correlation there.

Ad revenue doesn't really have to mean loss of privacy, especially in Wikipedia's case. You could easily sell ads for each individual page. Some of them (like those which are history related) won't have any ads at all, while others (like those technical/networking terms) will probably be very competitive. Put in place a bidding system and an ad scoring system and it could actually work.

I know the quote from my high school organic chemistry teacher.

He's best known for the periodic table, but he was also a pioneer in petro-chemistry.

This is one of the most insightful comments I've read here in a while.

Another side of the equation is the shift towards a post-scarcity economy. Of course, this is only partial, there are still people dying of hunger after all, but in the long run, the human economy will shift more and more towards artificial needs creation and artificial barriers to simulate scarcity. This type of economy, already visible in the software world, will reach critical mass when rapid prototyping units (3D faxes) will become wide spread. That's my prediction anyway.

... after studying the chemical composition of oil: "This stuff is way too valuable to simply burn it".

The problem is that breeder reactors (at least the early models) can be used to obtain weapon grade plutonium. They are also much, much more expensive than traditional ones.

Now with the constant rise in price for nuclear fuel and of course the development of better designs, breeder reactors will most likely become a reality. Of course, that assumes some responsible politicians will avoid knee jerk reactions and that's a big assumption.

The latest evidence seems to point out that China might be behind the Stuxnet worm, as an expedient way of sabotaging a nuclear power without the diplomatic drama.

Of course, this is all highly circumstantial. We'll probably never know with absolute certainty.

Here's a rather insightful analysis on this hypothesis.

But... but... think about the children.