I pretty much agree. I had my bill handy so I checked how many kWh out of curiosity, but what really can I do about it? We minimize usage as we can, but at $0.138160/kWh with no competitor, what am I really going to do about it? And sure as shit the price "must" be raised, according to said monopoly, every year no matter what. What am I really going to do about it? Like it or not, most of us are just cogs in the machine.

Our home used 654 kWh in October in the upper Midwest. We ran the heat some but it's a boiler system fed by gas. Same with the water heater. We have an electric clothes dryer so I assume that is our main consumption device.

Assuming their telemetry system is limited and that "safe = slow = low prices". That isn't always the case!! Slow may very well = dangerous in many occurrences.

In my little rear-end of the US Government (agency of less than 1500 employees) we have been on BlackBerry since 2003. Moving to iPhone over the course of this year with the troubled waters of BB. I won't shed a tear. Our IT folks have stuck with BB 7 devices and the attachment handling stinks, web browsing is horrible, and I hate the keypads versus touchscreen keypads.

Damn right! Their overreach of powers can try and pry the trans fat from my cold, dead arteries!!!


Seriously.... Dept. of Health & Human Services: please try, I am mere seconds from a heart attack.

Everyone is flaming this poster for using "bias" but I think perhaps it's just a case of the wrong term. I think OP perhaps meant SENSATIONALISM. The "Beeb" and all news these days rely on sensationalism to jazz up stories.

"Bullet" is more sensational than "tag", "projectile", etc. I want to read about a "GPS Bullet" story far more than a "GPS Tag" story!

I wonder how Elop can sleep at night for getting $25mil to tank a company.

But I suppose it isn't too hard on a pillow made of 250,000 Benjamins

But he's BROWN, which is close enough for most of the US' security apparatus, isn't it?

So far in this thread, you are the only one who - I think - has hit the nail on the head. It's all about employee lock-in.

The "free" shuttle buses, laundry, meals, etc etc etc has one goal: KEEP YOU WORKING. If you don't need to maneuver your own transport? You can work more. If you don't need to cook? You can work more. If you don't need to wash your own clothes? You can work more.

A colleague of mine has a daughter hired by a Bay tech company right out of college. He was humble-bragging that she gets all of these "benefits" plus a low six figure salary at 22 years old. But to me, it's a bit of a sucker bet because the goal of these "benefits" is to have you work as much as possible.

Spot on. My prices were on the generous side!!

Well if it was still within the .gov domain it would still fall under all NARA and other legal requirements to archive. It's when Gov officials use commercial services, like DickyC@evilempire.com to control the Bush Administration that I have a problem!

**facepalm** My above post should have read minister@"domain".com and "ministersname"@"domain".com

Setting aside the ridiculous $1M issue, the accounts are called secret, but aren't they simply PRIVATE? That is, they aren't publicly distributed and shared widely, but they aren't "secret" since multiple parties obviously know that they exist. Even my low-budget church has a "Minister@.com" address for the public and a private @.com.

My per page prices figure bulk shipping. With enough lead time, shipping is cheap! With overseas production, shipping is MORE than the printing!!

Printing Geek here: Paperback book would be roughly $0.01 or LESS per text page (depending on the run length of total copies) and $0.04 per cover. All of this includes binding and shipping. So, let's look at a 300 page paperback: about $3.10 per printed copy. Now, think of a large run book with text page cost at $0.005 or $0.0025 per page: ~$1.54 or ~$0.79 per copy. I think the lower range of prices is even more likely considering the junk paper stock and black ink only for paperbacks.

Keep in mind these cost are assuming domestic US production of books! I don't think I can pick up one of my kids books and not see "PRINTED IN CHINA" on the back.

I fully agree that it makes fiscal sense to send robots and such. Manned exploration, to me, isn't about fiscal sense. I think it's innate to the human experience to go there ourselves. To see with our own eyes what the robots tell us. Example: I found James Cameron's dive in the ocean trench last year far more interesting than what submersibles have already told us. To hear the excitement in an explorer's voice and get that feeling of what it was like... you can't get that from a probe.

It doesn't make financial sense, but to have "boots on the ground" puts the awe of it in perspective for all of humanity, IMHO.