While I'm not holding my breath for cold fusion, and I disagree that the US supported Bin Laden (yes we supported those fighting the USSR, but Bin Laden was to nuts even then for us) I agree with almost everything else your saying. An advanced nuclear power program + Plug in hybrids would slash our oil needs. Spend some of this money on Fusion power, and we may very well have that.

Okay ... I think you missed my point entirely. I'm not pro war for oil.. But it's stupid to think that it was not in part a war for oil, the expensive, scarce resource that our society relies upon. In fact, the crux of my argument is that if we had spent the money on alternative vehicles/power/etc. instead of in Iraq we would be much better off. If every vehicle made in the past 10 years had a plug in hybrid drive system we would be able to write off the middle east, saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars, and we would never have to buy oil from Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, or wherever... It's my biggest complaint because he missed his "Only Nixon can go to China" moment. Your right about al-Qaeda, and that too is my point. Not only can they run a war on the dirt cheap, but we were paying for it, via oil money what we sent back to Saudi Arabia. As for usernames, seeing as your Anonymous Coward, well.....

The one big problem with that theory is that everyone needs to recognize that it's wasteful of resources to fight wars. As long as you have one group that's willing to continue the fight, (Al-quida) your stuck. My biggest complaint about George W. Bush was that he didn't use the war as a chance to break our dependance on foreign oil. Not for environmental reasons, but for basic strategic ones... It's the heights of stupidity to pay for your enemies war.

IIRC, an infantry soldier "costs" around a million dollars, all told, if they are deployed. (Recruiting, training, equipping, transporting, feeding, healthcare, etc.) I'm sure a pilot is many times that. I don't see drones displacing all humans in a combat zone for a very long time, but blowing up a drone that's searching for IED's is almost certainly much cheaper the losing a soldier to one.

I agree. "Buying" QoS is a much easier thing to do, and won't surprise anybody with weird price glitches.

If they change the contract, you CAN get out, but you usually need to drop them within 30 days of them sending your the change to the T&C's

There's exceptions to every rule, but the vast majority of terrorists aren't people with great promise. Same as the vast majority of criminals. Sure, some are evil geniuses, but most can't find their way out of a paper bag. Osama was smart enough to not get caught for 10 years, which is damn impressive, even if the Pakistanis were helping him out. On the other hand, we've had the shoe bomber, and the underwear bomber.... Not exactly savants.

Do you own your stuff, or does your stuff own you? To many people aren't caged by the walls they live in, but by what's contained in those walls. Not being able to collect a bunch of crap can actually be very freeing.

I completely disagree. There are whole genres that are pretty much untouched. Even in the realm of mainstream pop music, they really only have a small fraction of what's out there. While the game mechanics do limit what songs work in-game (without being stupid), I doubt they have even achieved 10% of the usable material. That being said, GH did go to the hardcore territory, and certain death.

1. A crappy economy over the past few years has people slowing down extra purchases. 2. Can't see a huge difference on smaller TV sets. 3. Requires HDMI on the TV. Shut out many early adapters how had high-def TV's without HDMI 4. Media is still more expensive (this is a big one) 5. DVD will play in nearly all computers, car dvd players, etc. Not so for blu-ray 6. Not to put to fine a point on it, but porn hasn't really embraced blu-ray. 7. Recordable media and disks are still too expensive. 8. Extra copy protection crap has turned off other potential early-adapters (who want to put the blu-ray content on a media server or something) 9. Competition from on-demand services.