We lived in rural (I could see the nearest town 7 miles away on the plains) Colorado in 1996. For me, a 25 mile commute to a tech firm for support work. I had all the internet I could eat (then still almost fresh).

For the wife, life on the farm, make the best of what technology we had was the rule. We had party-line telephone access. No personal calls allowed to my work, so she'd dial up my company's server on the old 286 we had, login as me, use shell to run mail, send me a message, then logoff. If a neighbor had to make a phone call... we learned more about NO CARRIER than we cared. On that system it took her a few minutes to send me a message, where today she uses sms on a cell phone to ask the same questions: what time home for dinner? But it's me asking as she's the primary earner now.

The punch line here is that in 1996 the telco was laying fiber to our doorstep. Fiber, and we were listening for a distinctive ring!

When I was in the first grade (1968ish), we had a Sears and Roebuck television set with whatever special warranty for service. This was a big deal, because it went past the "mechanical massage" stage of repair, so dad called the Sears Television Repairman to the house.
All I remember of this is:
1. the nice man sticking a screwdriver into the back of the set
2. a loud POOF
3. tiny bits of foil floating amid all the smoke in the living room
and
4. the nice man says "yup, this is going into the shop"

All we need to negate the effects is a Graham Cracker Crust !

said food designed by a Presbyterian minister to suppress unhealthy carnal urges...

The same cost analysis applies to coal plants as well if you consider regulating and capturing coal's pollutants in the same manner as we do nuclear contaminants. The same ground-chemical pollution from a nuclear plant simply does not exist as it does for a coal plant. Additionally, nuclear fuel has a greater ability to be recycled than does used coal, we just have to DO it.

You're correct that it ain't cheap, but the costs probably run pretty equally in the long run.

We DO say Nintendos, LEGOs and Barbies. We's all American!

oh, btw, it's Hot Wheels without the extra -es in our favorite vernacular.

kthxbye.

You buy a car to drive it, and figure out how to adjust the seats. You tell your mechanic to change the oil because most of us couldn't be bothered to do it ourselves, or we know enough to recycle the used oil and don't dump it on the ground.

People gonna buy computers and drive them whether or not they care about AV. They figure out how to use basic software unless they have aptitudes approaching what most ./ers claim. My clients' computers might have an antivirus program or not, but most rely on my instruction to update the signatures manually or to set the program to update itself.

ftfy.

The right answer is "shush up newbie."

and still hamming it up

My neighbor gave me a dead (power-supply-issue) Wii, this may get interesting.

where's the solder...