Agree with you completely. Good points.

Before we rush to conflict, I am wondering if anyone has any peaceful alternative. One thought I had was for Ban Ki-moon as Secretary General of the UN to ask the 'most peace inclined' member of the Security Council (Russia) to arrange to take over custody of all Syria's chemical weapons as a way for Assad to show that 'he isn't the bad guy'. Any other 'great' ideas??

Go to SEC and read the latest 10Q/10K for your company. ( URL: http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml ) My ISP (Cablevision) has $10 B in debt, negative equity and last year made about 3% on the total assets after covering operations, depreciation and interest due. They reduced their debt and pay an 'ok' dividend which is why they are attractive to investors. So I feel pretty good about paying $70 @ month for a cable/internet connection with basic 'TV' and about 20Mbps download / 2Mbps up. I guess the government could have done it and just paid for it with taxes, but it would have probably been for 128Kbps ('who needs more?'), have cost 3-5x as much and taken 7 years longer. As to FCC, maybe they should look at the electric bill... my bill breaks delivery away from supply...and I can get 'supply' competitively. That leaves the 'delivery' (infrastructure) to be assessed separately by folks who (hopefully) understand capitalization, recapture rates, sinking funds, etc. Maybe the real question we should be asking is: Why should cable industry keep the 'utility' part combined with the 'content' part?

No doubt about that.

What are the key technologies needed in order to do that and where do they stand today? How do we afford that while focus is on survival in much of the world - and on greater comfort in the rest of it? From where I stand it seems likely that we will have to wait for something drastic to get motivated.

A little DRM goes a long way. Since publishers, developers, indies all seem to come and go, my problem is most likely going to be with their lack of reliability and permanence than my "piracy" (non-existent). I do play games from my library dating back almost 20 years - and if a game is any good I expect to do so over the next 20 years. Without this assurance (and most DRM fails to give any), I will not buy any game until it hits the bargain bin. However, no DRM at all might be too generous, too tempting. Steam as an independent repository makes it possible to buy otherwise DRMed games with some hope of a future. So does GOG. They also make some effort to have the most recent version. Works for me so I trade with them and not the publisher / developer. I think that the various players in this market will finally figure it out and move away from boxed, weirdly DRMed and from DRM free - and use a little DRM to keep things honest.

When I finish a build, I fill a ziplok poly bag full of all the stuff which I got with the parts I used for the box. Then I stuff it in a 5.25" bay which doesn't block ventilation. Sure beats looking though the stack of paper under my desk or in boxes or spare part bins.