Who said anything about punishment? I think the proposal calls for an email or phone call to the 'victim' to advise them they have been hijacked. Remember, they could also have a keylogger installed to get their bank passwords, too.

By extending your analogies, you're saying that AIDS victims should not be notified they have the disease, but leave them free to infect the population unaware.

Stop overreacting.

Its not just a new remix of Debian or Fedora - most people seem to be missing what could be potentially huge: Chrome will replace Xorg, and maybe also GNOME and KDE with something new.

I assume they wouldn't bother unless it will be superior to all of these, i.e. smaller, faster, more stable, and easier to code for.

Maybe it will even run games better, and maybe even include a directX-type graphics subsystem? Or maybe finally get OpenGL implemented correctly?

Pretty sure we have not managed much mass to energy conversion as yet.

Wikipedia says 97% of the Tsar Bomba energy came from nuclear fusion. Fusion is not matter conversion, although some small amount will be converted (but less than 0.1%).

Obviously some penalties are needed otherwise the weasels will constantly try, try, and try again until all civil liberties are gone.

Let it be resolved that: If any elected politician tries to make a law which is found to contravene the spirit of the principles embodied in a countries bill or charter of rights and freedoms, then that politician will be immediately removed from office and publicly flogged.

Let's see how many friends in office the RIAA/MPAA etc. have after reading that into law.

How about giving the money to Universities to create graduate projects in open source? Maybe even high schools?

Sure, some money will be wasted on crappy projects, but the code from those crappy projects will still be in the commons, and the students will have learned something.

If you want it more directly stimulus-related, then tell them to build labs and buy hardware.

Boy, you people sure are terrified of socialism. I get the feeling there are a lot of people who would rather see any unemployed person starve than give them a penny of government money.

Think of it this way: would you rather be forced to pay some guy to make widgets you don't want and only he will profit from, or pay someone to pick up garbage in the park?

At least the latter contributes to the public good.

You ignore facts inconvenient to your arguments, so you are not worth debating, but also your math is awful.

You say 35 minutes at 65 mph = 4 hrs at 15 mph. Then you ramble on about 'traffic and stuff', and make a lame attempt to justify the whole stinking package by saying you used an extreme example. Sort of proves my point, no? Ever heard of public transit? Blows any cost comparison with a personal car out of the water.

My ideology and dogma? Pot calls kettle black?

I never suggested anything of the sort. My point, which you seem determined to avoid, was that you are applying a strict cost/benefit analysis to something that includes a whole bunch of externalities and variables for which you do not allow or account. You may also have missed the fact that "majority of people" is not equal to "all people". You then go on to do a worst-case analysis, and compare a 65 MPH car commute (Average speed, door to door? Ridiculous!) vs. bicycle only, neglecting transit and taxis as I mentioned. If you're going to slant every analysis in your favor like that, then I suspect you must win every argument in your mind!

Not everything can (or should) be expressed in terms of cost/benefit. First off, what is the cost/benefit of having more than a 1-gallon gas tank in a car? The mileage will only suffer as you fill the tank, so why carry the extra weight? The added convenience is very difficult to calculate.

These shocks will add range to a battery-only car such as the Tesla, and that is a critical selling feature at this point, far beyond cost. They will also reduce the amount of fuel used by a hybrid, so your analysis should include the elimination of some CO2 emissions. What's the formula for that?

Not to mention that the cost/benefit of a motor vehicle for the vast majority of people is a complete bust anyway. You are much better off with a bike, transit, or even taking a taxi everyday.

Why should the file directory include information about the user hosting the file? That could easily be encrypted also, and when sending the file, you could use some mechanism where the pieces are sent via relay off dozens of other file-sharers. No trust needed, and no way to trace the source of files.