How much real difference do you think that would make?

First, there is a large, fixed component to the fuel cost - a fully equipped and staffed 747 with no passengers will still use a shedload of fuel. Then there are all the other fixed costs of operating an aeroplane and running the business.

Then, if you've ever bought air tickets you should have noticed that the price for the same seat on the same plane can vary by an order of magnitude depending on how or when you book it. The retail price of tickets is dominated by "supply and demand" factors. On international flights, for instance, the price of a return ticket skyrockets if you're not staying over a Saturday night. The fat guy in front of you may already have paid twice the price you paid just because he's flying back a day earlier or booked a day later.

You're just too naive - probably thinking that the airline will provide enough "big & tall" seats to meet demand, so it can make honest money from people paying a reasonable surcharge for them. Fat chance, when by deliberately not providing enough B&T seats (once their gold-card wielding frequent fliers* have had their share) they can create an artificial scarcity and charge people 3x over the odds for them.

(* the only ones who fly regularly enough for the airlines to give a fig about repeat business).

...and Virgin Atlantic have a similar 'Premium Economy' option (I think BA basically copied it) - I've used both and they're in a different class to 'economy plus' on US carriers, but if you got either of them for 25% over plain economy you were lucky... or maybe booked really early. In my experience 50% - 100% mark up is more typical and if you're not early enough they quickly shoot up to stupid money.

The problem with the whole "choice" theory is that it assumes that you also have complete flexibility in where and when you want to travel, and how much you can pay. I've had to include extra stops and/or fly a day earlier to get premium economy at a rate my employers will tolerate (i.e. < 2x the economy price) - this depends 100 mile trip from home to London Heathrow - even if you can get where you want to go from a closer airport it usually means Hobson's choice of airlines. If you have no choice over when you travel. when you book or where you fly from/to you often have little or no choice of airlines.

Nor does a certificate that proves that you spent time and money on paperwork.

In Soviet Russia, memes study you!

To be fair, the electric model is that most of the time you'll top up overnight (OK, that raises its own issues), and the only time you'll need a charging station is if you're on a road trip, in which case a 30 minute refreshment and potty break every couple of hundred miles isn't such a bad thing.

If, however, there is widespread uptake of electric cars, then it will start to become apparent that, even with demand reduced by home charging, you need one hell of a lot of 6-bay superchargers to match the throughput of a 6-bay gas station (especially since people who e.g. head off for a meal are going to leave their cars plugged in for more than 30 mins). You'd need entire parking lots kitted out with chargers - which, in turn, is going to start needing extra infrastructure to get the power to the site (...perhaps they could run a generator off those nice big tanks at the gas station? :-) ). The trick for the e-car industry is going to be to avoid the crunch point when people start to roll up at the supercharger and find all the bays in use (and no owners in sight) and don't have enough juice to get to the next one.

I saw the video of Tesla's battery changer, and it certainly seems preferable to a 30 minute recharge. With the weight of battery packs, and the need to build them in to the chassis to save space, I think robotics is probably the only way. Also, its probably too soon in the development of battery technology to introduce a 'standard' pack - maybe a split system whereby part of the battery capacity is in a replaceable, standardised, pack, and the rest is built into the chassis...

Except you can't refill your hydrogen fuel cell at home - so you're going to be straight in to the chicken-and-egg problem of needing the full refueling infrastructure in place before people buy the cars. Unless maybe you have a plug-in/fuel cell hybrid?

Lets face it - the ideal use-case for an electric car is as a and still need another one for long trips. I quite like the look of the BMW i3 (it would probably suit my purposes, as the UK range-extender version hasn't been gimped to suit CA law) but, again, you could buy 3 small city cars, or a fully tricked-out Mini with gold-plated hubcaps and unicorn-fur upholstery for the price of the basic model.

Meanwhile, I've done my bit for the promotion of electric vehicles and bought one of these.

The problem isn't killing off a few humans. Plenty more where they came from. Disrupting ecosystems due to unintended consequences could be far more destructive.

E.g. Transfer natural insecticide "X" from plant Q to plant P, insect A (that had never encountered plant Q) eats P and accumulates X; insect B eats insect A and dies from X, is no longer around to eat insect C, which swarms and displaces insect D, which had an essential role in pollenating crop S...

Of course, X could get transferred from plant Q to P naturally or by old-fangled horticulture - but this will happen gradually, even horticulture will probably take decades, giving ecosystems time to adapt, but GM can make the transfer and roll out the GMO around the world within a few years. Plus, with GM, X might come from a plant from another continent, a seaweed, a jellyfish...

Now, if we could only be sure that the firms making GMO crops were painstakingly exploring all possible ecological side effects, and would scrap a new product at the first hint of any possible problem on a "better safe than sorry" basis, then the benefits of GMO might outweigh the risks. Unfortunately, these are probably the same people who thought that putting diseased sheeps' brains into cattle feed was a good idea, who are resisting attempts to ban neonicatinoids until its absolutely 100% proven beyond all doubt that they're killing bees, and think a 1m strip of ploughed land around a GMO trial field will prevent cross-pollenation.

Plus, as others have pointed out, the problems of food supply are caused by poor infrastructure, overpopulation, growing high-value crops for 1st-world markets instead of food and over-reliance on single crops. These are not generally helped by increasing yields in the already-overproducing rich nations who can afford to buy GMOs.

Personally, I prefer games where you don't get bits of your body cut off when you lose.

Dear Slashdot,

I am currently in the office attempting to work, so I am unable to post a funny, informative or insightful comment on this story. I expect to be goofing off again in an hour or so at which time I will give your story my full attention.

Meanwhile...

They don't. "In-App purchases" are charged to your Apple Store/ Google Play/Amazon/whatever account. There are APIs to enable this.

You usually have to give your password for this to happen... but there are various gotchas such as a 15-minute window during which you don't have to re-enter your password and other design flaws e.g. asking for your password even for free apps.

So, scenario: Little Johnny asks Daddy to enter password to install free, or maybe 50c game. Daddy checks that game is, indeed $0.50 and enters password, 10 minutes later, Daddy has left the room and little Johnny is asked if he wants to buy 1000 magic berries for $10... and doesn't need a password.

Then, you've got games which mix in-app purchases with real money and an in-app imaginary currency just for good measure...

Many puffins died to bring us this information...

Someone invents the Star Trek Matter Replicator.

So, rather than take your new car out and get it dirty, you run it through the replicator to make a working copy for day-to-day driving and keep the original in the garage. While your at it, you make another copy for your Significant Other so that they can (according to their inclination) fill up the footwells with high-heeled shoes and/or dismantle it and leave bits strewn around the house without bothering you, and one for each of your 3 kids, and one for your mate Bob (in return for the speedboat that they let you copy last month).

Ford then sues the replicator manufacturer, basing their damages on the theory that obviously if you hadn't had the replicator you'd have bought seven cars off them instead of one.

Meanwhile, Paramount reveals that it applied for patents for everything in Star Trek in 1969 and, by continually updating the applications to involve more sex and lens flare, they're still valid, so they're suing as well.

This is why we can't haz post-scarcity utopia.

"Solved" is a bit wildly optimistic.

"Improved beyond recognition where the laws exist and are enforced" I could go with.

Seriously, what do you expect for $35? They've done well to add the extra USB without raising the price (and, hopefully, removed the need to buy a powered USB hub which was the real dealbreaker with the old Pi).

The stated aim of the Pi was to always encourage people to muck around with programming and electronics without the risk of bricking an expensive PC. Its quite deliberately built down to a price, so letting the magic smoke out is never a big deal.

Devices like the Hummingboard and the BeagleBone Black (which probably wouldn't have existed without the success of the Pi) look great, but they already cost ~30% more.