It's true that you can't get it by waiting. The question is how can we create the conditions which would result in it happening.

You also have fairly constant water usage from year-to-year, as has anyone previously living at your address, probably for the last hundred years (if you address has been around that long). In fact, there's a good chance that your water usage is less than previous occupants (assuming any), due to water-saving technologies that have been adopted over time.

Water delivery is a mature product. Data delivery is not yet one. There are still services an applications being developed that would not be possible at previous levels of supply. Current services are not yet at the level, I think, where most people would say, "yeah, that's enough, freeze it here and keep roughly that level of service forever"

Moreover, data delivery is unlike water delivery in another fundamental way - the data is an unlimited resource. There is no reason why anyone would be interested conservation projects. The only limitation to your usage of data is the network's ability to deliver it.

That said, if we want data delivery to behave like a competitive market, then we need to have a competitive market. I'm pretty sure that a condition where the companies serving the market are local monopolies separated by geography, "competing" only in the sense that residents may move to another service provider's area if they are dissatisfied with their service (and how bad would it need to be, really, for people to consider moving halfway across a continent....) does not constitute a properly competitive market.

Nah, food and nukes are the same. On paper there is plenty to go around, and then some. In practice, logistics and politics and local resistance get in the way of the distribution. We have been fortunate not to see this demonstrated with nukes, though.

Some books are classic because they stood the test of time and are still enjoyable to read and possibly have something valuable to say. Sometimes I think most books are 'classic' because people think they should have found them enjoyable and edifying, rather than actually did find them so....

I think I may never have been more disappointed than when I finally read "From the Earth to the Moon."

Baen eBooks were ~$6 until they started selling through Amazon, then the price went up to $9 something.

As a book customer, I am supposedly benefiting from this whole thing by having cheaper books. where are my damn cheaper books. eBooks often aren't even cheaper than discount hardcovers.

It's difficult to pin this plan on the Republicans when none of the Republicans in the House voted for it.....

I'm trying to think of what is excluded by that, but I can only come up with flounder, which is quite edible.

How can the state of California guarantee that without price controls, then.

I'd like to see some stats on that. I'm sure that the stats agree that driving slower results in fewer injuries when accidents occur, but how does the enforcement itself affect the quantity of those accidents?

All too often I am in freely flowing traffic close to the speed limit and blue & red lights reflect off of something and all of a sudden a wall of brake lights as people slow to well under the posted limit. Frequently traffic was such that the vehicles involved weren't actually speeding before the velocity shift.

I haven't seen statistics on it, but I cannot imagine that the speed changes from "ticket avoidance" are helping accident stats.

I think he has worked out a way to make money on it. Step one is to drum up interest by talking about the one that was lost....

It should be two cocktails by your reckoning, unless the cocktails are being mixed too strong. (which, if the numerous restaurant/bar improvement reality shows are any indication is pretty much a near-certainty...)

And the problem is that if you're going to set a limit based on blood concentration, you have to choose where that limit is. If you choose too high of a limit, there is a chance that some subset of the population will be (even slightly) impaired, and you'll get the blame when one of those people (even a small percentage of the also small percentage of people who drive after drinking will still have a reasonable chance of being non-zero when you multiply by a third of a billion people.) causes injury or death.

There doesn't seem to be a downside to lowering the limit, so it seems it will ever creep downward. I suppose it will finally stop when we reach the level of natural fermentation within our own blood, though. It would be quite a tyranny to assign criminal blame for someone who simply doesn't metabolize the alcohol which has naturally fermented from the sugars in his blood as fast as most people.

One wonders who supports the drug laws most loudly (other than the LEO's who get to play with cool, expensive paramilitary gear). The superior-to-thou teetotalers, or the drug smugglers themselves. An end to prohibition would also be an end to the profit margins of the illegal drug trade.

We went to the moon when space programs were about proving how accurate your missile guidance systems were and gentle on the payload.

All of the threats and proof to back them without actually blowing up something and sparking off round after round of retaliatory fire.

There is plenty of power from hamster wheel generators, it's only a matter of raising enough hamsters and feed.

The question isn't how much energy is available in the form of wind or solar. It is obvious from the size of the disk of the earth, the insolation at sea level, and the energy needs of the current civilization that, even if we raise all people to the consumption level of the average US'er, and use panels whose efficiency is conservatively calculated at our current capability, there is enough solar power for all human activities.

Wind, i have not researched sufficiently, though I suspect the total extractable energy across the entire planet still exceeds our energy needs.

One question of wind and solar is that you don't get to pick where and when you are supplied. For a global system, maybe it averages out, but you still don't get to pick where, so you need to be able to supply everywhere in the world from anywhere in the world. Grid capacity is not sufficient and I'm not sure 40 years of rollout is enough to get it there.

Another is will.

I live in an area that is pretty ideal for wind power. It is not only strong, but also fairly consistent. A recent windmill in my area was, under the retail rules, offsetting electric usage in amounts roughly equivalent to a fifth of its installation cost. That windmill remained in operation for well under three years and is now derelict due to the installing company (I suspect a cut-out for the generator manufacturer.....) going out of business, invalidating the maintenance contract. Unable to find a new maintenance contract, without maintenance, it was allowed to continue operating until the generator was damaged beyond repair.

There are a sprinkling of windmills in my area, but there does not seem to be the will to maintain them, or their maintenance is simply too great an expenditure to justify their continued existence.

Is 30 years enough time to clean up the shenanigans that are currently going on? I hope so. I'd like to see a windmill someone actually cared about. But we can bring on real replacements to base-load plants in closer to decade-scale by going with nuclear. The clock starts whenever we stop holding it back.

Perhaps verboten, but those terms are often unenforceable. Reverse engineering the server protocol from the client for creating a compatible server is almost certainly protected.