Well, some of us make sure to "forget" large chunks of our collections in our parents' garage every time we move (just make sure there's a gap of a few days between moving out from your old place and moving in to your new place, your parents will happily let you put your stuff in the garage "over the weekend"). And despite this sneaky move I still have a 10 m^2 storage room connected to my apartment that's a deathtrap due to all the stuff I've piled in there.

The only problem with my storage method is that I occasionally spend a few hours going through the pile I have at home only to realize that I left the Indigo^2 workstations in my parents' garage and I'll have to ask them to ship one to me.

I hate to break it do you, but a huge portion of PC users DON'T play anything more intensive than Farmville on their systems - if they game at all.

Even for myself - I do play games on my PC, but only on 1 of them. I've got 5 systems (Windows desktop, Linux desktop, Linux laptop, Mac desktop, and Windows desktop at work) and ONLY my Windows desktop at home ever sees any gaming. In the other 4 I really don't care what chip is in them because Chromium, Visual Studio, Safari, etc simply don't need it.

The simple truth is that this move will lower the cost for systems with integrated graphics, and likely increase the cost of systems with dedicated graphics. That sucks for those of us that end up buying a dedicated graphics card machine, but when the majority of the market doesn't need that, then overall the decision is a good one.

Besides - integrated solutions are getting better and better all the time. I'd put it akin to sound cards and network cards. Once upon a time no motherboards included these. Then some started doing it but the components were pretty bad. I personally specifically looked for motherboards WITHOUT integrated sound when it first started showing up. These days though, most of the integrated sound cards aren't really that bad. They're good enough for all but the most hardcore users. Same with integrated networking. Most new motherboards have gigabit network chipsets that work plenty well enough for almost all users. I'm going to guess that in 5-6 years, the integrated graphics will be plenty good enough to play your average game at an acceptable level. Separate graphics cards will still be available, but they'll cost a bit more (smaller market), and they'll only be needed by those who absolutely have to play at the highest resolution with every detail slider set to max.

A real nerd would have a Mac Mini in the car with 100+ DVD's on an actual hard disk, serving up movies from iTunes to all of the iPads in the car over wireless.

Plus almost doubling the price of a car through taxes when buying one?

But cheer up, from what I sometimes see you actually are getting something from it...

The iPad isn't a computer. It fails to meet the definition of a computer (unless you think your washing machine is a computer, your digital watch is a computer, your TV is a computer, you're getting the idea...) A computer is a device that can be programmed, the iPad can't. If I wish to create an application for the iPad I have to use Xcode on a Mac (then jump through one of two hoops) to do it. Now for me, that makes the iPad a "non-computer" like a washing machine. Sure it has more than a whiff of "computer" about it, but it isn't. This isn't a ding against the iPad - I still want one - just as I'm not about to get rid of my washing machine because it doesn't let me install Plone, both are useful, but neither are useful for creating programs. If Microsoft create a washing machine I'll be sure to not complain if they stop me installing Firefox on it.

You might think my argument is nebulous, fine, so why is the first thing a "new born" iPad does is ask to be connected to a computer running iTunes (I know it actually shows a diagram and points, but you know what I mean)? The Apple iPad doesn't want to replace your computer... and I think the washing machine is pretty safe too.

I imagine the tens of millions of people playing MMOs, 4X, RTS, and FPS games would disagree with you.

How about instead of assuming that we need to simultaneously light up hundreds of square miles of land, we assume that we only need to make the land 'blink'? Using your figure of 10 watts per square meter, and assume a 0.1 second flash every 3 seconds. That would require 1/30th the power, and it would only be necessary to transmit the warning for maybe 15 minutes at a time. A 10kWh battery pack should do the trick, and can trickle-charge from solar panels between tsunamis. In fact, the figures are even better because the tsunami would hit different pieces of coastline at different times.

Er, technically its described as a "family show" and it is heavily marketed at children. In the UK at least it airs at ~6-6:30pm on a Saturday and thus has to be child friendly.

...however, fortunately, most Dr Who writers and producers have interpreted "child friendly" as "do your best to scare the little buggers shitless without technically violating the BBC content guidelines." Of course, the kids love that! The meme about watching it from behind the sofa is founded in reality (I did, when I was little).

Actually, as any history of the show will tell you, it was originally conceived as an educational show to teach kids science and history, and in the old days used to have the occasional straight historical story (nowadays, they may meet historical characters, but there's inevitably an alien monster involved.

Statistics is important because you can use it to manipulate people!
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."~Disraeli

Dunno about europe, but for half decent fuel in Western Australia, i'm paying $1.30 - $1.40 / litre.