So it holds half a CD at mediocre quality?

If you've got an addictive personality, you'd be paying for that regardless. MMO's for me have supplanted TV and movie watching, which is far more brain-disengaging (if you ask me). As far as entertainment goes, they're pretty darn cheap.

What are you, a communist?

I'm pretty sure that the 100 Million/Year figure quoted is the budget for his entire show.

That's odd. I've been a Canadian subscriber for at least 2 year, and I listen to Howard Stern every morning. I'm not sure about NFL since I'm not a football fan, but Howard is definitely there.

There's a theory out there that it was our invention of cooking food that put us over the top. Cooking food frees up a lot of energy, meaning you don't have to spend as much time hunting/grazing for the same benefit. If less of your time is spent on just surviving, you have time to invest in art, invention and play.

Well if we're going to make one... why not make two? Seems like an obvious solution. Arranged marriages have worked for centuries.

And that is the way it should be. Unless you're working in a sweat-shop type setting where it's really easy to count how many shoes you've made during the day, then your employer is paying for your time. Time might be money for a company, but for me, my time is my life. I'd sure as hell prefer to spend my time doing something besides work, but I'm perfectly willing to trade some of it for some money. If my employer doesn't want to pay me to boot my computer, that's their problem, not mine. Asking me to give away my most precious asset (my time) is simply not a realistic idea in today's world. The days when that sort of sacrifice and loyalty were reciprocated are long gone. It reminds me of my father's workplace, a will-remain-nameless power generating facility, where some new manager thought it'd be a good idea to cut the janitorial staff. The engineers and electricians (and management) would be responsible for keeping their own areas clean. It might seem reasonable to some people, but they were then paying high wages to their engineers and management to do janitorial work. I believe it changed when the director at the station remarked to his secretary, "I noticed my garbage hasn't been taken out for the past week, who's responsible for that?" to which she replied "You are."

I have to agree. As much as I wanted to buy into the sensationalist headline, there really are some valid concerns. For me though, the real issue wasn't that the system could be used to set up such a 'business' but instead, was it? Picking up random people and driving them to work isn't carpooling, it's a taxi service, and as such it needs to be regulated for the same reasons. Safety, insurance, etc.