They're just hoping to get a better class of criminals.

His point was not that there was nothing else available, but that there was nothing else available that would economically produce the quantities of energy. Methane and such like don't scale that well.

I should say that ESRI is Google's big competitor in the MAPS field. Don't do much in Google's other areas.

Bogus. Google's big competition in the States is ESRI, with their ArcGIS products. ESRI also has a free version that provides users limited functionality, and they also have a version that users pay a boat load of money for... for a LOT more functionality.

As another user pointed out, Google is not alone in this space. If Bottin has a better product, they will be able to make money with it. If all they have is a bare bones, basic map service, they are going to have a hard time to convince me.

$10K/lb was the going rate for using the shuttle, which was a massively overpriced boondoggle from the day it was planned. I think that you can shop for launch costs in the $2K/lb range without too much difficulty.

That being said, $2K/lb is still much more expensive than it should be. The actual energy per pound to low orbit is only a few bucks, assuming it were delivered from your local power plant. The problem is that you have to drag along the rocket... and the fuel to get the rocket the last 10 miles into orbit... and the fuel to get the rocket and that fuel the next to last 10 miles, etc.

It would be so much easier if we just had a sky hook.

Cheapest economic solution that would also reduce man's carbon footprint would be to eliminate 99% of people. 100% would fix the problem permanently.

STANDARD != FREE. Where I live, TB vaccinations are required for kids entering school. This is STANDARD. FREE is when you get somebody else to pay for it. Admittedly most of us have insurance to pay for it. Those without generally get the vaccinations for free anyway.

I purchase/acquire books of several types.

Yes, there are the technical books, usually purchased because I need to get up to speech on a new subject. Can't say I READ them... but I do dig through them enough to learn what I need to know, and then they go on the shelf as reference. These books are probably 25% of my total library.

I buy a number of books out of curiousity... variations on Steven Hawking's book. I end up reading about half of them. At most, these amount to 5% of the library.

Collections: Purely decorative. Often leather bound. These fill up the shelves in the living room. Probably haven't read 5% of these, but some are duplicated elsewhere where I have read them (e.g.: Jules Verne).

For casual reading, I buy whatever interest me in SF, Fantasy, Western, Mystery, etc. genres, and these have a much higher read-rate... in excess of 95% certainly, and if you include re-reads (I've had some of them for ~40 years), well in excess of 150%.