Just how ignorant are you? Stuff like this should be common knowledge and require no proof. Ever heard of clean air/water regulation? How about abolishing stuff like the truck system? It would take at most 5 minutes of googling or wikipedia searching to find this stuff out.

Just in case you are too lazy, here are some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_air_act (note how the criticisms stated all involve net profits and outsourcing as a result of cleaner air, look up the air quality in Mumbai or New Delhi if you get the chance...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store
The system noted above gave rise the the union United Mine Workers which helped secure the rights of coal miners and other abused workers. Without government supporting the right of unions to exist this would have been impossible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Mine_Workers

Oh if I still had my mod points from last week, thank you parent for that article link!

Not only that, but the brilliant solution you suggest is in use in, you guessed it, Diablo 2(cloud characters= closed bnet, offline characters= open bnet/singleplayer/lan).

What it all boils down to is that Blizzard is doing the exact same thing they did with SC2. That is, removing features sorely missed by some of the paying customers(in the case of SC2, LAN) to try and squeeze some money out of pirates. Pirates who probably just won't play the game instead of actually buying it, although I admit that's mostly speculation on my part.

Watched the video. He basically made a small furnace out of clay where he got copper and iron out of ores found in the area(malachite for copper, no idea about the iron, don't remember).

Basically, the video is just a proof of concept of how you would make a battery to use as a telegraph using only stone age materials combined with knowledge. The video ends after he uses a voltmeter to measure his "battery" made out of clay and the aforementioned iron/copper(he gets like 1V out of it or something).

Of course it can make a huge difference, but no matter how good your multitasking is, tanks still don't shoot up...

The point is, it's really easy to just outsmart an RTS AI once you figure out its tendencies. No matter how good it's multitasking is your own won't be bad enough that your flying units all of a sudden forget how to shoot down.

Having an intricate knowledge of counters and economy and timings(at least as far as starcraft goes) has always been superior to multitasking, but only to a point. There are things that you can take advantage of with near-perfect multitasking and control, but you need to actually know what to do with that control(and so far, no AIs do). A good example of what you can use AI for is in the article video demonstrating mutalisk/scourge control at a level which no human player would be able to accomplish. The only problem is that a human player would know that the AI is capable of that and just play around it.

An example would be some extremely mechanical starcraft players(NaDa, a korean progamer comes to mind) being able to just completely outdo their opponents with pure control and multitasking. The problem here though is that those players have such an immensely better understanding of the strategy and tactics of the game than a programmed AI can ever come close to even if it's not their strong suit(compared to other progamers who play more with smarts than raw hand speed). Their multitasking wasn't what won them games but rather a combination of their abilities. They still had far and away stronger decision making than your average player(or any kind of AI).

A bot would always be superior in multitasking, but the most important ability in Starcraft(which the article is about) is decision making which is really hard to program for an RTS bot. Or at least, so it would seem as I've never seen an RTS AI that hasn't cheated and at the same time been challenging.

It doesn't matter if you have the best multitasking in the world if the opponent can just outright kill you cause it has more stuff.

I love how you sarcastically poke fun of people for using a specific argument by using the very same argument but in reverse.

Because the rest of the world believes that health care is a right, not a privilege.

How do you suppose those pesky freeloaders are supposed to find a job with a busted knee? How about if you were born with an incurable condition which requires expensive treatment just so you can function properly? Are you suddenly not allowed to be incurably ill without your parents being CEOs?

Or it just so happens that 40% of the applications are more or less crap.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me. ;)

Define useful?

A server is way more likely to be "found out" as being in a botnet by its user(the admin) than a home computer is. At most it would be useful for a short while and then the admin would take care of the problem one way or another.

Why would you design a virus that to servers if that is the case(and I'm assuming it is)?

Even easier is to simply divide feet by three and you'll have it in meters. Or roughly anyway.