Sudden death because you failed to observe the [throw grenade -> explosion] interval?

Maybe things (more or less) work that way, but personally I think IP addresses shouldn't be treated as something that can be saved / 'extracted' / bought & sold for profit.

It's not an asset, but an address space, a shared resource, a set of numbers used to manage a world spanning network. Have a share of it assigned to your organization, as necessary to run your piece of that network. When 64K numbers were assigned, other organizations have a need for IP addresses & your organization only needs a couple of hundred IP addresses, the remainder should be re-assigned to those other organizations needing them. The only money involved should be costs that originate directly from bookkeeping of what IP addresses are assigned to whom.

And if IPv4 addresses run out, move to IPv6 to leave IPv4 address space limitations behind in history / LANs / legacy stuff / niche applications.

I'd tend to agree with you, but then we would overestimate the real-world cost of transportation. If transport halfway across the globe is feasible for oil, bananas & cheap plastic toys, why would it not be feasible for high-tech products like electronics, cars etc?

Labor cost is what counts. Relative to that, transport is cheap.

None, I think. Only less functional (say, 8-bit microcontroller kit / Arduino stuff?), more expensive ones (like Beagleboard), or used / bulky / second hand gear.

Personally I like the Raspberry Pi a lot for its combination of cheap, small, brand new, and open-friendly. Biggest minus IMHO is that it's not 100% open due to lacking chipset documentation/drivers. Which limits what OS'es you can run or develop on it. Had such documentation been complete, this would be a perfect dev board for alternative OS experiments.

Why strive for a "one size fits all" anyway ?

Yes, mobile devices are on the rise. Often with small (touch)screens where it makes sense to minimize control elements, in order not to clutter that screen.

At the same time, big screens aren't disappearing either. Browsing the web on a 40" TV at home isn't unheard of, maybe those screens are wall-size in a decade or so. And the average laptop / PC on a desk with mouse beside it, is yet another way to go about it.

The intelligent thing would be to realize that those devices & user experiences are different, and applications + their user interfaces should adjust accordingly. Or if that's too difficult, have different applications & different user interfaces for different devices. Like what has always been the case, really.

As for actual implementation, I agree with you. There's more than enough half-baked crap out there that the world could do without.

As a UI project, I disagree. Throwing some concepts out there fits in nicely with the "release early, release often" philosophy that's practiced in the open source world. If users like it: proceed. If users think it's crap: leave things as they are, or try something else (of course this assumes developers are listening to their users, which as we know isn't always the case ;-).

A story like this then simply serves as a spotlight on the subject, an entry point to encourage discussion about pro's & cons. What's wrong with that?

Might make no difference... The way I'm reading the article, it says "requires European airlines to pass on passenger information", without going into detail about whether that's US-bound flights only, flights within the EU, flights from EU to outside EU (but not US), or even any flight, from/to anywhere, done by an EU-based airline company. It would be good if someone could clear this up.

Secondly I don't see why passenger data would need to be transferred to US control at all. It's really naive to assume that the US will handle such data as agreed. Good chance it will end up in multiple databases, and possibly used at will (since under US control), in violation of agreement. What safeguards has the EU to the contrary? Any?

Of course the US wants some persons not to board an airplane, why not arrange for the US to provide that watchlist to an EU-controlled organization that checks this watchlist against passenger data? Flag & possibly take action on matches, data for people that don't set off any flags then wouldn't need to be transferred to the US (that is, other than what's done already in US-bound flights).

All this reads to me as: EU doesn't care about its citizens' privacy & lets itself be bullied by the US. Annoying - the EU is not even 1 sovereign nation, it's a whole group of sovereign nations. Combined a bigger population than the US. Our politicians should really show some more backbone.

That only works for airlines that want/need to land on US airports. A small carrier that only does a few routes (none including a US airport, never going near US airspace) could simply ignore such a threat.

Personally I think countries should just tell the US to stuff it. Lose landing rights in the US? Okay, then planes originating from the US lose landing rights in our country. Regardless of who loses more in such a fight, that would quickly end this nonsense.

Control what flies in US airspace? Sure. Exercise such control a bit outside that space, let's say to give intercepting fighter jets time to take off? Understandable. Control who gets on planes that never come close? Get the @*%^^) off!

Phone companies: provide paper copies only to those customers that explicitly ask for one (opt-in), and charge for the printing / shipping costs.

Customers: don't ask for one, unless you have a very good reason to keep a paper copy around.

Oh wait - where I live (NL), that's already how it works... (and the vast majority of people do without a paper copy these days).

Yes, we here many of these stories, and then years later nothing has changed... Other than the fact that the cost/watt of pv has continued to drop a significant percentage year after year after year. If that doesn't suit one's definition of progress, redefine "nothing has changed"...

If I'm not mistaken, pv already is cost-effective if not cheaper than conventional energy sources in a variety of places, be it with a significant upfront investment (but with cost-effective = including that investment). Any progress in the cost/watt department will simply increase the # of places where it pays to put up solar panels.