Yes, however not everybody has internet connections like yours, my cable connection is 7Mb/s when I'm not sharing the pipe with others in my building, and the best DSL I can get is 1.5Mb/s. On top of that you've also got the transfer caps, Comcast has the most liberal cap that I know of at 250GB. At the moment i'm running around 100-125GB/month of transfer just with browsing, podcasts, and streaming media. If I had a download only system I'd need to carefully plan out when I wanted to play what game, as I'd need advance warning and enough drive space to store it, and I could only download 2-3 games per month with a 50GB game file (4-6 if you're calling it a 25GB download) while staying under the transfer cap, and it's even lower if you're on an ISP with more restrictive caps. And even the largest PS3 capacity believed to exist (250GB) could only store 10 games with no other media stored on the console, not a large library without the ability to back up games. I believe that we'll need to see larger storage capacity in consoles, faster 'net connections, and a removal of transfer caps before we see any sort of growth in download only consoles.

According to the history of podcasting article on wikipedia the system of using RSS for podcasts and the ability to get them onto an iPod was mature and in use by the time this patent was filed, so it would appear that prior art will indeed shut any efforts from VoloMedia to get money from this patent down.

I really hope you're right, if anon responds in a mostly civil manner we could see the govt forced to take a stand on net neutrality. On the other hand if anon goes revenge happy on AT&T we could see this sort of block considered a "justifiable act".

Remember that even on hot days not all of the traffic through the datacenter needs to be rerouted, and I'd imagine that a location selected for a datacenter like this was chosen for the infrequency of days that will require rerouting. Do you know how much it costs to cool a datacenter, and how much this will save? I don't, but Google probably does, and they probably wouldn't make a decision to do something like this without comparing the savings with the potential cost from decreased lifespan of computers running hot and losses due to downtime. I would also imagine that Google will be working to greatly increase stability during rerouting, given the comments from the end of TFA about other power saving uses, such as routing traffic to datacenters where it's night, meaning "free cooling" can be used since it's colder outside, and off-peak electricity rates are in effect.

I think the concept is interesting, and it makes me wonder if we'll see more datacenters built in areas of the world more conducive to projects like this in the future.

Given that Honda seems convinced that their tech doesn't conflict with any Toyota patents I'm curious as to how specific these patents are. If they're general enough for any automaker to run afoul of them just by making any sort of hybrid system then I'd imagine they could be invalidated through prior art. If they're much more specific to the Prius drivetrain then there are other questions, like how many patents deal directly with the drivetrain, vs control software, or other elements like battery tech? If it does get to that point then it can be debated if the public good of having more hybrids from different automakers outweighs the legitimate issue of rewarding Toyota for spending years and what was probably a fair sum of money in the development of their hybrid tech. I imagine that these patents cover a combination of the 2, and ford (and others) have decided that paying Toyota is cheaper than bringing a legitimate challange.
I'd guess that at least a few of these patents deal with the weird new "cvt" that only uses planetary gears instead of belts or chains, which is a pretty significant and original idea for a car. A simulation of the gear system can be found here: http://homepage.mac.com/inachan/prius/planet_e.html

Not all schools are as liberal with their policies as your school. Where I was students weren't allowed to remove library copies of the textbook from the building.

When I was in school it was "Here are the homework assignments, they're only in the new version of the textbook". I'm not saying it's in any remote way logical, just that's what they do.

In all reality, how is this all that different from a student buying a textbook at the start of a semester and selling it back at the end? I also think that the endless cycle of "new" editions of the book can put a crimp in the plans for this service, since schools will require the latest edition of a book, which will be impossible for this company to find cheaply online, meaning that they'll need to price to rental to pay for the full cost of the book in just a few semesters (before the new one comes out).

Interesting idea, but I'm skeptical as to how well they can keep costs low enough to be a truly economical alternative to buying.

I think it is supposed to come from which side of the brain the ear is primarily connected to, with the right ear being connected to the "logical" side of the brain, while the left ear is connected to the "Creative" side of the brain, so the right ear is better for conversational audio, and the left ear is better for musical type audio.

This does line up with a topic in a similar vein I heard about a few years ago, essentially saying that the right ear is better for processing vocal type audio and the left ear is better for processing music type audio, because each ear is primarily connected to either the logical or creative side of the brain respectively. Really the headline should say "Want someone to understand what you're saying? Talk in their right ear"

I don't know how accurate this theory really is, but it doesn't sound as implausible to me as some others seem to think