Thank you! Someone finally gets it! When comparing countries, people often forget how FRIGGIN HUGE the United States is, and how much of that is empty space. Piping broadband into the middle of a desert or corn field is not cheap. If you compare on a state-by-state basis, I'm sure the denser northeastern states would rank much higher on the list.

It looks eerily like Warehouse 13...

Am I the only one who initially thought this was from Sunnydale, not Sunnyvale? That would make it a completely different story!

After being out of school for over 10 years, I recently started tutoring a few high school friends in Algebra, Trigonometry, and Chemistry. It was amazing how quickly these things came back to me. Not only will it help you brush up on your math skills, but it will help someone else out, too!

When I was in school at Purdue, we sometimes learned 3 programming languages in ONE SEMESTER. In my first programming class in college, we learned C and Fortran, along with the basics of Make. By the end of the semester, we were writing Fortran functions, then calling them from our C code. Later, in an "Intro to the Web" class, we learned HTML, Java, and Perl in a single semester. Since most classes were about concepts, not languages, the professors felt free to use their own 'pet' language, whatever that may be. So frequently we had to learn a new language on the fly in order to finish a project. In one class, our first project was due 2 weeks into the semester, and was to be done in LISP -- which none of us had used previously. The professor didn't teach us LISP; he just suggested a few reference books, then went back to the subject matter he was teaching. In my Compilers course, the professor invented his own programming language, and gave us the job of writing the first compilers for it using Lex/Yacc. So if you only learned 3 languages, but didn't get in-depth in any of them, I would question the value of the institution. Heck, my high school taught 2 programming languages (BASIC and Pascal), and they were taught by the gym teacher!

I live in Lebanon, IN, where BPL is just now becoming commercially available. One of the largest benefits of the system isn't being talked about -- IP utility meters. Lebanon Utilities is in the process of installing new electric and water meters that communicate back to the "home office" over these broadband connections. This way, when there's a power outage, they will know about it before anyone calls them, and will know exactly how many homes are affected. They'll also be able to diagnose water leaks or busted pipes easier (by watching for constant draws on the water meters). Plus, they won't have to send out meter readers anymore -- they'll be able to read them remotely.