Or to put it another way how little energy most things need. You don't need tons of power unless you're trying to heat somewhere or move heavy things.

There's a hysterical amount of power in mechanical motion. One horsepower is almost exactly 3/4 of a kilowatt.

Cruising a mid-size car at highway speed against air and rolling resistance takes about 18 HP (much more for accelerating or hill-climbing, of course), while a "typical home" load is about a kilowatt average, i.e. 1 1/3 HP.

Not to mention the well-known fact that batteries have a limited number of discharge/recharge cycles

That depends on the battery chemistry.

As I understand it, modern Lithium Ion chemistries are mainly affected by time since manufacture / first charge (due to ongoing electrode oxidation) and high temperatures, with extra cycling (if it doesn't result in overheating the battery) a minor issue.

(But I'm not expert on this so maybe somebody who is could comment?)

Crosstalk alone I would think would be an issue.

Yes, it is. The standard is largely about canceling crosstalk. (Look for "vectoring" in TFA.)

Without the standard's crosstalk cancellation feature, but with everything else according to the standard, the speed drops by a factor of five.

200Mbps over these short hauls is not to sneeze at. But it's not such a big deal, either.

Ya no... that's not how it works at all.
It's called a Fiber Mux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexing

That's how things like DSLAMs work: One (or more for redundancy) fat pipe for backhaul, a router or switch in the box at the curb, and individual links carrying only each customers' data to the DSL modem at each customers' site.

Passive Optical Networks work like cable internet (and vaugely like the original party-line coaxial Ethernet): A pair of light frequencies (one outgoing, one incoming) connect the box at the curb, through attenuator/splitters, to each of a handful of sites. (The one I saw had an 8-bit hardware address and handled 250 subscribers per fiber.)
  - The outgoing signal contains the traffic for all up-to-250 subscribers on a given link and the subscriber box rejects traffic for all but its own destination(s).
  - The incoming traffic takes turns on the other light frequency. (Timing information is on the outgoing link and they run a link-level protocol to assign slots as requested when the subscribers' boxes have traffic, rather than a collision/retry protocol.)
Advantage is you need about half as many optic transcievers to implement it, while optical splitter/combiners are really cheap.

So, yes, it would be trivial to build a box that could listen to the fiber and tap your neighbors' downbound traffic. (You MIGHT be able to tap the upbound traffic from SOME of your neighbors, too, with a sufficiently sensitive optic receiver and if the fiber joints and splitter/combiners have enough discontinuity to reflect enough of their inbound light.)

It's time people like you did something productive for society, instead of trying to exact some kind of schoolyard vengeance on people who disagree with you.

I think he was asking if your blue cube was a police box...

READY.
LOAD

PRESS PLAY ON TAPE

SEARCHING

FOUND DOOM
LOADING
?LOAD ERROR

SUCK IT DOWN.

bhsihbvhb ruif v riuvhwer ur viurvye whb ru wiu ergwer
65fub yuv54r ^5vdc ^ &r 856* ^t8V^*679

That's a pretty good analogy. Although I don't remember Art Garfunkel making anyone his bitch while ordering them to "suck it down".

So what you're trying to say is that companies shouldn't sell cars with communications and entertainment technology to make drivers' 45 minute commutes more enjoyable, because you'd rather use communications and entertainment technology to make your 45 minute bus commute enjoyable?

Cadillac doesn't make a "sports car", genius.

Burnouts may be showy. But you get better acceleration from a standing start if you DON'T break traction.

What I'd find more useful is a "button" for automatic maximum-traction acceleration (to a presetable speed or until you let off the gas). Think "anti-lock brakes" but in acceleration.

(Though what I'd find FAR more useful is integrating "tow-haul" mode with the speed control.)

It could also be because there are government-based financial incentives for single mothers to keep having children, and no disincentives.

What are the great advances in energy storage technology, again? You know, to allow those wind and solar systems to provide base load?

Probably cheaper than that produced by huge wind and solar farms.