Like mobile phones are opt in. Like the internet is opt in. Like submitting your CV to recruitment agencies in MS Word or even PDF format is opt in.
It may get to the point where to be a functioning member of society you "have" to wear them.
Hopefully by that stage competition has stepped in and given us other less evil options, but maybe not.

So let me get this straight.
Rather than saying "I bought the second hand Fiat because it was cheaper than the Ford" you say "I bought the second hand Fiat that is actually on its third owner not including the garage and distributor and Fiat themselves because even though it has significantly higher maintenance costs given the likely probability of breakdown and usage patterns for a typical but not necessary same demographic as myself; when you factor in the expected costs of depreciation on a new model and the relevant tax, servicing and inflationary costs together with the differences in insurance and fuel economy for predicted driving conditions for by planned lifestyle as anticipated for a car like the Ford it would have proved to be more expensive than the predicted benefits would merit"

I bet you're a lot of fun at social events.
Normal sane discussion allows one party to assume verbal shorthands. If you forbid their use as you are trying to do with me then sensible discussion is impossible.
I knew that equipment costs included more than the simple BOM. You knew that too. Where is the problem and why are you trying to dismiss the rest of my argument because of this pointless semantic squabbling?

Can you explain this please, I don't get your argument.
I was referring to:

As far as I am aware finding the price of something by it's value to society is a good thing. How would you rather it worked?
The alternative I can see is that some things are socially or politically favoured and so are forced down our throats whether it's a good idea or not. As long as all costs* are taken into account then what's the problem?
*As a counter example I know not all costs of coal are taken into account, and they should be and this is a failing of capitalism but that's not related to the paying for the energy content of something which was the point of the OP.

Perhaps it will also help if I mention i was also considering another use of this effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy
Which might explain better some of the comments on efficiency and "free" source of energy

Which is part of the equipment costs. Whether I use one cubic meter of water or a million doesn't matter because it is the equipment along with the implied land(if it exists, these could be floating platforms) and costs associated with that equipment that we are concerned about not the actual source of said energy that the equipment is using.

I am not in the slightest "blithely unaware" of these costs because they are irrelevant to the argument about efficiency vs equipment costs except that of course they are part of equipment costs. Unless you think that every discussion would be improved by listing every detail to the quantum level that impacts the outcome? Since this is a discussion about efficiency do you not know what efficiency is?
Efficiency is a measure of useful work extracted from input energy. It has nothing whatsoever to do with that list you gave.
Now as I said " if spending 1% more on the plant to improve efficiency gets you 10% more energy then that's a fine thing to do" acknowledging that by spending more money to improve thermal efficiency could result in a net gain, but what gave you the impression that in my plant costs I wasn't referring to the total plant costs?
My only explanation here is that either you are confusing thermal efficiency with some sort of economic efficiency concept or you just didn't try and comprehend what I wrote.
So let me try a different tack for the sake of this discussion. What is important is that such a plant is economically efficient. Thermal efficiency must serve that goal. Thermal efficiency should be increased to the point where it improves the profitability but no further.
I would argue that for a coal plant while technically the same argument applies (because you have to pay for the fuel not just collecting it, burning it, disposing of end products and the equipment and associated costs with all of that); that because of the costs to the environment it and other plants like it have a duty of care to ensure they are as efficient as reasonably feasible.

Unless you want to nitpick terms like reasonably feasible...

Another way of saying it is that capitalism sort of works. Or at least the laws of supply and demand do.
Product A is cheaper than product B. Demand for Product A increases. Price of Product A increases as price of product B decreases. Per unit of usefulness they end up costing the same.
To get back on topic though in this case energy costs are fixed by supply and demand. At the moment ARM cores are in server terms a niche product so you don't get the benefits of bulk supply. Those efficiencies can be improved on though, cost of energy less so.

Thermocouples isn't the way to do it. Stirling engines are.
Efficiency is not a serious concern when your energy source is cost free.
The costs of this problem are all in your equipment to handle the fluids, there is no fuel as such so efficiency doesn't directly matter. What is important is how much your plant costs you to generate X watts. Of course if spending 1% more on the plant to improve efficiency gets you 10% more energy then that's a fine thing to do, but i see no problem with running these plants at 1% efficiency as long as they are cost effective. The worst case scenario is you pull more cold water to the surface
Not granted doing that on an infinitely large scale and without some management would doubtless cause problems but we're a _long_ way off that. Not forgetting though that the cold water will be very nutrient rich which is the limiting factor in most ocean ecosystems. Certainly if we did this stuff in the deep ocean there's massive potential here.
And I'd certainly rather they did this with low efficiency than burn any more fossils...

I completely agree but:
It makes sense form a network perspective to have local caches of data that are likely to be both large and accessed by many. e.g. I believe many sites like youtube and iPlayer effectively have regional datacentres co-located with ISPs to provide this. I assume you wouldn't argue against this? It's a very short step from these kind of local media services to the case where you have some sort of media box that they push popular programs/data to when it is good for the network. i.e. they know 10% of people will watch the latest episode of Mad Man when it becomes available and they know who 90% of those will be, so why not send the data during off peak times?
Once you do that how are you to the user any different to the cable service they already have? The ISP being innovative and bandwidth efficient has run afoul of your no content delivery rule...

You mean the one they fired 3 years ago to pay for their bonus?
Got you.

It's not a device for extracting momentum from the relativistic differences between the group and phase velocity of resonating microwaves.
It's a device for extracting money from people who don't understand physics.
I would call this device a total success so far.

This sounds like a good plan I wonder if I can make some money off my invention. It too has space applications:

We all know that in a vacuum you have particles and anti-particles being constantly created and destroyed. Many of these are charged so:
Set up an intense electric field to pull all the positively charged particles to one end and negative particles to the other. If you get your charge strong enough you will pull the electrons away from the anti electrons before they can annihilate and Bob's your uncle you've got a cheap source of antimatter!

Now who do I speak to to get funding for research into my solution to the world's energy problems?
What? No-one? It's the energy companies keeping new science down I tell you!
Conspiracy!

And if they're not US citizens they're not really people and so killing them isn't as bad?
I understand the legal point here WRT the constitution, but are you aware of how things like this sound to others?

To summarize your post.
"I realise that a company has screwed you over. You are an idiot because knowing what you know now you should have gone to someone else."
I'm sorry but no!
The point is they have been amoral and done something at could screw over other people. The world needs to hear this and the company should be dragged through the coals because of this.
Not that it will happen mind and yes really the only way a consumer can attack a large company is to take their business elsewhere, but that is only painfull to a company if lots of people do it.

I'm not sure that is a good example.
Let's (for the sake of argument) suppose that relationships between Brazil and Argentina get worse. To the point where is limited military conflict between them. Both of them either develop their own or buy off the market some cruise missiles, actually let's assume they both get lots.
Should the US intervene to stop them? What gives the US the right to interfere?
These are sovereign nations and what right (other than might makes right) does one country have to interfere with others?
But let's suppose the US does interfere - this very intervention would then be the event that kicks off that attack on the US with an overwhelming number of warheads.

I believe the point of the article wasn't to say that there is something to currently worry about,I think it was simply saying that the current situation is potentially flawed.

These days guidance technology is so cheap it's just not funny. Plenty of amateurs have demonstrated guidance systems on their model planes that cost no more than a few hundred dollars. Let's face it the cost of a guidance system is a GPS receiver, a small processor and a few servo motors.
Now I believe you're right that the complexities of building a plane capable of crossing the Atlantic or Pacific is no mean feat. However I do not believe it is that much more complex than say building a modern car - and there are plenty of countries that are capable of doing that and doing it in huge numbers at low cost.
Again I don't think any of those are currently annoyed at the US enough to do anything like this, but you can bet they have thought of it.

Don't forget as well the costs to build this are basically pi*d + turbines, and the storage capacity would be pi*r^2; so economies of scale rapidly kick in - it makes great financial sense to build this HUGE!
And taking a large amount of farmland or living space out of commission when there is all that unused ocean there just seems plain daft in comparison. What "job" the ocean does it still can do with this, not the same as if you tried to build something analogous on land.