Where I live is in the midst of a moderately dense residential area a few miles from downtown. We have a single high speed provider available, and our current plan is about $65/month for "up to 12/2 Mbps". And, indeed, on speed tests and the occasional Linux ISO torrent, I actually see those kinds of speeds. However, for practical applications, such as streaming videos on Hulu, we're lucky to have things play smoothly at the 0.5 Mbps resolution even at off-peak hours.

I don't think we necessarily need faster rated connections, but ones that can actually perform to their specifications under average usage conditions.

claiming that 'the president had the constitutional authority, no matter what the law actually says, to order domestic spying without [constitutional] warrants,'

Where on earth does the constitution say this? Once found, it needs to be removed immediately, in my opinion. Further, any president willing to use such an outrageous power should also be removed immediately. And anyone who supports them using it.

I am a bit curious about the past tense wording (had the authority), though.

This has always bugged me, too. If, for example, you take the black hole at the center of our galaxy, assume all of its mass is located in a singular location and that it is roughly a sphere with a diameter of one Planck length, you get a density of about 3.88 * 10^141 kg/m^3. Very high, but a far cry from infinite.

That's understandable. It would likely be more interesting and useful (and intrusive) to have some kind of passive means of measuring actual visitors taking part in your system such that a zero-cent option would be unnecessary. There's a world of difference between making $3.44 split between 10 people and making $3.44 split between 10,000 people.

Are you recording the lack of a click in some way, then?

Which of these is more meaningful?
60% chose 1 cent
30% chose 2 cents
10% chose 3 cents

Or:
90% chose 0 cents
6% chose 1 cent
3% chose 2 cents
1% chose 3 cents

Interestingly, bacteria is the plural form of bacterium, so there's nothing really wrong in the sense you imply. I'm more concerned with the fact that they're apparently not actually creating gold.

I certainly would. Incidentally, that would also make it easier to find comfortable pants.

Don't punish the students just because the adults are bumfuck retarded.

I agree. I don't often admit this, but I grew up and attended school in Kentucky. Seeing news like this makes me sad for my home state. I don't recall much from my high school years, but I don't think there were any overtly religious topics discussed. However, I don't think students should be screwed out of a proper education just because some biased idiot in a position of power can't keep his personal and political beliefs separate.

I would disagree (to an extent). In ages past, I used to upgrade my computer at least once a year, if not more frequently. I've been a software developer and gamer for a very long time, and tend to try to stay on top of things.

That said, my last major upgrade for my main system was about 3 and a half years ago. I can still play just about any game that comes out on the highest settings with no issue. When I end up using a newer system with a "faster" CPU and more RAM, I would be hard pressed to discern a significant performance difference from my 3.5 year old machine.

The only notable difference is I have a (now "out of date") gaming video card, but for non-gaming related tasks, my computer is just as quick to perform anything the newer hardware does. I'm not going to drop another $1500 for such an intangible increase in speed.

I read it as one in a million cells are falsely identified. So, every 10 seconds or so (at 100,000/sec) it would incorrectly classify one. Sounds like a bad thing being spun as good.

I would surmise that someone would need to be legally insane to willingly go to a place without society, without parks, without schools, without culture, without even atmosphere, without children, without the elderly and without the prospect of seeing those things first hand again.

What a coincidence. Aside from the atmosphere, those are all the things I dislike about living on earth.

Well, sure it does. To calculate how much faster it actually is, you take the time it didn't take (infinity - time_it_took) and multiply that by your new factor (1.3 to 2.0), then subtract that from infinity and you have your new rate.

Well, clearly, gravity is the root cause of the obesity problem in the US.

Oh, that's alright. I'll just have to cut back on my video game purchases so that I don't end up with a whole bunch of crappy games that I can't resell.

Don't forget the 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio!