" they should invent, and pay for the development of their own internet "

why? it's not patented. RFC's aren't private knowledge. if they currently are part of the internet, they likely have most or all of the hardware they need.

what about Opera?

*goes back to sit in the corner*

some people like to play. others like to tinker. for many tinkering is play. but for many more it is not. I could build my own PC based DVR. we pay for a Dish-NotATivo. my wife wouldn't tolerate the glitches, the growing pains, the tweaking.

'It just works' is highly valuable to many people. Worth paying for. Especially worth giving up for capabilities they won't use anyway, as they spend their free time not tinkering.

It's not wrong to want a walled garden if it gives you what you want. Those wanting a walled garden shouldn't feel guilty about shifting the market away from open gardens. maybe open gardens get more expensive as the market realizes that most people are happy with walled gardens now that they can be easily created. so it goes.

next time make sure you type with more vocal inflection.

hmm... if I find an old copy of a CD with the rootkit on it, and it installs today after the law takes hold... what does the letter of the law say for that case? (sure, the intent might be to punish 'creation', but I wouldn't be surprised to see this slip through some poorly worded section...)

challenge accepted:

Rare Earth Alternatives in Critical Technologies (REACT)
National Lab Developing Alternatives to Rare Earth Materials
Idaho may provide rare earth alternative
Semiconductor nanocrystals as rare-earth alternatives
Rare Earths Fall as Toyota Develops Alternatives: Commodities

whole house fans were fairly common maybe up to the 1960's. we have one, and used to run it regularly to pull air through those poor airflow rooms when the temp started to drop in the evening. could avoid AC well into June most years.

the argument is it's too expensive to make the higher composite risk (liklihood and severity) areas more storm proof, such as burying lines. Not paying dividends in this case would have meant investing in infrastructure maintenance and improvement. Maybe some people could have kept the lights on because that. now, the whole thing is meaningless without equivalent costs to compare. (i.e., complaining about a million in contracted banker bonuses relative to a billion in the bailout, etc.)

What would the non-dividend improvements have actually bought us if spent responsibly on infrastructure? Oh, and part of the 'you don't have any competitors for the infrastructure' agreement is that they will maintain the infrastructure, and invest in upkeep and improvement. hence the neglect charge.

density increases exponentially as you approach capitol hill.

remember that whole Stimulus thing that the current Dem and previous GOP whitehouse both supported? That was supposed to fund short term infrastructure projects to improve long term health of the country's backbone infrastructures? I recall we got a few repaired roads. I remember a lot of people talking about funding 'the smart grid'. I don't recall anyone saying "hey, lets bury the lines so we don't lose millions every time a storm comes along. we predict there will be more storms..."

hindsight is 20/20, but still...

baltimore-DC area was hit by a hurricane about 10 months ago, and had a near identical outage&response to what we're seeing this week. people with power out for 3-7 days, communication sporadic, centralized/managed sources of ice/water/etc generally minimal if existing at all. AND, this time it's been averaging 95-100F, whereas last year it was actually pleasant having the windows open and no AC going.

The local authority 'investigated' the local utility's response. don't recall the outcome. but now, less than a year later, and we have almost the same level of damage, and same response time... maybe the latter makes sense. (we'd have done better than last time with at the same warning as last time). but why is the level of outage the same? Maybe that's what needs to be investigated. shouldn't a good hurricane have taken out most of the weak spots last year? did the hurricane create new weak spots that this storm caused to fail? Having grown up in an area with predominantly buried power lines, are there any preventative ways other than burying lines that can help? What about identifying certain projects to bury lines that frequently fail? A 'greatest net benefit' analysis?