Or, instead of forcing consumers to buy some expensive gadget that could potentially be used for invasion of privacy, we could just use the simple odometer that is installed in every vehicle nowadays. The extra time spent having a person verify the odometer reading every year when the tag is renewed is nowhere near as wasteful as creating a whole new electronic system. That is, of course, if you're going to insist on having this sort of tax.

While doing your calculations, you forgot to take into account that a big rack of disks isn't going to give you any data unless you have power. So add a couple thousand pounds for a PDU. Wait, the PDU needs power so add in transformers, transmission lines and generating stations. That rack will create heat so be sure to include the cooling. That generating station will need a source of fuel so include the coal/water/whatever.

We can go on and on with these stupid metrics.

I'm all for minimal bureaucracy and maybe minimal in-house manufacturing would be good but is it a smart idea to have minimal innovation and testing?

Maybe you should stop using a hammer when plugging in a new hard drive?

Who said anything about drastically increased retrans requests? The method is meant for short messages to the effect of "Dmitry was arrested on false charges yesterday." that are hidden inside a transmission of a much larger file such as a picture.

Well, the other solution is to distribute anti-malaria drugs to millions and millions of people across these third world countries from now until.. well, forever.

Also, while you may not personally have to deal with malaria on a regular basis, lots of people do have to worry about it. Thousands, if not millions of people die from it. That certainly qualifies as a "problem" to me. There is no search necessary as long as you look somewhere other than your backyard.

They probably won't need luck if the following happened. Paperwork is drawn up stating that the terminated employee gets paid $2,000. Supervisor and employee sign off on that sum. Retard typing in the info for the check keys in $20,000 instead of $2,000.

The employee can't possibly think that he/she actually deserves the extra $18,000 after agreeing to the original sum.

Wooosh!

Being a member and having connections to the I2 are two different things.

Except that the traffic won't be going over the I2 unless Google decides that it wants to pay for connections between their data centers and the I2. Even then, I'm not sure the I2 group would allow it unless Google could bring something of value to the research effort other than faster searches, gmail and google docs.

I2 != IPv6

Sure, you can use IPv6 on the I2 but most people are still only using IPv4 on the I2. The I2 runs on completely different fiber than the regular internet. You aren't all of a sudden on I2 when you switch to IPv6.

Because Faraday cages are made of metal and metal is heavy. Heavy and flying don't mix very well.