Exactly. Well-done studies may be out there, but I have yet to see ones credibly discussing the cost in lives and health of economic devastation. As we could be facing at an economic disaster that makes the Great Depression look like a mild downturn in comparison, how many lives will be shortened from poverty, lack of access to medical care, inability to afford screenings or treatments for common causes of death such as stroke, cancer, heart disease, and trauma? What would happen to the suicide rate? What about the effect of a ruined tax base unable to support social services? I don't know the answer but so many of these analyses about COVID-19 seem to ignore that we might, just maybe, be contributing to more early death and illness in the population with our current course. Just a thought.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the HP 200LX. That was for me the most useful computer, all things considered, I have ever owned. I also have my original true-blue IBM XT which was my pride and joy after upgrading from a C64 ...

I'm from the US, but having driven in England, Scotland, and Ireland many times, I absolutely love roundabouts. I think they should be the default and city planners should have to show cause as to why stop signs or signals would be superior at a particular intersection. That said, it can be tricky when an ordinary 4-way intersection is marked as a roundabout with a small circle painted in the center, as in many places in the UK and Ireland - because you have someone in the intersection turning right in front of you when the intersection looks like you're going "straight". I think there are too many unskilled drivers here to adjust to that and we'll need a true center island in all our roundabouts. Second, I see Americans yielding not just to traffic in the roundabout but to cars coming from the side roads that are nowhere near, as though it is a traditional 4-way with no stop for cross-traffic. We need more education ...

Mach 1 is about 340 m/s. At that speed the Navy could send up a fighter and throw a rope around it. ICBM reentry speeds are usually over 4,000 m/s, with in-flight speeds of over 6,000 m/s. Or about Mach 16. A different magnitude of problem...

What was awesome was getting a free copy of Windows 1.01 with an Intel AboveBoard, and then installing all the 5.25in floppies to make it work on my green-phosphor IBM monitor with a Hercules graphics card - the ghosting was incredible. It was cool ... for about 10 minutes. Then I deleted it ... The bad ol' days ...

Let's say the copilot makes $10,000/month in wages and benefits. Let's say he flies 5 times a month, with 200 people on each plane. I think they should advertise "Save $10 on your ticket - no copilot!" and see what response they get.

The danger here is not this one airline's lunatic CEO and the sociopathic pursuit of profits, but rather that he'll start a trend, and we won't have a choice much longer.

Only in the very broadest sense are speed limits related to safety. On the overwhelming majority of US interstates any speeds up to 100+ are safe, especially in the western US. For the police to be out there ticketing for 5 or 10 over the limit is all about revenue, not safety.

How many times have we seen road hazards - big chunks of tires, debris, cars driving erratically - and find a few miles up the road some lazy-ass cop is sitting there with his radar gun rather than actually, you know, patrolling the highways for safety.

If it wasn't about revenue, we'd have longer yellow lights (proven to reduce accidents but lower ticket revenue) and well-marked speed cameras with warnings in areas where it really matters to lower your speed, like in England. Here in the US, it's just corruption and revenue. Don't kid yourselves.

Reality is a very complex problem.

To think that ANY political ideology, no matter where it sits on the spectrum of political thought, provides an optimum framework for solving the world's or nation's problems is the sign of a very small mind.

Yeah? "Considered" by whom? You're just as big of a fool as Stewart, Colbert, Beck, and O'Reilly if you really believe that anyone spouting political opinions on TV is "reliable" or "trustworthy".

Gotta disagree on that one. Revenge may or may not be a reason for the existence of prisons and a court system, but removing criminals from society for a period of time has value in itself, and there's always the slim chance that the prison experience will not only deter behavior but also reform behavior. It's not just revenge.

That is the most insightful comment I've read on /. in years. Too bad you can't be rated higher than 5 ...

IAAL and it is legal malpractice to not double-check the prosecution's sentencing algorithm and recommendations to the judge ...

Per Wikipedia, Microsoft had net income (not gross revenue) of $17,681,000,000 last year. With 262 working days per year, that is daily net income of $67,484,132 per day. That's over $8,000,000 per *hour* so the fine comes to a whopping amount of less than *2 hours* of Microsoft's net income when converted to euros...

I assume by "around the country" you're referring to China. The US can't even manufacture a doorstop anymore. I know; I just looked at them the other day at Lowe's ...

Apple - not a monopoly

GM - not a monopoly (far from it)

Your hypothetical "new" (sic) station - presumably not a monopoly.

And if any of your examples were monopolies trying to leverage their market dominance in one field into a different market, then YES they should be forced into the remedies imposed by the regulating agencies...