BTW, I had some camel in Austrailia, Gross.. Way way gamey.

It's another stickfigure comic ala xkcd
http://thedoghousediaries.com/
They have me laughing on the floor often...

MS was also forced to take the "bailout" and lets not forget, the government made a TON on the stock from the strong banks (JPM, MS, GS) and since the money has been more than returned, that profit the government made has now been wasted, instead of returned to the general fund.
The way the news covered it made it sound like they handed out cash, and that's just not the case.
The GM "bailout" however needs the stock price to double before the next shares are sold for the government to break even, but those are union jobs, so we won't hear about that....

This kind of Hardware stuff is what I do most of the time. First, yes do get a dev board and free tools (Xilinx or Altera) to play with (just like you would play with software by compiling and trying).
Second, pick a language, I use mostly VHDL.
I like:
"VHDL for Logic Synthesis" Rushton
"VHDL Coding Styles and Methodologies" Cohen

Also google "VHDL Math tricks of the trade" (pdf) you'll need that to stay sane if you actually do algorithms

So are you just a cheapskate or are you truly concerned about giving them your information?
I ask because if you go to the store and buy Turbo Tax, you don't have to give them your information and send it anyplace. That's what I do / have been doing for a long time. I'm paying them to guarantee me that they have interpreted the tax code properly, I'm totally fine with that.
I like some open source stuff, but I need a company to stand behind something that can royally screw me over if it's wrong.

...thanks a lot....Ass

Hundreds of dollars per month. You are either purposely making stuff up, or horribly bad at math.
I suppose you could be spouting off someone else's fake numbers, which would just make you ignorant.

Anyway, lets do some math:
24KWh battery (Nissan leaf, and we'll give you the entire battery, just for grins).
I'll even grant you a ridiculous number for power cost (average wholesale energy cost in TX $0.045 / KWh) we're talking peak so lets go with $0.10 / KWh
24KWh*$0.10/KWh*30days = $72.00 Oh and by the way you can't drive your car now, because it's going to take 6 hours to charge back up.
Nissan said the cost for the battery is $18K (not $9k as widely reported) http://green.autoblog.com/2010/05/15/nissan-leaf-profitable-by-year-three-battery-cost-closer-to-18/
So to break even is 20 years (or 10 if you assume the cost ends up dropping to $9K).
Neat that's to break even, no where near an order of magnitude.... And now you can't drive your car because it's an expensive battery...

"They" you realize capital gains tax rates can be taken advantage of by everyone. Oh and by the way the two lowest "normal" tax brackets get to pay 0% for capital gains. So let's not get silly and talk about capital gains in a "they" manner, EVERYONE may take advantage of that.

You'd be correct, except you're not. Sprint (and anyone who really cares about time sync) doesn't use "cheap, low power" GPS time synchronization. They use relatively expensive rubidium backed gps trained oscillators which give a stability of 5x10^-11 seconds / month stability without gps lock. All these systems need is to have been synchronized to gps at some point, once they have that they are good to go for a long time as long as they don't lose power. They aren't using some ghetto cell phone gps clock. They use stuff more like this: http://www.spectracomcorp.com/ProductsServices/TimingSynchronization/GPSTimeFrequencyReferences/SecureSyncSynchronizationSystem/tabid/1304/Default.aspx

Most important part of your comment is "it's WiFi, not clean drinking water."

I'm sick and tired of people (including some polititians) acting like high speed internet access, or free TV ($50 coupons for a converter box, what the?) is a fundamental right. It's crazy, you have a right to have the opportunity to work to make money to buy these things. Free internet access does not make a better society, that's crazy.

I'll have that guitar riff in my head all afternoon now, thanks....
(and I didn't even click the link)

Care to state an example of a "whacked out law"? Oh, that's right you're just blowing smoke up everyone's ass pretending like you know anything about Texas or our laws.

You fail to understand the issue. Lightsquared's transmitters could screw up GPS service for EVERYONE. The FCC waived their own rules to allow this, rollout. If you RTFA (I know I know, this is slashdot) you would see the large distances a single transmitter can jam GPS devices at.

Is this the focus you want? (2012 model)

http://www.ford.com/electric/focuselectric/2012/?searchid=444987|32150650|210463862

Oh, under $30K well get it for near invoice and when our stupid gov't pays you $7500 you'll be close.

The Volt is a glorified taxpayer funded hybrid, if it takes gas it's not an electric.

I've read all three of your comments.
You do realize that cars don't turn the alternator off right? You'd have to actually wire that up yourself. The alternator / battery is what also runs every electrical thing in the car (you realize there's a computer, and oh my, an ignition system that requires lots of juice).
Wind drag and weight are what predominately reduce mileage, you've made both of these worse with your modifications.
2-2.5% is not a significant enough change to make any claim, the wear on your tires will actually cause WAY more error than that as time goes on (more worn tires register more distance than reality).
It's much more likely that your numbers are just wrong, and that any change in your driving habits when you decided to start being "green" make up for any true change in mileage. Pull all that crap off your car and you'll probably do even better.