Can't find anything on the InterWebs, but I remember hearing a news story in the '80's about a company in FL that was using a low-voltage electric charge on a chicken-wire dorm to attract corals. They were going to use the process to make permeable drainage pipes, which would be useful in FL and other places where groundwater accumulation can lead to things like sinkholes or swamp-like conditions during flooding.

IIRC, they were saying that in the warm water off southern Florida, they could create one section of pipe in about a month. No idea what the impact was on near-by coral populations of course.

Since there's nothing about it online, I'm sure the whole thing went south, but it was a neat idea.

Lightbulbs.

So, let me get this straight: a company that charges $30-40 for a trip (more during "peak" times) is out-competing a government run, publicly subsidized service that costs a just a few bucks for the same trip?

How incredibly awful must the public services be?

Here's an idea: make public transportation suck less, maybe people will use it willingly. Heck, we might even make them break even for the first time in 50 years (yeah, wishful thinking, but one could hope)!

Airlines have a checklist of things that the pilot and ground crew need to do and those things take a certain amount of time. Keeping people busy boarding means they aren't complaining about sitting at the gate or waiting to board when the plane is already there.

The delay is a feature, not a bug.

Free.

"You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means."

Setting asside the legality of not using government-run email for government business (which is a clear violation of the records act), I have one comment:

Ordinarily, there is no way one could argue that a server sitting in somebody's home was more secure than one sitting in a data center owned and managed by a Federal agency. Then the IRS thing happened, showing an incompetency in their IT department that is deserving of much public ridicule and a proverbial "you'll never work in this field again." After that, an AOL or MSN account might be preferable.

30 years in IT, more than 15 of those running ISPs, and I've never seen anything like that level of incompetence from a professional IT organization.

It will be interesting to see if somebody has the balls to issue a warrant for the physical server itself. I doubt it, as this is mostly an excuse for the Repubs to act outraged and make a lot of noise without actually accomplishing anything of value, and the Dems to act like victims and make a lot of noise without actually accomplishing anything of value.

When it's all over, there will be new rules to follow and new hurdles for us plebes to jump over because clearly we need to regulate email or something equally stupid, and as always, the political class will except itself from it's own laws and rules.

Bureaucrats and politicians are nothing if not predictable.

Please remove the "News for Nerds" tag line from your name. You're no better than Yahoo! or CNN at this point.

The one saving grace of this site has been that it stayed focused on tech and science and things that actually DID matter to nerds. Either the standard for "nerd" has dropped significantly in the almost 20 years I've been reading this site, or the new owners are hungry for stories and don't really give a crap about screwing with the formula that Rob used to make this place a success.

Sad.

Check with the smaller or newer local state colleges. There is a big push among the small schools and lesser known schools to have "$10,000" degrees, where you pay a set fee ($10K is common, though I've heard some that are $12K) for a set 4 year program. Some get there by mixing local community colleges into the mix. You might even be able to negotiate a discount, given as you have some of the prereqs already (english, language, history, etc.) if you've gone very far in your current degree plan.
    I know that Texas A&M San Antonio, which just opened a few years ago, has this in their CS Dept.

Not income, wealth. 60+ has one of the lowest income brackets, but it's the wealthiest. They already made their money, now it's time to have fun, hence playing the lotto.

Hmmm... so people with no practical experience in life are judging people with massive experience on the quality of their decision making abilities. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

May I respectfully suggest "Hell's Bells" for version 2.0?

Good analysis!

May I point out that all packets are NOT treated alike, and haven't been for over a decade. Controlling priority and limiting heavy services are common procedures in all major networks, and users should be darned thankful for it.

The original argument that started all this nonsense was complaints that TWC and Comcast were ratcheting down services like eMule and Torrent. Then somebody speculated that they may start doing it to people like google (followed about a month later by Comcast and Verizon floating just such a plan ... probably suggested to them by somebody reading the original discussion here on /. BTW) and the /.ers went crazy and started demanding that somebody in government regulate those evil ISPs.

My advice now is the same as then: let the market work. If you drag the pols into this, you will get results that you REALLY don't want because they will do what their donors (who are NOT you) want them to do. Unintended consequences will surely follow.

Google buying dark fiber to take TWC, AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon on head-to-head is what my suggestion looks like. If they are successful, other investors will smell the blood in the water and we may find ourselves sitting in 1999-type network growth again (only this time, nobody will be dumb enough to say that profit doesn't matter).

Regulation will be the death of the break-neck innovation that has gotten us where we are. Is it fast enough yet? Of course not, but it isn't going to get faster if every decision has to go through some bureaucrats in DC.

Then tell you PUC to decrease the regulatory hurtles to become a carrier.

Of course, you still have to lay 20,000 miles of duct, but, it's a step in the right direction.

A better solution: stop passing laws that favor AT&T and the other big incumbents. That's what drove the small ISPs out of business.

To answer your questions:

Because "wind" power is more than twice the cost of coal or nuclear generated power, and at today's prices, close to (or maybe over - haven't looked in a while) 3 times the cost of nat-gas generation. Also, the windmills, while technically "neat" (hey, I'm a geek, and I do give points where they are due) are an eyesore to people who love the land, are a hazard to birds and aircraft alike, and break down so often, it's unlikely they will ever achieve economic break-even. If you doubt that analysis, then just ask this one question: Why did T. Boone, after spending $2 Billion on windmills, fire sale them when the carbon exchange thing crashed? Any technology which requires government subsidy to break even is, but definition, immature and as engineers we should understand that.

Second question, it depends on what you are "progressing" toward. If it's individual freedom, then I'd say nothing's wrong with it. If it's totalitarianism (or despotism), then not so much. Of course, that's "relativist" thinking.