I enjoy your enthusiasm but I think you are getting a little too excited. We have the same means of sharing information here in the USA but many people refuse to believe what is being reported on it if it doesn't come from state media. Oh sure, we don't call it state media here, but the truth is that ten megacorporations with similar goals (hoodwink the people into spending money on crap they don't need) control virtually all of the news media in the USA, and over half of the news media on the planet. People trust what they get from 'official' sources.

Correct. The free market assumes perfect access to information (information wants to be free, no?). We just got more information on this product. Thus we can make decisions based on this new information (it gets "priced in"). We then return to an equilibrium after the use of this GM corn falls in disfavor. Of course, I'd also like to see more studies confirming this before any conclusions are drawn. How about a simple comparison of how widespread this GM corn is, when it was released, and national rates of organ failure over a long period of time?

but due to monsanto's lobbying, they get to have their cake and eat it too. they lobby that their gm corn is 'different' enough that it requires patent protection, BUT they then turn around and lobby the fda(or have their former employee's that work there) declare it no different then normal corn so it gets the 'generally assumed as safe' status meaning it is exempt from special regulation and is treated by the fda as non-gma corn.

Selective breeding though is a different process, they took a already existing trait and only let the seeds from the plants that had it germinat, if the trait produced something else they did not want they either tried to select against it or started over. gm corn is taking a gene from a completely different organism, in this case gene's from Bactria that gained resistance to their weed killer or from a organism that produces natural(as in not artificially produced) insecticide and shoot it into the genome of the corn or another plant with micro gold spheres as well as chemical's that not only turn the gene on but smash the switch that turns the gene on and off in the on position.

2) not made in US (shipping offsets power savings)

One CFL bulb lasts about 8 times as long as a normal bulb. Let's assume that you're using crappy ones which only last 4 times as long - even with the shorter lifespan, you can ship a CFL bulb 4 times the distance of an incandescent bulb without generating any extra waste.

While I agree with most of what you wrote, this part does not compute. You are comparing apples to oranges. The amount of extra distance you can ship without generating extra waste is a function of the shipping method and is certainly not going to be 1:1
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JimFive

No other industry has as much freedom as the food industry when it comes to the ingredients of their products! WORLDWIDE! There are laws, but they only cover a tiny fraction of the possible substances the industry can put into their "food".

But using Google Docs is not the same as putting your docs online. Unless you also think that using web-based email is "putting your emails online". By default google docs are viewable only within your account (unless you choose to share them), but surely you'd have guessed this?

Of course, something could go wrong as it did with Voice, but you assess the risk. Just don't use Google Docs for those trade secrets, or blackmailable material :) It's actually a pretty handy tool, I use it instead of the txt files I'd have sat on the desktop of various computers - project notes, todo lists etc.

This stuff is absolutely something that needs regulation to control it.

Half the time people cry out for more regulation, there already is regulation in place. The problem is the very entity you want to enact regulations, is inept, certainly fallible, and usually only reacts after bad news like this gets out to the consumers--who by then (presumably) would already be scared of buying this stuff.

Since rules are already in place for this sort of thing, you can't cry out "regulate it!" because it already is regulated. The best, and really only short of a miracle, is informing consumers. And consumers, foolishly believing themselves protected by the government, do not inform themselves much and thus are put at risk. A large part of me thinks that these sorts of regulations are actually *bad* ideas because people assume that god (another word for "government") with his all-knowing wisdom will make sure everything is OK. But that's not the reality, and consumers always have to try to keep themselves informed. And skeptical. There's something wrong with a market, IMO, if people walk into a BestBuy and actually trusts one of the salespeople there.

Anyway, it's not really that government itself *needs* to oversee and regulate this stuff as *someone* has to. That's a very different claim, and private organizations could easily certify products as safe as an alternative. Not certified, don't buy. Wouldn't the world be so much better if consumers informed themselves about the products they buy (and at what costs to them, financially speaking) instead of just mindlessly consuming? We'd have actual competition in the medical sector (people do to the doctor and do not even agree to a price beforehand and just pay whatever is charged...!), BestBuy would go out of business overnight once people discovered the internet, and apple would sell less Ipods due to more people buying other personal media players, so on and so forth. People might even realize that there is an alternative to Windows!

In the end the onus is on you to keep yourself informed.

I would agree with you on this. I hinted about some of these points in my original post, but I think you've hit the nail on the head as far as answering the original submitter's question. The "thin client" term is clearly being abused to jack up the prices.

All disagreements over terminology aside, I think our (or at least my) frustration lies in the fact that we think we should be able to find a plain diskless workstation with lower specs for much cheaper than they're currently being sold. "Thin client" is the term we use when we google because it yields the most accurate results as far as hardware to what we had in mind. (but no one disagrees about buying a cheap nettop or other variation).

I agree with you that a thin client can be defined by its function, and so any PC can act as a thin client. However, I would say that the industry definition of a thin client is a diskless workstation. Do a quick google product search (http://www.google.com/products?q=thin+client&aq=f) for "thin clients," and check this yourself. This is specifically tied to the fact that companies that use thin clients have moved all storage to a server farm in order to cut costs. Local storage does not make sense in this model, as it would increase the overhead that thin clients are intended to reduce.

That is absolutely wrong. You're probably thinking of nettops, which is another class altogether. Your confusion arises because nettops offer "less," just like a thin client does.

I don't understand your point about this. It doesn't have local storage.

From the link you posted:

You can network boot or install some minimal thin-client OS on compact flash. It would be dead simple to hook 30 of these up to an LTSP server.

Of course. You can take any PC and make it a thin client. The point here (from the original poster) is (and I quote), "I can PXE boot a homebrew Atom-based thin client for $130, but I'd prefer to be able to buy something assembled." I also assume it's implied the poster is looking for a solution that doesn't require additional configuration. I.e. a thin client "out of the box," regardless of how easy you or me think it's easy to setup using an existing PC.

Also, why would having a keyboard disqualify it from being a thin client?

It doesn't (and, in fact, I mentioned thin client laptops, which would have both a monitor and a keyboard). What I meant was that the PC-in-a-keyboard comes with a keyboard and hard drive and is essentially a full computer for the very cheap price of $100. Buy a thin client with the same specs WITHOUT these components and pay at least 3 times more.

By the way, I actually do think the PC-in-a-keyboard is pretty cool. Eee is also making one if I recall correctly, though the initial price was higher.

This basically just reaffirms the submitter's point. The PC-in-a-keyboard is not a thin client--it's a full, although lightweight, computer in a keyboard. It's $100. Want to buy an actual thin client? Expect to pay $300-$1000. Throw in a keyboard and monitor, and that ups the price quite a bit.

Also, the argument that thin clients are "specialty" items that drives up production costs doesn't hold up, since one would assume the $99 computer-in-a-keyboard is also a specialty item. It contains, at a minimum, a hard drive and a keyboard, which is already much more than a thin client has (not incl thin client laptops).

So why are thin clients so expensive? I've had the same question for a while now, since I've been looking around for a thin client laptop that's cheaper than a traditional laptop/netbook. So far I haven't succeeded, with most thin client laptops being much more expensive.

My guess is that the marketers hear phrases like "high security," "low energy consumption," "remotely managed," "longer longevity," "virtualization," "cloud computing," etc and think they have features that can drive the price up. The geeks, though, understand that they could build their own "thin client" by just subtracting physical parts from their existing computer and doing a little configuration.

Nothing that a little crypto can't solve.

I fail to see why it's can't be used for "real work." Just do your compiles on a remote google-hosted developer box with 12 CPUs. I'm sure your compiles will be much faster. As far as internet availability, let's not forget white spaces internet, which Google also has a hand in.

As I understand it, Chrome OS packages a full linux kernel and device drivers to be able to interact with your hardware. It would probably be more accurate to call it a new linux distribution. But, why argue about terminology when "linux" itself isn't even an operating system.