Please. How many people get to choose their insurer? You get the plan your employer chooses.

If I want to buy a used refrigerator, I'd use Craigslist. If I want to buy anything used that can be shipped at a reasonable cost, I'll look at Ebay. Example: I just tried "IPod Nano" on Ebay, and got over 33,000 listings. I did the same for Craigslist, and found 102 on the page for my closest city. Add the inconvenience of trying to deal with individuals (who may have already sold the item, and who might eventually respond to your email), and the wait time involved while arranging a form of payment, and you have an easy default back to Ebay.

Obviously most artists need to make some money off their creations to pay the rent and to give them the incentive to make more of their art. Just as obviously, if no one can see/hear their work, no one is going to buy it and allow them the freedom to create more art. Sony is defending a business model which supplies Door #2 to the vast majority of artists. Further, their efforts come at the expense of developing a system which maximizes exposure while creating a revenue stream from the works. Would most artists gladly trade their profit from 10,000 downloaded songs for the profit from an extra 1,000 seats sold at live venues? A lot of artists are doing this, and from the interviews I have heard, many are quite happy with the model.

However, material created while under contract to another entity is the property of that entity unless agreed otherwise. If you are employed by DuPont and invent Nylon II, DuPont will own the patent, and you will get a mention but have no further rights. Similarly, if you write for a publication, there is normally a specific agreement as to who owns the rights to the material. Get hired by the NY Times as a reporter and try and publish a compilation of your writing and the Times will rightly claim the words are their property. Wolfram is making the same claim here, and since you are using their site, their TOS is a contract. Your use is acceptance of the contract.

Problem #1 with your math: you assume none of the mercury is removed from the coal. Mercury scrubbers remove up to 98% of the metal from the coal during processing and burning. http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/utility/hgwhitepaperfinal.pdf Newer plants are required to scrub the coal, and older plants making capital improvements must add controls. So, depending on the plant, the CFL could ultimately add twice as much mercury or 1/25th as much. Problem #2: You assume 100% of the power is coming from coal. Coal supplies a little less than 50% of the power in the US: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html So you need to cut your savings figures in half. I use CFL's at home, and think they are the best choice in today's market. But you need to correct your assumptions with your calculations.