Economics 101: When a resource is mis-priced, it is mis-used.

Bandwidth costs money, folks. Eventually everyone will pay for data services based on their consumption, probably of various service classes: time-critical packets for things like telephone conversations, less time-critical for things like musing and video downloads, even less critical packets for file downloads, and the cheapest rate for email and other messages that can be delayed by minutes or more.

Be ready. It is inevitable.

"4:3 frames for those still deathly afraid of widescreen" Why would I pay for a 10" screen, then only use 80% of it for the thousands of photos I have? I can use 100% of what I pay for if I buy 4:3. Of course, maybe your photography is so sloppy that it will benefit from cropping the top and bottom off all your pictures. Mine isn't.

Monster Cable has been the poster child for successful consumer fraud companies for years. Aided and abetted, of course, by the people who also profit from the fraud, like the magazines that get paid for the advertisements and the retailers who benefit from the fat margins.

The only amazing thing is that an Elliot Spitzer type AG has not long since strung them up. Any first-year assistant professor of electrical engineering could demolish the company's advertising claims in a few minutes of testimony.

>it would be nice to know how many user actually use vista<

I have the Vista "upgrade" disk that came for my Fuji P1610 tablet and don't have even the slightest interest in installing it. To run slower bloatware than XP? Why?

So I am a "user" by M$ count but not a user in the sense of using the product. I don't think I'm alone.

Can't resist entering!

Can't resist entering!

Can't resist entering!

"You need to learn to read." Actually reading is not the problem.

The problem is that sunlight (or the solar emission spectrum, if you prefer fancier words) does not have any notion of "layers." Anyone with a modicum of scientific education would know this and would then go to the source article to figure out what information this author has gotten screwed up.

In the article, we find that the cells "employ three layers of semiconductors." _That_ is what the author garbled into his nonsensical sentence about the "solar spectrum" having layers and his equally nonsensical notion that conventional "collectors" collect only one of these "layers."

Particles and waves have nothing to do with it. You can now go and stand over on the other side of the room with the rest of the scientifically ignorant.

It would be good if these things could be written by someone with a bit of education. For example, sunlight doesn't have "layers" -- the device does.

"Since when did we need to see the end result to know something is dangerous?"

We don't. What we need to know is whether something that is dangerous in theory is, in fact, something worth taking steps to protect against. Economics 101 is beyond the scope of this discussion but that is where you need to start. Cost/benefit analysis specifically.

Exercise #1 for the student: Dancing between the feet of a marching elephant is dangerous. Should we take additional steps to prevent children in the United States from doing this? If so, why? How much should we be willing to spend? If not, why not?

Exercise #2: Weak gun locks have been responsible for zero deaths in the United States but someday they might. What is an acceptable national cost to increase the strength of gun locks?

Exercise #2a: If weak locks have caused one death (or plug in your favorite number) what is an acceptable national cost to increase the strength of gun locks so that this number is reduced? Hint: "Anything it takes." is not a tenable answer.

Extra Credit: Explain why there is no such thing as a free lunch.