Oh plenty of countries fuck up. But so few of them do it internationally.

This is called the Luddite Fallacy, and there are clues the fallacy won't be a fallacy much longer. In the old days workers had alternative industries to relocate to, and automation basically meant more productivity per worker. But there's a limit to that, and I think we're reaching that limit.

Where are my mod points..

I often complain about the wifi not working, but I'm not geeky enough to figure out which neighbour I should complain to.

That sounds like I thought this product was: http://noteslate.com/

Yes...see list of belligerents.

3-8%...per?

There's the catch. The US is vast. 5% per 1000 km adds up, or rather, multiplies over long distances.

Apparently, some people tried the same idea but with a boeing

Ah, my very old sig. Forgot some people have sigs turned on :)

A better way of estimating is looking at people who did similar projects, and see what costs they had. Expect to be in the upper range if you're a first-timer.
(an interesting phenomenon from psychology: when you ask people to estimate the time/money they need, you get a vastly different answer than when you ask how much time/money other people in similar situations need)

Or like this one:
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/

He basically makes miniature houses, and then makes them as a mobile home to get around regulations.

He could make it earth-sheltered, if the structure will hold. That would put the insulation on the outside, and make sure the neighbours don't complain about 'eye-sores'. Of course, you'd replace the visual appearance completely, and I don't know if he was specifically going for the train-carriage look, but that would be one solution I'd be researching.

I work in a photo-shop, and most photo-kiosk machines don't work like that. They're simply windows-boxes with software running *on top* of it. So if windows auto-runs it, you're already too late depending on the exploit used. Of course, they could be linux-boxen, but the chain I work at really can't afford to train the minimum-wage personel how to use linux properly, as they have trouble enough using windows. Also, we use various software (one to run the passportphoto-camera for example) and some of those programs are available only on windows. We do have AV however after earlier viruses really messed up productivity, but we can't afford to have internet at every store as margins in photography have become really slim since the introduction of digital photography.

Well the example the GP mentioned, the Pirates of the Amazon Firefox plugin, is a great example of an unkillable idea. The creators only made it as a sort of prank and university-project and in fact only told a number of their friends about it when they launched it, so when Amazon 'asked' them to take it down after 2 days of internetfrenzy, they did. But google for 'pirates of the amazon', and you can still find a download link under the second hit.