Now did my reading, but I'm still none the wiser as to why do we burn power? Assume that I'm not a huge fan of Ron Paul, so the "alternative to government conspiracy" brand of arguments would also not make much sense to me.

I wonder what's all the fuss about this. Computing power costs electricity. Here in Turkey, a 7/24 draw of 300 watts would cost about 25 Dollars a month. Does the bitcoin mining thingie produce more than this (+ the capital expenditure of course)?

And why are the people make their computers burn fossil fuel (albeit indirectly) to solve useless hash algorithms? I can justify folding@home, and even seti@home... but as far as I can see, the computing power used for bitcoin mining is used just for the sake of proving it is used. Like counting sands on a beach. No use whatsoever.

Am I the only one who does not get it?

outlook.com (latest incarnation of hotmail) allows you to do that.
Like google apps did when it was free.

Here's a guide.