I take it you haven't been to Vancouver when it snowed?

I know about the political situation - I live in Western Canada. But you didn't read my post properly: Canada HAS nuclear reactor technology, we HAVE nuclear reactors, and we DO sell them abroad - they are actually quite a success: see CANDU reactor.

The question was why Canada went with this more traditional design, rather than a thorium design.

That doesn't explain why countries without a nuclear weapons program haven't gone that way. For example, Canada and Germany gave up nuclear weapons ambitions decades ago, but they both have the technology to build nuclear reactors, and they export those reactors to other countries.

This seems unlikely, since rods are inhibited in situations where there is enough light for cones to function (i.e. at normal photopic light levels). Basically, rods just saturate and do not contribute to human vision vision at daylight levels. Do you have a reference?

How exactly would there be waste heat? The process magically circumvents the laws of energy preservation? No, the energy stored in the fuel is the energy taken from sunlight, just like the CO2 stored in it is the one taken from the atmosphere. The whole process is just a way to store solar energy in high concentration and have it usable at a convenient time.

Well fine, but that still means you are basically PAYING interest for the privilege of owning gold, when yo really could be EARNING interest with other forms of investment.

If you replaced the screws they'll see that as evidence that you have tampered with the device, and therefore you have voided warranty. Good luck arguing otherwise in court.

Installing an app from the Apple app store counts as installing software. As far as I am concerned, they should burn the OS into ROM, and have an MMU that physically prevents code execution outside that memory region. If you really want apps, they can run in a Java sandbox, rather than native assembly code, which has access to all the hardware.

Let's assume I actually install apps written in native assembly, which I don't. Even then, it is unlikely that the phone would get cracked within its normal lifetime (3 year contract). After all, there are many phones from many vendors, they would require different binaries, presumably signed with different keys. It is not like the game console market, where there are only 2 or 3 high-value targets for a crack.

Haha. Never heard that joke before. </sarcasm>

If you can't install software then you can't install malware.

Actually, it is good for power consumption. By being programmable, the FPGA can be smaller than an ASIC - since it doesn't have to implement all protocols at the same time, just the ones that are used on the current network.

I don't know specifically about the Motorola phones, but in many phones the "modem" is really just an FPGA that can be reprogrammed for different protocols on the fly. If you can change the OS, you can make it upload FPGA code that CAN wreak havoc with the network.

Really now? Because I do want my phone to be locked down, actually. I want a mobile device that allows me to read email, but doesn't force me into regular OS upgrades, patches, or software upgrades of any other form. I am willing to give up the ability to install software in exchange for never having to worry about the darn thing not working or having a virus. So there.

Yeah, you can keep telling yourself this - everybody who doesn't want exactly what you want clearly doesn't have a clue.

Here is a reference point: I am a computer scientist, I've been using Linux both professionally and privately on the desktop for almost exactly a decade now. But the very last thing I want of a phone is yet another device to upgrade or configure a kernel for, or worry about malware and viruses. Locked down sounds pretty good to me. I just want to have access to email wherever I go, I don't buy a lot of apps (I have 4 total), and I am not going to start developing for the darn thing. There is only so much time in a day, and the phone is one device that I don't want to have to fiddle with to have it work.