I was thinking of my next laptop being a MAC. It won't be now, unless Apple takes action here in favor of the customer.

This will cost Apple more in lost sales than it would have cost to replace the laptop. And letting a company like that continue as an authorized service center is certain to have adverse impact on the Apple name.

Cloud 2? My company is working on Cloud 3 Premium Services. We're skipping version 2 altogether to give users the feeling that it's a well-developed platform. We plan to roll it out before it's fully ready and let users be our beta testers, much like a large software company in Washington does. Of course, your data will be safe with our Cloud 3 Premium Services, and we won't share your data with other parties, except those with whom we have a business partnership with.

I realize that big money is behind Monsanto, but, in principle, shouldn't the farmers who plant non-Monsanto Canola be able to sue when they find their seeds cross-pollinated with GM Canola? It seems to reason that it's one thing if a farmer is cultivating the licensed product, violating Monsanto's patent rights (under current patent laws), and quite another if Monsanto is polluting the farmer's seed base. I would think it only is fair that Monsanto would have to replace their contaminated seeds with non-GM seeds of the same variety the farmer planted, or at least provide the farmer with a waiver to grow canola from his own seed as an alternative, if the farmer feels he wants to grow the cross-pollinated stuff.

I don't do what you do with image management, but this product does a lot. You can get a free trial, and if you register with the company you will get an extended trial (I think it's 40 days). http://www2.ashampoo.com/webcache/html/1/product_2_1018___USD.htm Once you've registered a trial key, you will get offers from time to time. One of those offers is a name your own price deal which they do about every other month or so. While this normally sells for $50, you can probably get it for $15 or $20. They don't accept just any offer you make, so it's not truly name your own price, but they usually accept less than 1/2 of their normal price.

Whether you use calculus or statistics will depend on what career you end up in. Statistics are used in many industries to prove cause and effect in order to improve processes. They are very important in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and other businesses as well, but you could be in a position in those industries where you have no need to use statistics. Same for calculus. It was required as a prerequisite in one MBA school, but not in another. So in some business environments, it may be useful. In others, you'll never need to use it. When I was considering one MBA school that did require calculus as a prerequisite, I took a proficiency exam to satisfy the requirement. I had never had calculus before, so I asked for an outline of the knowledge required and studied the first 6 chapters of the book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Calculus. It made calculus fairly easy to understand (for me, anyway), and I passed the proficiency exam for calculus. It didn't make me an expert in the subject, but if you want a good starting point as a refresher for calculus, I can recommend this book. For statistics, I can't recommend any book on my own experience. I learned what I needed during an intensive 160 hour training course in Six Sigma techniques. But I would bet that this book would also be a good starting point for you as a refresher: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Statistics. Both are available on Amazon.com. You can get both as used books there for less than $18 including shipping.

I was able to get a pair of 6 channel hearing aid (with 3 programs) for a lot less than I could with my insurance alone. Insurance had a maximum payout of something like $250. The hearing aids I got were over $6,000. I found out that we have a government program in our state (through the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation) which can pay for most of the cost of a hearing aid. Without lying about my income, which is nowhere near poverty level, I qualified for the coverage and we worked out a plan that my insurance would pay $250, I would pay $250, and the state would pay the rest. The amount you pay is somewhat negotiable, I found out, so I offered to pay the $500 and get $250 back from my insurance. I could have applied my part to my flexible medical spending account but I usually have no problems using it up in a year's time. See if you have such a plan in your state (I live in Ohio), and if you do, maybe they can cover some of the cost of your hearing aids.

Your name must be shared with quite a few other people in the world. You could say that there is information on the net about another person with the same name, or deny it in the same manner if it's pointed out to you. If my name were Michael Vick and someone mentioned what happened a few years ago, I would say that it wasn't the same Vick they read about. Unless there's a picture or something else relevant only to you in the information, you have a way out, unless the judgment is made without asking you first about it. There's no way around that last one unless you preemptively bring it up first, if you want to risk doing that. Or, you can tell the truth up front and see where it gets you.

"And ITRI has started testing STOBA on electric car batteries." Is there such a thing as a NON-electric car battery? :-)

We have these red light cameras in our city (in Ohio) and the whole thing was passed by City Hall very quickly without much room for public comment. There is a measure on the next voting ballot to make it necessary for a police officer to be present and personally issue the ticket if the red light cameras will be used to enforce traffic violations. The current arrangement makes it a civil issue, not a moving violation, so you are presumed guilty and have to pay the fine in advance even if you want a hearing. At first, the cameras were issuing right turn on red violations when there was no violation. Talk about the public getting incensed over all of this! And there was supposed to be a law enforcement officer checking the video clips before the violation was deemed to be valid. It looks like the city council and mayor are now lame ducks and will be voted out of office over this. One thing that bothers people is that the owner of the vehicle gets the ticket, and if the owner isn't driving, he or she has to rat out the driver or pay the fine as if they did the driving. That will be fixed if the law passes about requiring a police officer present to hand the ticket to the driver. There's also a court case over this because the contract the mayor signed may be invalid. And all of this was supposed to make our streets safer and had nothing to do with revenues for the city! (Right!)

A few words of advice from someone who is in a similar marriage and has been since 1974. The most difficult years in marriage are after the wedding. :-) I say that because so many people think that marriage will bring eternal bliss. It doesn't. But it doesn't have to be a living hell, either. Marriage isn't so much about how compatible you are but how well you deal with incompatibility. It helps to find common interests that you can share in together. Look at disagreements as a challenge to work out together, not a reason to terminate the marriage. When people divorce and remarry, they don't realize that often they are taking with them into the new marriage the same problems that led to the failure of the previous marriage. It's better to work out those problems and not divorce in the first place.