The cynic in me wonders if he is working for some hack start-up company trying to develop a DRM scheme for a hard drive, similar to the crap the studios do to DVD's to make them difficult to rip. Typically this involves creating some sort of currupt/invalid area on the disk that your particular device will know to ignore, but will lock up anyone else trying to read the data off the drive.

The optimist in me wonders if he is trying to defeat such a scheme.

The problem of unexploded ordinance goes back much further than World War I. In 2008, a guy was killed by a canon ball from the U.S. Civil War (140 year old ordinance) http://bit.ly/2O4M7j

For the most part, they loose money on each ebook sale.

I was part of the "teenager" definition just few years ago ...

Welcome to the old fart's club. Your cabana is right over here. The metamucil is complementary, but you will have to charge the Rogaine and Grecian Formula to your club credit card. Our next group outing is to the Rolling Stone's concert. Don't forget that you are responsible for packing your own oxygen tanks and diapers before boarding the group bus.

what open positions are available which will net me 6 figures

Lots of things, if you have worked hard in school and learned a profession that is in demand. Nursing, for example.

... it still felt like a betrayal of trust to have been lied to like that

Absolutely. One of the most common complaints of chronically ill children is that they are lied to. Paraphrasing one 7 year old boy with cancer: "When they say that this won't hurt a bit, what they usually mean is that it will only hurt for a moment. Why can't they just say that instead?" As soon as they catch you lying, they will never trust your reassurances about anything else. A woman could come to the hospital room for 30 minutes to help fill out insurance paperwork, but the kid is going to be afraid the whole time because he doesn't believe you when you tell him that the visitor isn't doing to do anything painful to him.

Also, as twidarkling said, "they're not stupid" The kids definitely know that something bad is about to happen, no matter how much you try to hide it or fool them. They will be incredibly suspicious of anything new or different. If you really want this to work, you need to let the kid play with the helmet and wear it at home or alone in a waiting room with Mom ahead of time (preferably without any anesthetic loaded in it of course)

Why can't they operate on lower frequencies

They can. Some operate in the 1.9 GHz range. Look up DECT in Wikipedia if you want details.

Can you post model names/numbers for those baby monitors? I'd love to be able to pick one that has channel-switching built in...

Even better: just get a monitor that uses the 1920 MHzâ"1930 MHz range, instead of the usual wifi channels. Type DECT into Wikipedia. Philips makes some pricey but awesome monitors like the SCD510. I live in a downtown highrise, with 15 networks visible to my computer and lots of metal in the walls, and it works great.

... it would be cool to have a combination of both. That is, the email comes through with the attempted transcription *and* the original audio as an attachment

Most of them work that way, although often the email only contains a link to the audio file, not the file itself. If you want the file sent so you can hear it when offline, try Phone Tag http://phonetag.com/ I have used them, and Google Voice, for a while. Their accuracy is (obviously) MUCH better than Google Voice, because they are using humans to do the transcription.

For me (U.S. iPhone on AT&T) there is one other advantage: battery life. Push email from either my work Exchange account of my personal MobileMe account kills the battery life. Turning push off, and directing important email to SMS (via email to SMS) gives me "push email" features with a good battery life.

I was puzzled by Microsoft's decision to imbed ODF compatibility in their current Office program so quickly. Now I understand why. They realized that if they hurried they could release BEFORE the spec was usable for spreadsheets. Now they will stall as long as possible. Their lobbyists are happy because they can say "we support ODF." Their marketers are happy because there is something labeled ODF in the program that is utterly useless. Pointy haired bosses will never understand the distinction between version 1.1 vs. 1.2, and will conclude forever that ODF is broken.

$50 says there's a connection between this group and a major ISP in the USA.

I would go even further. The group is probably connected to a cable TV company, not just any ISP. The cable companies have the most interest in keeping total internet bandwidth scarce and expensive. They want to delay the day when Hulu/iTunes/etc. become a viable alternative to your HBO subscription.

The question is, will they pay for macdonalds.pr0n or not?

They would have to. You must constantly show effort to defend your trademark, or you loose your legal rights to it. Anytime someone registers a URL called "macdonalds.*" Macdonald's lawyers are going to say that they have to file a lawsuit or risk loosing some rights to their trademark. Ultimately, registering the URL before someone else does will be seen as cheaper than a lawsuit.

Also, no domain is safe. Everybody can now claim google.philly or google.hiphop and companies can do nothing about it(or start countless lawsuits). This is a bad idea and implementing this will cause the www to be more confusing than it is now.

So? Why would they care? This results in a lot more fees to them. MacDonalds will probably feel like they need to pay registration fees for macdonalds.* (every single TLD) They couldn't care less about the problems you listed.