Agreed. Even if they were to find a remarkable new material or means of producing solar cells that pushed efficiency past 50%, you need better (lighter) batteries, and more efficient (and lighter) electric engines as well. I'm not sure "never" is quite the right way to put it, but it's definitely not something we'll have in the immediate future. I just wonder how long it will take for technology to solve the efficiency problems.

*rubs head* alright.... while I can appreciate that it's a solar-powered, electric plane, this thing has really only served to prove one very important point - we are no where NEAR ready to make solar powered planes yet.

Solar cells are just not efficient enough to make this a viable means of powered flight. The proof is in the stats - 11,628 cells are only enough to provide the plane power to lift itself and a pilot. And that's with a wingspan of 208 feet. It has no on-board luxuries of any kind... including a toilet, and because it's maximum speed is 43mph (often less when dealing with air currents) that makes for a rather uncomfortable ride that lasts a long, long time.

Even though you can drive somewhere faster than you can get there on this thing, the one thing it does at least prove is that a solar plane is possible. Just barely with current technology, but possible. As cell efficiency, weight, and materials continue to improve, so will the solar planes that come from it. Until then... we're stuck with the gas-guzzling current batch of technology. :/

Enough said.

Whether it be religion, lax government regulations, or just plain sexual addiction, we have concocted an endless list of reasons to justify lack of control when it comes to procreation. So... we have a planet with too many humans, and not a lot of food. Until we fix our little willpower problem, "bugs" are not a solution - that's just ignoring the problem with a VERY disgusting fix.

Easy to avoid sending them when you don't have a cell. The Cells and smartphones alone are too expensive to justify, but texts are even worse. So many phone companies charge insane amounts of money to send a minuscule amount of data across their networks because they know they can get away with charging for it.

Even if all that were not true, there are two even bigger reasons I'd not send them;

a) Too damn short. How can you properly articulate something in a mere 160 characters or less? That ridiculous limit to their length is a big reason so many people can't use proper spelling or grammar in written text anymore.

b) Too hard to type. Tiny phone-sized keyboards or even just number keys means typing is a far cry from the 80+ words per minute I'm used to doing, and that makes it a chore. It'd be easier to just call the person (calling people on phones... I know, crazy concept) and finding out what's what quickly and efficiently.

Text'ing was the very reason I cancelled the one cell phone I briefly had. The phone company decided to override the contract and charge me for texts on my plan despite that it was supposed to include 100 free ones a month. Each text was 15 cents - 15 cents for 160 bytes of data! Now... I didn't text, and I had forbidden my friends from bothering me with texts as well, so I didn't think it'd be a problem... until they started texting me daily with Bell ads. Then, they charged me for them. When I asked if they were going to keep charging me for texts from them that I didn't want, they just said "well... yes sir, they're still texts", so I cancelled and never bothered getting a cell again.

Yep - not willing to part with the land-line just yet. I don't have a cell phone (I live in Canada, and we seem to be the only developed country without fair pricing for cell phones), and rarely use the phone anyway 'cause I dislike it. The land-line works regardless of the state of power, and offers vastly better long distance rates. Better still, it doesn't travel with me. Though some might see that as a drawback, I consider being unreachable a wonderful (peaceful) advantage.

In the world of Network Operations, it's impossible to disable Java at this time. Nearly every appliance we operate uses Java in some way in its administration GUI. Many of the home-grown applications here are also Java based. Vendors typically stray 5 to 10 years behind current market practices, so I don't see them abandoning Java any time soon. Heck, we're still waiting for some to abandon only support IE as a browser.

What I'd like to do is limit if not outright block Java outside of our campus, but the open access nature of a Canadian university means that blocking something can be a difficult uphill battle. If just a single professor or scientist has an issue, the block will not fly, and trying to isolate the needs of individuals can be a very long process.

It would be nice if Oracle just fixed all the issues, but I'm pretty sure there's about as much chance of that happening as was the US going ahead with the petition to build the Death Star.

Nature of the job for me - Network Admin/Engineering, so all day, every day at work, then it's also my source of video and entertainment at home since I don't watch TV. Would MUCH rather swap the work time with kayaking though (nature provides a MUCH better show than any computer screen).

Exactly - it is an interface aimed at the casual user, not an officer worker, administrator or power user who needs to be able to manage a multitude of programs at once.

I could understand that sort of decision if the majority of their users were tablet/phone based, but they're not - they're PC users.

I'm not surprised that a lot of folks are still on XP - at my university (where I work as a NOC network admin), the majority of the Windows machines are still XP. XP is simply what was put on older machines, and then a few years back with everyone hating Vista, new machines that had it were back-rev'd to XP Pro. Newer machines are mostly coming with Windows 7 Pro, however, a considerably number of people are installing alternate OSs on them alongside or to replace Windows 7. So far, exposure to Windows 8 has been 100% negative (the only time I ever recall seeing staff completely of the same opinion), so I don't see it ever catching on at all.

So yes... come April 2014, like or not, XP will be dead, and businesses will have to get off of it. They just don't necessarily have to stick with Windows for whatever they install instead.

I have an MP3/media player for music, a GPS for navigation and computers at home for contacts. I personally loath text messaging - a horrible form of communication due to the character limits and people's horrific bastardization of proper grammar to skirt said character limit. I do agree that the ability to make a call while out is a handy thing, but my issue has been that I cannot simply get a cell phone which is JUST a phone. I don't want to pay $40 a month for something I'll use once or twice (if that) in a year to make a call, and last I looked (about a year ago) I couldn't find a company in Canada that offered a super-basic phone for a pay-as-you-go price that has no expiration time.

For me, they're just not a useful device. A super-basic cell phone that is only a phone would be useful if the cost was fair, but I have no use for a smart phone.

I just found that KDE is very clunky and bloated. I was a KDE fan quite a while ago, running the original 1.0 version when it came out on FreeBSD. It just got too big and too bloated. Today there are just so many other shells that are either lighter on resources, easier to use or both.

When I tell people I don't have a cell, they so often say "OMG... you're a tech guy - how can you live without a Cell phone!?"

I often reply "How can you live -with- one?"

There is a certain wonderful charm to being unavailable to the world. Technology is great and all, and definitely everything my career is built around, but knowing when to unplug and walk away for a while is good too.

We have similar - a residence network and the main campus network. On the main campus network we have a bit more control in that we are not acting as an ISP that provides completely unrestricted access. We do not allow much P2P, and are quick to lock a host that abuses bandwidth. I would estimate the bandwidth requirements for the main network sit around 60M per student. The only reason it is that much is because of the recent spike in the use of educational video streaming by the professors, which is more of a misuse issue (IE, professors should pre-download the video they want people to see and show it on a single display unit rather than telling people to go look at it on-line all at once).

It is inevitable though that the bandwidth-per-student counters will continue to increase, even though the majority of that usage is likely non-academic (as is the case now).

Speaking as a Network admin at a major university, the amount of bandwidth-per-user really depends on the levels of control the school is allowed (or willing) to apply to the user's Network usage.

For example, in our residences, students are told they have unfiltered access to the Internet, as in, they are allowed to use any software they wish. The only stated restrictions are overall bandwidth related on a per-day basis. Behind the scenes, a we use packet shaping hardware to limit the total amount of per-user bandwidth usable for such things as P2P or VoIP (to prevent super-nodes) but otherwise leave it alone. In this model, 100Mbps per 1000 students is inadequate, but only just barely. We currently have it at approximately 120Mbps per 1000 students.

Under tighter control circumstances, where P2P is disabled and/or other controls, caps, and so on are enacted, you can likely get away with less bandwidth. Other networks we distribute have such tighter controls, and allow us to dial the number down further to around 70Mbps per 1000 students (without any web censorship).