They're taking things from the open source RepRap community and attempting to patent them. Do not support MakerBot.

First this, and now this. MakerBot needs to DIAF.

Or the brute force solution. Break it apart and reform it in the correct color order.

This. I noticed that the Google doodle is missing this functionality. :-)

6.21 miles deep, that's impressive.

The Fup prevents Satellite from actually working.

Unless you only want text based email. - then it's worth the 50 bucks a month plus expensive equipment....

(Fair use policy - they use that to slow you to 1200 baud speed when you hit the one meg download a month limit)..

Heck, wasn't the iSight the only webcam for Firewire?

No. (I have one of these kicking around somewhere...worked much better than most of the USB webcams that were on the market back in the day.)

I'm not shilling for ISPs. I'd rather see municipalities own infrastructure and companies and the people use it. That way, real competition can actually occur, not just the duopoly we usually have. And, if the people in an area want faster internet, they can fund an upgrade of the infrastructure and see who comes to provide the service.

You don't build a road because someone wants to come to your door and deliver you some goods. You build a road because you want them to be able to do so.

Funny, in my anecdotal evidence, my power, coax, and telephone lines are run through a 10 foot easement at the back of my yard, buried underground. It is like that for all houses on my street. I believe water sewer and natural gas come from the street side at the front, also buried underground. But because you never saw a setup like mine, that must mean it doesn't exist. I see.

It isn't intellectually dishonest to compare regulated utilities (electric, water, sewer) with "regulated" utilities (telecom) because the reasons I gave are correct. And yes, I do still see telecom companies as regulated, since when you have to allow an interconnect to other companies providing the same service, you are not free to do as you would please (unregulated). You do not want a disruption on your property, people digging holes to lay new lines, because someone down the street wants a different brand of Cable than what is in the area. Because of that reason, telecom companies were given a local monopoly. Laws might have been changed to allow for competitors, but even if they have, where are the competition?

In a perfect world, perhaps every underground run would have extra space. Frankly, if a city owned the conduits by through which the lines were run, awesome! That would allow for new contenders in an area without disruption, the exact goal I would seek. That is exactly the equivalent 'public infrastructure, private usage' I hinted at. However, I don't believe the cities generally own said conduit to provide that service. When the conduits are privately held and AT&T (for example) won't let a competitor run lines through their conduit, that kind of turns us back to the competitor having to run their own conduit and line, doesn't it?

AT&T already has data caps. I was informed recently that I had exceeded mine, yet their site is such a pain to find it I had little idea how to assess my usage.

There is the issue of certain services being 'natural monopolies'. How many power companies do you want running power lines to your home in order to offer you power service? Network companies running fiber, cable, or coax to offer you the Internet? Water? Sewer?

See, when something requires the customer to receive not just the service but also build infrastructure through other people's property to deliver it to them, most people realize that allowing many companies to build that infrastructure is a disruptive pain. Since we don't have the core infrastructure built so that such cables can be laid without disrupting someone else's property, the trade-off has been a limited number of contenders in an area. You can argue whether that's right or not, or if there are better ways, but that is what the compromise was in order to allow for the service and yet not be a disruption.

Personally, I see local infrastructure like power lines, fiber, coax, cable, etc as just like roads. Who maintains your roads? Anyone that provides a service using those roads can do so without disruption, and the entity that owns them maintains them and permits access. They generally have no vested interest in extorting excess money out of the users of those roads, but do charge them for use. Other aspects of our infrastructure could be similarly maintained and we would solve the 'local monopoly' issue while minimizing disruption.

No one owns a car for 10 or 20 years anymore

With an '04 Alero and a '77 Cutlass Supreme in the garage, I must be "no one." :-|

Repeated press of start/stop (e.g. in a panic) should display emergency information, and possibly also shut off ignition, but not any other systems.

Given that the power-steering pump and brake booster both need the engine running in order to function, how would you propose to do that?

(In fairness, the brake booster frequently has its own vacuum reserve that will allow it to function once or twice with the engine off. The power-steering pump, OTOH, definitely isn't working without the engine running.)

It's actually a fairly modern idea to have the same key fit both the ignition switch and the car doors.

If by "modern" you mean they were doing it in the 90's, I guess.

It wasn't until 2002 that I had something that only took one key. Two keys was standard practice before then. Hell, the previous owner rekeyed the trunk on my '77 Cutlass so it needs three keys, but that's definitely atypical.

Now get off my lawn!

Optical discs aren't a proper backup either unless you store them offsite...

...which is exactly what I do. I have close to 200 BD-Rs in a binder in my desk at work. They hold 20 GB each, with the remaining space used for dvdisaster error recovery. I knocked together a script to pack as many files onto each disc as will fit. The scripts themselves (and the database they use) also get backed up offsite, to a VPS.

Hauppauge PVR-150 works in 32-bit Win7.

It (and the PVR-250/350/500) also works well under Linux, either 32- or 64-bit. I used these for a few years with MythTV. I think I still have a PVR-250 in this computer, but haven't used it in ages. I'm ripping a bunch of DVDs and SVCDs to my server before I unload them; if I have any tapes that haven't been superseded by some newer source, maybe I'll rip those next. I think the last time I used this card was for a PAL-VHS to NTSC-DVD conversion...that was interesting.

5 years ago, I would of looked forward to it.

Now? I'll check to see if AT&T will offer being dragged thru a swimming pool full of salted razor blades as an alternative.

The latter would be more preferable....