There are a couple of good points there, Part of an open system is of course that it is open to everyone - including douche bag marketers.
I personally would like it if Google were a bit fussier in there acceptance of apps but I vastly prefer their approach to Apples closed door policy.

With Android, I can load any app I want from anywhere I want. (including my own)
I hate it when companies decide they know better than me as to what I can and cant do with my own equipment!

You should be thankful to Google for some of the functionality you now enjoy (Like teathering, VOIP over 3g etc)
Without Android, Apple would happily ignored the wants and desires of their users while raking in the dollars

On a side note, I Australia we are now getting an enormous number of advertisements for Iphones and Ipads. Something we have never had before.
I wonder if Apple is getting a bit worried that android is outselling them by so much?

Itunes - How many fart apps would you like today????

Sure, people could write more apps for Android than iOS... but they haven't (yet)

corrected that for you

Rejecting it because it would be in IOS5, that doesn't help people prior to the release IOS5 and kills a nice little niche market for those who don't want to updgrade to IOS5

The smell of corruption is strong in this one
Combined with apple having proven itself time and time again to be a "do as I say, not as I do company"
It is the sort of thing that companies can get away with due to trade secrets and closed source.
The only way we can know for sure is for a disgruntled employee to spill the beans.

I can never figure out why so many people try to be innovative with Apple products knowing the high probability they will be screwed over - They should just stick with Fart Apps and have done with it.

Something good will come of this law
Goatse will disappear forever in case someone in Tennessee sees it (I doubt it)

What did you expect ?

If you must keep something running then updating the entire architecture every couple of years is expensive (and plain stupid)
Upgrading requires a realisable benefit and a budget.
I have an acquaintance who works in a company that sells spares to the military and get this, they make a fortune selling unused MFM and RLL hard drives that have been properly stored.
Device X works, whats the problem.
Once again, upgrading requires a realisable benefit and a budget.

I say the same sort of thing to people who want a computer.
For most people an Atom processor is more than capable.<BR>
You do not need an I7 processor to surf the net or use word! <BR>
If you're not playing high end games or video editing, save hundreds and go for the low end processor<BR>

I ran the article thru google translate and it is the same hydroplant I found.
The article does mention the existing weir but for some reason it doesn't say it actually uses it

The pamphlet I found is
http://www.enbw.com/content/en/group/_media/_pdf/water_is_energy.pdf
Page 26 explains what they did and page 29 has some details of the plant (esp the head of water)

I don't mind friends and family asking for help in XP, There's a good chance I already know the answer and the rest don't need that much effort.
Anything they are likely to do or want has usually already been done.

Windows 7 support usually involves explaining why they need to click OK so often (I am looking squarely at Adobe here) Yes, I want to update, Yes I give permission to Update, Yes I want to download the update, Yes I accept the terms and conditions, Yes I am happy you finished updating. Yes I want you to stop asking stupid questions.

Do you have a link to the Heidelburg hydro plant?

The only one I could find is the Karlstor hyrdoplant which is a standard run of river hydroplant
That means it relies on a head of water generated by a weir to turn the turbine.
The new Karlstor generating plant was built under water at the site of the existing weir so as to keep the existing view.
It has a 2.6 metre head and uses 140 cubic metres a second to generate 3.1MW from 2 turbines.

While the genset might be hidden, the weir is not. The is different to the GP's suggestion

Extracting energy from kinetic energy of moving water alone is nowhere near as efficient (or controllable) as using a head of water. If it were, it would already be done.
The changing political environment of GW might be enough to make something like this more attractive but I doubt it.

The article said nothing about silverlight being dropped

It said that developers are upset that it is not being used for the upcomming windows 8 desktop

Silverlight will remain for web based "Rich Interactive Applications" (as long as you run windows and use the plugin's) - just like it does now.

If developers chose silverlight in the hope it would be the new desktop app system they were mistaken and will pay the (a small) price for their decision

Until reality hits home - like rolling blackouts, then things will happen
Then it will quickly change to Burn more coal, Build more Nuclear plants etc.

Turbines in a river - not exactly a new idea
The web site you mentioned is rather bereft of details
I have done a couple of basic calcs and have come up with each generator being able to generate roughly 250 watts (1 metre turbine, 5kph river and 50% efficiency)
250 watts continuous for a whole year is a bit over 2MWh, to get 2TWh will require nearly a million of these things in rivers. No wonder the site was bereft of details

I can imagine the NIMBY arguments being rather loud when it comes to rivers littered with these things

Ahh memories
I remember seeing that photo and gasping at how much larger MIR was compared to Skylab
There were a lot of details about Skylab in the press but very little details about MIR for some strange reason.

Surely if they have broken a beta version, they would be better to wait until a few weeks after the production version is released and thus maximise it's usefulness .
Telling everyone also tells Apple where the weakness lies and beta is relatively easy to fix

Fox News? Sounds a little too much like The Republicans to me. I don't have any interest in listening to what a bunch of terrorist sympathizing talking heads have to say.

OMG, That sounded to bad to be true so I had to google it
I have never heard of that story and I wish I hadn't searched it.
Heck, I wish it went to Goatse or something