It is possible, however, by rooting the Playbook, to open it up to full GAPPS capability, including the Google Play Store. RIMM needs to do this for BB10...and then they need to promote the hell out of this capability, saying, "BlackBerry runs all your favorite Android apps...and runs them better!" (Which is true; the QNX kernel of BB10 is far more efficient in an embedded environment than Android's Linux kernel is. This translates into increased battery life.) Karl Denninger has argued that this is the only way for RIMM to avoid complete irrelevance in the marketplace...and the company's performance since he wrote that piece in March seems to bear that out.

They could go further, too. One enterprising hacker has gotten (some) unmodified iOS apps to run on the Playbook. And it's perfectly legal, because the developer has just created his own implementations of relevant Apple APIs, and, under the ruling in Oracle v. Google, APIs are not copyrightable and Apple can't stop him. RIMM should acquire or license this technology and extend it to work with more iOS apps, and promote the hell out of this capability, too. Imagine being able to run virtually any popular smart phone app on one phone...with better battery life than either Android phones or the iPhone. (QNX beats the iOS Darwin kernel for efficiency, too.)

If RIMM does these two things, they could go from zero to hero in one fell swoop. If they fail to do either one...well, next stop is probably a bankruptcy court.

Now the Shuttle is gone, and so is she. Sigh. Clear skies to you, ma'am.

"Someone is coming. Quick, tell them you see them."

"Why? I don't see them."

"It scares the hell out of people."

"R-O-F-L! All right. I see you."

"Ask her if the's still there."

"Are you still there?...She didn't say anything."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"What should I say now?"

"Come out, bitch!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz5cl131KTk

So why is Microsoft still calling it "Windows"?

Apple doesn't call its OS for iPad/iPhone/etc. "OSX" anything, even though that's what it's derived from. It calls it "iOS."

So can't Microsoft pick another name for this thing, just to eliminate confusion? Like, say, call it "Metro OS," after the visual style it uses?

CM9 feels a bit sluggish on the Nook Color, but it's usable.

Thorium is a natural impurity found in coal. It has been estimated, in fact, that the thorium in coal would, if used as fuel for LFTRs, generate eleven times the energy that you would get from just burning the coal. And right now, all that thorium is simply wasted in the coal ash, or worse, goes up the smokestack and becomes an environmental pollutant!

Also, due to the higher temperature LFTRs run at, they can directly supply heat to drive the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert the coal that we'll no longer need to burn for electricity into synthetic petroleum. This would allow the U.S. to completely supply all its petroleum needs (especially for transportation fuel) from coal for at least 100 years, and eliminate the need for foreign oil. This, in turn, would allow the defense budget to be cut in at least half, as much of that expenditure is to protect our access to foreign oil. And it also reduces carbon emissions, since, while we're still burning the coal (after it's been transformed into synthetic petroleum), we're not burning the oil it replaced!

None of this requires new technology; we were running LFTRs at Oak Ridge in the 1960's (and they proved their safety by literally cutting power to the reactor systems and going home for the weekend!), and Germany was using Fischer-Tropsch back in World War II. All it requires is some engineering refinements...and, of course, the political will to do it. The latter, sadly, is lacking.