It's my observation that short charging times lead to early battery replacement. I'd rather the charger take it a bit slower and avoid overheating or overcharging the battery.

Tax evasion, I guess. Over here (.nl) married couples can fine a combined tax return that results in the couple paying lower taxes than they would have paid as two separate households.
Also things like inheritance (spouses pay a lower estate tax).

The most compact nuclear power plants around (naval units used in submarines) weigh about 1000 tons. These use highly enriched uranium, so they would be seen as a security risk.
Containerizing this unit would mean at least 50 40-ft containers (with each container at its maximum weight), you probably need more because most containers won't reach this density. That would give something like 80 MW. Considering that a 20-ft container can hold at least a 1-MW diesel generator with its fuel supply, having a containerized nuclear reactor would seem to hold little advantage over diesel gensets.

There's also the problem that you really want the reactor vessel and the primary coolant loop as one unit, since you can't easily disconnect these once the reactor has been active and has irradiated the primary loop.
Now the reactor vessel alone is larger than a standard container. You'd end up with a very large and heavy undivisible central unit.

You'd be better off leaving the reactor on a ship and just running a cable ashore. For smaller power needs, existing containerized diesel gensets are a good solution.

Uh, do you actually wear glasses? Mine need cleaning every day, and I'm not going to take the time to do it in a sink. I mostly use a soft cloth instead.

The video makes it look like it does. Or is this a consequence of the zoom factor used, and did Cassini pass the equator outside of the rings?

No.

Over here the LifeHammer (and its copies) is popular. It's a small plastic hammer with a pointed metal head, purpose-designed for breaking windows when the car is under water. There was a Mythbusters episode on escaping from a submerged car; both the auto punch and lifehammer worked well to break a window. Note that both need to be used on the side or rear window! The windscreen is laminated and you'll only break the inside layer with these tools. Side windows are tempered and will shatter.

That doesn't make sense. Being in front of the semi, there's no way it'll hit you when its tire blows. If you're behind it, the computer will notice the semi slowing down and will brake accordingly. Speed matching and collision avoidance is in production cars today, and works well.

The only remaining hazard is tire debris. I think we'll see mandatory tire monitoring systems before we see automated roadtrains, which would mostly eliminate that hazard.

Brake failure needn't be a problem in a road train either: because the cars have very little separation, the speed difference will be small, the failing car will bump into the car in front (after giving a warning through the intervehicle communication system). The car in front can then help bring the failing car to a safe halt.

Total brake failure is very rare, though.

Going from your list it seems odd that you'd need floppy disks for all of those parts. I'd expect that after installing set A from floppy you'd have a basic system capable of reading a CD. The rest could then be installed from the CD.

The link at the end of the video is to the Microsoft Research website, where they explain most of what you see in the video. The 'bubbles' talked about in TFS don't appear there though.

Full screen apps? Oh no! I hate when an application provides a nonstandard UI. The screen shot shows that even the menu bar is gone, which I find unacceptable for everything except media playback.

Autosave, Versions and Resume on the other hand are fantastic and long overdue. It'll be interesting to see how they implement Autosave: the easy way would be to save every x minutes, the right way would be to create a transaction log and save every action (keystroke, mouse gesture), to make sure that when you crash, every action up to the moment of the crash is preserved.

I think the figures you have for the Shuttle are low. Endeavor cost $ 1.7B to build from spare components. That does not include the cost to acquire those components, and it assumes the design has been paid for already.

From Wikipedia: Roger Pielke has estimated that the Space Shuttle program has cost about US$170 billion (2008 dollars) through early 2008. This works out to an average cost per flight of about US$1.5 billion.

What we see here is an attempt to maximise screen real estate. This is necessary on today's widescreen laptops and netbooks, but pointless for those who have a large monitor.
For this reason, the UI should be user-configurable.

You're right, it's not a "(rare earth) element". Unfortunately, journalists and other Muggles tend to use the term as "rare (earth element)", applying it to any element that's not abundant.