.. that none of the ten officers they sent out looking for the phone were good at correlating live location data on a map to real-world locations. You'd be surprised how many people, cops included, lack that very basic spatial-visualization skill.

Then again, if the phone was physically well hidden and the people around it had enough acting talent to not look too hinky, it would be pretty difficult for the cops to make much progress even if they *could* narrow down to a relatively small radius. And depending on the EPE of the phone's GPS and the resolution of its tower location, the radius might not have been that small. (And the hiding location could have been specifically selected to optimize that..)

"English follows other languages into dark alleys, beats them up for their words and goes through their pockets for loose vocabulary." -- variously attributed

Anyone have any idea how many languages English has taken words from? Spelling rules in English are mind-bogglingly complicated because they include sub-orthographies for pretty much every one of those languages, some based on standard transliterations, others maybe kind of sort of quasi-phonetic, still others whatever worked for the first batch from that language. And of course spellings mutate over time in common usage, and sometimes the colloquial spelling will displace the "linguistically correct" one, as in almost any other language, but ten times as much in English because English has at least ten times as much vocabulary .. for the reason above. The bulk of the language is Germanic (via Old English which was basically an esoteric dialect of German), Romance (via Norman French), Latin, and Greek, in roughly that order, and the Latin/Greek distinction definitely influences a lot of seemingly contradictory rules. There's some "making it up as they go along" in the case of some source languages, but with others, the original spelling (or transliteration for non-Latin-script languages, where transliteration systems exist, and often archaic ones like the Wade-Giles system for Chinese) tends to take precedence unless it's just too weird for the average English speaker. But whole theses or possibly even dissertations could be written on this subject..

I actually want a watch that I can pair with my phone via Bluetooth, that will let me do things like dial and answer calls. I don't know if the protocols for that even exist, but it's what I want. Touch screen for a multi-modal display that's a watch when it's not being used for something else, but switches to a dial with send/end buttons when I need it, Maybe make it switchable between various analog and/or digital dial skins. Open source/open architecture if that can be done without introducing malware vectors.

If I had the time and resources to develop it myself, that'd be the watch I want.

I'm still in favor of the big red button with a clearly worded warning on it that says it will render the computer unusable and/or void the warranty if pressed. The people who read instructions and warnings and in general have some clue what they're doing will leave it alone and get years of service out of the computer; the ones who just poke and click at things totally at random when things don't do what they expect get what they deserve...

There are some people who will call tech support whether they get a warning or not. Usually the wrong support, and usually to unload a half hour of angry rants that do absolutely nothing to fix the problem. If there's any reading involved beyond about the 2nd-3rd grade level, they'll ignore warning dialogs and just call and complain. This is a constant in the tech support universe.

(And I still have to laugh when people tell me their internet isn't working but they can send and receive email..)

You would be amazed how many times some people would click the OK button before giving up and either telling everyone the Internet isn't working, or calling and screaming at their OS platform support until redirected to their ISP, and then calling their browser support instead and screaming at them. It's incredible the lengths to which some people will go to avoid reading what's on their effing screen..

I've been wanting this on computers for years. I'd also like for the last thing the computer does before it completely dies to be playing a recording of someone saying, "Told you not to push it!"

Given that it's server-based and not running locally on the phone, network latency can make the app pretty impractical to use for much, and if you have no network connection at all, you have no voice control at all. Yeah, I kind of like the Voice Control app, at least it's locally resident in iOS and works fairly consistently. (And usually doesn't do half bad recognizing my voice, although my accent is sort of slightly-rural Midwestern which is more or less "standard" for North America..)

Yeah, if it's 18 kHz, I'll most likely be able to hear it at least from my right ear. (One reason I'm very glad LCD has displaced CRT TV's is that damn flyback whine.)

Then again, how much amplitude are you going to get out of a randomly chosen voice coil speaker at frequencies above 20kHz?

If the drywall isn't up yet, take the opportunity now to run PVC conduit to the server rack closet from the room locations where you're planning on Ethernet drops, and possibly to other locations where you might want to run AV cable later on, such as likely mounting locations for a ceiling-mounted projector. It'll save you a ton of work later drilling through studs and firestops later on. Even if you don't run the cable now, you can run a fish tape through conduit and pull cable through it without having to cut through drywall to route it, especially in rooms that have no access to the top or bottom of the wall space.

I'll also agree with y00nix on the impossibility of having too much rack space. You never know what you might decide to install later, and more rackspace (and preinstalled conduit, see above) give you more expansion options. Trust me, 5-10 years down the road if not sooner, you're going to want to put more stuff in that closet. :D

Hoping the closet you converted has an exterior facing wall where you can install a dedicated window AC unit. You'd be surprised how much heat can come out of even one rackmount server unit..

..and the FBI seizes the server they used?

Anyone else think this is more believable as a denial of service attack, or as a pretext for taking down a troublesome server they couldn't legally seize by any other means, than as an actual threat?

Unless the person sending them was stupid enough to think that a remailer would protect them from ever being caught, and didn't care that it was going to mean taking down the whole service for everyone else using it..

Considering that "viewscreens" that allowed The Party to watch people in their homes were an integral part of the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it's arguable that people who are familiar with that story are probably inclined to at least think briefly about the possibility. (In the book, the "viewscreens" couldn't be turned off, although it's fair to say that most pieces of modern tech aren't exactly ever "off" unless you completely disconnect all sources of power, so this may be 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.)

Then again, in this age of the almighty corporation, how much is a simple corporate assertion of goodwill really worth?

I might add that burning down a haystack to find a needle in it not only destroys the hay, but makes the needle useless..

The sensor that triggers the airbag is in the very front of the car where it starts decelerating at the start of the impact, before the crush zone in the front begins to decelerate the rest of the car. It's supposed to be timed so that the airbag is maximally deployed right at peak deceleration during a frontal impact.

It's very likely the deer happened to hit the spot right in front of the airbag sensor and caused it to think a collision was underway, causing the bag(s) to deploy when they shouldn't have. I suspect yours isn't the first case where they've done that. Which is one reason I wasn't thrilled when they became mandatory, especially in cheap cars where the deployment isn't all that well thought out..