I hate to break it to you, but...

Remember when thin clients were all the rage, guys? Remember Bill Joy telling us the network is the computer? It was true!

Well, kinda...

As it turns out, internet access isn't ubiquitous, at least not yet. In the age of 4G smartphones and tablets we'd like to think it's ubiquitous, but you really only notice that it's not when you have a system like a Chrome OS laptop that literally does not function at all without a network connection.

Even if it were available all the time (airplanes, underground, in the wilderness) it's still not fast enough. And even if it were fast enough, presently we have to deal with usage caps.

Chrome OS is an idea way too far ahead of its time. Right now there's no reason to ditch native software that works perfectly well.

This isn't an either-or situation. The TSA's perpetrated a number of civil liberties violations, yes. On the other hand, some kind of free market libertarian fantasy should not come at the expense of public safety either.

The TSA needs to be re-imagined, but we shouldn't revert to the system we had before. But c'mon. A free market system has no incentive to improve in this kind of situation (oh, you died in a terrorist attack? Fine, go to some other airport next time!)

Lack of support for 20 year-old standard is usually just annoying as hell, but in this case it's actually caused the summary to be wrong. For a site that frequently discusses such topics as technology, math and language (for all of which Unicode is an important part—at least insofar as even being able to TALK about these subjects) there is absolutely no excuse for not doing Unicode.

As far as I'm concerned Slashdot ought to be able to render MathML too.

This is absolutely not true anymore. In fact I would say it's basically the opposite now: the least tech-savvy people I know are unaware that Amazon used to only sell books.

Around 1971, could anyone have imagined this is where we would be in 2011? Having no ships of our own and hitching rides from the Ruskies' spacecraft originally designed in the 1960s?

AT&T U-Verse traffic is not included in the cap. Since video is by far one of the most bandwidth-intensive type of data online, essentially this is a cap on all services competing with U-Verse: iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, MLB.tv, you name it. Get real. This is in no way, shape, or form, network neutrality.

There is definitely not a 1440x900 BTO option for the current 13". You're thinking of the Macbook Air.

You've obviously never worked in IT support then.

Tell that to Dan Brown.

This is pretty amazing, although as I write this it remains to be seen if the capsule re-enters correctly. If so, SpaceX will probably combine its next two missions into one. The first upcoming mission is to perform an ISS flyby, followed by a docking. If all goes well with today's mission (and I expect it will!) then the mission in spring 2011 will be an unmanned resupply mission to the ISS. It's worth noting, though, that the Falcon 9 / Dragon platform is probably not going to be the one taking us to the moon or elsewhere outside of Earth orbit; it was designed to be cheap and fast to develop, which is exactly why SpaceX was able to fly this mission whilst Orion got cancelled. It would take some really heavy modification to even do a lunar flyby. For now, though, it seems like exactly what we need. If these flights prove to be reliable and inexpensive, then the supply and personnel lines to the ISS are secured, and it'll probably pave the way for Bigelow's space station to launch in a couple years.

Hey, bicycle, electric bike, and moped owner here. And I don't mean scooters like your Honda Spree and Vespa PX. I mean moped. Your Puch Maxi, your Vespa Ciao, your Tomos LX. It's so interesting watching the moped revolution of the late 1970s in the US come alive again in even fuller force in China and other Asian countries today. We Americans could save a mighty lot of gas if a lot of us switched to two-wheeled transport; and I get the feeling that at some point it might have to happen yet again.

Calm down, it's just an expression.

I think this could have real potential for getting raw material into orbit. Delicate electronics aboard satellites would obviously not fare too well with such high acceleration, but if we ever wish to build large space colonies in the Earth-moon area, this would be the way to do it. We'd probably need to spend a few billion to launch the machines necessary to process raw material, but apart from that, the rest could be made from raw material. The ISS masses about 400 tonnes. A small space colony that supports, say, 100 residents, would probably need to mass around 50 times that of the ISS, I would think, so that's around 20,000 tonnes, which would require about 50 launches with this gun.

You're complaining about a supposed need for multiple browsers and then your example is a site that YOU built that only works with IE7? Seriously?