But in my mind, it's still not space or deep space as it is sometimes called. These terms should have been reserved for some place that is not still basically here, closer than the next biggest city on the ground.

"Space" should be at least further away than the moon, and "deep space" should be out beyond the orbit of Mars. You know, actually far away from here.

Arbitrary? No worse than Karman. And it's going to look damn ridiculous when we start claiming deep space is low Earth orbit when we all know from scifi deep space is really way way out there, where nobody can hear you scream. Deep Space Transport Craft Nixon of course will go no such place. It will taxi to the moon and back. Some kinda deep space. It's just going to sound silly.

Are you at ALL familiar with the Hilux they're speaking about? There is a very good reason to want THAT specific pickup over any other. It's immortal.

See for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Parts 2 and 3 also available.

Don't forget the Hilux options for "Able to float out to sea and still run afterward" and "building demolition device"

GM would charge a LOT for those features and they wouldn't actually work.

Has GM seen a modern mobile device? Oh they are magical things indeed! Maps, GPS, instant messaging, email, music streaming, podcasts, MP3s, even streaming live TV and video, almost anywhere.

And with bluetooth, all of that can be streamed right into the car audio system. Or you can use an aux cable, truly the tail of the magic fairy.

The best part, all of that is included with my phone plan. As much as a I want. Oh sure there's a cap, but exceeding it by a huge margin still wouldn't hit this $150 a month rate, and that cost there would be for something only usable in the car. My magic mobile? Goes with me where I go, and if you will excuse me, I am going to go now, if you get my meaning. But I'll be online the whole time.

Magic times these are!

30Km/s? That's 67,000 miles an hour. Good luck with that if you're not using some anti-friction/anti-inertia techniques.

My job has mutated over the years such that that I am now tasked with doing work on I don't actually know how to do, on custom systems I don't understand. As a result, I suck at it. I have told management this many times but they blink and look at me like I am speaking Martian and basically think I don't WANT to work.

Anyway, I end up with a pile of work I can't do and a few things I can do and it is often a struggle to stay awake. I mean a serious battle between me and gravity pulling my head down to the desk. Snacks doesn't help. Three cups of coffee does not help. Even walks don't help: I am very good at falling asleep in motion.

Yeah it scares me too. Terrifies me.

The combination of boredom, lack of mental stimulation, and lack of ability to do the work leaves me physically devastated.

I am told I am the least productive employee in the whole company so I am waiting around now to see if they will fire me, at which point I will go home and take a nap.

That's it exactly: Google needs fibre so it can say to Comcast and ATT, we won't pay for users on your networks who want Google services. Instead, we''ll service them ourselves with a better product at same/better pricing.

It puts the ball back in Comcast's court to say they'll match the service or pricing and dares them to keep the network open. It would look awful for Comcast to start blocking services. Customers with a choice might just flee.

Eventually Google will need their own wireless coverage. Mobile is where they will make most of their money, if not already, and that means all the carriers will want a cut

Greed about what? What would we, either as a race of creatures, or as a populated biosphere, or even as the raw planet itself, what would we have that an advanced race could not find somewhere else for less hassle?

This assumes advanced races couldn't just do "magic" with materials sciences and simply make whatever they needed. If they still need raw material, why come here?

Water? We know there's a LOT of it out there. Our own Oort cloud could be mined for water for close to forever and we wouldn't know about it or be able to do anything. They won't need our oceans.

Gold? Metals? Asteroids. Free. Nobody with spears guarding them. They don't need your dental fillings.

Food? Oh come on, advanced races surely have sorted out getting rid of biological needs like food and waste processing. So they won't need to eat us.

Reproduction? Laughable. Our reproductive process is ridiculous. And probably not compatible. We don't have horse-humans running around and our DNA is already close to the horse DNA. Alien DNA won't be that similar. It would have to be modified, tested, modified more, tested more, to get to a viable hybrid. Hmmm....

Toys? Now this is really the only reason for them to come here. A set of living toys. If all we are to aliens is a set of toys, then we have no hope. This is worse than if they wanted to come here to eat us and take our water. Being a toy means we're only here until somebody decides they want new toys.

We do have plenty of evidence. Something is definitely going on.

The real truth is that humanity is merely a curiosity at this point. We think very highly indeed of ourselves but we're barely better than zoo animals and we go out of our way to ensure we stay that way.

Those who have come here to see what's up haven't felt any need to establish an open, formal relationship. It brings no benefit to them. We have nothing to offer they can't get now while they continue to operate as they have, and there's nothing we can do about it. Zero. So why bother talking to us?

That's the really sad thing: it's not that we can't find ET or if there is or is not an ET at all; it's that ET is around and just doesn't care about us.

The real problem is the ( and ). It would have been possible to construct that sentence as a whole thought and finish it rather than put the last bit in ( ), It's one thought, one statement; there is no need do it the way it was done. You're not interjecting something. It's all one sentence.

I think in nearly every case, whatever is being said can be structured in a way to eliminate the need to ever use those damn things. If you have to use them, you need to redo whatever you are trying to day, because you should not need them. And yet I know plenty of people find it impossible to write anything without using them.

It just pushes me to find ways to avoid them (the parenthesis, I mean; not the people).

Jokes like that about Canadians not getting into fights are funny but also sad. The country has experienced huge growth recently driven by immigration from all parts of the world. Those people bring with them whatever cultural tendencies that had in their places of origin. And that includes violence, quick tempers, fighting, etc. Things normally not what you'd expect from Canadians.

There are already enclaves of people who moved en masse from home country to Canada where they live just as they did before, complete with their own codes of justice and morality which mean more to them than provincial law.

Some of it is muted by exposure and blending to the overall culture, it is true. But It's also safe to say Canada will continue to slowly be less and less "Canada" and more just a melting pot more like the US. There is no way to stop this short of ceasing the immigration options.

So enjoy making jokes while you can. Assuredly somewhere in Canada somebody will soon enough cut off their child's head for something on religious grounds, and others will obtain guns under hunting laws and instead use them on people.

Noting: I am USAmerican. But I work for Canadian company, which has nearly all immigrant employees in our Toronto headquarters. These are people who have nothing to do with Canada in any way, except that they happen to live there now instead of some place you see on the "tragedy today in..." news stories from some country overseas. They do not share any of the laid-back traits Canada is famous for. At all.

I also completely get that modern Canada was created in the first place by immigrants who displaced the "first peoples" much as the Indians were displaced in the US. I get that Canada wouldn't be Canada without ships full of people moving in. However, in the old days, you moved to a new country and eventually blended in for the good of all and because you had no choice. Your shared DNA made all strong. Nowadays you can move in and watch the same TV you had at home, and never integrate into anything new. Instead of making all stronger, this makes pockets of infection increasingly at odds with the body.

This same thing is happening in the US, of course. We're just used to it here. We happily kill each other and think nothing of it. I fear for Canada. This hasn't been their norm, but it will be.

Agreed. The AG-1980 was excellent. The AG-6500 is also a good choice for SP only.

There's nothing to joke about here. I used to work next to the local Postal Police offices. Yes, they have their own cops. Yes, they have their own guns, and lots of undercover cars. They also have one of those fully-loaded mobile command centers that show up at major incidents. This vehicle is exactly the same as what any other government agency would have.

It's so loaded with gear and antennas, Google's map photos block out the whole vehicle to prevent anyone from seeing the equipment.

So go on making jokes. The Postal cops are just like any other police and their bullets will kill you dead just like any other.

I used to be a real fan of WRT54GL and happily ran Tomato on it for a long time, until I realized I needed gigabit ethernet (yes, I do need it) and Wireless N (yes I use it). The new router had to actually work, without crashing, and handle constant data load, and not need hand-holding.

Linksys had the E3000 which worked fine except the CPU was wimpy and the 5GHz never worked for me. Throughput was awful. So I went to closed-source hardware, specifically an Asus router, and it works just great. No problems. Lots of bells and whistles and enough horsepower to cope with actually doing what the buzzwords on the box say it can do, without crapping out. This thing is a beast. Never needs nursing. It just works.

The E3000 is now relegated to a glorified WAP and gigabit backhaul at the other end of the house. Tomato is still useful as I never have to maintain that box at all, not that it's being asked to do a lot.

Open source is great when it's compatible with what I need to do. But bottom line is, I need to do X task. If closed-source can do it, OK. But I am not holding my breath or suffering with some problem waiting for an open fix.

This is a classic example of governments and problems. When some sort of problem is identified, and "the people" want action to happen, the government has two choices to deal with the problem.

One, they can take appropriate action, if they can do that and know what to do and how to do it. Even better if doing so is relatively cheap. In this case, you do the cheap thing to make it go away.

Two, they can do everything in their power to suppress knowledge of the problem. A problem nobody knows about is one that doesn't need to be solved. This is especially important if the problem is big or serious, or affects a lot of people in a negative way, and to which the government has no solution. The only thing worse than a big problem is having "the people" aware of it and that their government is unable to act. So is is essential that the government take this route when they cannot solve the problem or don't know how, or can't afford the solution. Or there's some other reason they don't want to solve it but they can't admit that either.

So type one problems, you dump the reservoir. It's cheap to clean it out and, well, water is cheap anyway.

A good example of type two problems are the side effects from the chemical disposal mishandling at Groom Lake. To admit the problem exists would invite a huge liability mess. So by denying it, they avoid the problem. Because they can.

It has been speculated one reason the governments generally dodge the UFO issue is that if they were ever identified as a real force(s) of some kind, then the people would demand that something be done about stopping it. It's not clear anyone would have the ability to DO anything about it and when your government can't protect you, what good is the government? So a problem like this would have to be denied.

Thankfully there are no UFOs. So this is not a problem.