I actually got to see the city people out and about with their picks and what-not cleaning the snow out - had never thought about that being needed until a recent storm. The hoods over the lights I saw did have open bottoms. Unfortunately, the snow managed to build up in there anyways, probably not unlike how I had an couple of inches sticking to the side of my car. (That's my own darn fault for not parking in the garage...)

Will they really need a carrier subsidy? We've been able to get netbooks at retail in the $300 range; rather than drop the price over time, they up the specs to hold at that price point. If components continue to drop in price or increase in capability, shouldn't the specs that were hinted at be possible at the $300 price point without a mobile carrier?

Where I am (upper Midwest), we have two seasons: Winter, and Road Construction.

I dunno - I've been using G-Mail and Google Apps since each was introduced, and this is the first time one of their outages has impacted me, or anyone else that I talk to (true, that's not a lot of people, but...).

>CSJA (Court System Judges of America)

Shouldn't that be Court System Judges Industry Association of America (CSJIAA)?

That's not entirely accurate... I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 from an older distro, and ended up needing to replace my video card because it was no longer supported. (Now, it may be true that I could have spent some amount of time making things work, but I thought the goal was to have things "just work" for the average person.) So, yes, it's true I didn't need to get a whole new machine, I did end up having to shell out for a new video card, which wasn't cheap.

Given is's been a closed beta for a while, I really wish they'd expand to the USA.

A grand hack in the truest tradition. And the very end of the story brought a tear to my eye.

True, but I've changed some of my kids' diapers that made me want to barf.

Yup - running on a Via C3, and no problems what-so-ever. (Well, running might be stretching things a bit...)