Come to think of it, I still haven't seen this movie. The first one was good, the second OK, the third... well, you get the picture.

Not only does this dump the IT costs on the employee, it often interferes with the employees private usage of the equipment. Eg: tech hardware that interfaces with the systems at work have to be locked down with the company security software, and all data on those systems is subject to inspection/audit by the company. This is at my wife's company (fortunately not mine). Needless to say, she doesn't bring any equipment to work. (I have, on occasion.)

When you have kids, most of the fun is the opportunity to give them gifts. Of course, as they get older, the gifts (toys) get more expensive, and that's not so fun.

Actually, the real concern was interference from Amateur Radio signals. The frequency range that these devices plan to use is in the 440 - 450 MHz range... which is right where a bunch of the little hand held ham radio units operate. The ARRL (National Amateur Radio Association) was the biggest group against the proposed usage, and the FCC only permitted the use with the prevision that it was Secondary to the existing licensees (HAMs). In other words, the medical devices cannot interfere with the radios, and they have to be able to live with any signals produced by radios. Here is an in depth article regarding the FCC grant.

And likely to stay. You actually have to study (at least a little), and spend some significant money to purchase radio equipment.

No doubt that there are some Hams who have gone silent key still on the rolls, but most of their registrations will expire after no more than 10 years. And the dead certainly don't account for many of the new registrations (except perhaps in Chicago).

It's probably expired by now, though, or close to.

Ten years is the license term, assuming you've kept your email current with the FCC. If you haven't, and some snail mail bounced, they will have kicked you to the curb sooner.

I just logged on to burn some MOD points when I saw this posted. Just picked up my HAM Technician license last month (Grandad was a HAM back in the 60's/70's... should of earned it sooner!), and upgraded to General class this week. Aiming for Extra next year. Now I just need to convince the wife to let me spend $2K - $20K on fancy radio gear so I can talk further than the nearby 2M/70cm repeaters...

But you also need hardware to access the Internet through the ISP. I definitely don't think that the it should be imperative on the State to provide individuals hardware so they can connect to the Internet... other than the computers down at the local library.

I'm glad I ditched satellite TV last month. Now I'll have to remember not to listen to the radio that day...

Return on investment was pretty good for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The space shuttle... not so much.

I seriously doubt that they would have an 18 meter bust, even if they were surveying using 1950's surveying equipment. Errors that creep in using simple trigonometry are on the order of 1:100,000. GPS is a whole lot more accurate.

Absolutely. We have an African Grey, and while Shredder (name earned from an annoying habit) doesn't have Alex's vocabulary, the words he/she does use are used appropriately. E.g.: The phone rights, and as you pick up, the bird says "Hello" before you do. You head to the stairway to call the kid down for school, and you here the kid's name before you say it. The funny thing is that you can't make the bird say anything... but you can't stop it from repeating words that it wants to say.

Plenty of web pages address this. Here's an example:

http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/conceptual_study_of_a_solar_power_satellite_sps_2000.shtml

Can we say "Flying Cars"?