Surely your town has a hotel. Every hotel I've stayed in for the last 15 years (mostly Hampton Inns) has had an analog TV with a fancy remote that looked like a digital interface. Once I saw "rain fade" revealing it was Dish Network behind the covers. If you have credentials to prove you work for the municipality, stop by a few hotels and ask if you can see the equipment that drives their TV system.

And while I'd think it would be nice to cancel the cable and save the town some cash (like another poster suggested), I would expect the fire department to have cable to keep the firemen sane. Well, as "sane" as you can get and still run into a fire.

You do know that costs are different from prices, right? And that iSuppli has been doing this for years?

They're careful to state that they're not including distribution, packaging, R&D, or anything like that. They're just counting the raw materials.

We cut you off, because we were legitimately changing lanes when you came up so fast behind us that from your perspective, we were cutting you off.

Translation: "We cut you off, because we wanted to be in your lane and don't know how to use either a rear view or side view mirror."

I believe I cut off a speeder a while ago. I looked in all my mirrors, looked over my shoulder, and didn't see any problems. I was travelling at the speed limit (well, 2-3 mph over, like the rest of traffic). After I had committed and was half way there, I saw a motorcycle come from out of nowhere. He was clearly going significantly faster (20mph over traffic speed) and had planned to use the space I was moving into. I made some assumptions about traffic density, average speed, where traffic flow normally goes, etc. and I made the move. Yet, it turned out I cut off a motorcycle driver. When it was done, I knew full well my motion had caused him to brake and take evasive action. There was nothing else I could have done in my 2200 pound vehicle. His little bike was far more prepared to evade me.

Of course, not only did he evade me, but he matched my speed and started pounding on my hood with his left fist.

It is possible to cut someone off without seeing them, even when performing due diligence. It is far more likely when someone is traveling at a speed significantly different from the rest of traffic. You thinking I'm stupid and don't know how to use my mirrors doesn't change that. If you're doing 70 in a 50, in traffic doing 55, you're taking some lane changes that mean you're not always visible.

Why is it all hardware is set by default to run just barely below the overheat point?

Because when we had high power computers that continued to cool to their best effort, people complained about how noisy they were. By the time you add 3-4 cooling fans and have them running at full power, things get quite noisy. So, you have to use some sort of tradeoff. From the perspective of a console maker, why not run it at some high temperature like 85C? If you have confidence that you can keep it from getting to 95C (or wherever is dangerous), running at a single temperature seems to have the least number of physical stresses. Additionally, at 85C, when you have an ambient of 30C or less, that amount of thermal delta means you can dissipate a lot of power with only a little air flow.

It's dried up minerals dust from the evaporated water - the water in Phoenix is extremely "hard", so pretty much anything that involves evaporating water (swamp coolers, humidifiers, dishwashers, etc) will result in a film of white dust building up.

I like the theory, but I don't think that's it. If that were the case, all belongings should have this coat. Beyond dust, there should be these crystalline minerals all over everything. Every metal surface would have major oxidation problems pretty quickly. Stainless steel isn't really stainless, it's stain resistant. There's a reason most boats are constantly being repainted.

The solution is to either a) use distilled water or b) use a water softener.

Using distilled water in this volume is not a solution. And all water softeners work by adding more crap to the water -- so potassium and calcium would precipitate out as it's treated, so it's got to be flushed out (using even more water) or it'll be deposited somewhere worse.

1) it can use salty water. It's drinking water that we are short on.

Why do you believe it can use salty water? I've seen salt deposits, and I've worked with swamp coolers. If you spray salt water at a fiber mesh and force air through this mesh to evaporate the water and cool/humidify the air, the salt remains in the mesh, right? So it's eventually so clogged no air goes through? And the salt that makes it into the air will rust out the motor driving the fan and end up depositing itself all over your ducts and house. I'd bet you'd need to replace your swamp cooler mesh every few weeks or even every month, replace the motor annually, and if you had any metal in your ducts, they'd not be worth anything after a few years. And that's ignoring the effects of salt deposits all over your home.

We're currently running in the mid-90's with dewpoints in 80's. "Swamp coolers" just don't work well in this climate, so I don't know how useful this will be to us.

Wikipedia doesn't do the principle justice. A swamp cooler is essentially a big fiber mesh (which can look and feel similar to cardboard but holds up when it gets wet). This mesh is constantly sprayed with jets of water to keep it wet -- damp isn't enough. A big fan, bigger than a typical air conditioner, forces air through this mesh and pushes it into the house. Each room that needs to be cooled needs to vent air out, typically into the attic and out into the outside. The more air you move through this mesh, the cooler the house, so it's typical that the air volume is much higher than an air conditioner.

The humid air introduced into the house is essentially at dew point (if it's lower than dew point, the mesh / jets aren't doing their job forcing the water into the air), so the house will likely be warmer than that, making a few assumptions about the conditions outside. Now, if you had this pre-drier in Alabama, dropping the dew point to 40 or 50, you'd be able to cool the air 20 or so degrees -- about what your air conditioner does.

By the way, I grew up in Phoenix. Instead of the $400/month power bills from running the air conditioners, my parents opted to run swamp coolers. The water bill regularly got above $100/month, but the electric bill didn't. Financially, it was a good trade-off. I'm told there are health benefits from breathing more humid air instead of dry desert air, and the air was constantly being refreshed from the outside, so there certainly weren't any toxic house concerns that people in some areas of the country have. On the flip side, there's the monsoon season, which is typically the whole month of August; the dew point rises to the point where swamp coolers just don't cool much. Several of my Magic: The Gathering cards (mostly Revised aka 3rd Edition) felt like they had a powdery coating on them. I assume this is mold. If it was on my cards, I'm certain it was on countless other surfaces we just never touched enough.

except the advantage the other two have are great titles, especially PS3.

I have no interest in a Wii3D, but a WiiHD would be very nice. I've enjoyed Wario Shake It, Paper Mario and Wii Sports Resort. I'll get New Super Mario Bros Wii when the price drops a bit. My wife has beat every Lego Movie game (both Star Wars, both Indiana Jones, Batman ...). In all, we have nearly 30 games and I think only the Coraline one has been played less than 5 hours. My 6 year old daughter has enjoyed several kiddie games that I haven't seen on the "big boy consoles".

Burnout and Little Big Planet are the only games I'd like from the PS3, and I don't really see a reason to cough up more than $100 to play them. The next Nintendo, however, will certainly have a few dozen games I'm interested in. I don't see PS3 or XBox having a significant library advantage. Hardware, certainly. XBox Live I suppose, and if Natal was $50 or less, it would be tempting (with a good Yoga program, I don't think I could stop her from getting Natal + a 360).

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about VI

VI is power. Do the math.

Seriously. Voltage times current ...

Now the question is, why can't Adobe add a feature to the Flash authoring tool to just output the HTML5 and whatever is needed, that smokescreen does in the browser?

Hasn't this been the whole question bantered about in the media? Where Adobe says that Flash isn't about distribution or language, but about making content easier to create? Where Apple says they want people to be creative and make that easy, but that the Flash interpreter sucks donkey balls due to its affinity for crashing and battery munching? What part of that isn't precisely "Export Flash content to HTML5"?

So instead of purchasing a game new for say $50 then the expansion for another $30 they waited till the set was $20 then purchased them all the while getting full use of a game that others paid full price for. That is stealing and is wrong in my book as they took something they liked then continued to play the game(although I know many people that did the same thing).

I'm torn. Part of me wants to agree with you because everything you said was right. Part of me wants to say this is the very definition of supply and demand. Blizzard in fact got the money they were asking for the game. Of course, you don't steal a new car from a car dealership and 5 years down the line pay them the KBB for it used, but then again, the copyright infringement didn't deprive Blizzard of any income either.

First of all, starters have a limited lifetime. If you force cars to engage them at nearly every stoplight, they will wear out 10 times faster or more.

I've worn out one starter. Replaced it when the car was 10 years old, and it survived every summer that Phoenix had to throw at it for those 10 years. When it died, how much of that wear was age, and how much was wear and tear in that environment? I'm betting both are a factor. If this idea means that a starter starts to last 8 years instead of 10, I think that's a major win. Especially where roads are salted and bodies rust out before 8 years. If 10% of the car population had to replace a $50 starter every 8 years, I think we're all going to save a lot of gas. And that's if starters haven't improved in the last 20 years, AND if starters aren't made more robust in preparation for this idea.

Second, if my engine shut off at a stoplight in the Texas summer, my air conditioning would not work and I would effectively be baking in an oven.

I'm in Austin now. There are three intersections that I stop at where I can tell I'll be there for more than 30 seconds. More than half the time, I'll stop the engine and save some gas. Yes, there are some times when it starts to get warm (namely the 5:30 commute), but for the most part, it takes as long to heat up as it does to cool down. And not much cooling seems to happen in a stationary car anyway.

I have several patents in my name, filed by my employer. With the business climate the way it is (which is to say, globally flat to slightly rising revenue, improving profits and a rise in stock price because of a constant decline in costs), we're being scrutinized on the patents we do file. If the costs go up even more, we'll file for fewer of them. There's already mounting pressure to keep ideas as "trade secrets".

I'm 34. I've regularly used computers as old as 1981, but most of them have been retired for a long time. I mis-voted 1-3 because my work laptop and home desktop are that age. Then I remembered my work Unix box, 5 years old, and my home server, 7 years old. I regularly use both, but of course that's less than 10, so I'm in the category that surprises you.

If I had a Unix box from 10+ years ago, I'd be itching to replace it -- I remember those; my oldest Unix experience was from an HP 705 which wasn't new when I found it (introduced in 1992, I used it in 1997), but I only used it for a short time -- I used 715s and 735s from 1993 much more. A laptop from 2000 or before (my home server is a laptop -- a 1GHz Powerbook) is very slow, and wouldn't be able to keep up with what I demand of a home server.

As near as I can tell, either you didn't read the poll right, or you have a very different view of the longevity of hardware than I do. And I use hardware longer than anyone else I know.

Professionals are paid for their time. Period. You can slice it however you want, but almost no one works piece meal. Most of those that do are VERY far down the skill ladders.

That view is going to limit you. In my job, the more I can modularize, the more I can automate, the more I can call on previous experience -- that results in being able to work more efficiently. My employer cares that objectives are completed on time. If I can do it in 30 hours a week, and a coworker takes 50, we're judged the same. If I then take on an additional 10 hours of work, I'm a team player working on broad horizons, and I'm going further with my career.

Customer work is similar. 15 years ago, my employer was contracted to deploy workstations for a major engineering firm. The customer was educated -- they knew it took 2 hours to deploy a workstation. They argued about billable hours, etc., the contract was awarded, and I began the work. I built 2 stations that way, spent an hour to ensure I understood the dd command, and each workstation was 15 minutes after that. Of course, the contract stipulated 2 hours of billable hours for every workstation, no more NO LESS.

Even when we're paid by the hour, a good engineer (who is, by definition lazy) will be able to reduce the work necessary by finding common tasks in his job. Nearly every intellectual job has some ability for automation.