Are you shaking my hand because you're friendly, or are you secretly reading my ID, sending the information off to your ops center, and are now going to clone my ID and sneak into my secret lab that I shouldn't have just mentioned on Slashdot....crap

What goes in, must come out. I'm not sure if I'd like to swallow a pill every day for authentication. Besides, it doesn't seem that secure. What's to stop my friend from taking my pills and authenticating as me? The Tattoo idea may be better, but it better be secure. You can't exactly "Patch" a tattoo with a security fix.

I had a coworker who was banned from Canada for years. He was driving over the border and was asked what the intent of his stay in Canada was. He said pleasure, because he didn't want to do the worker visa hassle. They opened the trunk and found his toolbox. They were not amused. It took 5 years of the companies lawyers working on it to get his travel restrictions removed. Moral of the story is, either don't lie about the purpose of your visit, or make it impossible for them to find out that you're going to do work.

Middle of Michigan. Not exactly prime solar country.

I had thought about propane generators. They seem to bypass a lot of the wear issues of gas powered generators. Plus, I've always got two propane tanks around already.

My wife and I coupon as well. Couponing is a great fit with my techy side. I remember talking to a friend who watched extreme couponing. They were commenting on how some of these freaks had 5 computers for printing out coupons from the internet. I laughed. I've got 7 computers for just me and my wife. I didn't buy them to print out coupons, but they work great for that purpose. We've got a reasonable stockpile of food. I've thought about trying to get a generator so that I could provide power to my freezer. It's a 20 sqft chest freezer. I looked at generator prices, and I eventually decided that it wasn't worth it. A decent generator costs +$400. I don't know how much money of meat, cheese, etc I have in the freezer, but it's just not worth the cost for a "Just in case" situation. It would be different if generators didn't require maintenance and work, but they do. You can't just let them sit unused forever and expect them to run without a hitch. Also, stocking fuel would be a problem for me. I don't like the idea of keeping 5-20 gallons of gas/diesel in cans in my garage.

The best smartphone OS for the enterprise is still the BB by FAR. I'd list iOS as #2 because of their limited hardware selection and OS updates. I'm not sure if Windows or Android would be next, but I'm guessing it would probably be Windows phone. This is not to say that your users will want to use the phone you give them, but from an administrative perspective, BB is leaps and bounds above everything else. My favorite setting on the BES server was that you can wipe the BB when the battery gets below a certain threshold. So, you could tell a BB that if it ever gets below 10% battery, wipe itself. I just had a hard time coming up with any legitimate reason to implement such a feature.

The problem there is, wouldn't the fault be with the neighboring farmer? Maybe he'd have a case if his neighbor was supposed to have a "barrier row" of plants but didn't. Regardless of that, it's sometimes wise to not sue your neighbors, even if you have a legal case to sue them. Why? Because they'll probably have a legal case to sue you some time down the road.

We do this all the time with science. For example, when was the last time you ate a banana that had seeds in it? Self-terminating is a harsh term. I prefer the term seedless. Than you can charge people more for it, because everyone wants seedless fruits and veggies.

Lest we forget that even if you made a device that flew safely and satisified all of the requirements from the safety boards, you'd still have what I'd imagine as a giant gas guzzler of a car/plane. You thought a 10 MPG SUV was bad, wait till you see the 2 MPG flying vehicles of tomorrow!

In L.A., going 40 MPH in the air would be a 1000% improvement over going 4 MPH on the highway. Seriously though, it's not rocket science. First, you're limited to speed by the speed limit, so it's not a 2.5x difference, it's more like 2x difference. Than, you factor in all of the perks of flight such as direct A to B navigation (Yes, I know that if you need a runway, you can't exactly do A to B navigation, but the idea still holds). The term, "As the crow flies" applies here. Depending on where you are going, being able to fly in a direct line could cut down 20-30% of the travel distance. For instance, I live in Michigan. If I want to go to Wisconsin, I could save a crap ton of time by flying over Lake Michigan. Also, highways don't always go where you want to go. Even a somewhat direct route over 55mph roads with stoplights, stop signs, and traffic would bring your MPH average down significantly.

Having said all that, this company states in TFA that they were designing it for medical missionaries. I'm guessing that in the areas these people are operating, they aren't choosing between I80 or I75 to get to their destination. I'm sure that flying above the trees in Brazil or Africa could save you a ton of time. Also, coming into a primitive village in a flying machine gives you instant "God Cred".

Is that a new station, or an existing one?

Keep that toolbox strapped to the space station.

I'll just keep pirating. I'd pay the "Tax" if I could, but I'm not going to get BBC America, since it's often in the top tier of providers listings. It's not worth $60-70 a month. I'd pay $2-5 a month.

Yawn. Call me when the first TV channel I've heard of opens a Youtube channel.