This will probably wind up getting funding for one reason -- national security. It's vital to defense to be able to monitor (and to a large degree, predict) the weather. Think multi-billion dollar supercarrier fleet accidentally heading into a hurricane.

Or does the defense department have their own weather satellite network?

I completely agree about the slide out keyboard. I had a BB Curve a while ago, and I loved the hard keys. I moved to the BB storm because I desired a touch screen (I feel like a touch screen enables a smartphone to be anything, since it can turn the UI into anything), which was nice, but I greatly missed the hardkeys when typing out a necessarily long email while on the go. I moved to the Palm Pre Plus largely for this feature, and I absolutely love it.

I've seen a few devices of this size (the Archos 7 comes to mind; and I've seen them on the internet, not in person, mind you) and I think it's interesting to watch the industry try to figure out the correct form factor for this new niche that is emerging. Obviously it is going to be something larger than a cellphone and smaller than a laptop -- but what, exactly?

This Dell Streak, I think, is the exact wrong size. It's quite a bit larger than a phone, and it doesn't look like something that you want to carry around all day in your pant pocket. One of the reason cellphones have become so popular is because they are so small (and light-weight). Remember that for several years, the major thing about cellphones is that they were getting smaller and smaller? Compare a phone from, say, 2000, with a phone from today. Why would anyone want to reverse direction on that? It's too large for a phone.

On the opposite end, it looks too small to do any actual work. A netbook-sized screen is good for emails and browsing, but it's not very useful for doing serious business. And this thing is much smaller than a netbook. I don't think that's the aim, of course -- I think it's more aimed to the niche that the iPod targets; gaming, "always-on" style internet access, etc.. But I have to wonder if the device is too small for these things, as well. I think it might very well be.

But the overwhelming thing we seem to be seeing is that there are plethora of devices being released, each being in some significant way different from the next; companies are trying to find out what consumers want in a device like this. Maybe Apple has proven it with the iPad, given its popularity; they did that with the iPod, and now the market is full of MP3 players which are essentially iPod clones. But remember when MP3 players were first coming to market, there were many different form factors, many different storage devices (Sony had that thing with the mini CDs, for example), until it became clear what consumers want. The same thing should/will happen here; and I believe it's quite possible it's already happened with the iPad, and anyone making anything substantially different will wind up falling behind.

The one site that I can think of that actually does use a webcam/mic via flash is ChatRoulette. So we might all be better if we don't have cam/mic support....

The author mentions the disk access for deduped primary storage (he points out (rightfully so) that deduped primary storage will perform slower than non-deduped primary storage), but he failed to mention what I think is an important point when discussing deduplication and network performance/bottlenecks.

If you dedupe your backups (the author mentions, for example, a VTL solution), you then gain the ability to replicate only the unique data to your DR site. In terms of saving bandwidth, this can be an absolutely huge savings. Imagine if you backup to a VTL, and with dedupe you get an average 25:1 ratio; that means that, for the purposes of DR, you can replicate 25x more data through your pipe than you would have been able to, without dedupe.

The author mentions the disk access for deduped primary storage (he points out (rightfully so) that deduped primary storage will perform slower than non-deduped primary storage), but he failed to mention what I think is an important point when discussing deduplication and network performance/bottlenecks.

If you dedupe your backups (the author mentions, for example, a VTL solution), you then gain the ability to replicate only the unique data to your DR site. In terms of saving bandwidth, this can be an absolutely huge savings. Imagine if you backup to a VTL, and with dedupe you get an average 25:1 ratio; that means that, for the purposes of DR, you can replicate 25x more data through your pipe than you would have been able to, without dedupe.

You're acting like the Russians are just going to take his dollars and burn them in a furnace, or that somehow those dollars are going to be taken out of circulation, never to be used for anything ever again.

Realize that his $30 million is going to be spent by the Russians; on the development of new technology, on fuel (and hence, on employees of the energy companies), on paying engineers and scientists; on all the things required to maintain a space program.

If you want to support an industry - and most people on slashdot probably believe the space industry is one worth supporting - the best thing you can do is to buy their product. That's exactly what he's doing.