Google talk is the perfect example of how the beancounters will stick to certain principles even if they are shooting themselves in the foot twice a day. Lock all your users in! People who want to talk to them will also have to get a Google account! The basics of chatting was done in the late cretacious. The ONLY way any chat service can beat the competition is by opening up to other servers. If google, skype and whatsapp users could chat with each other, they would kick Facebook in the nuts, HARD. Even just opening up to corporate Sharepoint servers would give serious extra traffic, with all the American CIOs who shit their pants at the idea of corporate data not residing on their own servers.

The neutrino is going to go straight through you with a 99.99999% probability. But if it does stop inside your body and deliver its energy, it should give of one hell of a whack. Wonder if you would be able to feel that?

company dears to do something in the US (under cover of darkness) which is standard practice everywhere else on this planet. Welcome to the 21th century!

Everybody here should enter the same comment: "I would like an independent body to calculate the cost vs. saved lives and compare it to other possible investments like traffic safety, cancer research, or promoting healthier lifestyles to school children."

Most Wifi access points can easily be configured to shut down during night time hours, with a simple on/off button on the front for those nights were you need data access late.

A simple .22 will do the trick as well!

The one use I can see here is tracking criminals who use throw-away phones. Unless the "spatio-temporal points" are dependent on your phone model of course. (No I did't read the article...)

is my favourite time-waster. Just draw some buildings, put in a cycle path. It gives a nice feeling that the time you spent there is not wasted and will benefit others.

The "sahara" version of the 2CV had 2 engines (front and back) and 4WD. It was so light it would easily pass through loose sand where other jeeps got stuck. The "DS" looked like a modern aerodynamical car in 19-frickin-55. Hydro-pneumatic suspension, power steering, swivelling headlights. They sold 12000 the first day. British Top Gear compared the suspension of the C6 to a BMW 7 series by driving around on a horse track with a video camera strapped to the roof. With the Citroen, you could actually see the horses.

chalk this one up as cheap publicity for the politician. I AM Belgian, and right now the vast majority of electricity comes from Nuclear. We simply do not have enough wind power yet to justify such an investment. Note that Belgium is a world leader in dredging (we did the dubai artificial islands), and that the biggest dredging company is in the politicians constituency.

If they delivered full IPV6 with a CNAT as fallback, I might understand. All the big boys are on IPV6 nowadays anyway. But only CNAT? That, my friend, is connectivity they can shove where the sun don't shine...

In Belgium, where guns are strictly controlled, most burglaries are done by unarmed Romanian children. The gangs give them proper training before shipping them to Brussels, and the first thing they learn is that when they get caught, they have to stick their hands up and wait for the cops. The cops send the kiddies back to romania, and a week later a new shipment arrives. You see, "bad guys" is a word invented by the NRA, so they can put thieves and psychos in one bag. Thieves are not interested in killing you, they are interested in MONEY. Gun control is not about thieves, it is about mentally unstable people, and most gun related deaths are suicides.

. Or just ask the patient to take his next dump in a plastic bag...

I speak 5 languages myself, work in a technical environment, and it is not appreciated at all. I applied for a job where my knowledge of languages would be an obvious asset (international helpdesk), but my 10 years of language learning was wiped out by a 10 minute psycho-test showing I wouldn't throw down the phone fast enough. Don't get me wrong: learn french and you will see how Jacques Brels lyrics will send John Lennon running home to his mommy crying. Every language you learn means new people you meet and new treasures you discover. But I have never gotten a job or a raise because of it. It is like juggling oranges: nice conversation topic at the xmas party, but not something that adds to your bottom line. If you are going to do it, German is the obvious second technical language in both west and eastern Europe.

I never understood why Linksys, DLink et al don't push hard into brownware. Imagine a Blue-Ray with buildt in DNLA and powered by POE. Only one cable, no separate power supply needed. DVB-T? Put a box in the attic and connect it wih a single ethernet cable. Make an amplifier with a POE switch up its ass, and a DNLA client. Could be the start of a very nice product line.