hahaha. Yes, very good april fool's day jokes. Merging OpenSUSE and Debian? LOL the first thing that caused me to see that as odd is the fact that they have different packaging systems. RPM and DEB. :P Among other things.

This is BS. Seriously. M$ is trying to go back to its 90's era dishonest business practices. Sounds like Steve Ballmer needs his behind kicked up between his shoulders. I don't blame M$ for wanting to catch people using illegal software. Not at all. However, why should I have to be sued for my supplier's BS and especially in another country. The problem these days is that we can all oppose this but it wouldn't make any difference to M$ and maybe not even in the federal government because so many officials are in bed with corporations. LOL M$ needs their behind whipped good for this one. I'd like to see M$ try to sue someone for this and win. It will waste time in the courts and waste taxpayer money on frivolous and egregious lawsuits due to companies having to protect themselves. And of course, small companies can't afford to pack the court room with an army of top notch attornies like M$ can.

THIS IS a good idea. Excellent idea really. It would require stations that could change the battery out jack spratt and on the dime. People aren't going to wait more than about 2 minutes to swap the battery. It can be done. However, you'd have to have one or a very few standard size batteries. One size for small and medium size cars and one for trucks and larger cars. It could be done though. Interesting idea. Obviously you would pay a charge for the replacement battery. The cost of electricity to charge the battery would be part of the price as well as the cost of labor to keep up with them all the time not to mention buying the batteries. There would have to be a national battery exchange program as it is unlikely that only one company or service station system across the country would handle them. The people handling these batteries would have to be licensed and certified for such. You don't want just any DA rolling batteries around. And you want to make sure they know how to connect the batteries correctly and not drop them, etc. One DOWN side I see with this is that it would not likely be a self service installation! You would almost be going back to the model of the full service station to have an attendant "fill up" with a recharged battery. Each station would have the business of keeping up with them. Testing, replacing, inventory, ordering, moving, transporting, distributing, warehousing, etc all of which are pretty well understood. For that matter the stations would be in a good position to deal with the recycling of worn out batteries so that they don't wind up in the bottom of a landfill one day. I could see a business in this. Just don't expect the oil industry to jump right on board! :) There is one fact about this though. It is still not as cheap or as convenient as filling up your own gas tank and jumping back in the car. If they could find a way to do that then maybe. But I don't trust people to be honest with self service battery replacement. Not to plug it in right and to deal with moving batteries, damaged batteries, defective batteries, etc. People that pay a full price for a battery but then the station didn't know it was defective and an argument ensues at the next station over a refund and yet the battery didn't come from the same company that owned the station that installed it last time. Talk about a SERVICE nightmare. Some way would have to be created to deal with his problem. We live in a sea of DA's. :)

Well, this is interesting. On the workstations level it might be true that they are "quieter" but somewhere the AC is being converted to DC. Seriously, that would require a huge power supply of some kind and there will always be some inefficiency in that conversion process. So really, I don't buy that it is more efficient as a whole load on the power system. Seriously, unless they have a power supply with rectifiers that are VERY efficient (over 90% or more) then I don't see how this is an advantage. I have heard people ask me why we aren't using DC for everything. And they are people that don't know anything about electricity. Such as the fact that AC was chosen because it can be transmitted across great distances at high voltage levels with far lower losses than DC. More secure? What moron thought this up? It is a electric current. One is not more "secure" than the other. :)

9 sentences? If it was a page long I could see it. Then again all the other posts in here that have "paragraphs" don't even have 3 sentences minimum to form a proper paragraph. What the h are you talking about? If it was a book I wrote I'd understand. Go hide under a rock or something. Besides, you posted as anonymous coward which says something already. :)

The answer is NO, definitely not. 220V would not be good for rapid charging. But why do you need to recharge at home that fast in the first place? Now, out at rapid charging stations where you can stop and recharge in a few minutes they will likely have 440V circuits that can deliver that kind of current. If you have a 200 mile battery you will probably be able to recharge at home in 4 hours (on 220V) anyway which should be enough after you get home from work to charge up for the next day. If you are at a place where you need a quick charge then stop at the quick charge station. Adding the kind of infrastructure it would take to have 440V circuits in every house plus substations and distribution network for every house to handle that much power for rapid charging is unreasonable except for at targeted locations that have quick charge stations. Even then I like the idea of the other poster of using fly wheel storage systems (where a flywheel spins on magnetic bearings) for quick charge stations. A station could have have several of the flywheel systems that are running at all times (large ones). So that as people charge quickly it slows down the flywheels a bit but then when no one is charging (maybe over night or middle of the day etc) then the flywheels speed up again and are ready for more quick charging at the station. Also it would allow for even higher voltages and currents than a 440V infrastructure can provide and make it less expensive to provide a power connection to a station.

I put science in quotes because the people that oppose fact based science simply invent science from their own religious or spiritual or anecdotal point of view. I mean I have other beliefs myself. But when it comes to Science for the purpose of implementation we need to base it on science fact. It is scary and disturbing that this movement against real science is taking hold. Especially, it is scary coming from the religious right and the teabagger/republicon crowd. These loons in the right wing will set us back centuries in science if they get their way. A bunch of nutcases. Thanks again (NOT) for voting republicon. You get what you vote for and so this is what we get from the right wing freaks. As for left wing, I honestly don't see this as much. Most "liberal nuts", as they are named by ring wingnuts, are usually attached to at least some basis of science fact when talking about the environment, technology, or even policies for energy, etc from the Government. The one exception that IS notable has to do with Nuclear energy. They are usually not educated on the new generation of nuclear technology that is much cleaner and safer than older reactor designs (IE newer Molten Salt, Breeder Reactors, etc). Anyway, there is at least some consideration among them for science fact. Where as the "intelligent design" and other delusional nutcases don't base anything in collected scientific discoveries.

As with some of the other posts I would be concerned about raising the eyebrows of the local intelligence agencies by encrypting a connection. In some countries (Iran for instance) i would think this would almost automatically trigger a police officer at your door for questioning or a visit to a local police station for interrogation. They would want to know what secrets you are hiding from them. I also imagine that leaving things unencrypted is undesirable as well. Personally, using "normal" channels is a mistake. Too bad there are not some affordable yet covert communications channels that have little to do with traditional phone networks or internet. Or at least something that transmits at different frequencies in small bursts that just look like background interference etc (I know CDMA works on this but that doesn't help in foreign countries and it is still in a domain that the authorities monitor from the CO, backbone, etc). I am sure the CIA has something like this. But it is about time that we had alternative paths that are covert and very difficult to even detect. In which case, it would not even have to be a really high speed connection for something like sending an email now and then or the occasional document or file. Even then, there is still risk with something like that being suspect by the local intelligence agencies if it is a device they know that you have and they become curious about something that is not simply a "normal" cell phone or small computing device. It seems best to just live with their local laws and try not to counteract them because otherwise there is a high risk of winding up in a very bad prison or similar situation and maybe no way for your own country to get you out of trouble.

I fail to see how this is informative. My droid phone multitasks to one's heart delight without even thinking about it. And even IOS doesn't allow full multitasking all the time. The downside with the multitasking in android is reduced battery life at times. However, it is a tradeoff I am willing to make. I can switch between apps at will and no problem. :) I am sure WP7 is pretty good. Still, I will stick with android for now. :) Multitasking is nothing new. These are the not the droids you are looking for. Move along. Move along.

I have mixed feelings about this. First of all the government cannot really afford to be doing overarching things like this right now. Is having LTE everywhere important? Yes, I think it is. Can the government afford to fund it for the carriers? NO. There needs to be a massive contraction in spending right now including on the defense budget. I think that given enough time that LTE will probably get close to the government mandate of 98% coverage. It might take longer but it will get there. I only wish that mobile wireless wasn't so darn expensive and limited. 3g is not that specacular. REAL 4g (as in LTE) is pretty good but it is still going to have capacity issues compared to cable and DSL. I think it makes sense for rural areas where telecoms cannot afford to wire every neighborhood or home with fiber. And when I mean REAL 4g I don't mean T-mobile's or ATT's "4G Like" HSPA+ system. It is fine on its own but it is not 4G and should not be marketed as such. It is rather misleading I think.

How in the H did this post get rated up to 3 for insightful. This is not an insightful post. In fact, it is exactly the kind of uninformed opinion about high speed rail in the US that prevents it from being possible. Now personally, I don't think we should do it right now mainly because we can't afford it. But more dangerous than an airplane? You don't know what you are talking about at all. Not trying to be offensive but you don't. Rail is very safe and even safer than flying statistically. IN fact, if you look at the safety record for the TGV in France you will see that they have had ZERO fatalities in its operation over the last 34 years or so of operation. There have been a few derailments but not many. Find out the facts before you open your mouth. The shinkansen in Japan has a similar safety record. The ICE trains in germany have been a little less safe but only because of stupid things like a recent accident where a sheep herd managed to break out into a tunnel which caused an ICE train to have a massive train wreck. But even then that is amazingly the exception and not the norm. Even then, I am not aware of any deaths from the accident. To some extent its true about train stations in some cities. But in NYC? Are you kidding. Of course the subway goes to the train station. I don't know about other cities. I will only comment on what I know. But unsafe? Hardly. MUCH, MUCH safer than flying actually. Although, flying really is not unsafe either. Just like to clear up some things that aren't even half truths about high speed rail but rather total untruths.

None of this is surprising. Windows 7 is pretty good and so is office. But these are not the paradigms of the future. Mobile and cloud computing together are the future. I think that the Meteoric rise of Android proves it. As well as the continued popularity of the Iphone and other mobile devices. I think the Ipad's success proves it as well. M$ has barely shown up lately for the mobile space. WP7 is decent but it doesn't have all the details and functions of the Iphone and Android. It amazes me how Android has barely existed for a little over a year (at least in the minds of consumers) and it is already a platform that is sophisticated, (relatively) easy to use, and has a large market full of usefull apps. Only the Iphone rivals it. And vice versa. Blackberry also has stagnated lately. The deal in the mobile space is Apple Ipad, Iphone, Android phones, and with honeycomb you can include Android tablets. Google is not going away in this space and certainly not Apple. Both have been visionary and innovative while M$ continued to rely on their desktop and corporate server Hegemony to live in lala land and hope for continued automatic replacement and upgrade sales for Windows and Office. They can no longer guarantee this market anymore. It is changing fast and M$ is asleep at the wheel. Interestingly enough, Linux has actually pushed forward into the consumer space in some forrm (finally) I mean this in the form of android. Now I wonder what is going to happen with intel? I mean they are not going away right away. But really they need to come up with something better than ATOM in the mobile space if they want to survive. I don't understand why they sold off their ARM division and products anyway. Especially now that ARM is growing in the mobile space and even the slumbering giant in Redmond has realized that the next version of windows will need to run on the ARM architecture.

Why were they this clueless? The internet was already beginning to take off. At the college i was at in 1993-1994 a lot of people were already logging onto the internet and learning the graces of pine, gopher, telnet, and FTP. I mean it wasn't very sophisticated but it wasn't new! A significant number of students were already there. In fact, I remember logging in to chat with people and use forums on ISCA which some of you may remember at the Univ of Iowa. It was a fairly popular BBS online at the time it seemed. I do remember mentioning to other people including some students of the era what the "information superhighway" was going to mean and many acted like idiots. "Why would I want that?" "Well, that's just stupid. No one will want that" Etc. Pure negativity which is a pretty American way to respond to something new they don't understand. Anyway, they have their foot in their mouth today.

I think this movie should be named Cablegate 2010: The Assange Story. LOL, or maybe Michael Moore will make his own documentary by this name. "The most dangerous man in the world" sounds a little overkill to me. :P But if it has enough drama then maybe it works.

Another US company selling off our technology to the Chinese to make a quick buck. And yes, what another user said about business schools is true. I know because I went to one RECENTLY. And the mantra is "Take care of your stockholders and their return before anything else". Even accounting books will tell you that the corporation's primary objective is to earn a profit for the stockholders first and pretty much everything else is secondary. That includes employees and customers. They are important but only in so far as making a profit for the shareholders. I think the answer is that corporations and the government here have long since sold us all off to the far east. The chinese are pretty clever and before long they will be the biggest economy and the largest "superpower" in the world. How do we turn this all around? The people of this country have to take the government back for us. How to do that though when almost all the politicians are corrupt and they to are only interested in a quick buck in their back pockets? I'd like to think it would stop short of armed conflict or revolution.