I wish I could abandon those "legacy" services. Want to convince my friends to move from YIM/AIM/MSN en masse for me?

Having a monopoly (at least in the US) is not illegal. Abusing that monopoly is. Bundling IE and tying it deeply into the OS is what got Microsoft in trouble.

For the ISS, launch windows are less than 10 minutes with about one window every day. This lasts a few weeks then there's a couple week period without a window.

Who said anything about going to the asteroid belt? There are hundreds of asteroids classed as "near Earth" that would be significantly easier to get to and from.

16:10 allows the windows taskbar and window titlebar to remain on the screen without obstructing a 16:9 video, while still letting the video take the full monitor width.

The problem with giving every child a computer isn't them having the computer, but all the costs associated with it like internet access. And a safe place to store said computer. Probably for a non-zero portion of the students that cannot afford a computer and internet access for it, the computer would be taken by the parents and sold for some quick cash.

I like the idea of a set of elementary school textbooks nationwide, but who gets to decide on their content? Right now, its the largest states (California, Texas, Florida, New York) that determine nearly all the content for the rest of the nation by virtue of their student population and buying power.

And you'll have to buy them again every couple of times a decade. Mostly because elementary school covers more than just the "three 'r's". I distinctly remember learning history (state and country), as well as government, science, and current events in addition to readin, ritin, and rithmatic.

So its DRM-free but tied to a specific user. Its still possible to put it on any device you own and give copies to your friends, but when its shows up on a torrent site it can be traced back to an individual.

Just make sure the friends you share it with don't upload it to a public place.

Well, you can convert it to .mobi, which the Kindle will happily read. Amazon has a few formats, including .azw which is a DRM'd version of .mobi.

Yeah, its a terrible name. But what else would they have named it? Xbox 2? That would be really bad, because the general public would see the choice between "Xbox 2 or Playstation 3". They'd read it as, "3 > 2, why should I buy the system with the lower number, its obviously worse," and buy PS3 instead.

But what about those students who cannot afford a computer at all? How are they supposed to complete their assignments?

Its steps one and three. The SuperDracos are to eliminate step two. At least per the video they released a few months back.

SpaceX Reusability

NASA did do a full duration "Flight Readiness Firing" before each Shuttle lifted off for its first mission. Videos of them can even be found on Youtube.

Like Columbia's.

I suspect the chances of all 12,000 people using their internet bandwidth at the same time was pretty likely. Especially since they asked people to try and max it out at a specific time to set a utilization record.

http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw11/2011/11/22/120-gigabit-at-dhw11/

Sorry to tell you this, but it is. Newer LCDs have LED backlights which don't require that pesky inverter.

The Russians had a Proton M/Briz M fail less than a week before the Soyuz/Progress (M-12M) failure. Both failures, IIRC, were for similar reasons.