They may have better soft products, but that's because of increased costs. A similar ticket in the US costs 1/3 less than in Europe (e.g. LAX-SFO vs AMS-LHR). Want to fly cheaper in Europe? Then you get stuck with low cost carriers, who are efficient and make their money by stuffing more people into airplanes than anyone else (my knees are still complaining from an Iberia express flight a few days ago).

Moreover, in the US, if you fly a decent amount, you get status quickly. In Europe, it's several times harder (e.g. discount economy gives you only 1/2 miles and the number of miles you need is higher). I fly enough, and use United for every trip. I get a lot of small perks, including more legroom, priority security, etc... And I don't pay much more than the low cost carriers in Europe. So, for me, US carriers are much better than elsewhere.

Now, if you have the opportunity to fly on a legacy from Europe, or, particularly, from Asia, then that will be much nicer. But you'll pay for it.

Pharmacists don't override a doctor's prescription. Lipitor is the brand name of the drug Atorvastatin, which was developed by Pfizer. A prescription is for Atorvastatin (or Lipitor, whatever the doctor) writes down, but the drug is the same whether or not is was made by Pfizer (and called Lipitor) or by a different company (and called atorvastatin). Pfizer has simply made exclusivity agreements that pharmacies would not sell generic versions of atorvastatin. This might be bad for the consumer (price-wise, not health-wise), but they can always go to a different pharmacy if theirs refuses to sell the generic.

A few questions/thoughts to think about:

1) How do you know you'd enjoy working for the private space industry? Sure, it sounds cool, but until you try it, don't assume you'll love it.

2) Academics is not the most important thing. More important is getting experience. Look at the schools you're interested in and see what professors have contacts with the industry. E-mail them and, ideally, try to meet them. Most professors are very approachable and interested in working with undergrads. Sure, you'll be essentially free/cheap labor for 4 years. But you'll get hands-on experience and learn a lot, and, if you're any good, the professor will drop a note to his former students at SpaceX or whatever other company, who'll get you a job as soon as you graduate.

3) Take classes besides engineering. You'll learn a lot, meet new people (networking is the most important thing), and get a different perspective on life. And, you might decide something else is more interesting. Treat college as a chance to explore and learn, not a something to deal with on the way to what you think you want to do.

4) Male/female ratio and social interaction in general is essential. If you go to a good school, you will be battered by problem sets, projects, etc... You survive that by having friends, a significant other, etc... You don't survive that by just working harder. Having a good social life (which does not mean partying all the time) is vital for having a good college experience and being successful. Plus, you never know when your friends will be able to help you later in life. And learning how to socialize (which you're probably not the best at right now) while in college means you have the skills to be confident both for future personal relationships and when you look for a job and need to deal with other people.

5) If you/your parents don't have any money, go to a good state school or to a school that gives you a good scholarship and save >$100k. It's not really worth the hassle if you really take advantage of the opportunities in your school. And you can always work with a professor at another school during the summers.

6) If you do have the money, go to the best school you can. The advantage of those schools is not that the education is better, but that the networking opportunities are much better and that the professors there have the best connections. MIT and RPI are good. Also Cornell has a top notch engineering program (and it's my undergrad alma mater). Carnegie Mellon is very good. Also Cooper Union, UPenn, Princeton, and Columbia. Probably some others as well.

Good luck and remember, academics is not everything in life!

There are times I like the NY Times, and times I really can't stand them. This is one of the latter. Sales tax is not a reason that B&M retailers are having problems competing with online retailers. Price and service are.

Almost always, I can order something for half the price online. What do I get for doubling my cost if I go locally? Horrible customer service and having to drive to the store (even more money) instead of having it come to my door. Plus, my service experience with Amazon is better than just about any retail store. This lack of service basically rules out me buying electronics in any local store. And the price is usually cheaper online even with sales tax.

So when do I buy locally? When it's something I need that day, or is very small, or when the extra service (from a good store) is important. Local stores need to stop whining about sales tax and start offering better service. Who does this work for? Costco for example. I routinely pay more to buy from them (and pay sales tax!) because of their customer service and their return policies.

Why do people not pay use tax? Because it's a mess to figure out exactly how much you owe. Same for internet stores. Some municipalities have insane taxation rules where certain things are taxed, but not if they cost more than $x, or less than $y, or 20 other rules.

If states want to get paid salex taxes, simplify things. For example, all catalog/internet purchases are charged a 5% sales tax regardless of what you're buying. Even if each state set its own, one sales tax on all products linked to each state is simple to deal with. Particularly for smaller stores, setup a national processor (paid for by the taxes) that each store can simply send its collected taxes to with a state-by-state break down.

That's how you collect taxes on online purchases, not by whining.

What most people here don't get is that academia is very different than business. I have no experience with academic hospitals, but it if's primarily a research hospital, I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar to most places in academia. I'm currently a PhD student, and neither my current university nor my previous one had any restrictions on servers so long as you didn't generate too much traffic. Most departments (in fact, most large groups) in universities have their own IT person who runs their own servers, and the main IT department is only responsible for managing campus-wide services (i.e. non-departmental services). Hardware owned by each department is subject to the policies of that department - some will enforce much more control than others. But I've never seen the situation where you couldn't bring in your own laptop and use it to work.

Again, this may or may not apply to academic hospitals, but the notion of a port being closed in a university is absurd.

Nothing of the sort will happen. The only reason the UN backed the Libyan rebels is because the Middle-Eastern countries agreed to it. The reason they agreed to it is because Gaddafi is crazy, and no one likes him.

Bahrain did have a revolution. It was crushed by the Bahraini, Saudi and UAE militaries. Sorry you missed it - it ended almost before it began. Saudi Arabia will not revolt (the government is way too strong and is slowly...very slowly...implementing reforms). As for Iran, anything is possible, but the government there has too much public support even with Ahmadinejad in power.

Get a VPS. You can get one for $20/month and set up a full e-mail server on it. You'll get better hardware and better connectivity than your own server. Your IP will be seen as coming from a data center, not a cable modem pool of addresses. You can also host your own website, and leave the server you have at your office for internal things only. For mail access, just set up IMAP and SMTP with TLS, with the latter on port 587 (known as the submission port) which is generally not blocked like 25 is.

Amtrak works by having the right of way for a certain window for each train. Basically, they have a schedule, and if they stick to it, it's fine. On the one long distance trip I did (LA to San Francisco) we left on schedule, stayed on schedule, and arrived on schedule, with no waits. But if they get behind at any point, it becomes horrible.

The problem is that Amtrak trains are very, very slow. LA-SF takes 12 hours. It takes 6 hours by car driving the speed limit. They also cost just a bit less than airplanes. The major advantages of Amtrak are lack of security and the space. Sadly, for high speed trains, I'm sure the first will be removed, and who knows about the second.

Therefore, why build high speed rail except in markets it actually would work due to the high concentration of people (northeast).

It'll only last until the first person dies from one of these sensors. Someone will have a heart attack in a rural area where ambulance service is at least 30 minutes away. Their spouse/friend will carry them to the car, and try to start the car. The sensor will malfunction, and refuse to start. By the time the ambulance gets there, the person with the heart attack will be dead. Instant lawsuit against the car manufacturer and the government. And I'd support it 100%. It's one thing to mandate sensors for people who lost the right. It's another thing to mandate it for everyone.

Last week Google took a page from Apple's book and pulled the Arcade by Kongregate app from the Android Market for violating its terms of service.

Except that on my Droid I'm still allowed to download the app from Kongregate's website and install it, no matter what Google thinks. They can even update their app automatically, or, even distribute more than one app. I have apps like that on my phone. Of course, they don't get the exposure of Google's app store, but there's nothing inherently wrong with Google saying "We don't want that in our app store". As opposed to Apple, I choose what can and cannot be installed on my phone, not Google/Apple.

Please e-mail the people in charge of the Planet Hunters people with everything you just wrote. I'm not involved with this project, but I am in the collaboration that supplies the data for the Supernova Zoo. I don't work much with that part of the project (I use the same data for stellar work), but for them SN Zoo is a crucial part of the discovery pipeline. Anything we can do to help people help us is something that would definitely be considered (and probably implemented if we have the resources), and I'm sure the Planet people are the same way.

There seems to be two general categories of Internet communications when it comes to trials. One is making comments about the process or trial. This I think has always happened to some extent, but was never made public (i.e. telling your spouse about your jury service). The addition of the Internet has made this more of a problem, because in the end, it is supposed to be the juror's decision about guilt, not him/her and the readers of his/her blog.

On the other hand, looking up terms or information about the trial, I think, only makes for a more informed jury. Otherwise, your only piece of information is from the prosecutor and defense lawyer, which are both extremely biased opinions. Granted, jurors have to be careful to judge information on the web carefully, but we're asking them to do the same thing in the courtroom as well.

"You and I" must be a very selective group. I use my Droid a lot, but in the last 10 months of owning it, I've gone over 500 MB/month once, and hit 400 MB/month 2 months. The rest of the time I haven't gone over 300 MB, and mostly at the 200 MB level. Why?

A good chunk of the time my droid is using wifi (at home). I used to be able to do it at my office as well, but then froyo broke WPA/Enterprise compatibility with cisco access points (well, actually wpa_supplicant broke, but froyo has an older version with this bug). Although android does have many issues with wifi compatibility. Plus, I don't stream music and even with 3G youtube takes a long time to load. And I don't tether my laptop (which is generally prohibited anyway).

On the other hand, I use it as, essentially, a PDA, navigation/gps system, and light browsing (the web browser is good, but I can only deal with so much browsing on a 4" screen. Great for looking something up. Useless for browsing a long time. VoIP may change things, but for the time being I only use VoIP when I'm in locations with wifi but not cell signal.

Personally, I'd be very glad to have a plan like Walmart's. I currently pay $30/month for unlimited data, and use on average, say 400 MB. Over the last 10 months I've paid Verizon $300. With Walmart's plan, I would've paid $160. Even adding on VoIP with a 64 kbit codec (the highest quality SIPDroid offers) for 450 minutes/month adds 216 MB of data usage. (or does it need to be doubled for both ways?)

You're right that the carriers are scared...because it won't be long before real VoIP apps appear for android that anyone can use, and the carriers are reduced to data carriers, not phone providers. Unfortunately, T-Mobile's network is nowhere as good as Verizon's, so I won't even consider it.

Just please don't follow the CA scheme. In NY, where I lived before Los Angeles, every grocery store had a few machines and you could bring down the bag of bottles you had whenever you wanted to. There was never a line, and everything just worked.

In CA, it's horrible. First, a lot more stuff has deposits on it. Second, most stores don't have any machines - they're only at special stores that have a separate booth on their property that handles recyclables (and not the ones I shop at for the most part). There's two automated machines per booth + one person who handles people who bring in huge amounts of stuff. Whenever I go, it takes me about a half-hour to wait in line while the professional bottle collectors in front of me off-load 5 huge garbage bags full of bottles. Half the time, the machines simply aren't working. And the booths operate from 9 AM to 4:30 pm. Oh, and there's usually a few homeless people pan-handling for money.

When I first moved here a few years ago, I'd store bottles on my apartment balcony for half a year, and then bring them down to get my $5-10 in deposits back. A few months ago I just gave up and decided I'd just recycle those bottles along with the rest of my recyclables. $20/year is not worth all the aggravation.