Agree completely. First I wanted a Nook Color. Sorry, not in Canada. Then I wanted a Kindle Fire. Sorry, not in Canada. If Kobo can get this thing selling in Canada, they might just get my hard earned money just to save me jumping through fire-ringed hoops to get one of the others.

I would be interested to know if the technology to boost bandwidth on copper might also help push bandwidth out further. A lot of us rural folk still don't have a lot of choices when it comes to broadband and all of them are expensive.

I've got two strikes against me before we can truly be free of subscription TV (BellTV satellite service). One, we're in Canada, so we lack much of the "Hulu-type" streaming options. Two, we're on a farm well away from decent bandwidth, stuck with satellite internet service. We do the best we can with torrents downloaded overnight (the FAP doesn't cut in in the middle of the night), Zip.ca DVD rental-by-mail and recently discovered there's quite a lot of true FTA content on the old C-band dish (using an Openbox S9 receiver) and have really gotten into watching the RTV affiliates that way. Emergency! and Magnum PI are far and away better viewing than Survivor and Dancing with the Stars!

So anyway, the BellTV subscription is just the minimum plus sports and threatening to quit made them give us a better rate for the next year.

I hope we don't find ourselves in a situation as we do with full-size computers where ads and sales-droids are telling us that SuperMultiCore Machine X is "perfect for email, web browsing and organizing your recipe collection". I don't want to see multicore phones trying to make up for sloppy coding and configuration.

Screw nature. I see enough trees and dirt every day. This kind of hike would be way more interesting!

I notice that most of your situations involve a semi at fault. I'd like to point out that more often than not it's the idiot in the four-wheeler who's at fault because he doesn't look before he tries to cross a highway and is plowed into by an innocent semi. Almost every fatality involving a semi around here comes from that situation. I'd be very impressed if Volvo can produce a car that allows anyone to survive that kind of "accident".

Back in 2006 I bought a semi truck to haul hay bales on my farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. I didn't have a Class 1A license yet (I think it's Class A in the US) that would allow me to drive a semi legally but I did it anyway. I had planned to take a course to get it that fall but figured I could get away with it for the summer. My neighbor's done it for many years without a problem.

Well, three months after getting the truck I'm crossing the Trans-Canada highway with a load. I'm pulling a 48-foot trailer loaded with a load of large round hay bales. Now, it's common for us farmers to haul hay unsecured (without straps) as it's often a short haul (for me about 10 miles) and figure we'll get a few more loads done without taking the time to strap them down.

You can guess what happened I'm sure. I got caught as I crossed the highway. Here I am without a proper license and an unsecured load. I figure I'm in for a significant fine. I play it cool. I'm respectful of the DOT officers but don't admit anything except the obvious which is the unsecured load, the reason they had stopped me. They also asked if I had a permit for an oversize load (I was 10 feet wide the way we load hay) and there was some concern over that but I was not travelling down a highway, only crossing them. They would look into that now. They go back to the car to write it up and call in my name and truck plate. I wasn't carrying my drivers license that day so they didn't know right away that I was only qualified for Class 5 (regular 4-wheel cars and trucks). Well, they come back and ask me what I'm doing driving a semi with only a Class 5. I admitted that yes I was cheating.

OK, here I am without a proper license, an unsecured load and no overdimension permit. How much worse could it get? Well, I lucked out this time. In the end I'm only charged with driving without an appropriate licence which carried a fine of $140Cdn, which they informed me was a lesser fine than an unsecured load fine. And I guess since I wasn't travelling down a highway they couldn't get me for not having a permit. I had the leave the truck there (only a couple of miles from home anyway) with a warning that if they caught me driving it again, they would impound it. We did sneak back after dark and get it home, but it did sit at home until I got my 1A that fall. Oh, and I throw a few straps over now, too, when I'm crossing a highway.

I think it helped that we were respectful of each other and I'm sure having farm plates on the truck and trailer helped, too. Law enforcement is usually are a little less strict with farmers.

OK, but I don't think six billion people would fit in the Fertile Crescent.

Oh, wait...we had explorers that had the courage to take to the stormy seas in fragile craft without accurate navigation. Unmanned space missions are good for gathering information but there might come a time when we need to get out there to make use of what we learn whether it be for science or for commercial use.

It's really quite sad to see another step backward in human spaceflight. I grew up in the '80s when the shuttle was exciting but thought we'd have progressed beyond it by now. As a child a space station meant a large circular wheel with a central hub that thousands of people were living on and which was stepping off point for missions further out. Much as I appreciate the science going on with what we have, it sure would be nice if mankind was a little bolder.

The acronym or what it stands for? I always wondered that. Maybe companys and organizations have a whole team of people who's sole job is to brainstorm cool acronyms and then figure out words to fit.

Anyway, I still think this exercise would be cool to watch.

I'd love to tell you but first of all, are you from China or Iran?

It's my understanding subs tend to listen for what's out there because using one's own sonar would broadcast your own position to the enemy. If both these subs were running in this way I can see how a collision would occur. It's happened before and is bound to happen again.

I live on a farm in a very rural area of southern Saskatchewan, Canada. A year ago I heard a wireless provider (a private company) was lighting up a tower nearby so naturally I was pretty excited about getting a high speed internet connection finally. I'd been on dialup and didn't want to go the satellite route (for all the usual reasons). I'm about eight miles from the tower and could see the flashing light on top at night. Unfortunately I learned the antenna on the tower was installed only half-way up the tower...and at that height it was behind some hills...which means no line-of-sight! To rub it in even more our phone company called to sell us DSL by mistake and swore up and down that we could get it despite being seven miles from the nearest town.

So here I am on satellite and at times wish was still on dialup. $55/month for 512k sat. It would have been $45 for 1.5Mb wireless. Our phone company (SaskTel, a government-owned company) also operates wireless towers but despite one of their cell towers being about five miles away (and fully visible to me) they haven't yet put an internet transmitter on it. There's some hope they will in the not-to-distant future though.