The FCC, while perhaps not being as enthusiastic as I would like, has stood up for consumers against Congress and their lobbyists' wills repeatedly lately, and the spectrum auction helped fund an underfunded agency -- while making sure those that purchased the spectrum would seriously use it. The huge sums of money were a drop in the bucket for those wireless companies.

With the Internet, you have no reason to broadcast music; regardless, new changes in LPFM have made it easier than ever to get a non-profit radio station, particularly in rural areas. I am a DJ at a radio station in Cleveland, OH that was given to the people, as our fees are virtually nothing compared to commercial stations. We give back by offering diverse programming (no top 40 allowed!)

You want everything, but don't realize that this shared resource can't be decided by the selfish. The system has worked, continues to work, and will work in the future. I just suggest against biting the hand that feeds you!

These commercial kids also need to learn planning and contingencies.

Small hydro is nothing new. The state of Georgia has something like fifty or sixty small hydro sites, and they barely make any electricity -- as those stated in the article. The problem is, however, that hydroelectric power -- even without dams -- is fairly ecologically disturbing. Not only that, but you have to maintain it. Why would you want to have to maintain 5400 power plants that each only make less than 30MW? Yes, it's about four or five thousand households, but that's also about a thirtieth of an average coal plant. There's no incentive to do this. Your ROI is low, your maintenance is high (and difficult)...particularly when chemical belchers like Plant Scherer can exist, which produce upwards of three and a half gigawatts. They aren't trendy, but I've yet to see a conclusive argument against breeder reactors.

CDMA has advantages over GSM and is actually, uh, well, newer. Read up.

This is meant for hospitals, not offices. $900 is justifiable. Who do you share your keyboard at work with in other situations where it's an issue?

The cotton isn't a [semi]conductor, the coatings are. Still novel, though.

Yeah, nothing to see here (coming from someone who essentially designed an ARM Linux system-on-board with similar performance for an entirely unrelated application)...ordinary and almost reminiscent of reference designs. The CraneBoard is much more complex.

The Cray-1 was ECL. The Altair 8800 was TTL. We're now CMOS, but I wouldn't mind an ECL i7, despite the fluorinert waterfall... (My real point is that there were very serious differences between the Altair 8800 and the Cray-1 despite the obvious which lend to significant differences in power dissipation...and speed.)

Additionally, the other thing this article doesn't take into account is the preponderance of battery-powered modern devices -- before, power consumption wasn't really much of any consideration (plus, now it's marketing!)

(playing smarterass) Some of us still love five nines...

Doubtful. Highly doubtful. 3d printers are faster than their traditional manufacturing coutnerparts in some applications, but they don't allow you to manufacture anything you couldn't before. Other than that, the idea (while fittingly /. tinfoil-hatty) seems absurd.

Agreed, quite remarkable

I find it hilarious that Apple still has that myth going for it -- there are NO advantages to a creative professional under an Apple environment compared to a Windows environment, especially after FCP took a turn for the worse...

Ethernet's just as analog as dial-up!

So you install a constant-velocity motor generator set and...

well, if you were a military installation protecting something important, then it'd be a bit different. Yes, it's very wrong to sell it to a commercial entity, but it's not wrong at all to collect it. You're buying power from these people -- it would be like asking your water company to stop using their AMR equipment. Or gas -- oh no, they know when my water heater cycles and I use the stove. It's strange, I feel that people are diverging on privacy. On the one hand, they don't care about privacy of their personal lives and relationships (re: Facebook) but now they care that someone knows how much electricity they're using? Enlighten me if you disagree with my opinion that this is all a bit silly (remembering that I am not saying that commercial sale of this data is OK)

The pingers have long been dead. They have a battery life on the order of days.