Is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDUVe3a496Y

Doesn't EC2 let you request hosts in any of several particular datacentres (which they call an "availability zones") just so you can plan around such location-specific catastrophes? No matter how good the redundant systems, some day a meteor will hit one datacentre and you'll be S.O.L. no matter what if you put all your proverbial eggs in that basket.

Only a fool cares about a single-datacentre outage. This is why it's called "*distributed*-systems engineering", folks.

*bzzzt*

John Spartan, you have been fined one credit for violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.

Be well!

If you debunk a debunker, don't you just get back to the net-zero result?

You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to . . .

Absolutely. Earlier android phones (the Dream and Magic and others) have well-known solutions for operating without an active SIM. The Nexus One is only 3 days old, so it might still need some work, but unlike the earlier locked-down hardware, the N1 is not only open-source, you don't have to "crack" it to replace the firmware.

The XDA forums contain all the info you could ever want about the topic. (http://forum.xda-developers.com/ )

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What kinda weak FUD is this? It's a linux system on which you can gain root access with fair ease! You can packetsniff, block traffic, and swap out whatever bits of the OS you want. If the Big G were spying on you as such, you would not only know, you could do whatever you like about it.

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The participants had better be careful; if their entries - submitted to google, solicited by google - happen to redistribute trademarked Google property in any way such as names, logos, or interaction with google services, they'll just slap them with a Cease and Desist letter shortly after awarding the prize money.