Prices in fabs are normallly on a pr. wafer basis. Also normally prices go down, not up...

Radon (And its decay products) can most certainly get inside your body through your respiratory system. Exposure to radon is associated with lung cancer. A quick google search finds the following article: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/radon

While radon itself has a very short biological half life since it is an inert gas, it also have a rather short physical half life decaying into various heavy atoms (polonium, lead, bismuth, thallium and mercury). This turns into airborne dust that can get lodged in your lungs. Of the decay products pb-210 might be of most interest having a half life of 22 years.

Air in planes are dehumidified to minimize the amount of ice and condensation that forms on the inside of the airplanes pressure skin. If this weren't done you might literally get a shower during landing.

It was late to market as the #3 contender.
* It is unclear to the user what WP7 offers over the 'safe' bets.
* Why should application developers support WP7?
It gives users the worst of both worlds compared to iOS/Android:
* Multiple device vendors so updates and support can be variable and fractioned
* Extremely limited device support effectively locking device vendors out from doing any practical differentiation. (I.e. all devices must have same resolution, same CPU family same peripherals), effectively reducing the user choice to the same device (only cosmetic differences)

In the long term WP7 and iOS will have severe growing pains as they have both tried to leverage a hardware 'monoculture' to optimize end user experience. As technology developes Apple and MS will suffer severe pains as new hardware breaks or renders obsolete existing development work, and subsequently will need to be delayed to the end user. Apple have allready been there having to do a resolution x4 jump on the display, they likely can't do that once more, and while Apple is foremost a hardware company with experience in driving hardware development ahead of the curve, microsoft will be limited by the general availability of new components.

Android have a benefit in the long term in that it was made with support for diverse hardware in mind. This caused confusion and criticism initially, but is likely starting to pay off now.

Looking at computer history we can draw the parallel to the development of the x86 wintel platform vs. a handful of vertical oriented competitors (Amiga, Atari ST, Mac). The Wintel platform was not the prettiest, nor the friendliest, but it was the only one placed to leverage the enormous momentum in ever improving hardware. Amiga and Atari died, mac survived after a fashion, but not without scrapping everything and starting over. (Kudos to apple for pulling that off, but they very nearly broke their backs doing it)

Soooo this looks like a thermocouple or peltier element. What's new?

I have no problems with Google policing the android market, in fact it might be good if they did more of that to prevent rouge apps from appearing there. The key difference between android and iOS is that you can get your apps from other sources than android market so the devs of PSX4Droid can just host the app at some other server and they are in business again.

Superior how. Do you fit your code in a smaller memory footprint, can you you make it run on a slower clock, using less energy? If not I am not interested in your so called 'superior code'.

Bull.

There are other SW development jobs out there that absolutely do not require OO. In fact I would be very reluctant to hire anyone who have done OO and framework based stuff most of the time. To clarify: Our SW devs are firmware developers who work with embedded devices that get all of 2-8KB of ram and 16-128KB of flash to play with. Devs that rely on libraries and frameworks will never be able to get the job done.

On top of that I will still require your code to be understandable and reusable.

"The most lucrative market in bicycles isn't cheap commodity bikes like Schwinns"
Do you have references for this. In most markets it is the low end that contributes the most to the bottom line simply because the volumes are magnitudes higher than the high-end.

"Besides, if adopted, economy of scale would drop price dramatically"
Of course, economies of scale will in practical terms mean replacing the printed parts with injection molded parts. Economies of scale isn't magic. In practical terms it means you can afford to pay larger up-front costs to get to more rational manufacturing. Consider SRAMs XX casette. This part is milled through a time consuming process while other casettes are stamped. SRAM will not be able to simply push a button to manufacture more XX casettes and then get them cheaper, it is the more rational manufacturing that leads to economies of scale, not the other way around.

A lot may change yet until the election. What if the republicans end up winning despite this? Then these guys might just have caused the worst candidate (in their view) to win. Sure indications right now is that this improves odds for Obama, but it isn't a win.

I would have preferred an approach where both candidates are reasonable. I don't care much for gaming the democratic system, I think if this actually have any impact it would need to drive electoral reform.

P.S: I am european and I do not have much personal opinion on any of the candidates.

telecom was deregulated in norway in the eighties. It was done quite ineptly leaving the resulting telecom company 'telenor' in control of the distribiution infrastructure as well as the last mile granting them monopoly on the existing tax funded highly costly infrastructure.

Nevertheless an immidiate positive effect occurred in that you could get a phone installed in days instead of waiting months. After a couple of years competing distribution companies turned up (as a consequence of regulation that partly undid that they did not split the last mile from distribution, forcing the ex gov. Teleco to offer last mile access at fair rates) this turned significant pressure on pricing.

Now that cell phones have made the last mile irrelevant we have very healthy competition in telecom with a lot lower prices that before deregulation.

Considering that wifi can use both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz ISM bands, how do you figure there will be more interference issues with wifi than BT (That only use 2.4GHz as of right now)

HTC et.al will likely go to microsoft with one of their android phones and say "here is the hardware, now port the software, design a new chassis and give us money to market it and we'll sell your stuff"

It's not like they will spend much green on WM7 until it is proven in the market,

So i can buy the one with the most radiated energy. That way i get more reliable connections.

I herby revoke your geek license.