I'm in the satellite business myself, and the reality is that satellite capacity is expensive, no matter how you you look at it. As a rough rule of thumb, satellite capacity prices roughly at $6000/MHz/Month. If you do the math, this basically works out to $6-10 per kbps per month, and that's assuming at least a 2 year contract. So if you had a 1Mbps connection with a 4:1 contention ratio, you're still looking at $1500 a month. The economics change a little if you own a whole transponder (Typically a few million dollars a year for 36Mhz), but even then it's not cheap. The only way that DirecWay and the other satellite ISPs can keep their prices within the realm of reason for the average user is by having insane contention ratios, and draconian "Fair Access Policies"

It sucks, but there's not much that will reduce these prices. There are only so many active geosynchronous satellites that can be up there, and there's only a limited amount of spectrum available. Even if SpaceX cuts the launch costs by 80%, the prices won't go down, that just means the satellite operators will be (more) profitable. The end-user pricing is demand driven, not cost driven.

Actually no. Most commercially available hydrogen is produced by steam reformation of methane (natural Gas). Electrolysis of water is far too inefficient to use on a commercial scale.

Actually in many places, the geese have become non-migratory. (There are actually several different subspecies, some are prone to finding a comfy spot and just staying there 12 months a year). The resident goose population in the Vancouver area, for example, is huge, and discharging long guns in the heart of the city is probably not the wisest thing to do. Besides, from what I'm told, canada goose tastes horrible.

Eh? They're loud, obnoxious, and leave shit everywhere. Clearly they're American. ;)

We aren't talking about small sensor type devices here. (Attitude sensing is done with laser ring gyros, no moving parts) Reaction wheels are rather large objects and can provide significant force to orient the spacecraft.

Reaction wheels a very well known concepts in spaceflight. The ISS uses them to point itself (The Control Moment Gyros) and pretty much any and all geosynchronous satellites also use reaction wheels to keep themselves pointed at earth. This is actually how they ended up recovering Galaxy 15. After several months of drifting while "zombie", the reaction wheels finally saturated (spinning as fast as they could go) causing the satellite to lose earth lock, and go into a safe mode.

Anyhow, the upside and downside is that they are relatively simple devices, and allow for very precise and stable pointing without spending a lot of fuel (you don't want your exhaust condensing on your optics in a telescope now do you?), but at the same time they're mechanical devices, and thus are more fragile than something that's purely solid state.

The fundamental problem you run into however, is that at the point where you need to verify the certificate you don't yet have a network connection. In a PEAP environment, the certificate is presented to the client before layer 3 connectivity has been established. The client obtains the certificate, sees that it has been signed by a valid CA, but it can not actually verify that the certificate is being presented by the right server since, well, there's no network connection yet. It's really one of those chicken and egg problems, there's no good way to resolve it.

The reality is that in most cases, it should pop a warning giving certificate details (along with the fact that it has been signed by a trusted CA), and asking the user if they would like to proceed (and then saving that approval if desired).

I hear the built-in worm detection and removal is especially handy!

I guess you've never been to Monoprice. I use one of their 2.1A car lighter adapters for my iPad, and it works very well. The main issue i have is getting it out of the socket, rather than having it stay in.

While I haven't been camping much, I now have a small (27') sailboat. The one thing I notice is that event though there are lights in the cabin, I'm usually nodding off at around sunset. I do wish I could stay up longer, as in many of these places the stars truly are spectacular (as is the phosphorescence) but alas. :)

... I voted for Kodos.

I always thought that "Canada Geese" should really be called "American Geese"... They're loud, obnoxious, and leave shit everywhere. ;)

These are the people that are generally what's wrong with the world, not what's right.

Fill the plane with Engineers, Computer Scientists, Scientists, Technicians, and the other people who actually make the world work, and you might have something. The only problem is that these people are actually too busy making a living rather than leeching off their employees and customers.

All this is is an excuse to fill an airplane with a lot of self congratulatory reacharounds and hot air.

Sure, but which laid the egg first? the Chicken or the Junglefowl?

Little known fact: Many recipes are not directly transferrable between even Canada and the US, even if the proportions are kept correct. This is due to ingredient differences rather than measurement units (In fact, most Canadian cookbooks offer their recipes in both Metric and US). The biggest difference is flour. Canadian flour has a significantly higher gluten content than US "All Purpose" flour, and that can make a huge difference in bread, pastry, and other similar things.