In real terms, if what you have can get the job done it is 'enough'. In marketing terms, enough is never enough, because we always 'want more', so to them - enough is never enough.

Realistically, to watch lawyers on TV, the old B/W 480i tube was 'enough', to watch the zits get ready to pop on the local weather bimbo, well resolution is never high enough. Even going from old broadcast NSC (effectively 480i) to 1080p even the weather bimbo has changed her makeup to show that youthful complexion she has never had before.

And the 4K TV (4x the resolution of 1080p) is on the horizon and it too is 'not enough'.

Higher resolution on my monitors has allowed me to USE smaller fonts, to the point that people looking over my shoulder think it is unreasonable (then again, they didn't need to be looking over my shoulder ).

I am guessing there is a maximum usable resolution for a fully immersive display, but we aren't there yet. Large scale simulators do pretty well, but hey are limited on the size and number of displays to make full wraparound 'worlds' still hard to generate at this point. Higher resolution (and required higher CPU and bandwidth needs) can always find a place. The content to take full advantage of that kind of resolution and bandwidth isn't there yet. My fuzzy crystal ball sees a light weight fully immersive heads up display that can be worn in both HUD, 'see through' and as 'full attention' (non-translucent) mode for movies, simulations, etc, and enough 'cheap' bandwidth and to make it work for the common person will be the next big thing. It will start out expensive, and get cheaper. HUD display like google glasses still have court cases and precedence to set for 'distracted driving' and such (we just need GOOD apps that show good use of the displays that can save lives, traffic tie-ups, accidents, etc - possibly in conjunction with automated driving systems, not just allowing facebook updating and tweeting when we should be concentrating on the job of driving).

For practical home use, at this point, I love my 32" 720p, and would like a 60" 4K display, but it isn't happening on my wages.

Once there is no perceived difference between a display and looking out a window opening the same size, then we will be close to 'enough' resolution. Only because we can not detect differences between real and virtual displays at that point.

Sorry, I was wrong. The CORN LOBBY wants corn only ethanol domestically produced only. The rest of us (except the politicians) don't.

I do find 'pure gas' in my area, but I have to work to get it. It would be great if they just remove any corn subsidy, and allow ethanol to be produced by non-corn crops and even imported if that makes economic sense. Brazil is mainly ethanol gas, but that is because they HAD little oil, until they ran out of money and started making ethanol from sugar cane. Now they are an oil exporting country (and have done more exploration and production domestically too).

Mythbusters do not do scientific studies of the REASONS, they seem to only go after the dramatics.

As long as the liquid fuel remains liquid, it won't even burn. It must be atomized and evaporate and then the fuel becomes conbustable once there is also a sufficient oxidizer (oxygen in air is the typical one).

In this case, Mythbusters fired into full tank, so it is much safer than if they had shot into 'almost empty' tanks.

I live in an agricultural area, and we had a fire in a storage barn a hundred or so feet from our house. We were thankful that a couple of fuel tanks (gasoline and deisel) were filled the day before a fire that night. Much less fumes in the tanks, making them safer even for the fire fighters to keep cool, during the course of the blaze. (They were 2, raised 250 gallon tanks for farm equipment.) Since then the tanks (still in use) but have been moved to a more remote location (near where the tractors, etc are stored now).

Movies make the explosions more spectacular than they would 'naturally' be, but they do make for great 'action sequences'. Of course, that is why they are done in the first place.

On the subject of explosions, the best 'explosion' I ever saw (an the only time I fell out of my chair laughing), was watching a engineering contest at Purdue picnic, when a 'fire starting' contest was handled. Some 'clever engineer' started a hibachi on fire, and poured a thermos of liquid oxygen on it. It generated a huge mushroom cloud. They took the camera up to see what was left of the Hibachi, and it was still boiling aluminum in a puddle on the ground. (No one was hurt, but Purdue University has forced the staff to remove the video from view. I saw it in the early days of the internet, when colleges and big businesses were the only ones with 'net access'.)

It doesn't take a liquid to 'explode', just the right combination of fuel, oxidizer in a rapid burning combustion.

It didn't used to be. But municipalities or other entities allow 'franchises' that pay a fee for the privilege of charging residents enhorbatent fees. When I was in college cable was about $7/mo from any of 3 local companies. 2 of which were allowed to serve every house in town. So if one ticked you off, the other was there and there was no connect fees/transfer fees/etc. Eventually the companies were all bought out and now all 'served' by one omnipotent and omnipresent cable provider. Of course they want a tenth of the income from every building served as their tithe for allowing limited access. (Significantly higher prices anyway)

Chattanooga TN has gigabit fiber available to residences via city owned infrastructure. The price is a bit higher, but still not bad. $350/mo (362 with TV channels included). Still not bad if you have a $$$ need.

Yep, puts Snowden on even keel with BHO. ... Somehow it seems right.

When we drove from TN to MT and back, 1800 miles each way, we stopped for about 15 minutes every 350 miles to put in gas. Not enough time to recharge batteries during each stop. We had 3 drivers and swapped at each time. This is not unreasonable method of travel for many. Even with my wife and I drive, we swap driving with the same regularity and the stops are timed to take about the same time. I don't think our driving habits are to unreasonable or unusual. To this point, e-driving just isn't up to it. This startup (from what I think I understand) was going to SWAP battery packs, so 'refueling' would be 5 mins or less, batteries were basically leased from them so they would have a continuing cash flow, and they would deal with battery maintenance. Too bad they didn't make it.

This weekend I re-watched minority report. ... It is an over-exaggeration of the google glasses concept, but yea, it is creepy and intrusive technology. Some will buy in but I would prefer to have the OPTION to opt in or out.

If you want us in the USA to convert, teach our kids metric. Metric system is the 'official standard' of the USA for some time now. Gulf Petroleum converted all their gas pumps to Liters many years ago, and it drove customers away. Gulf as a independent petroleum company retail presence doesn't exist now. Even in woodworking 6MM is not really 1/4 inch, but it is used. 3MM is not 1/8 inch, a 100x150 board 3 meters long is not a 2x4 12' long but the conversion is used. Even 2x4's are really 1.5x3.5 inches anyway. My Nissan car made in the USA displays Metric OR Imperial units, but not both. If we want to get folks to convert, display Metric units more prominently and in smaller type the Imperial. Folks in the USA will like most, go with the easiest thing. But if we have our auto's converted, we do need all traffic signs and maps display BOTH also. Will the USA convert totally to metric? Yep. When it makes ECONOMIC -AND- POLITICAL sense. As crazy as BO is, that is one sacred cow even he isn't willing to tip... yet. And my Gas Sucking Nissan gets between 13 and 27 mpg. Now how many K/L is that? :)

Just determine how to use the backdoors the Chinese have been building into equipment we have purchased from them, and use them. No need to engineer new ones.

We do have a 'overseeing agency' called 'Homeland Security'. I don't trust them either.

As Pogo said: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Why RPi? Easy, cheap, available. Yep, there are others smaller, but being 'less to engineer' and lots of 'howtos' and examples available to promote the use. Make a better equivalent (and promote it), and they will come. ... It used to be Intel and Motorola embedded products, then PIC, not things keep changing and the RPi is the current implementation. ... Wait a while and it will change again.

I am looking forward to getting my hands on a Ubuntu tablet and phone.

Given the size and power of the memories, I like the ones with the micro size SD cards.

64G isn't to much for these device to handle, and having a 'library' or several larger cards would be nice for 'special needs' (movie libraries, detail CAD files of the Empire State Building or Golden Gate Bridge, or latest killer development you plan on selling on Etsy or your next killer Kickstarter campaign, while not mixing them with your complete internet cat photo collection!) would be useful.

The 7" tablet is about the size of what we currently know as a 'half sheet' of 8.5x11 sheet of paper. This is roughly the size of the journal that Ben Franklin carried around to write notes in. ... Franklin (now Franklin-Covey) has been selling 'Daytimers' of about that size for years. Why have they been such high sellers and adopted by millions? You guessed it, size. Big enough to read and write on, small enough to 'carry everywhere'. The day planners do you no good if you get an inspiration or need to schedule a meeting and it is 'on my desk'. It must be with you. ... The same goes for tablets.

Is there a need for bigger and smaller displays? Yes. We do 2" screens to 60+ inch displays all in the home. To carry about, IMHO, there are a few 'critical sizes'. The 'shirt pocket', the 'hand carry', and the 'in the backpack' sizes. Shirt pocket can be small to an iPhone/Android screen phone size. Hand carry is the mini-tablet, 7" or so, I keep thinking that there was a reason why Amazon make the kindle that size and it became their most popular model. It is convenient, it fits in a large pocket or purse, and is a 'thin' novel size. The larger 'backpack' size can be from the large iPad to a 'Windows Surface' to to a full laptop. The 'netbook' fit into the same size as the mini-tablet, but unless you have one that can work with or without the keyboard, the tablets with 'optional' keyboards seem to be a good solution. Still even the netbook is a neat toy to have and covered that range for 'high function' before the full-function tablet technology caught hold in a big way for that form factor.

Many of us still find the keyboard easier to use when writing the great american novel or doing things like posting on slashdot, but the on-screen and blue-tooth addon keyboards for the tablets help a lot when not -on the move- when reading/content consumption rather than generating content is the primary task.

I would still like to try one of the laser projection keyboards, but my toy money only goes so far.

These kinds of technologies are not 'either-or' but both. I still like my desktop (big monitors, all my high power goodies at one spot) but it turns into my server more often anymore. A host for my 'local cloud'. ( My internet connection is slow and expensive for bandwidth, and cable/dsl/Wimax are not options here due to physical location, I may be going satellite soon unless something happens. ) ... But even around here, I enjoy relatively good wireless internal to my home area that makes devices useful.