I'm afraid that IBM beat you to this by several years, as they patented patent trolling back in 2007. Your technique is not precisely the same, but it would probably infringe on their patent...

No, Skyhook's definitely not the technology under the hood. In fact, Motorola replaced Google's built-in geolocation with Skyhook on their Android handsets, but Google pitched a fit about this. And so Motorola dropped Skyhook again and returned to Google's geolocation system, and Skyhook sued Google.

Japan never used to have power outages to speak of, but in the wake of the tsunami and Fukushima Dai-ichi being taken offline, outages are heavily on the mind of the average Japanese citizen. They had a ton of blackouts in March, and the Tokyo area in particular has been engaging in a ton of power-saving measures; the article from the summary even mentions a few (dimming subway station lights, to draw less power, for instance). Given that everyone's looking for ways to reduce their draw on the power grid at peak times, I'm not surprised that Nissan is looking into this possibility.

www.facebook.com's AAAA record resolves to 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::b -- however, most folks can't resolve it. According to posts on the ipv6-ops mailing list, Facebook is still doing IPv6 in a limited testing phase, so they have DNS whitelisting enabled to avoid folks other than Hurricane Electric IPv6 testers getting the AAAA record while the IPv6 version of the site is still not quite there yet.

Presumably they'll turn off the whitelisting and let it resolve universally for IPv6 Day.

No, Android stores the last 50 unique cell-derived locations (in cache.cell) and the last 200 unique wifi-derived locations (in cache.wifi). In other words, the file /is/ truncated, but based on quantity of data rather than age/time. Apple's logfile is not truncated, whether by design or programming error.

Conversely, Apple's log remains on the device only for Core Location caching; it's stored in iPhone backups, but isn't ever sent back to the mothership (at least so far as anyone has been able to tell). Google truncates the log, but does send the data when you hit a WiFi point and have a GPS signal; they use this to update their WiFi location database for GPS assist, as they use their own service rather than Skyhook. (If your base station advertises itself, open or otherwise, go to http://samy.pl/androidmap/ and enter your local router's MAC address; you can see where Google thinks that base station is, based on how Android devices have paired your station to their GPS data.)

Some of that may be due to the fact that Apple charges a lot less -- a LOT less -- for OS upgrades than Microsoft does, and some of it may be due to the fact that OS X is a lot less likely to be heavily tied into some company's corporate network than XP was.

Either way, you're still correct that no company can be expected to support an older OS forever. As was noted elsewhere, RedHat's long since retired support for many versions of their software, and no longer roll RPMs to update various things based on older systems.

Honestly, "YourSQL" seems more accurate than "MySQL" given that apparently even the developers can't keep control of their own database. ;P

In fairness to Gates, he's willingly given away something like $39 /billion/ dollars of his own money through philanthropic and charity efforts. Even as a stockholder in MS, I doubt he cares much about $1.2 million. But there were probably some chairs thrown in Ballmer's office...

Yeah, Bones is really the worst offender out there for product placement. They don't even bother to try to disguise them most of the time.

As I noted in a different post, White Collar at least /tried/ to work it into the story and dialogue in a semi-natural way when they were showing off a hybrid car placement (during a high-speed car sequence) in a recent episode, by having Neal mock Diana for "not driving very green." Bones doesn't even bother with that much effort.

Bones has got to be the worst offender for this, which particularly bothers me because, honestly, if you rated what characters in television series were the least likely to bother showing off a new gadget to those around them, I would say Temperance Brennan should land somewhere in the top five. She just wouldn't care. But White Collar also earns an honorable mention lately; they seem to be trying to take the crown of Random Car Placements from Bones. Though at least they've tried to work it into the script through jokes, like covering the hybrid during a high-speed driving sequence.

Neal: Why is there a tree on your dashboard?
Diana: It's a hybrid. It shows me how efficiently I'm driving.
Neal: You're not driving very green. All the leaves are falling off.
Diana: *annoyed* Do you want to catch this guy?
Neal: I feel like I'm stuck in the Giving Tree. There's nothing left but a stump.
Diana: *more annoyed* I'll grow a new one over the weekend!

I didn't say they SUCCEEDED, but they tried.

That's the thing. Watching Castle and seeing that Rick Castle has an iPhone, or that Detective Beckett has a Palm Pre? Eh, whatever. They're probably going to have a cell phone, like most of the people in the US. As long as you're not throwing that device into my face really obnoxiously, I don't care what it is. It's just a prop, and I can focus on the story. Seeing that Shawn on 'Psych' carries an iPhone, again, not terribly jarring. None of them make a big deal about their phones, they just use them on screen.

But when I'm watching Bones and, say, Dr. Brennan feels a need to explain her new Windows Phone 7 device and show the Metro UI off to someone? Or on /any/ show where they feel the need to discuss the little tree on the dashboard (or demonstrate the Bluetooth capabilities) of certain hybrid cars? (White Collar, I'm looking at you as well here.) Those get annoying and jarring, because they feel like someone randomly regurgitated marketing into the middle of the script.

Be fair... for a while, the History channel made it seem as though all of human history boiled down to UFOs or Hitler. (Or sometimes UFOs and Hitler.) The Bible Sex and Mayan Apocalypse shows were at least a new form of irritant!

USA Network is apparently the exception to this; it seems like they'll give all their original programming at least two seasons to find its legs. Psych, Burn Notice, White Collar, In Plain Sight, Royal Pains... every one of them has been given sufficient time to find its legs and pick up an audience. And most of them have. I imagine their new series Fairly Legal will be given the same opportunity.

King County already has a vote-by-mail system in place. In fact, the last King County elections were handled entirely by mail.

The real problem I have with the Xoom is that you have to sign up for the cellular data plan in order for the tablet to enable WiFi. No Verizon data plan? No WiFi for you, either. Sure, you can cancel after the WiFi's been activated, with a minimum of one month data service... but still, that's just outright extortion. And there's no release date on the WiFi-only Xoom yet, so it's the cellular-enabled Xoom or nothing.