In OZ, the carriers block at the IMEI level, so if a phone is stolen you can't use it in Australia (unless you can change the IMEI to one that the carriers recognise as valid)
http://www.lost.amta.org.au/

Why doen't the USA do this as a sterting point?

One reason I turfed my backyard with artificial turf.
I was sick of weeds, animals digging in it, mowing it, fertilizing it, the kids trampoline killing it.

Synthetic grass can now look as good as the real deal. It can get hot in summer, but otherwise its nice having an always perfect looking lawn.

NO mine wants a tailings dam to collapse. There are regular conferences on how to design the things and specialists who design them. NO CEO wants this to happen, because the cost reparations is horrendous, and contrary to what the comments have been like here, the bosses of these companies (well the ones I've know of) want to be good corporate citizens.
Mining has risks, and incidents like this will ne analysed and fed back into the future design models, and like all things in life, will improve over time.

We use it for GUI interface in industrial controllers.

Have never like tek scopes that much, or Agilent. In fact my fav. Scopes are Yokogawa DLM series.
All the manufacturers do the cripple thing though. If you want free I2C or LIN or CAN or USB or UART, buy a PC scope like a CleverScope.

To add to what you said.
Australians now pay about 25c/kwh compared with 12c/kwh 10 years ago.
The overinvestment in wires and poles was due to stupid legislation that GAURUNTEED a 10% return on any capital investment. (Gee lets spend a billion so we gaurunteed to make $100M)
We put 40kwh of solar in at our business that with the current subsidies nets us 18% return on capital (vs 2% cash in the back)

Not sure where you got $6k from.
We have a Yamaha & Juki machines and they cost between $60k and $120k new + feeders.

For $6k you get somthing more like this.
http://www.alibaba.com/product...

I had a debt collection agency come after our business for $100 unpaid cell phone bill.
It was from a lone disused cell phone where we had either never received the invoice or admin had misplaced it.
I said no problems, just give me a copy of the invoice and we'll pay up.
They said. Can't do that.
To cut a long story short, the phone company sells anything past due date to a collection agency BUT doesn't bother to give them the supporting documentation.
How retarded is that!

We are about to embark on designing a similar product. Essentially we want a gateway that can select from either a Cell Phone embeded data modem such as the Telit HE910, or local WiFi, then provide an internal data link via USB or Ethernet to our device and some remote connectivity for setup via Bluetooth.
We need good power management, and the ability to add local peripherals (such as a keypad, status LEDs, etc)
OpenWRT looks like the right foundation, but which chipset to select is more difficult.
Any suggestions from hardware devs out there?

Australia has a minimum wage of around $20/hr and we are a very prosperous country.
Higher wages just take profits from the mega corps and give it to the working poor who , shock horror, spend it, and create more wealth!

Damn. Wish there was a once year mod point for +6.

You know you yanks looked incredibly brain washed from out the US of A.
A gun is a tool that allows quick any easy DEATH. Such tools should be highly regulated.

Well it does matter in the rest of the developed world that has socialised health care systems.

For example. Smoking in Australia, although not banned, is now incredibly invonvenient. The goverment banned all advertising; smoking in workplaces, all public enclosed spaces, outdoor eating places, street malls; jacked the price up to $20 a packet; hid the packets under counters; removed all branding from the packets themselves. Why? because the government (ie the tax payer, ie me) bears the burden of providing their health care. The same can be argued for huge serviving of HFCS drinks.

The trick is striking a balance between restricting an activity that reduces your lifespan and costs society $$ vs the individuals freedom.

I'm suprised it took this far down the comments for such a basic mistake to be corrected.
For clarity these are correct ways to refer to power produced.

20GWh was produced over a one hour period.
The solar output peaked at 20GW.

Energy is measured in joules which is watts x seconds.
Power is measured in Watts which is volts x amps.
(yes there are other definitions, but this is in context)

Maybe adoption of ipv6 is slow because it is so damn complicated.
Why did they have to make the number more than atoms of the universe when they could have just turned the ipv4 from 8 to 16 bits.
Like abcd:1234:cdef:9876