I cant find details of just what the kernel change was but it seems like the hardware feature is a feature to detect that the laptop is undergoing a sudden shock and shut off the hard disk (move the heads out of the way) to prevent damage to the platters.

All 3 commercial networks as well as the ABC (government owned station) air cartoons on various of their channels on Saturday Morning (and at other times of the day/week for that matter)

Heck, its 5:30pm here and one network is airing an episode of Scooby Doo...

In places like Manhattan, the local authority charges parking taxes which the hotels then have to pass on to the customer.

I ran Gentoo for a while and my system actually got a little tiny bit faster over time as big heavy packages got rebuilt with newer GCC versions that optimized the package better than the last GCC version did.

Of course that didn't make up for the fact that it could take the best part of 3 days or more for the ancient Pentium 4 I was running it on to do a full emerge pass if certain larger packages all happened to be updated at once.

Most of the arguments about population density/demand/etc that apply to high speed rail in Japan (or more to the point in Europe) would very much apply to a super-fast train linking, say, Grand Central Terminal in NYC to, say, Union station in Washington DC.

I did a 6 month student internship with Motorola software development (basically 6 months of full time work that counted towards my degree) and I can tell you that phones being in development for a year or more isn't unusual for the industry, especially if its totally new hardware rather than a variant of existing hardware. Plus, remember that these guys are voulnteers and not doing this fulll time.

As for the CPU choice, it has been chosen so that the Neo900 can be backwards compatible with the N900. Plus, its actually possible to GET this CPU wheras you cant even get Qualcomm parts (and the info you need to actually use them) unless you are really big and well established.

The Neo900 isn't meant to compete with the Galaxy S or iPhone, its meant to be a phone that takes all the good things about the N900 (physical keyboard, full Linux/X setup, openness) and make it better (faster CPU, more memory, better cellular radio, better WiFi, better Bluetooth, NFC support, more security, more control over the hardware)

Disclaimer:I own a N900 (and in fact am typing this reply on it) and would sign up for a Neo900 preorder if I could afford it. I am also involved in reverse engineering and code work for the N900 and Neo900.

For example, if eBay no longer owns PayPal (or has any connection to it) they no longer have the incentive to force people to accept it (or like they did in Australia before they got in trouble for it, make PayPal the only method of payment).

Also maybe this will impact the ability of eBay to do certain things they do now like holding money from an eBay auction instead of releasing it to the seller straight away.

If you want a phone that doesn't lock you into proprietary crap-ware, wait for the Neo900. Or buy a used N900.

You want an N900 or its successor, the Neo900 (which is basically a community-developed board designed to go into an N900 case with a faster CPU, better cellular modem and some other hardware improvements) Runs full linux (including X) and is close to the most hackable phone available.

N900 is available now if you look online for a second hand model and Neo900 is currently at the advanced prototype stage.

At the last few airports I flew out of, they have one way doors designed to stop anyone walking the wrong way back into the secured area (the only way into the secured area is through the security screening)
Why Sydney doesn't have the same thing baffles me.

Except that Windows probably has just as many holes only you dont know about them because they aren't public or because Microsoft has decided not to invest the engineering resources to fix them or because Microsoft has fixed them in a patch but the actual security flaw is still unknown publicly.

At least with Linux, if a security hole is found (and made public or released to experts in the security community or to the relavent developers or whatever), the number of people who are able to investigate and fix the hole (and make official or unofficial fixes available) is (in most cases) significantly larger than the number of people who would e able to deal with issues in Microsoft code. And the Linux guys can have patches out much faster (and they can get into distros fairly fast too)

They only need a very small amount of actual unchangeable memory. Do it like Microsoft did on the XBOX 360 and have fusible links on-die on the GPU, when the card is manufactured, the fusible links are blown to store the ID of which GPU it is in a way that cant later be altered.

In some areas of the US (especially the south eastern states where cheap dirty coal rains supreme) state governments have banned the kind of solar fiance schemes and loans that have allowed people in the west or in the north east to get solar panels on their home without the huge up-front cost. Yes the solar company makes money from the deal but the home owner still comes out on top in that they aren't paying anywhere near as much in power bills.

Also utilities have attempted to restrict (and in numerous cases succeeded in restricting) the amount of power allowed into the grid from small scale generation (including grid-tie solar) or have reduced or eliminated feed-in tariffs in way that make solar less viable.

Plus there are cases of outright bans on some kinds of solar setups (I cant find a cite right now but there have been cases where people have wanted to install solar panels and a battery bank or whatever and completly disconnect from grid power but have been prohibited from doing so by state and local laws)

The real problem is that the airlines switched from having a few flights a day between point a and point b using medium sized or large aircraft to having more flights per day using smaller aircraft.
Reverse that and you wont have anywhere near as much of a problem (especially if the airlines have an incentive to use larger planes as demand grows rather than adding more flights)

The right answer for water (and electricity and piped gas and other utilities like that) is for the company to charge a fixed cost (that covers the cost of running the systems and maintaining the infrastructure) and then a per-unit cost on top of that for the actual usage. That way everyone pays based on their usage of the infrastructure and how much water they actually use.