In some ways the Volt is GM's flagship car so they've been very careful to make sure it works for them instead of ending up with a disaster. I suspect their support of an enthusiast interface is to encourage that goodwill continues. They have an amazingly long warranty service and free 3 years on OnStar which for the regular consumer is something very desirable. It's helped them improve their product as well as their 2013 model battery improvements were partially based on the fact that the battery pack was degrading less than they had thought. Mind you I don't see this as a privacy disaster either. VoltStats site notes they don't have free access to air pressure and a few other stats that they use to use. I'm going to be a Volt owner soon and to be honest, I'm not worried about GM collecting data on my car. It looks like it'll lead to improvements for everyone down the road. If you're wondering why you'd want one, well it's a really nice electric car and while yes I could get a Leaf, it's my only car and without a gas engine you're going to freeze in some of the -20C sub zero temperatures in Canada. It's only downside is yes, it costs a lot of money to get one. But as a nice luxury sedan which is what I see it as, it's nice.

I can't believe how many of you can't figure out why this is BAD for consumers for Microsoft to be setting DNT by default. Let's think a little! Before Microsoft implemented this "bad" advertisers ignored the DNT so they're going to track you no matter what. "good" advertisers honored the flag assuming that if you were smart enough to turn it on then that means you must really not want to be tracked. Now if Microsoft turns it on by default the "bad" advertisers are still going to track you because they ignore it. The "good" advertisers if they still follow it will see a huge revenue loss because most folks don't care really. Congratulations now no one is going to be a "good" advertiser and DNT will be ignored. Also as a smart consumer you've also now lost that option to opt out because someone broke the system for you. All the companies that are complaining well guess what, I'll bet they honour DNT.

Also advertising is not necessarily evil. National Geographic for example has more advertising in it than they did historically but they've also kept subscription fees exactly the same for years. Personally I would prefer to pay more for less ads but I can understand how to a lot of subscribers they'd prefer to pay less and see a few more ads. I think the Internet is the same. Would you prefer to pay more? Probably not so ads it be.

Actually to be honest the "new computer" smell like the new car smell isn't exactly good for your health. It's made up of a lot of toxic chemicals. I'm suprised no one's pointed this out . It's like having a "car exhaust" smell. Not really appealing if you ask me. ;)

I actually tried out both tablets in the store (Ipad2 versus Asus Transformer) and I have to admit I eventually sided with the Transformer. It has a much nicer looking front end interface and the web browser seemed to work better (which will likely be my primary use). I also liked the fact that I could get Linux going on the Asus EEE Pad as well and the overall hardware wasn't as tightly restricted. Maybe in the future if I'm bored of Android, I can go full out for Linux. My recommendation? If you like flexibility I would definitely get the Android 3.1 based tablets. If you want something simple then an Ipad2. In many ways this is like the difference between a Mac and a PC. I suspect in the following years the Android will probably win out via sheer flexibility as how the X86/Win machines have won out in the personal computing market.

Canada uses a Heavy Water reactor that seems to be fairly fail safe as the Heavy Water is required to sustain the reaction. If the reactor overheats, the Heavy Water in theory would boil off and that would effectively stop the reaction. Last I recall thou, the biggest problem was that the CANDU reactors are very expensive but they are very safe.

I've actually done a fair bit of research on the subject and concluded that VDI's are a good solution in standard office environments after testing it out on actual equipment. Where VDI's fail are in any graphics / video or multimedia intensive environments where it isn't possible to transport enough data to the Terminals for it to work correctly on most gigabit networks. An extremely inexpensive solution is to use Oracle's VirtualBox along with the RDP support. Then buy set-top atom boxes and configure them with Linux as thin clients. It's pretty amazing to see an Atom set-top box running Linux Xwindows that automatically starts Rdesktop off an SD card. If you use the VirtualBox's customized version of Rdesktop you can get remote USB as well. Oh and be sure to use SSD drives on your Virtualization server. Your may have a massive multicore CPU but most folks forget to account that HD's and even Raid systems can't easily handle commands from a large group of clients. Even then I would highly suggest you do your research before even attempting such a project because there are small driver instabilities in VirtualBox for example that can cause issues if you misconfigure them which will crash the entire server. The reason why it hasn't been implemented yet? I suspect that's because most IT will not spend the months to research and test as I have. Plus many organizations are resistant to change in computing models.

Unfortuantely that statement is completely false! Sony released their Z11 series i7 laptops in EARLY 2010. These are not your run of the mill store bought Windows laptops either when they come in at nearly $2000 or more at the time. They are custom built, carbon fiber / aluminum shells assembled in the USA or Japan instead of China.

I own one and all I can say is Apple can't hold a feather to this laptop:

3.3lb with roughly 4 hour battery

(My power meters note that the i7 core can idle between 11-13 watts, you can't get much lower than that and it beat my modern Core 2 Duo Sony Laptop by a few watts, this is overall system use!)

1080p 13 inch widescreen panel. (I don't think anyone really uses such a fine resolution panel. I opted for a 1600x900 instead because I suspect that might be too small! But amazing tech nevertheless)

256 GB raid 0 SSD.

Switchable Intel GMA (built into i7 core) and Nvidia GT 330M 1 GB ram (This is why it's so efficient with power on idle)

Blue-Ray Drive (Expensive but I don't see that in any apple laptop...)

Large copper based heatsink and fan. Since this system was designed to cool an i7 and Nvidia core under full load. In idle use which just has the i7 in idle and the Intel GMA core which is built in, it's actually very quiet. About as loud as a laptop HD which it lacks.

So yes, you definitely don't know what you're talking about. I looked at various laptops and came up with this one after 2 months of research. If money isn't an issue, there's no laptop like it in the 13 inch category with it's weight class. Sony is one of the few companies that pushes their engineering to the limits. Apple's laptops on the other hand are more commonplace consumer items now.

I honestly think the problem with UPS is that it out-sources its deliveries to third party shipping companies versus doing the actual deliveries with their own fully paid staff. I recall in my area, they consistently had some of the worst service and most likely to be damaged packages. I still remember the time where their third party delivery company attempted delivery at 2am in the morning according to the UPS website! Truth was they didn't bother and just scratched in some random time to look as if they had made first attempt. Too bad whoever did it didn't know the difference between am and pm! Eventually Purolator in my area took over the thrid party shipping for UPS and things have been better than the literally back of a warehouse trucking company. Although I suspect Purolator handles their own packages with higher priority than UPS.

This is why UPS's results tend to be unpredictable. It depends on which third party company UPS hired which can range from decent to horrific. I find that is probably the reason why results vary.

If you're in Canada, you're also likely to have discovered that UPS has the worst brokerage fee of any shipping company as well which is why if possible I try to avoid them as much as possible. I mean when you charge $20 brokerage for paying $5 of taxes at the border it makes you wonder why UPS!?

In Canada the postal equivalent is CanadaPost and I've always found their service to be great. Their post offices also tend to close late which makes it easy to grab a parcel after work. I imagine the USPS is very similar.

I'm a former LU Computer Science student and still active in the clubs there as alumni. All I can say is that LU's WiFi protection policy is a complete LIE. Look at it this way folks, a cellphone puts out at least 1 watt of power which is 1000 milliwatts. A typical wifi router puts out a measly 20 milliwatts. I should know, my blackberry phone has the power to buzz speaker systems wirelessly at times. If a lot of kids and adults carry cellphones, shouldn't we be more worried about the higher power systems? If anything I suspect kids are getting sick because well it's school... Most kids are happier with no school. Happier = Healthier (well short term anyhow until you have no education and can't survive in the modern world) Sheesh dumb parents...

Another point, we did a quick wifi survey of the University and guess where there's an obvious wifi point? Right in the administration offices where the president resides! Truth is, I think the president banned wifi because they didn't want to spend the money to implement WiFi or the associated bandwidth needs. If he actually believed the health issue why the heck would he put a WiFi point in his own administration office? Somewhat a hypocrite no? Anyhow, President Gilbert was highly disliked by staff and students and many are happy to see him go into retirement this year.

I think maybe this writer totally missed the point of SSDs. SSDs are not about space but are about speed. If you've ever had a chance to use a high performance SSD, the experience is awesome. Everything loads and unloads smoothly. You have none of the delays related to standard hard drives that do affect your experience with an operating system. Also in a laptop SSDs bring silence and a physical reliability that you just can't get in a standard hard drive. I suspect SSDs will fill their own space in the market with mechanical HDs being reduced to storage or backup drives.

I have tried many routers over the years but some of the best I've used were the ones supported by the custom Tomato firmware. The WRT54G series Linksys routers or the Asus WL-500 routers work extremely well. The best way to test a wireless router's ability is to see if it can survive torrents. I find the ones that can with stability to be powerful enough to even handle routing an entire small office's internet activity.

D-Link is some of the worst consumer wireless routers I have ever used in my life. I have friends with disaster stories as well. D-Link often cheaps out leaving essential stability components out or they overpower their wifi chip to the point that there's a real risk of it melting down. I would never recommend them.

A recent router out on the market that's very good is the Netgear WND3700 (Dual-Band Wifi). Unfortunately like most good things in life, it isn't cheap.

I am Canadian myself, I suspect this will not come to pass. I mainly blame the US Media lobbying groups for pressing the Canadian Government into the current situation. No sane government would want this law as it seems to do a better job of upsetting the public than benefiting them. I suspect this law keeps coming up as a way for the government to show the worldly powers that they are trying to do something while realizing at the same time that it's going to keep getting shot down. In some ways Canada got lucky. Although we have this nasty blank disk tax, after seeing how the DMCA ended up being used in the US, our Consumer rights groups sprung into action / panic to the law. I am reminded of a show I saw about the printed word. They clearly pointed out that any advanced civilization in history has always permitted the free flow and non-restricted sharing of literature. The ones with problems restricted / limited or even destroyed works. I wonder in time what the difference of not having a DMCA equivalent in Canada will compare to the US?

For anyone that plans on using this CPU as a workstation or light server chip, this is the best way to go. I recently priced an Asus M4A785TD-V EVO motherboard and it's only an amazing $120. (Comes complete with a built in low powered graphics card too) Pair that with this Phenom X6 and ECC ram and you have an amazingly great value Virtualization or Parallel rendering system. This chip is probably overkill for consumers and gamers but for the folks who can use it, it's an amazing steal. :) In any event, I work for a small company and so far AMD's proven to be the best value for light servers. Intel's primary best designs and strengths are in the Laptop market where they make advanced chips but on the Desktop I still find AMD to be great.

Er, actually even the cheapest AMD motherboards support ECC. ie Asus M4A785TD-V EVO which on NewEgg lists for $114 and even has a built in video card if you're going to use it as a workstation system instead of a gaming system. It's one of the reasons why I pick AMD for workstations and server whitebox builds... They're hard to beat. :)

First of all is it just me or did folks forget that the phone was lost in a bar in another country according to the last article I read on this issue. I always thought that what you did in another country would fall under their laws. In any case, I suspect what is actually going on is Apple is investigating if Gizmodo actually stole the phone. If it turns out they only bought something that was stolen in another country I don't think there's much legal president on it. Besides, the press, "Apple jails Reporter who bought a stolen Iphone." probably really isn't something Apple wants to be known for. If anything it seriously tarnishes your product image. I suspect Apple is not directly involved for this reason but requesting an investigation to be sure. If it turns out Gizmodo did steal the iPhone directly then yes, they will be in trouble but I suspect in the long run, nothing will come from this and after the investigation, all the computer hardware will be returned.