NOT to be so naive! 21 years old, fresh out of electronics school. Moved to Houston Tx. Believed everything the recruiter said. Got there, found out it wasn't what I thought it was. Stuck it out a year, just for the work experience. Came back to my home state, found another career in electronics and have been with it for 3 different companies for 33 years. Current one, 17 years. Take everything a recruiter tells you about a "major" corporation with a grain of salt. 18 months after I left the one in Houston, they laid everyone off and closed up shop, moved it to Dallas. Couple computer companies had that building for a while, northwest Cyprus, Tx area. Don't know who has it now.

Just call Obama, McConnell or any other moron in DC, they will probably just GIVE it to you for free. After all, it wouldn't be fair that someone have something and someone else did not ya know.

Had the USA not had a power grid, but, each home had its own independent "power plant", the USA would have been on DC long ago. But, back then, it was decided, that it was better to have power generation done from a central location, and have it "piped" to the homes. Of course it became a business, & I seriously doubt the powers that be, will NOT allow home owners to have their own source of power, without some sort of BS tax. They will throw a ton of money at politicians, which do their bidding, and not the people.

For probably 75-80% of your TYPICAL smart phone user, the mid tier devices will be all they would ever need, but, most consumers fall for the slick marketing, hype and got to keep up with the Jones' attitude and will go on the hook (even under an overpriced contract) for a flagship device. I did the numbers when I bought my last phone almost a year ago. I had been off contract for over a year with straight talk, with zero issue or coverage problems. At the time the S5 had been out and the OnePlus was just out (late May '14). I went ahead and bought a $299.00 Huawei Mate2. It's a mid tier device, 6" screen, 720p, snapdragon 400. It was the BATTERY size that sold me, 4,000mAH. I ran the numbers between it and the S5, and in a 24 month period (typical USA contract), I save over 84 dollars per month buying outright, than on a contract. The problem with the device manufacturers now, is lack of INNOVATION. They release a new device every 6-9 months with marginal speed increases or tighter pixel densities, or (shudder) higher megapixel cameras. And with them come HIGHER prices. But, if you run the same apps on my snapdragon 400 device, with these snapdragon 80x devices (general apps, not high intensity games), you will find both devices run them adequately for everyday use. Then why are people willing to shell out year after year for overpriced devices, that the apps can't really benefit from? Because in my opinion, they are suckers. Also, it's in the best interest of both the carriers & manufacturers to NOT offer software updates to the devices, when, they can push them into a new device every 12 months, and, simply extend the contract. You keep them locked in for life. I hope these "sell for cost" or mid tier devices flood the markets. It will require the "big boys" to change their market ideas to compete. They will have to drop the price on their devices, or lose market share. More competition is good for the consumer. When the manufacturing cost of a smartphone, with marketing, research, advertising is less than 200 dollars, but yet they will retail them for 700, 800 or more, consumers are being ripped off. That's why I will stick with a good quality mid tier device. It's your money...do what you want, but I'd prefer value, over bright shiny new flashy things.

I'm not up behind the science, but in SOME cases, can't lasers be deflected with mirrors? Now, the power level of the military lasers is HUGE, so perhaps the mirror idea wouldn't work?

For not having their own "capsule" system, they shelved in the 70's. Should have NEVER stopped upgrading Apollo.

Take the HDD out. pack it in air bladders, ship it to the location you are going to, or to the hotel. Fly with the laptop, sans hard drive, or another that's just windows. Then when you get to your destination pop in the "real" HDD.

Why? Because if you have tax free medical savings accounts, couple things would happen. As with the so called social security trust fund, congress would raid it, and would have NO money in it. Giving POWER to the citizens, goes totally against congress, the senate & the white house. We can't have the people having any power...it would make the government not needed, and would take away OUR power. Sad, but true.

Wouldn't it be nice, if ALL government projects, worked as good as the Opportunity Rover.

Yep, called a phase II ping. Gets em within 50-75 feet, if not closer.

First couple shuttle launches had ejection seats, but were taken out prior to operational use. The way that stupid shuttle was designed, there would never had been a practical way to escape the shuttle, unless they went with a "pod" to get them out, which would have weighted too much. The capsule concept, in use from the 50's, is a more practical way of escaping, but, NASA (and by the way of a proxy, the congress), went with that stupid shuttle, then didn't launch it the way it was intended (piggyback on a giant plane). They went with those stupid boosters, problematic at best. NASA, congress, and of course the CONTRACTORS, wanted the shuttle because they sold it as a "flying truck". So, instead of furthering our exploration of space, we just flew up and down in low orbit, then, they came up with the space station concept to give the shuttle something to do. It's been a great big money spending party. Put space exploration into private hands, which will find a profitable way to do it, and space exploration will, to coin a phrase, take off.

Should have one of these "art festivals" about once a month across the nation...draw these morons out and stomp on them like the cockroaches they are.

Well, since those shows are almost 50 years old, and she passed away at age 85, that would put her in the late 20's to early 30's when those shows were made.

In 1972. Started with tubes in a tv shop when I was 14, transistors just a bit later, then in the late 70's, went to a 2 year college for electronics. First computer we had in that school, took up an entire room, magnetic tape and a whopping 10 meg hard drive with a platter larger than a laser disk. After college, took a year long job in Houston for Texas Instruments. Loved the job, hated the city (early 80's). Came back (midwest) took a "temporary" job in an office machine business, been in it ever since. Was just starting to transition from discrete transistors to LSI chips so I bought myself a computer kit, built it myself, learning along the way. Played around with basic. The key is to NEVER stop learning. Some in my business dropped out, when things went digital about 12 years ago, add connectivity, internet, cloud computing and they just couldn't hack it. I'm in my mid 50's now, and I even have some of the vendors calling me for advise, because I never stop learning and always want to know "what if". When hiring, "book smarts" to me, only means you were good enough to sit through class and pass the tests, but, I always look at practical experience, and weight that, as much or more, than that little piece of paper with your name & a gold seal stamped on it.

I'll bet, except for benchmarking programs, any commonly used app on the google play store, will run just as efficiently on any snapdragon 8xx SOC, as it does on my snapdragon 400 device. People are for the most part, WASTING their money trading in a snapdragon 800,801 device for a snapdragon 808-810 device, just on the basis of performance alone. My 400 device, has a great camera, plenty of ram, LTE, battery that lasts 3 days with 3% left over, but I didn't pay 600-800 bucks for it. Hey, your money, I just don't get the "need" to trade a device 6-9 months after you get it, unless it was a dud out of the box, or you've jacked around with it to the point that it is unstable.