SurfaceRT was a failure. The only way only explanation that I can think of for you asserting that the Surface Pro line has been a failure is if your head is located in a place that makes it difficult to see what's going on in the world around you.

The main difference is that FreeBSD users know what Google is and how to use it.

They will take a CNN and a Fox newscaster and lock em in a cage until only one is left reporting.

I'll avoid that. I don't think I could stomach such brutality.

I’ve got news for you. The sexual liberation movement has already been and gone, and most of society no longer has a puritanical view of sex and sexuality. You’ll have to find some other reason to explain the difficulty you’re having getting laid.

Implementing proper domain and user authentication by baking PGP or some other PKI right into the email protocols will both solve the spam problem comprehensively AND allow UTF8 domains with minimum risk of phishing /spoofing.

I agree. The real solution is hardened authentication getting baked right into email. I'm all for UTF8 domain names and email user names, however if the email protocol suite is going to be expanded to allow for more features, then I think security should be top of that list.

Sure, for a while, domains that span multiple character sets such as hotmail.com with a Cyrillic o could be spam flagged, however what happens when (not, if, but when) legitimate domains with multiple character sets start appearing? What about domains that use characters restricted to the intersection of two character sets such that they appear to be from one but are in fact from another?

The ONLY answer to this is an email client that can associate a certificate with a domain and checks it against received email as a matter of course. This solution not only has the property of preventing domain spoofing, but also comprehensively solves the spam problem. (It didn't get done earlier because it fell foul of the "requires everyone to agree at the same time" point on that pro forma "Why your proposal won't work" sheet.)

What would be wrong with just buying a couple of Nexus 7s, remove all junkware, put skype as the only app on it and distribute those? Surely the center has WiFi?

Yea! We don't need no stinkin' ecosystem! We got technologies! Raaa!

Or very, very right.

All these puns suck.

Actually, this is also incorrect. They do not decide what the law means, there is no decision involved. They attempt, to the most exactingly precise level possible, to determine what congress intended when the law was enacted. It is rare indeed that a law is so vague that it's intent cannot be determined with a reasonable amount of clarity.

Or, should I say, it used to be rare...

It must be comforting, living in a world of such naivete. At least, it will be until you wake up and realize where you are.

Glass (and obsidian for that matter) are crystalline in structure, making them hard and brittle. Exactly what you do not want in a road surface. Rock on the other hand is usually an amalgam of several materials, meaning that it can be scraped and chipped, but is less likely to develop cracks that propagate. Using regular ordinary gravel in asphalt also means that the rock pieces are not subject to localized large forces, as the exposed surfaces of the gravel stones flex away thanks to the bitumen. The twin properties of flexibility and a hard wearing surface are what make asphalt able to stand up to being hit with tonnes of force hundreds of thousands of times a year and still last decades between having to be relaid.

I agree that it's probably not the case that we can't do better, but the question is about current materials technology and economic viability. Could we do better if we spent $1m per square meter of road surface? Possibly, with those newly emerging exotic resins and fibers. Would a $1m/sqm price tag mean that the project has any chance of success? No.

When I said "solid bitumen", I was referring to traditional road materials, and not a bitumen only tarpit. Sorry for not being specific.

Also, "durable" is a relative term. We're talking about roads. Solar panels are durable when compared to, say, laptop screens. They are not durable in the context of road surfaces. Yes, there are amazing glass types around today, but once again, in the context of road surfaces, I don't think glass is, or could ever be, an appropriate material.

Bitumen+gravel is used because the stone gravel provides excellent wear resistance while the bitumen holds it in a flexible and self-healing suspension. It is still the best road surface material we have by a country mile.

You missed the whole point of durability that I mentioned.

In Thailand, many of the roads in the southern areas use glass balls as lane markers. They don't get driven over unless a wheel is in on the lane marker, hence, only a small fraction of the actual traffic. Nonetheless, it is plainly obvious that they just don't last. They are chipped and damaged to the point that they don't fulfill their function.

Roads are possibly the most abused surface mankind makes. No type of glass that we have access to could ever stand up to long term road wear. It's just not possible with today's tech. I really think that this is a grant scam, which is unfortunate, because the politicians being scammed will be less favourable to green projects the next time a real idea comes around.