That seems to validate the parents point of, "Panama didn't have the benefit of the massive machines available now. It will likely be much cheaper compartitively."

Ex: http://www.geekologie.com/2008...
311ft tall, 705ft long, 45,000 tons (versus panamas digger at 105 tons), and moves 2,700,000 cubic ft of day!

Ex. http://justpaste.it/largest-co...
A bunch of various big machines...

Ex. http://www.popularmechanics.co...
Hydraulic Shovel (possibly the best comparison/evolution of the steam shovel you shared). It's shovel holds 57 cubic yards (versus the measly 2.5 - 5 of that steam shovel).

I'd say that's quite an improvement and should make the job faster and cheaper than panama.

Wrong (AFAICT).

They are actively throttling users. That is not the same as their network being unable to handle it, or for congestion to affect many users.

The users with metered plans are not being throttled. They may be using even more. Everyone could do that, and they would not throttle the metered users because they want that additional money. The unlimitted users are getting throttled when they hit some cap of MB/month. That's not unlimitted. Unlimitted would mean they should behave just like the metered plans, but they'd pay a flat fee.

As others have said, they should just terminate all of these contracts and offer those users something else. They are all on month to month. There's just an awful lot of them that ARE still profitable, and they're scared to lose that... so either it's worth it to keep them all or not, but they shouldn't be throttled like that (as much as I hate the idea of some very small percentage of folks ruining my day to day experience).

Personally, I'd like a more customizable rate... something like the way fractional T1's used to work (dedicated 256k up/down, and burstable to 1.5mbit if it's available... but some different rates in those places, especially on the high end). I'd be willing to wager this is quite possible (for 3g/4g/lte as well as cable/dsl/etc), but is just "too complicated" to market to people (quantity, 2gb/month, is easier to grasp than throughput, 256kbps; and they are very very different forms of measurement, with the former barely meaning anything - if you do all your downloads at 3am, you'll still hit your cap even though there was loads of extra bandwidth).

ECC isn't *that* much more than normal ram. Ex.
Kingston ValueRam 8gb DDR3 1600 non-ecc CL11 (amazon list $115.99; amazon price $79.99)
Kingston ValueRam 8gb DDR3 1866 ECC CL13 (amazon list $168; amazon price $103.99)

It used to be (many many years ago) that ram was very expensive, and ECC was tons more expensive (more than 2x's the price).
A few years back, they were almost the exact same price, and it was almost half as much as it is now (it was when I did my last desktop build). I think I accidentally one of the sweet spots, cause it was well under $100 for 16gb DDR3-1600 ECC... somewhere around fall of 2012.
I really wish it became bog standard... just as common as VT-x and friends are these days.

That peaked my interest quite a bit. However, after looking into it, that gets you a custom collection from each of those book places (700 safari books online, and 500 books 24x7, and 150 morgan kaufmann and syngress books). Safari, for example, offers far more books on their cheapest plans (which includes over 200 publishers).

ACM also offers a discounted Safari Pro upgrade: http://learning.acm.org/books/...
The ACM price is 20% off list. The Safari Pro package is $39/month or $399/year. So you save either $93.60 or $60 a year.
If you wanted to get the Safari Pro already, then you might as well join ACM and do the pro upgrade... it's almost a wash, and you get the other ACM benefits.
I was hoping for a bit more of a free ride :-) Still not a bad deal, but thought others might want to know.

http://particlecounting.tumblr...

Compares Blue Air 203/270E (3,600 RMB) and a Philips AC4072 (3, 000 RMB) to both of his setups. Those are only about $550 filters, but I think that is sufficient to cover the "up to" in "up to $1000". If you want to donate a $1000 one to him, it looks like he'd be happy to test it.

Are you talking about eInk e-reader, or their tablet?
If eInk, good luck filling up the storage they give you with books. Pdf support is there (as far as I can tell), and you can borrow books from the library using overdrive (checkout is not built in, but it works).

If you're referring to their tablet, just get a generic android tablet. You can install all the reader apps on it (Amazon Kindle, BN Nook, Kobo, FBReader, etc).

I do wish their eink kindle allowed other "app stores", so to speak, but I think that'd be entirely possible using the browser, and they do have app support (I have scrabble on mine).

While I agree, when it comes to ebooks, there's no reason someone else couldn't capture that market. The only thing they have going is that the Kindle is somewhat locked down, however, anyone can make an ebook that works on it (with or without DRM). Those 3 big companies are where they are due to the awesome distribution work they have in place + size (negotiation power) + software. Those things don't matter nearly as much for ebooks.

I don't think Amazon should force a maximum price for ebooks, but I do think anyone selling both the ebook and the physical book on that same site (amazon in this case) should have the ebook at a lower price than the physical copy.

Nitpicking, but this:

... is technically incorrect, though in general practice it sure does seem that way.

The "privilege" is that of driving on public roads. Just about anyone can legally drive just about anything on their own land (ex. young kids operating farm machinery).

The AC was almost right, except that we (at least in the US) already put laws in place banning various driving situations, like driving in public without a license, or without insurance, or with an unregistered car, etc etc (most of which are actually state laws). It's much like one of the ways that marijuana got banned - they put a requirement that sale required a tax stamp, and then didn't sell any of those stamps. In this case, you can't operate a driverless car on the public roadways without having a licensed driver and registered car and all that stuff, and those don't pass yet.

Or the problem is the financial budget (more money -> send more stuff -> include more features/stuff -> going faster and doing more).

FWIW, I totally understand that certain design decisions were made for various, and well justified, reasons. Personally, I'd favor the ability to travel long distances over some of the other features (ex. have it nuke powered, and ignore the issue of contamination of Mars). I'd also love to see more stuff sent there, and to other celestial bodies, like maybe a deep drilling device, or excavation equipment.

Anyway... I had just assumed (poorly) that it had wheeled around more than an average of 36 feet a day, or had a top speed better than 0.1mph. It's still an amazing little rover (already survived more than 40x's longer than planned).

I realize it's done much more than it was designed for, and we got more bang for our buck, but when I first read TFS, I thought this:

...meant, "If the rover can travel just 26.2 MORE miles THAN IT ALREADY HAS TRAVELED, then..."

It's been on Mars for over 10 years. It's not a very fast little bugger, is it?

They had their own goals and all that, but my first goal, if I was sending something millions of miles away (I don't know how far it traveled when it went to Mars, but the closest approach between earth and mars has been 34.8 million miles), I'd certainly want the ability to move it more than XXX feet per day. 25 miles is REALLY short compared to it's 35 million+ mile trip to get there!

1. they are. They're just not very good.
2. there's stuff on the back of your phone. If you add on a keyboard, you block those things and/or have to work around them some how.
3. (if you didn't do a slider keyboard) the other options is a folio style. Generic ones exist, but they're very bulky cloth or (faux)leather wallet things with a keyboard shoved on one inner side.
4. more battery needed (takes up room, and it's another thing to charge).

Phones with a built in keyboard can move stuff around the back of the keyboard. They can stick the battery in the keyboard part if they want. It's little things, but they're really needed to make it worthwhile.

As I mentioned above, the Typo keyboard for the iPhone is another alternative that does seem to work. It rips off the blackberry, more-or-less. Something like that *could* be made for other devices, but it's not as desirable in other ways (adds permanent length to already long phones, and puts the keyboard on the portrait side, etc).

Completely agree then.
The biggest issues with the sliding keyboard cases for galaxy S4 and S5 is that the camera, which is centered on the back, gets blocked even when the keyboard is slid out (the cases have an extra hinge so one can then fold it some, which leaves the camera the clearance it needs, and makes it really awkward to use and extra bulky).
The only add-on case I've been able to find that appears to be decent is that typo one for the iPhone. Wish they made them for other phones.

I'm hoping we see keyboards make a short comeback. Between the samsung galaxy S3, S4, and S5, there really weren't many significant changes. It wouldn't take them much engineering to get a keyboard properly integrated with one (or any other maker to do similar), and they could nab some upgrades from folks like me that see no reason to upgrade (only thing the S5 has that I want is the water proofing, which I hope becomes commonplace).

WHAT!??!!
I haven't found a keyboard case for the Samsung Galaxy S4 that I would use (though I really want a keyboard), but keyboard cases exist for the first two you mentioned (haven't looked for the nexus). Or am I misreading your post... are you saying you would NOT buy an iPhone nor Galaxy SIII?

Ex: iPhone (I really like this case): http://istoreworld.com/us/typo...

Here's a sliding one for the iPhone: http://www.amazon.com/Bluetoot...

I have trouble seeing any of the justifications for getting a public CA cert for a name like "Server1" with an internal IP.

You could use your own internal CA, as others have noted. There is overhead to doing so and, being lazy, just buying the public cert may have seemed like an option.

However, one could simply use a real DNS entry, and all would be fine. Ex. server1.int.my-domain.com. Setup the "int.my-domain.com" on dns servers that all your internal hosts can see (they're all internal, so that can't be TOO difficult, and it doesn't hurt if that's visible from external). It's really quite easy to setup DNS, and it's cheaper, and it'll work with the CA just fine, and will work if/when you move the service to a public IP, or if you adopt an internal CA, etc etc etc. Why NOT do this? You can even host your DNS for free somewhere online.

... is that the same risk team that would authorize the purchase of a public cert for "Server1"?

I think the original point was that it takes almost nothing to sign certs. There need not be any significant investment.