I know you are being sarcastic, but that is probably the most true thing you've ever written / said (tied with any correct mathematical statements).

Actually, its name is mythological in origin (like most bodies in our solar system):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Yes, I'm sort of a MS fanboy (less so that I was years ago, but still). Flame me all you want. Sounds like this could be a cool update :)

Not on the app side, so far as I can tell (and yes, I use the Hangouts app on my Android phone). I've not yet downloaded this new version, but have been looking forward to it for a while since I had been using Google Voice for voicemail and text messaging, but had to use Hangouts for texts with pictures attached or group texting. Hopefully this brings it all into one app :)

The ratio of children being born is roughly 50/50, though, as most other places in the world. Here in the US there isn't a lot of abortion based on gender yet (thank God!) so birth rates comes out pretty even.

What you could have, then, is people moving to the area for jobs. The military in particular is going to bring in a higher ratio of men than women, but they are probably not looking to do a ton of dating while in active duty... and they are moving in and out of the military bases around the area every year or two.

So the other major employers - MS, Amazon, Boeing: are they really bringing more men to the region than women? Maybe, but only a little bit I think. Anyone they bring in who is already married or in a committed relationship is likely bringing their partner / family too. And I know that with Boeing in particular a massive amount of the workforce is already from Seattle; they aren't trying to hire people from the other side of the country for mechanics positions, though some of that may happen in the upper echelons of engineers and managers.

So what I suspect is happening is a *small* influx of workers to the area, with a bit of a higher male:female ratio. There is also some movement of folks from around the greater metro area into the city as young working professionals, to be closer to their jobs. That may make an imbalance within the job hubs of Seattle, Everett, Redmond, and Bellevue... but what people are leaving out are the myriad of smaller cities around and between them. Do Kent, Renton, Auburn, Burien, Kirkland, Bothell, Woodinville, Lynnwood, Shoreline, Edmonds, Marysville, Federal Way, Fife, Puyallup and the many other towns all have more men than women as well? I doubt it. I bet if you look at the region as a whole you would have a 1.1:1 ratio or lower.

Seattle proper is actually relatively small, and surrounded by dozens of smaller cities and towns. I would wager that the overall metro area has close to a 1:1 ratio, but that young, single men tend to move into the city to be close to work, especially before starting a family. Housing in the city is expensive, but more livable for someone in a 1-bedroom or studio apartment. Once you need more space than that, the suburbs are much more appealing.

I believe rust is traditionally only *iron* oxide, not that of other metals.

I figured that all along. It took off on Apple hardware, with almost no pickup on normal PCs. That has finally started to happen a little - some upper end motherboards have 1 or 2 Thunderbolt ports now, and Asus has an add-on board for a few others - but it is really a niche thanks to its odd hardware requirements and lack of early adoption outside of Apple. USB is easier to use, and at least up to 3.0 has been backward compatible with older devices. With an even faster option, as long as they don't screw something up, I don't see how USB could not continue to be the leading connectivity standard.

When I was talking about ship to ship, I mean if one of our destroyers or cruisers had to engage a similar class of ship from an opposing navy. They would not come alongside at a few miles distance and lob shells at eachother anymore - even if equipped with cannons of some kind. They would fire cruise missiles from many miles away, and hopefully counter any opposing missiles with point defense guns or interceptor missiles. That is what I meant when I said we don't use cannons for ship vs ship combat these days.

If you instead mean do we fire smaller caliber cannons at fast, tiny boats from pirates or terrorists - then yes, we absolutely still do use guns for that... but it is hardly real ship to ship naval combat at that point. The rail guns we have been testing for years, and which the article talks about, bring back the option of direct capital ship vs capital ship combat (at extreme ranges, too) as well as countering incoming missiles and bombarding shore positions.

Tiny cannons on a close-to-shore (littoral) ship are a bit different. We don't have battleships and cruisers with massive cannons anymore, though, like we did in WWI / WWII. The last time a battleship shelled an on-shore location - or fired its main guns in combat at all, so far as I am aware - was back in the Kuwait war in 1991.

Yes, we (the US) have *one* ship now with a serious cannon system... but even it is more like artillery than a traditional ship cannon, from my limited understanding.

It isn't built to compare with cannons / guns, which our naval ships no longer use for ship to ship or ship to shore engagement. It is designed to replace or augment missiles, and the cost of the round fired is ~$25k which is an order of magnitude or two less than similar-ranged missile technology.

Windows 8.1 Update 1 - then next they will do Windows 8.1 Update 1 Service Pack 1 ;)

Oh, I see - that is unfortunate. The rumors I had heard were that the big update today was going to include all of that... rather disappointing that it doesn't. Sorry for the confusion!

That is what the *current* (read: before today's update) version of 8.1 has. I believe this is the update that is adding back a Start Menu, and letting you run "apps" within windows on the desktop.