Having grown up being taught that "All men are created equal", it is a rude shock to discover that the Creator has not made it so. No wonder the subject is argued so fervently.

Now that 24 bit 192k audio is the norm for motherboards, I'd like to see this on a small cheap board BTW --- how much is the Due going to sell for?

It is worth noting that IMAX uses almost the same aspect ratio (1.43) as the 1932 Academy Ratio (1.37). Many cassic B&W movies such as "Casablanca" are a joy to watch in hi def.

The original Star Trek episodes reimaged in HD are fun to watch because I see the handiwork in the props.

Where is live the cycling is almost entirely recreational. Cyclists travel considerable distances in their vehicles to get to where they wish to cycle around.

In addition to their carbon footprint, cyclists here force drivers to waste energy to slow down to a crawl until it is safe to pass them, then resume normal speed.

Back in 1959 High Fidelity meant being able to play an entire side of a record without the needle skipping or sticking. A rich neighbor had a Klipschorn driven by a Scott 121 Dynaural preamp and Mac 60. It was fantastic on organ music. But horn type speakers, even very expensive ones, sounded terrible on choral music. I lived through the early days of transistor amps, many of which sounded terrible. By the 1980s DBX LPs and good audio amps allowed classical music lovers to enjoy music with virtually all the expressiveness it was played with. Enter multimedia and the sound was challenged until Laserdisca got digital audio. The listening acoustics have yet to recover from having that big screen dominating the room.

There are two concepts of free space radio communications that must be understood to appreciate the gravity of the problem with LightSquared's currently proposed system. Radio signals lose strength as the square of the distance. GPS satellites are some 10,000 miles up. That puts GPS signals at a disadvantage of 10 billion to one over a cell tower a mile away, and LightSquared are proposing to build 40,000 of them. That represents a 100 decibel difference in signal strength. Can you hear the rustle of leaves over the roar of a jet? The other factor is the closeness of the frequencies as a percentage of the frequencies, as well as the bandwidths involved. Tune in the strongest station on your AM dial, then try to get a station 100 miles away up or down 20 kHz. Broadcast band DXers (long distance reception hobbyists) use precisely aimed loop antennas to null out nearby stations. Unfortunately that trick won't work for practical GPS navigation receivers.

Why not show it on NASA's hi def channel? It would be more relevant than showing *nauts playing pool and planting trees, which has been rebroadcast many times.

The SPAM in my inbox hasn't decreased much. I continually get emails from senders such as "dental care", "dream home", "medicare" etc.. I've spent some time tweeking spamassassin but this stuff keeps coming in.

Perhaps the Government could start by eliminating SPAM. Success (or the lack of it) will be easy to see.

Another solar event as strong as the 1859 Carrington Event, or stronger, could happen at any time. Apparently these events happen about once per several 100s of years. If that's not soon enough, a crude atom bomb in a crude ICBM could do the job in a few years. What's really scary is that engineers at electric utilities are generally clueless on the subject. I suspect executives know even less. Is EMP physics part of EE education yet?

Some years ago when the Blackberry 8830 came out, I switched from Verizon to Sprint because Verizon refused to enable the Blackberry's GPS. For me, GPS driven Google Maps is THE smartphone killer app. I switched to Sprint. The salesman assured me the GPS worked overseas, in Barcelona for example. Before leaving for Barcelona I called the salesman I bought the phone from to enable international voice and data. When I got to Barcelona the phone was not authorized for GSM. Sprint did not have a customer support number in Spain. I had to purchase a local cell phone to call Sprint to get the Sprint phone working. These calls used up about $100 worth of minutes. Eventually voice, data and tethered modem started working but not the GPS. Upon returning to Oregon I sent Sprint letters demanding credit for the expenditures they forced on me but never got a reply. Sprint did manage to get the phone authorized on subsequent trips but the built in GPS never worked. I was able to use a Bluetooth GPS but the connection had to be reset often. The tethered modem feature did not work on the last trip, and Sprint claimed it never did work overseas! The nice thing about Sprint is that you can get "all you can eat" data overseas for about $70 per month surcharge. Too bad the menu is shrinking. The other carriers I've checked charge an astronomical fee for data overseas.

I remember what I was doing during that broadcast. I had a brand new VCR set to record. The show had started while I was driving home from work. I had my analog car radio tunes to the show's audio but couldn't make any sense of the Wookie talk. Guess I didn't miss much on that segment. Some of the other segments are worth watching. I still have that VHS tape. I've captured it, even made a DVD out of it. I may make another sometime, this time leave the commercials and newscast in place (with chapter stops). I would buy a broadcast quality DVD if it were available.

I visited a local T-Mobile store the other day to look at the Android. I was just about to jump from Sprint when the salesman told me the data cost for international roaming is $15 per megabyte. I checked the T-Mobile website and this is indeed true. It is such an incredibly high rate that Google Maps could ring up hundreds of dollars a day. That data charge is 3 orders of magnitude greater than Vodaphone's advertised data rate. I am currently using Sprint for my Blackberry 8830 World Edition. They lie about what they provide, they lie about services they unilaterally remove or unbundle, and they rarely respond to customer complaints. But they still sell unlimited international data roaming for about $70 per month. And they only charge for the time international roaming is enabled, so a two week trip doesn't incur the full cost if you remember to turn it off when you get back. I can understand a surcharge for roaming, but THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE is way over the top.