Of course drilling in shallower water is safer. The problem is we've already exhausted a large number of those reserves, forcing deep water drilling.

The reason they had 5 different things to try so quickly is because they were all tried way back during the Ixtoc spill. The ideas weren't new. The problems arise when you consider they're now under a mile of water instead of a few hundred feet.

Its a fairly safe assumption that BP (and other companies) have spent nothing on containment research given the rehashing of Ixtoc containment and the on-the-fly engineering that has happened since the spill started.

Discovery was capable of automatic landing back in 2006 when they were still treading a fine line after Columbia. It appears it was a nasty hack at the time and would be manually plugged in if needed so it may not be included on current flights, but it was available.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/30/0458246

I don't notice any flicker as well. I have noticed that some lights have blocks of LEDs failing rather quickly after installation though. Entire sections of turn arrows and squares in circular lights that have gone out look rather weird. It may be a brand/manufacturer issue though since I see this in the larger metro area but not in the suburb where I live even though the suburb has had them longer.

Makes you wonder if they'll have the same issues with chunks failing in these lights.