At some point it will depend on your definition of efficiency.

At the moment none of the four major carriers in the US are using common protocols and frequencies for G3 service and above. They may be using some frequencies in common, or some protocols in common, but to differentiate their services, they don't use common protocols. A side effect of this is that you can take a walk with three other people, each of you using a different provider's phone, and walk through almost any major metro area, and see different carriers signal levels fluctuating all over the place. It's nearly impossible to roam on other carriers services, and almost no-one is providing general coverage service outside of major metro areas. In some parts of the US, you are better off having an Iridium phone than anything from a cellular carrier.

Yes, each carrier is working hard to provide solid coverage in the metro areas, but it's not going to happen. The frequencies that provide the best reach into where the customer is are either already in use, or don't have sufficient capacity for high bandwidth. 700mhz may seem like a magic bullet, but remember that a TV channel has about enough bandwidth for 45 mbps, one way, and to spread that across 100 customers for a cell (or worse) means that no-one is going to see 500 kbps, or less than 60kB/s. To get higher throughput, you have to go to higher frequencies. And higher frequencies don't reach into buildings as well. Great coverage out on the street, perhaps, but that reflective surface on the window to keep the temperature down in the glass building does a serious number on signal reception.

And since 800mhz analog has been eliminated, there are a lot of towers across the US that it just didn't make economic sense to convert to digital service. That may start changing if the FCC mandates that the only way that they are going to open more spectrum is if there is broader distribution of coverage across the US. But I'm not going to hold my breath for that. I figure the likelyhood of that is right up there with the FCC mandating that US carriers all start using common protocols and allow users to use any new phone on the market with any carrier, at the phone's best transfer rate. I just don't see it happening.

From what I've seen that $500 will go to the profs, who will give a TA a $100 stipend to submit between 1 and 5 corrections and a review of the quality of the material. The TA will look for misuse of "its" and "it's", and submit one correction per week for a semester, in hopes of getting a bit more than $100, then find a generic review of the text that someone else has done (in another school possibly, or at least from another prof) and wordsmith the review to submit their own review.

Profs really don't have the time needed to review the books. Unless they are getting publish credit for the review, their time is almost completely committed to the publish or perish grind.

At the very least though, compiling a collection of text books that state school boards can look to and see what offerings are available, and compare them with the texts that they can allocate funds from their budgets for (meaning that their budgets do get to keep growing, when the idea of the Open Textbook is to save the community money) them to justify their position. And it's not like the publishers of the Open Textbooks are going to bey plying those board members to get them to commit to using the Open Textbooks as the commercial textbook publishers will.

Not sure that anyone at MIT would stoop so low as to use X10 modules for a dorm project. Somehow I would tend to expect them to design their own solution that wasn't so noisy, or prone to being affected by someone in the next room with an X10 timer, or lamp control pad.

I hold the view that this really is more along the lines of saying that there is not just one faith that involves god. If you allow that there are literally hundreds of christian sects, a couple of different Jewish and Islamic sects (each) there are at least three well recognized 'dwelling places' that are within 'My Father's house'.

If you look at what each faith teaches, you will find far more in common, than separate. Almost every faith recognizes both that killing is wrong, but sometimes necessary. Stealing from one another is almost always discouraged in one way or another, but very few discourage taking from those outside of the faith.

Who among us truly knows "My Father" well enough to say that those following what we think is a different path are not following the same god?

Personally I think that all religions are the first level of governance beyond the family. They give us a means of building a community. That community allows us to accomplish more than any of us as individuals can do. And those accomplishments build upon each other as our communities start working with each other.

But that's a personal view, and I'm well aware that it runs counter to the public statements of many religions. I don't claim not to be heretical to those religions. I don't claim to be closer to 'my God' or yours, or have a better fundamental understanding of how the world works in your mind than you do.

I have a suspicion that the 'solution' to this is going to have to be someone re-implementing the SketchUp UI to fit over Blender, and or InkScape. Personally I would prefer it to sit on top of Blender because there are already tools that are well known for printing components from Blender on a 3d printer, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone has (or is working on) the same sort of process for SVG file based component designs.

A lot of 3d printer models are already being started in SketchUp, but then one has to extract the needed content from the SketchUp file to process it in Blender (or other tools) to get/generate tool paths for 3d printers.

I've never seen any of the development team for SketchUp suggest that there ever would be a Linux version. They seem to be content that at least some of the free versions run under Wine. Presuming you have proper 3d hardware acceleration running under Wine. Hell the developers are recommending other companies iOS software to people requesting _something_ for Android.

I gave up on having any real hope for a Linux release over a year ago. The SketchUp developers just don't seem to get the fact that they have a ready audience. And while Linux users have the image of not being willing to spend money, we don't all look for the cheapest hardware and restrict ourselves to software that doesn't have support agreements. And the people who will pay $500 or more for SketchUp are commercial users who would treat it as part of the cost of doing business. And considering that Google themselves have moved to a Linux and MacOS preference for operating systems for desktops, it just seems like ignorance on the developer's side that they haven't even started a port to Linux.

What the Model 100 had going for it was that for the target market you could put in 4 new AA batteries at 8 in the morning, set the clock (if needed) and start working, and not need to be plugged in again until midnight. For writers, and people doing data gathering in the field, this really does mean that you can work all day. The keyboard pretty much feels comfortable, you don't have extra hardware to keep track of in the field, (where did I drop that wireless mouse again?) and so on.

No it doesn't have an HD or Wysiwyg display. It's not going to run 3d games very well. etc. You are not going to watch TV on it, or have it read that book aloud to you. It's not the latest and greatest hardware. On the other hand what it did, and for what it was capable of doing, there really was not a lot of competition. It's not the sexy gadget of the week for endgadget or techcrunch. That's OK.

I don't recall the specs of the model 100, but the model 200 had an Intel 80c85 processor, with 3 26k banks of memory available. Each bank was available to the user as 19k of usable memory. The 200 had a 40 column by 16 line lcd display that folded over the keyboard, and that device gave Tandy a patent on the clamshell design for laptop and pocket computers they earned royalties on for the next 17 years.

I'm not saying that it was the sexiest device. But you would be hard pressed to find a device in the digital technology sector that has put in as many hours of work in as many fields, as the TRS-80 Model 100 (and by extension 102 and 200) portable computer.

To the several who corrected my misunderstanding, thank you.

This is the suit that Apple has attempted to end run the penalty by filing suit in the US against Motorola asking the courts to prevent Motorola from enforcing the ruling in Germany. The question I have is _in Germany_ who enforces court rulings? The petitioner, or an agent of the court?

It may be that since damages Apple must pay to Motorola are unspecified at this time, that the court in Germany may hold off on specifying them until the case in the US is decided. After all if the only penalty that Apple can declare has been adjudicated in Germany is that they can't offer the service without getting a patent licence, that may be all that the court in the US says they have to do, and there is nothing in the filing that is preventing Apple from doing that. If Apple seeks a license from Motorola, then Germany has a basis for declaring damages based on the negotiated license requirements.

It looks to me that Google is doing exactly what their p3p policy says they will do. It also looks to me like IE is assuming that simply because there is a reference to a p3p that it says whatever the developer thinks a pep should say, rather than whatever it actually says.

I'm not saying that Google shouldn't be setting up a situation where 3rd party cookies may be accepted when they are not wanted. I don't know how the p3p in place was decided upon, but just because I have a valid drivers license, doesn't give me authority to drive any vehicle known to exist. My curiosity may be such that if someone offers to let me try my hand at operating a Peterbuilt tractor, I might give it a go, but that's not part of the class of license that I carry and can present.