No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

All modern power generating plants that use fuel (as opposed to hydro, wind, etc.) work basically the same way. They use a fuel to generate heat (burn coal or gas, create nuclear fission), heat water to steam, and use steam to turn turbines. The water is then cooled and returned to its source, usually a river or lake. All such power plants have problems when the incoming water is too warm or they cannot cool it sufficiently before discharging it.

The only difference between a nuclear plant and a coal/gas plant is that a nuclear plant can concentrate more generating capacity at a single location, which then can require more water.

Having replaced a power window motor and (in a different car) repaired the track for a crank window, there isn't a significant difference in weight (maybe a couple of pounds per door). With a crank, you have to have a lever, a bearing, and a gearing mechanism; with a power window, you have a light-weight switch and a small motor (usually sized for direct drive). The rest is pretty much the same.

Air conditioning isn't an option in hot climates if you spend much time in the car, and efficiencies of scale (and resale value) pretty much dictate it be standard across the board. Studies have shown that driving with the windows down increases drag in modern aerodynamic cars, affecting mileage more than the engine load and additional weight of the A/C system (which again isn't all that much, less than one adult passenger by a good bit). Also, my 1977 Honda CVCC Wagon got 30 MPG with an A/C (a dealer add-on which was not designed into the car).

Modern safety features such as air bags, anti-lock brakes, and crumple zones built into the frame add weight, but I'll take that weight. If I'd been hit by a truck in that old Honda, I'd have been dead. Today, in a Honda Fit (a similar sized car), you'd have a good chance of coming out with only minor injuries. The curb weight on the old Honda was around 1900 pounds, while the Fit (with a manual transmission) is 2500. The mileage in the Fit is a little bit better than the 1977 Wagon and has lower emissions.

I expect T-Mobile will still be sold, just not to another major mobile phone provider. I wouldn't be surprised if CenturyLink ends up buying them; they are the largest telecom company without a mobile presence.

There's too many customers and too much spectrum for them to just be shut down. They're even still showing growth, just not as much as AT&T and Verizon (and not as much as Deutsche Telekom would like).

Don't you mean box?

I bet you still drive a car with a four-cycle engine, which is 19th century technology. Your car has some improvements, but nothing much original.

Hey, that's my dad you're talking about! Dad worked on what was then called the J-2X (a different program from the current J-2X) during the Saturn program, and is still working for NASA on the new vehicles.

It also allows you to see who sold your email and/or who has been compromised. I have a personal domain for email, and I use a different address for just about everything (and they're usually pretty unique, so not found by address harvesting). I am now getting a lot of spam at the address I gave to Linux Journal; since they went online-only and I cancelled my subscription, I killed that address.

I also had a year of free credit monitoring with one of the "big three" credit agencies (due to somebody else's database compromise), and now (shortly after the year passed and I didn't agree to pay for continuing monitoring) that address is getting spam. Either they sold it, or their database has been compromised. Either way, it gives me SUCH a good feeling about their reliability!

I switched to XFCE (on Fedora 15). It is similar to the GNOME 2 "look and feel", especially if you spend just a little bit of time moving things around (although the default XFCE "look" isn't bad either).