Do you mean like this? Light Radio, a programmable cell tower the size of your palm?

While true it has been a while since the hey day of Bell Labs coming out with new tech every few years, they don't seem dead just yet. I blame their current state on chasing quarterly or yearly profits and having a somewhat unfair playing field with companies like Huawei and ZTE instead of investing in the long term tech.

Per wikipedia

That and their merger with Alcatel hasn't been very smooth. Though too, perhaps the wireless tech is maturing so there is not the low hanging fruit anymore?

Also for clarification Bell Labs is still around in at least some form, it is the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent. Lucent merged with Alcatel back in 2006.

The data shows that it reduces accidents and death. The real question though, is it worth the effort and trouble? At what point do we reach diminishing returns or a reasonable balance. That is for the states to decide, it's not (currently) 'mandatory'.

Any "fair use" possibilities get stopped by the DMCA because if it's an encrypted disc you have to first break the encryption which is not protected by fair use.

Although modern infrastructure has placed barriers to prevent impact around many road level surfaces (curbs, posts, trees, fences, etc) I'm not sure that's not the correct question on safety. Planes can do that currently.

What is needed to ask is what are the safety mechanisms in place for when something fails in power or structure. At least with a plane you have the ability to glide a certain amount and some steerage if the engine goes out, but I guess with helicopters you really don't. Some even have emergency parachutes but I'm not up on how well they work. Either way they are fairly expensive to get, thereby reducing the access and limiting harm. Hmm, now that I consider it, without automation and computer controlled flight, I'm not sure I'd want ubiquitous and affordable flying vehicles.

I'm going to assume due diligence was done and that with it being so far away, a refillable port and a small, single-use robotic craft to accomplish that would be more expensive than just creating a newer satellite to replace it.

Party balloons? "Those are my everyday balloons." -Kramer

I get 15Mbps for ~ $55 (fairly consistent according to tests), it's one of the lower tiers around here with Cox. I'm not sure I would want any faster as I doubt I'd see much benefit. We stream Netflix and other stuff all the time plus I work from home. Never had an issue with the speed of the connection, even with multiple users. So yeah, another $10+ for 5x as much sounds good, except when you wouldn't notice it.

Just because you say it, doesn't 'make it so'. I liked (as most did) JJA's latest Trek reboot and am looking forward to what he does with SW7.

What you don't understand is that most people don't keep both hands on the keyboard. They either have one down on a laptop mouse area or a stand alone mouse in their right hand. Most don't know any shortcuts including alt-tab. They only one they may know, out of necessity sometimes, is ctrl-alt-del. F# keys? Forget it. Some fancy users have figured out with the PrtSc means cause their kid showed them. Windows key? never used. This new metro design is beyond confusing, and for no apparent reason, to most users. Instead of a desktop with shortcuts to your programs, and a start menu to find others, they've overrun your view with a bunch of meaningless icons and constantly changing pictures. You and I can understand it and work around it, most find it too confusing and agravating because it's not like what they know.

When you give non technical people instructions you tell them you can do it this way, or this way, or this way. No. They memorize that one way to do things and move on. Win8 is different and they don't know the steps to manage it like they learned with XP or Vista or Win7, all those were similar.

I had one. Sadly when I got rid of my CRT monitor the LCD one could no longer flash the full screen bar codes to program it. It was fairly neat at the time at holding some information.

Smart watches are the modern day Palm Foleo. And will likely be as successful.

Wow, you don't say. You either forgot the /s tag or you have a distorted view of "old".

I have a feeling you're gonna be disappointed in the future...

Not really any big deal to me, or my kids, which seem to be more entertained with their iPod or DS these days anyway. Given their ease of use and cost (our used iPhones turned into iPods for them) I'm wondering if I'll even invest in the next console from any maker. I'd thought about the next Xbox as my kids mature but I'm not so sure given the reports. There's so much entertainment for them already, I'd rather them be outside playing or interacting with friends or reading and less screen time, not more.