Yet another version of "We're all in this together!" (as he's sitting on a mega yacht next to your leaking rubber raft) Yeah the economy is having a rough time, but when your company is sitting on train-loads of cash I don't buy the whole "we've got to tighten our belts" BS.

My assumption is that it's some piece of top secret gear from a country that would rather it not be known they're sending stuff up. Part of some launch vehicle sending up a spy satellite. No one's going to up and claim that. Cause the brief is correct...with all the various monitoring gear around the globe you can't tell me no one knows who launched that.

Longer battery life? Sure, they can promise that. But the computer makers will then turn around and make laptops even thinner and lighter, shrinking the battery thereby negating any power saving from the chips.

What I can't figure is why anyone buys inkjet printers anymore. Laser printers are cheap and cheap to run. Even color laser printers are reasonable when you do the math.

You know, because Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, etc can only afford the medium sized solid gold jacuzzi. They obviously deserve the large one. I'm sorry, but how the hell does restricting YouTube benefit me, the consumer?

I know there's a crap ton of money involved, but I would think that since the study was based at UCSD, that it would stay there, regardless of where the head of the study goes.

First off, you're talking about a group of people that probably have more money than they know what to do with anyway. They're likely impatient and aren't accustomed to having to wait for anything.

What they likely don't realize is that they paid for something that, essentially, didn't exist yet. Would you rather they rush and blow you up? Or wait a bit and have a relatively safe ride? (Yes, I say relatively...it is inherently risky after all) They jumped at the chance to be first so they could rub it in their friends' noses.

Me? I'll never be able to afford it, unfortunately. But if I could, I'd wait until it had gone a few times. Let the bugs get worked out.

I have no honest idea how long my CFL bulbs have lasted, but I've been happy overall. I've generally had better luck with better brands though. I had some cheaper ones that burned out fairly quickly. I'd like to try out an LED bulb in a couple places, but am willing to wait until the price comes down some more.

I preface my answer by saying that I have worked in a K-12 school district as the lone IT guy.

The most honest answer I have (unfortunately) to your question is: "tough sh**". Too often, school funding comes with so many flipping strings attached it's sickening.

i.e. "We can't afford to fix the AC because that budget is dry, but the XYZ funding is overflowing, even though we don't need new XYZ this year. But we're not allowed to move money from the XYZ fund to the maintenance fund due to funding rules. But if we don't spend the XYZ money the state may not even give us that money next year, so we'll blow the money on XYZ anyway because we have little choice"

Oh Blackberry...what ever were you thinking? It looks like a phone and a tablet had a child. Too big for a phone, but too small for a functional tablet. Looks too big to comfortably fit in a pocket too. The screen will be full of wasted space. Apps have been designed to fit vertically or horizontally on a widescreen type device. Is anything designed for a square screen?

There just seem to be so many misfires on this one. I applaud their effort for trying something different, but they don't rule the roost anymore. People have moved on to Android and iOS devices. People (to my knowledge) aren't objected to having two different sized devices, smaller for phone and larger for regular use.

There are a couple things that come to mind in regards to this upgrade.

1. These planes are older than the flight crews and maintenance staffs upkeeping them and flying them. Last ones entered service in the early 60's. Pushing 90 years old by the time of retirement! That's simply insane.
2. There are good and bad to upgrades like this. Yes, it makes you more efficient, but you lose the skills of being able to do it by hand. Also, old systems are damn near impossible to hack, unlike newer, shiny systems.

I'm an I.T. hardware tech/purchaser. I'm good. I'm the centralized purchaser of computer hardware for a couple hundred stores. I'm also one of the hardware support people for the call center my office is in. Now do we have needless people at my company? Oh I know we do.

Should friendly aliens visit tomorrow, the puny humans on this planet would quickly split into a few groups.

1. Those that are truly honored and would welcome the visitors.
2. Those that want to cover the whole thing up.
3. Those that want to convert them to their particular religion.
4. Those that want to blow them up because the aliens aren't of their religion.
5. Those that would want to blow them up because "they ain't white".

And I haven't even figured in your "young Earth" groups, crazy militias, and those whose heads would implode from the sudden realization that our little rock isn't so very special.

For me it's a bit of a toss between 4 and 5.

I think we can all admit though, all 6 of the movies are flawed to some degree. Yes, even the beloved 4, 5, and 6. You can take a farm kid, drop him into a military grade ship, and he flies circles around the "vets"? Armored ground troops are beaten by teddy bears with sticks? Our ships are being fried by a giant moon sized laser? Hmm, I wonder if we should fly around to the backside of that moon where the laser isn't. Artoo can fly? Oh wait, now he can't.

And here in KS your rates get raised if you use too much, so they need the funds to "build capacity". Use too little and your rates get raised because of "budget shortfalls". Water, electric...doesn't matter. Happens either way.