There was great buzz when it first went online, but they actively kept folks from signing up without an invite for a couple months. I tried to check it out, but was rejected, as were many folks I suspect. Google didn't want me, why go back?

Google has done this before too. I just lose interest if they come out with a half finished Beta service, which they have a track record of then not following through with. Apple has this side of things mostly down, zip your lips until you ship. With little Apple generates over-inflated expectations and mostly well executed non-Beta products at launch you have a lot less chance of "Meh" in the marketplace.

Nuff said.

Exactly. Pushing your religious beliefs at work is bad enough, but doing it as a manager is something else entirely. Sounds to me like the dude crossed several lines.

I've worked with a few oddballs, like a Young Earth'er who'd fill your ear with great flood stories (the Grand Canyon is proof positive of the great flood!), but they all knew what lines not to cross and I had no problem with them professionally. One is still a good friend. You can talk about this stuff at a peer level, outside of work within reason (i.e. respect folks desire to change the subject when they are clearly getting uncomfortable). You can't create a situation where employees can reasonably be afraid that their review/raise/promotion can affected by agreeing or disagreeing with them on decidedly non-work topics.

Given how the phone is already rolled it, it would be nice if it was broken out as a separate line item. A lot fewer phones would get tossed if you had start paying another ~$20-30/month once you swapped. Folks are fools if they don't upgrade every two years, as they pay for it anyway.

Having phone standards be more open so that it would be easier to switch carriers without buying new phones, and get contracts more Ala Carte would be great. Sadly we all know that We The People don't really matter to the regulators these days.

"be laid off by the time I'm 50 because I'm "too expensive""

Try laid off at 25.

I'm now at my 5th engineering job at 34.

Job 1 paid poorly so I bailed.
Job 2 was a nightmare of constant stressful layoffs and exploding work levels so I volunteered for a layoff to end the pain on the 5th round of layoffs (that site eventually hit 85% headcount reduction).
Job 3 was a known lame firm, but times were tough. Had an engineering manager standup after a layoff and say "We are ALL temporary employees." I polished my resume up...
Job 4 was another abysmal disappointment of disfunction, mis-management, then we got bought by an evil overload (Danaher), so I bailed once it was clear that things were decidedly going to get much worse (they actually reneged on vesting of 401k's and the like).
Job 5 finally feels like I found an outfit that is not terrible, but I'd have to move out of state to find equivalent work if they ever ran into a tight spot.

At this rate I'll work about 16-18 different jobs by time I retire, and working at one place till I hit 50 is just a dream.

Wages are low, work is hard, college for these degrees is hard, and job security in general is all but a punchline but especially painful when you are uber specialized. You are smarter to get a more mobile degree like business, as it is also easier and anecdotally it has a much higher wage ceiling than science and engineering.

Not that I'm jaded or anything...

Get into any specialty sport like running, rock climbing, even some cyclists and you'll quickly find yourself with a dozen pairs just for that one activity. Horrifying, as I still have distinct memories of being a kid and being totally baffled at the notion that anyone would need more than a single pair of velcro close sneakers...

29 total deaths in either space flights, or training for space flights out of 555 total astronauts is what I did up. With a death rate of ~2% per person in space that is awful by almost any measure.

Agreed, however look at it as 17 lives out of just 555 people in space (wikipedia total for all nationalities). Scale that up with the arenas covered by the FDA and it would be like them choosing to ignore Mad Cow disease for a couple decades in terms of the order of magnitude of Fail.

All that said, the episode of management ignoring sound engineering advise has been a cautionary tale for many, likely saving many uncounted lives in desperate fields by helping to give engineers a little more backbone in the face of bone headed management.

150k mile lifetime:

25 MPG -> 6000 gallons
30 MPG -> 5000 gallons

$3-4k savings at $3-4/gallon

However, many of the hybrid luxury vehicles have better acceleration than their non-hybrid counterparts, and that is often the real draw.