You're thinking of Surface RT. Surface PRO requires an x86 compatible processor, namely an Intel Core i5: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/surface-with-windows-8-pro/specifications

Third base.

My problem with microtransactions is that the economics of the model seems to drive them to be geared toward the 'whales', as in people gullible enough to sink hundreds to thousands of dollars playing a trivial mobile game. Say there's a free-to-play game I download and find I like. I might want to reward the developer by paying 5 or 10 dollars for it (a kind of price that seems reasonable for a mobile game). But if I look through the microtransaction store, I invariably find that 5 to 10 dollars buys exactly -squat- worth of benefit in the game. It looks so greedy and makes me feel like I'd be a total rube to even give them a dollar. But there is no 'reasonable' option in the store because it's aiming for people who will actually pay $20 or more for a meaningless virtual trinket. Sorry that's just not going to be me.

Maybe that part is related to a recent article indicating that heat could be used to restore broken NAND flash cells back to working order:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/12/02/2222235/self-healing-nand-flash-memory-that-can-survive-over-100-million-cycles

Perhaps ultrasound is a way to deliver that heat.

The Russians knew how to fix this back in 1997: http://www.theonion.com/articles/mir-scientists-study-effects-of-weightlessness-on,1211/

Unless you operate a store where people can only buy one item at a time, I'd say this is impossible.

That really is a DERP because "In God We Trust" is on the edge of the Presidential dollar coins and on the face of the Sacagawea dollar coins.

Lighten up. If you can deal with the fact that the Hulk's shirt always falls off when he transforms, but his -pants- magically manage to stay intact just enough, then you can deal with the clothing 'devolving'. If you pay attention, SF has problems with clothes responding to things that are supposed to affect living beings -all the time-. It happens in Star Trek. It happens everywhere. It's a necessary conceit. In this case it was -particularly- necessary to the plot, because otherwise the non-devolved crew members would have realized who the devolved people were immediately, killing the whole story.

They already exist: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/e9b4/

I think hoboroadie is saying that we have -already- made fraud and bank robbery legal by the way we allow the system to work (e.g. high-frequency trading and it's associated stock manipulation being allowed - my example, not hobo's)

Dark Star.

Yes it is complex. Unfortunately, except for the brakes perhaps, most of the costs you list for an I/C engine are negligible (at least in my experience). Modern cars require a $30 oil change (includes filter) every 5000 miles or less. My last car which I had to give up after 10 years -never- required exhaust system repairs (not even one muffler as far as I can recall). The state of Massachusetts charges $29 per year for safety/emissions inspections. Although I couldn't find the information in a few minutes searching, I seriously doubt they discount the price for electric vehicles: they probably just charge you $29 for the safety inspection alone.

On the other side of the scale, you have to consider the battery replacement cost. Will his battery pack last 10 years?

Protons might be close but they'll probably come up short.

Books are great for reading, but for the ultimate experience you have to unroll a papyrus.

Papyrus is great for reading, but for the ultimate experience you have to carry a clay tablet.

Books -are- great, but they're not the be-all and end-all of carrying words and pictures around. I was just on vacation and took 4 library books and 8 to 10 of my own purchased books with me, basically for no 'physical' cost because my phone, tablet and laptop were coming along anyway. No chance I could forget any of those library books on vacation either, and have to pay for them to be replaced. And of course I could have had 500 books to choose from instead of a dozen or so just as easily.

And another advantage nobody else mentioned yet is that all my devices tracked my place in each book automatically so I could switch devices depending on what was most convenient at the time, and pick up right where I left off.

I'm really looking forward to the day when I'm carrying around my entire library, all the time. I only wish there was a way to replace all my existing paperback books (save for a few sentimental items), with digital copies for cheap (and legal of course).

The Rosetta Disk http://rosettaproject.org/ is actually designed to give future humans some hint that the object contains microscopic data. Yes people have actually thought about these issues.