The 2Ghz link is nice for being unaffected by weather, however you're going to need a very large dish or a huge SSPA/HPA to get enough output. Remembering that beam width varies linearly with frequency, a ~40Ghz Ka band is going to start at 13dB more gain from a similar dish verses a low end S band signal. One of the reasons it takes such a huge dish on the satellite. Now, my quick math is putting an 18m beamwidth at only .58 degrees at 2ghz. That's hardly enough to cover all of America, and in fact the 3dB beam would only be 220 miles across. Something with the math just doesn't add up.

There are providers of content parallel to and just as easily accessible by the consumer as Apple.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with your points. While yes it is easy for someone to create content, that is not the issue. Creating content for a palm pilot over 10 years ago had a very low entry barrier. However where apple differs is in the critical mass of it's app store. The app store solves the distribution problems that plagued the palm pilot. Developers can get their product in front of millions of people, make it easily search able, allows for easy and convenient purchasing, and apple takes care of all of it, for a fee of course. Starting a new app store requires tying it to a popular device and that is a huge barrier in and of its self.

However, what many people seem to forget is when at least 3 sigma of people buy an iPhone, they just want a device to go in their pocket, make calls, have a GPS map, a camera and go grab an app to play a game or do whatever it is they want. They bought that phone so they didn't have to go trolling through the interwebs looking for some off the wall app and hope and pray it doesn't have Trojans, key loggers, or even porn. Right wrong or indifferent that's what most people want from their phone.

As a result, apple starts censorship out of request by it's citizenry. And that's when it gets scary. The citizens of iPhone nation have asked for it's government to take care of telling it what is acceptable and not. They ask apple to filter out the "bad" stuff for them. It's a scary Orwellian world that is quickly approaching and the majority is HAPPY to see it coming.

My contract is coming up and I look toward my next phone. I can get a power user phone like the Android or I could get the new iPhone. One will come with a learning curve, cautious work to vet anything I put on it; however my reward is a very powerful tool in my pocket. Or I could buy an iPhone and know "it'll just work". After all, it's just a phone. I still don't know if I'll climb the mountain or slide down its slope. I do know that the slope is most definitely slick.

I'm still forced on IE5 you insenstive clod!

Haven't the Mythbusters proven again and again that operating a vehicle from 'non standard' driving perspectives is quite difficult?

Everything is difficult if you haven't practiced it. Once you do practice, I'd imagine it would be almost as easy as driving normally - almost, because you aren't getting inner ear feedback from the exact movement of the car.

People use remotely controlled vehicles all the time.

Perhaps you should have built your building with asbestos and then you wouldn't have fire problems?

It did in Canada. If you make a copy for private use, such copy is legal.

It actually works in a very funny way. Say, you want to share a CD (that you legally own in the first place) with your friend. If he gives you a blank CD-R, and you copy your CD onto it, and hand it over to him, what you just did was "distribution", and it wasn't "for private use" - so that's illegal.

But if just give him the original CD, and he copies the file off it onto his own medium, and returns your CD to you, it's perfectly legal, because your friend did a "copy for private use". That he did it off a medium he didn't own is of no relevance according to the law as it stands.

In fact, if you steal someone's CD (which they legally own), and copy it, you're not guilty of copyright infringement - only of theft.

However, because the levy is only paid on blank CD-Rs that are labeled "audio", all of the above only applies to audio works, not to books, video or software.

"To recharge, stare directly into sun."

I think I need some more coffee this afternoon. :(

0.07$ to 0.70$ is 10 times or 1000%. It is not 11% no matter how good your accounts are at hiding numbers.

Assuming this is true, unless you actually know if you are a "head flipper" or a "tail flipper" (assuming of course you allways start with the same orientation) as long as the distribution of "head and tail flippers" is the same, the randomness of a random person flipping a coin stays intact.

Seriously. If you want to home brew fine, there is NOTHING stopping you from buying a second console to homebrew on as long as you keep it off THEIR network. Microsoft wants to have a service that is run on "secure" Xboxs to prevent hackers, cheaters, and pirates. This is something that is in YOUR interest, unless you think C.S. 1.6 was fun when some guy (not you) is running with the knife speed hack. This is also something you agreed to.

However, you KNOWINGLY (or should have known) violated a written contract with Microsoft. What's next, are you going to complain when the bank reposess your house because you don't pay? You have a contract, you violated the contract, Microsoft is taking steps that YOU AGREED IT COULD TAKE when you signed the contract. Even this law firm knows there isn't a case here, however they are now using YOU to get loads of free advertising. Wake up, grow up, or shut up. Pick one.

Umm... This week by beating innocent civilains I have caught 5 MAJOR terroist plans. Just trust me on this one. How can you possibly take an unverifiable statement made by a party that serves that party's interest at face value?

You might have a little bit more look into the fermi archetecture. Based on http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/fermi_white_papers/NVIDIAFermiArchitectureWhitepaper.pdf nvidia's white paper, and assuming a clock speed of 600mhz, i.e. in line with a GTX 280, they are looking at 1.5 Tflops of DOUBLE precision computing power. Nvidia is making a hell of a push at multi-threaded supercomputing. Not to mention some crazy cache sizes.

"Such a high percentage above average? Are they lying, or they just don't know what average is?"

You are assuming the distribution of people on Slashdot is the same as people in general. I would not be bothered if the majority of people on Slashdot rated their intelligence as "above average" or if the browsers of the IT section rated their computer knowledge as "above average".

However, I have no idea if this poll is a result of Slashdot readers having an above average navigational skills is a result of the type of people who read Slashdot or if it is a result of people thinking they are better than they really are.

Furthermore, you've lead credence to the poll its self when it claims that "stumbling occasionally" is an above average line. If most people(i.e. most people in America or most people in the world, not the average slashdotter)would describe themselves as "stumbling occasionally" (whatever that means), then the poll its self is at fault as it claims that is above average. Polls in and of them selves can and are often fallible when it comes to inducing desired (or unintentionally undesirable) results.

I'm sorry, but the gains he is talking about are simply unrealistic. Lets do a little math shall we?

If we take a rather thick installation of AS5 at 0.015 inches and assume the contact area is a square with sides of .75 inches (it will be larger), his CPU is disapating 100 Watts(probably higher than it is), and we take the advertised number for AS5 at 8 W/m*K, and you end up with a thermal circuit that takes 13 degrees to cross.

He claims to have a new thermal compound which reduces the temperature by 14 degrees. Now lets take a look at some more realistic numbers... 1 sq in area, 75 watts, 0.010in thick paste, same 8W/m*K and you get a tempeture delta of 4 degrees to cross.

Furthermore, when we start looking at websites that have done reviews of thermal pastes like [url=http://hardwarelogic.com/news/137/ARTICLE/2752/3/2008-03-03.html]IC Diamond 7 Carat[/url] and they show a range of 1-2 degrees difference between AS5 and the paste it makes it hard to belive.

For a little more background, perhaps we should consider what is going on here. We have some material that is being used for thermal conduction, silver or diamonds, and to that we are have a material it is being suspended into. Thermal conductivity of silver is over 400 W/m*K and artic silver which is made from pure silver plus the suspension yields a conductivity of 8 w/m*K. The idea that exchanging that for something with a thermal conductivity of somewhere between 900 and 2000W/m*K is going to yield a paste with orders of magnitude better thermal conductivity.

So based on that, I'd like to call shens. If he made a mistake with his numbers or he faked them I don't know, all I know is the numbers he is reporting are outside the realm of reality.