These are hidden/masked expenses. How do you think they budget secret initiatives ? They surely don't have their own lines in the budget details. That's why at the Pentagon you have 500$ hammers and maybe 50$ green leds. 95% of these costs go somewhere else, let's not be naive !

Meanwhile, in Romania, of all places, a provider (RDS) announced deployment of a new "pipe" (fiber-optic) that would allow (they say) up to 1 GB/sec down, all that for around 10..12 euro/mo, which is the cost of a one-person lunch in a mid-scale restaurant in town. I currently have about 40Mb/sec and pay 23 euro/mo for the whole package (internet, 70 channnels IPTV, and landline phone). In other words, if the situation is this bad in Australia, as per previous posts... it clearly is a huge money grab.

Not at all. It's more like someone using parts of google's code and charging for it !

This must be the year of Linux...

• So many people have such a blinding hate for everything Microsoft that they lose all semblance of moral and logical integrity. Therefore the argument becomes puerile, unfortunately, like many of the replies above.
• Anyway, back to the subject: in my opinion Bing is quite good, and has some interesting qualities. Are they enough to make people leave their "google" comfort-zone ? No, not yet. There's nothing revolutionary enough. Anyway, I really wish them well - competition is always welcome.
• Note. In my experience one area where Bing really fails badly at this time is searching for references to people. Search for instance for "bruce springsteen" (with quotes). How many hits you get ? In Google you get almost 11 mils. In Bing you get around 4.5 mils. In this case, of course, there's no difference (comparing two almost infinite numbers doesn't make sense - nobody will go past page 10 anyway), but searching for less well-known people will be something else - you'll get, say, 334 hits in Google, and 2 in Bing. Now that's a huge difference ! Some of the 334 hits in google were real hits. Search for instance for your own name, or for the names of your friends, not for "celebs". That's Bing's biggest downside right now, imho.

...since the new "Go" will always be "Go beta". There will be an older "Go" and a newer "Go beta"... Who's confused now ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww
Enjoy ! :-) It's actually even moving and endearing !

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children. :-))

I have forgotten one such reader in the car, in the Canadian winter (about -15..-20 celsius). The next morning the screen was all black. And, of course, it was about two months out of warranty !

Besides, what about books with (colour) illustrations ?

I would simply like a phone which works EVERYWHERE, like the satellite phones - but I hear that those companies are not with us anymore. I would like to be able to turn left or right on the street, to enter a building, or to go outside the city and still have reception. Is this too much to ask ? Whenever I'm at home, if I receive a call on the cell, I need to go on the balcony to be able to talk (but it could be inconvenient, rain, snow, and all, don't you think ?) and the house is not even made of reinforced concrete to form some kind of cage. So then if I receive a call late in the evening, in winter, I don't dress up to be able to go outside and take the call - I just take the number and call back from my landline. And I still have one year of my contract. A phone that simply works well and everywhere on this continent would be the greatest telecomm revolution.

Where do I apply to patent the street map of the city ?

At a crime scene you don't find dna - you find organic matter - be it hair, skin, blood, etc. Yes, you can create "new" dna in the lab (and you know how dna looks like), but you cannot alter existing dna. If you find hair in the victims' nails... how do you change the existing dna in that strand of hair to a new one ?

So then - how can this alter the existing crime cases ?

PS. Yes, I agree, in the future it might even be possible to change one dna to another. But this is not possible yet, it seems.

Okay, got it. Yours is bigger. You the man. I get it. Satisfied now ? Oh boy... I will never understand these "religious" wars... Who gives a &*&@ on what you or me use on the desktop ? It's a tool ! To each his own. It's like "I drive a Mercedes - See ? I'm smarter then you !" PS. Personally, I have tried Ubuntu once. It failed miserably at the first (minor) HW change (the display died completely). Sorry, I have NO TIME TO SPEND on babysitting an OS - I have lost three whole afternoons trying to make it work again - when Windows found the new graphic card and installed it automatically in less than a minute. You use what suits you - fine, I'm happy for you - why to you need to start a crusade with each occasion ?

I think I remember reading somewhere that men usually try to imagine the map in their heads whereas women do this less. However, once the way to the objective is known, (so, in other words, the second time around) apparently women will find their way better because they remember landmarks very well (like "At that tree, right there, we have turned left and drove until we've seen a red mailbox on the right, and there we turned left again. I am absolutely sure of this.")

I can't remember where I've read this, though (I'm a man !)

The idea sounds very good... in theory. I would like to understand in more detail how this payment method will work. First, people should pay that fee in their local currency, whatever that might be. Euro, USD, CAN $, Yen, Swiss FR, etc, will not work - most people in this world don't have easy access to them. Also, the charities in question should either be local (so that they are appealing to people in, say, Mongolia, or New Zeeland, etc), either truly worldwide (Unicef). The second problem - how will the internet users pay in Surinam, for example ? Should they go to the bank, exchange their local money in some convertible currency, and then deposit that in some kind of micro-payments account ? What will happen to internet cafés all over the world (in some countries they are still the only way to have access to the net)? In case of a payment conflict, who will arbitrate ? Of course, it cannot work in any other way than pre-pay (otherwise you can install a virus on someone's computer and let that person fight the charges). So then what happens when you need to send an important email in the middle of the night and you have no money left in your account ? Remember that many people do not have a credit card to load their account with ! Will all the ISPs in this world agree to police their subscribers and provide accounting tools and supervision for ? I have many, many questions. I'd like to see this implemented, but...