INCORRECT:
The FBI is NOT prioritizing copyright over missing persons.

CORRECT:
The FBI has a backlog of missing person DNA to run in the DNA labs.
The FBI is increasing the amount of manpower assigned to copyright.

I don't know how much the FBI should spend at all on copyright, but it is a bit of a stretch to take the current facts and say that copyright is prioritized over missing persons.

If you move forward with this, one option is to setup your car as a repeater. You can park your car at the trailhead and turn on the repeater in your car. Then the idea is to hopefully hit your car from your handheld, then your car can hit a repeater. In addition to the additional radio in the car that supports Cross-Band repeating, you will need to add a battery or two to your car, and a fresh one in the trunk.

Like others have all pointed out, the handheld frequencies are all generally line of site. This could mean that in a real emergency, you may need to climb to the top of the nearest peak to actually have line of site to anyone. Then once on the top of the peak you may find that your cell phone works as well!

Amateur radios work great in the backcountry in communicating with your own party in a different campsite or at a base camp while you continue on up to a summit.

The SPOTs as you have already researched works pretty well. I especially like the non-911 "Help" button, which just sends a predefined message to someone. I think this is a great feature, as you may need someone you know to start hiking up to you to help you out, but may not need a full Search and Rescue.

I would agree with your comment if you could flip a coin a 100 times and have it land that way at least 3 of those 100 times.

As others stated RDP and VNC. Personally I love the logmein app. Works through all the little firewall issues in most locations.

I thought the Data Signal, repeated every 15 minutes roughly contained date/time and clock corrections? You might be drifting for 15 minutes at a time I guess...

Iomega Zip Drives.

How about GPS receiver + exact known location?

I would think just eliminating an unknown latency and replacing it with a known one (radio waves generally travel at a consistent rate) would get you a pretty accurate time. If you add one more known variable which is the exact location of the device, then you should be able to get an even more accurate time.

Why on earth would a salesperson at google be in the know on this one?

My guess is a memo or something went out saying they would have a meeting on April 10th to discuss things, and the rumor mill starting going full speed inside the department about what it was about.

I just find it hard to believe that Google's sales department would be let in on too much information.

Depending on your uptime needs and size, also consider weather you want your Internet Access included as part of your Data Center or whether you want a carrier neutral facility. Many places just lump data access in with the colocation space and you get an ip.

Other places, sometimes called a "hotel operator" simply rent you space and power, after which you can connect to one of usually a couple hundred ISPs that are cross-connecting in their meet-me room.

Also, don't know if you are starting or moving. If you are just starting, be sure you look very closely into simply renting some cloud space. I admit I have been skeptical of it for a long time, but I am now a convert. Sure it is more expensive than buying your own servers and hosting them, but redundancy and capacity planning are almost eliminated.

Well looks like the article was correct, just got my invite and was able to setup my google voice account. Yeah!

Makes me want to work there part time, not get all upset about it.