They're not really capping your bandwidth, even the 200mb per month plan technically allows for unlimited data transfer. What they're doing is throttling your speed down to EDGE instead of HSPA+ once you hit your 'cap'. If you happen to actually need higher data speeds than edge for more than 200mb per month, then t-mobile offers higher tiered data options. Frankly I wish most cellular companies offered that sort of flexibility in their data offerings.

What company? There is no central authority to bitcoin, in fact even if the creator went offline and stopped all development bitcoin would continue to operate. Once bitcoin was released into the wild there was about as much ability to control the network as apple has on the new york stock exchange.

So how long until this becomes practical on a personal scale? I really want to see someone's ipod solar edition get stuck to a metal guardrail until the sun goes down.

Warning Goatse Link, I'd mod down if I had mod points

Because the average US consumer looks at the whole $400-$600 price tag of a high end smart phone purchased without a contract and says 'no way in hell am I paying that for a phone'

The US consumers have become so used to subsidised phones that the majority of them aren't all that interested in spending big bucks for a good piece of hardware.

The ones that are usually end up going prepaid anyways since the current prepaid offerings are almost universally a better deal than the equivelent post paid set up.

This is not exactly new, they've been working on this for a while now. The only thing stopping them from putting armor plating on it and turning it into power armor is the battery life of the suit. Even with the most expensive batteries we can manufacture, there's a maximum opperational time of about 30 minutes on the XOS-2 when disconnected from an external power source. Needing to be plugged in to operate sort of limits their military applications to grunt work and MAYBE defensive deployments. Still if someone can work out the power issues, functional and deployable power armor is really only a manufacturing run away.

I prefer the 'choice cuts', or rather, I used to prefer the choice cuts before I found out what it was made out of. Now I eat a diet exclusively of soylent green.

I for one welcome our new android overlords.

Microsoft and Adobe are now going to be Microbe, I always suspected they virus'

Certainly true, unfortunately things rarely work that way in the real world, I mean look at how much the switch over to ATSC digital TV broadcast from the old analog NTSC system got screwed up. Even with the whole government inititive to get people the converter boxes, the switch wasn't exactly smooth or easy, even though there was plenty of advance notice.
From personal experience, I can say there were a LOT of very upset people who used to pick up analog broadcasts just fine but had insufficient signal strength for the digital feeds. Granted that probably had more to do with networks abandoning VHF frequencies for UHF ones, but I'm sure there were plenty of cases of 'fuzzy' analog stations that were still watchable falling off the digital cliff.

As an employee for a major electronics retailer, I can see that this whole situation is going to be brutal on the general internet going public, but more importantly it's going to be brutal on me when I have to try and explain to grandma Jones why her internet doesn't work right anymore on her 10 year old computer and how she's going to have to buy a new router/modem/network card/computer. People don't want to deal with ugly inconvienent stuff like the switch to ipv6 (no matter how needed it might be) they just want their stuff to work. I really hope this transition goes a lot smoother than it looks like it's going to, but I don't have a lot of faith that it will.

. . . Great Balls of Fire

I for one welcome our new android overlords

Even if we do convert to a nuclear based power structure, it's only a matter of time before we run out of uranium. As long as we're dependant upon some non-renewable energy source it's just a matter of time before energy production peaks and we're no longer able to obtain the fuel we need for all of our everyday things, not the least of them being the production and transportation of food.

The only solution really is to either develop an energy infrastructure which does not rely on oil, or some other non-renewable energy source. Any thing else is just delaying the inevitible collapse, when resources are no longer relatively cheap and freely available.

I advise everyone to read over this website if they get a free moment, it'll be well worth your time http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/