PayPal is highly profitable. Even though Musk is no longer involved in the company, it helped to bankroll his future endeavors. SpaceX has the potential to be highly profitable, although its fortunes (at least initially) will be tied closely to the whims and political meanderings of NASA's budget.

Honestly, this is an administration issue. Instead of cutting the entire school over to iPads in the classroom, they should simply have selected a couple of classrooms to try using them for a year. If the issues that crop up are insurmountable, the technology can be abandoned without significant disruption, cost and time wasted. This is the way we usually do things in business, after all.

Everything is easily scaleable. The count is done at the local level, with representatives from the major parties on hand to watch as the votes are tallied. It's a relatively quick process that usually only takes two or three hours (it can be slowed somewhat by spoiled ballots). In CEOs where the count is close, candidates can request a recount, a process that takes several days. All in all, it's a system that I trust more than electronic voting machines, simply because you *can* recount and reexamine all of the voter's original ballots. You can also have observers (from major parties and Elections Canada) actually watching the process in real time at thousands of polling stations, whereas an electronic system has the potential for massive centralized fraud.

I'm one of the guys behind an open source music hardware project (meeblip.com) and strongly against NC/ND restrictions. They exist out of fear and stand counter to the central tenant of open source (*anyone* should be able to study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or a derivative work based on that design).

There is natural conflict in the development process, because after spending hundreds or thousands of hours creating something cool, it's hard to let go. This conflict is especially difficult if you decide that releasing your project as open source is the best way to distribute it and get others to use and extend it. The first knee-jerk reaction is to attempt to retain as much control as you can -- "Yeah, it's open source, but I don't want you using it commercially or as the basis of something else." -- If you follow through with that restriction, you're essentially releasing source code or design files for a closed project. It's open in name only.

Once you recognize that your biggest fear is actually the idea that someone will take your idea and do a better (or more successful) job at it than you have, you can begin to step forward. The first step is to understand that if you have a really good idea, someone will clone it. In fact, it's likely that 15 people will clone it. And that's good, because they might do a better job and there's nothing from stopping you from incorporating their good ideas into your project (a derivative work of a derivative work!). Whether or not you explicitly grant permission for someone to use your ideas, rest assured that they will. To that end, it makes the most sense to release with a CC Share Alike requirement that ensures that your ideas and their derivatives stay public and accessible to all.

The problem is that electricity (or petrol) has to be used to compress the air. And 65% of the electricity in India is generated by burning coal or natural gas. So, yeah, let's burn fossil fuel to run an inefficient air compressor to run an inefficient vehicle. The *only* way that compressed air motors make sense in cars is if you want to reduce local emission levels in a densely populated urban area.

Actually, it's 90% bigger only in terms of area. The 3D panel now measures 4.88" inches diagonally, vs. 3.53 inches on the original. Of course, the pixel density is significantly lower as a result.

The first step in taking legal action is a demand letter, which can be considered a firm request for a refund. What you do after that point really boils down to how strongly you feel about making a point. Personally, receiving 6 years of service for a few hundred bucks strikes me as reasonable. But since it only costs $30 to file a claim for under $1,500 with the Superior Court of California, it can be worth filing even if you have no intent of attending court because you live outside the jurisdiction. The defendant will receive notice of your filing and must choose how to respond. If they offer a pro-rated settlement, it's best to take it and withdraw the action. If they ignore your filing, you can simply withdraw before the court date which will be months or more in the future.

Email them, politely requesting a full refund. They entered into a contract with you to provide service for "as long as they exist." They are attempting to unilaterally modify the terms of the agreement. While companies often try to grant themselves the right to modify a contract at will, courts have found this to be an unreasonable practice. See Douglas v. Talk America - (http://pub.bna.com/eclr/0675424_071807.pdf ) Should the company fail to respond, investigate filing a case in small claims court requesting a full refund plus interest and reasonable expenses. You may run into difficulty if you reside outside the State of California, because you agreed to undertake all legal action in that state when you signed up. That said, you can include the cost of travel in your suit. You'd have to do a bit of research before filing, but I suspect the company would chose to issue a refund instead of dealing with the hassle of a small claims appearance.

In the last decade or so, the US political process seems to have refocused on the endless selection of candidates that takes years, rather than focusing on the actual business of government. Other countries typically mount much faster elections, and political parties tend to be ephemeral -- two or three groups may amalgamate to mount a challenge to the ruling party, whereas the Democrats and Republicans seemed locked in a colossal coin toss. Barring a significant political event leading up to the election, we know that one party will edge the other by a handful of votes. Of course, it's easy to provide foreign commentary but much harder to see what could be done to improve the situation. Perhaps we will see the emergence of new regional parties that focus on issues of extreme importance for specific areas? Perhaps we'll see increasing demands placed on the federal gov't by individual states? Or perhaps we'll see the status quo indefinitely. I'd be interested to hear an American perspective on this -- does the system work? How would you improve it?

The utility box shown in the photo is painted black. I sincerely hope that's just for worst-case testing, because there's nowhere in the continental US that you'd want to leave a server baking in the summer sun in a black box. Of course, a light grey utility box also gets extremely hot, so one would hope that they have some sort of simple sun shades that keep these units out of direct sunlight. On the off chance that they don't, I should patent it -- "Passive shade cooling system for outdoor data center systems," here I come.

My son described it as "watching the sun explode." It seemed as if the intense heat was actually detonating the fireworks quite low - usually it takes a few seconds for them to arc into the sky and explode, but each barge just launched an angry ball of fury. As for the sound, it was kinda like filling a football stadium with old tractors and revving them until they backfired and the engines explode.

And by "old," you mean 18 months. It's a significant problem for those of us living in Canada, where 3 year contracts are the norm. By the time the contract is half over, your phone is no longer supported.

Rubbish. The myth that the PlayBook and Fire are equivalent was started by a blogger who thought they looked physically similar. Inside, the PlayBook is far better hardware. The Fire has only 8GB flash and 512 MB RAM, the base PlayBook has twice that. The PlayBook has a far better screen (viewing angle, contrast, color saturation), the PlayBook also has Bluetooth, a 5MP rear camera capable of shooting 1080p video, a 3MP front camera and a significantly better OS.

US business is always preaching e benefits of free market capitalism, yet the drug industry is regulated and restricted in a manner that artificially inflates prices and restricts competition. If this person was selling counterfeit medicine, by all means throw the book at him for endangering lives. But if all he is doing is supplying a gray market product, he is actually serving a valid economic purpose by helping to push down the prie of essential medical supplies for an aging American population.

I wouldn't have an issue with this, except for three things: (1) This money won't find its way into the pockets of artists. It'll end up in the hands of publishing companies, lawyers, managers and the record label because of the onerous contracts that performers are required to sign to break into the business. (2) Songs played at weddings tend to be mass market tunes or old classics. Handing over an extra few thousand dollars to Lady GaGa or whatever company holds the rights to Frank Sinatra's tunes does absolutely nothing to support up and coming Canadian musicians. (3) The government department responsible for collecting and disbursing this fee will cost taxpayers millions of dollars for the "benefit" of collecting and forwarding revenue to foreign entertainment companies.