Industrial scale geothermal works fine where the crust is thin. (Hawaii, Iceland, Japan, Yellowstone etc.)

Solar would be used in places where there is lots of sun to melt salt. (Like death valley, Saskatchewan, the Sahara desert, most of the middle east, the Gobi desert, the Atacama desert.)

Nuclear could/should/would be only used where the crust is too thick or where a source of water is problematic.

stop building nuclear power plants out in the open air and bury the damn things half a kilometer underground.

Takes care of explosions. (Even if it blows up, get your people out before it blows, seal the shaft and who cares?)
Takes care of terrorist attacks. (The terrorists are NOT going to dig half kilometer long tunnels to get to your fissiles.)
Takes care of leakage. (Its half a kilometer down so its not going in your water table.)
Takes care of waste disposal. (You just dig a bunch of side chambers.)
Takes care of expansion. (You just dig a bunch of side chambers.)
Takes care of exposure. (It never sees the light of day, it never gets above ground.)

You can build the cooling towers, the power distribution towers and the offices above ground but BURY all the rest way down deep.

Really, Provost Utah voted to accept Google fiber.

Was there ever any doubt that they would?

An SSD is a hardware component. It actually resulte in some major speed increases.

Other hardware components have not been faring well (PC motherboards are still made with AT type mouse and keyboard connectors. That just kills innovation in the form factor. A corporate PC hasn't substantially changed in twenty years.)

The OS and office suite market have both matured. (Which is why Microsoft is fighting like hell to sell their concept of software as a subscription service.)

The PC market has matured. Sales are in free-fall until the inevitable bottoming out

Trying to avoid the upgrades is pretty much useless.

My wife's NT 4.0sp2 box got upgraded to XP when it died and she had no choice.

My wife's XP box got upgraded to 7 when it died and she had no choice.

My wife's 7 box died and she said "Bugger this for game of soldiers!".

It got upgraded to a 27" iMac running OS X.

While she has land-filled 3 PC boxes, my old 2002 Titanium PowerBook G4 is still running, my old 2004 21" iMac G5 is still running, my 2011 17" MacBook Pro is still running and my iPad 3 is still running (of course. :-)

For consumer grade, Apple products are built pretty sturdily.

I was an OOP developer for about 20 years and IT development manager for about 5 until my MS become too severe and I am now on disability.

I am now using AmTrak if I possibly ban because I HATE the TSA.

Those minimum-wage knuckle-dragging troglodytes seem to delight in picking on the disabled, the weak or the sick. (If you can't walk away fast enough, you're screwed.)

Their conduct has always been disgusting.

They were idiots when I first ran into 'em in 2002 and they were still idiots last christmas.

Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, taking investors money and pocketing it instead of investing it. Madoff had NO INTENTION of making good on his promises.

That's not even close.

Though the idea of using drones for espionage is not a good one either.

Imagine selling electronics and supplies for miniature surface to air missiles that can be produced by 3D printers.

Paranoia + inventiveness = profit.

What about the threat from below .

I refer to the snow giants who are plotting revenge for our melting their habitat, with icy stares in their crusted lairs, in ... dun dun dun, Antartica .

Cute penguins with happy feet slipping and sliding on purulent piles of poop aren't the real worry here...

Hmm. Since most (80+%) of the population on Canada list within 100 miles of the US border we're pretty much doing to march back down to Washington and set it on fire again. (Look it up Yanks. You do NOT wanna screw with us.)

I like Americans, but every now and again they need to get a swift kick in the ass to remind them to get their heads out of there.

It was described in a negative manner. Why?

'Cause we doan like them Chiners much?

Its because we can't believe that anybody else is pulling the same kinds of asinine stunts we used to pull all the time...

I'd love to have a video of THAT flyby.

10+ kilometers/second (36000k/h) with those kinds of tolerances must look like being on a bullet aimed at a bull's eye right up until the end.

Yes there are laws which invalidate contracts signed under duress, threat or intimidation. He might as well not have signed it for what its actually worth: used toilet paper.

If everyone paid, or worse, if we got the average designer, we'd probably get bulky devices that look like something out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

I wonder what Johnny Ives would design?

I bet it would be something that looks remarkably like the latest Apple earphones, with some external reception membranes, a built-in battery and 20-20kHz amplifiers and a pair of sound production membranes. (It would also be remote tailorable/controllable via your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch.)

Price $129.00 a pair.