Software isn't mechanical engineering.

Unlike in the software world, in (real) engineering degrees matter. You cannot become a professional engineer without out a BS in engineering.

Getting a masters degree is great if you are interested in the work. As long as it is an accredited school, where you got it from won't matter in the long run.

It's like the 'Coffee Party' or the 'No Labels' groups.

This will get lots of press for a few weeks (Palin + internet shenanigans = ratings/pageviews) and then fade away because there isn't a real grass roots push to do it.

Also they are about a year too early to affect the primaries.

Palin's not going to run. She's making lots of money, has some political juice and no responsibilities. I bet she really likes not having any responsibilities.

Google doesn't care.

Licensing H.264 is cheap and provides the knowledge that they aren't going to get sued. If they push VP8 they are going to spend years in court fighting MPEG-LA and all of the patent trolls out there.

If they succeed with VP8, what happens? VP8 gets supported in Chrome, Firefox and maybe Opera? Yay 20% of the market, while the other 80% will require the H.264 stream anyway. I'm sure supporting H.264 & Flash streaming isn't easy, adding another codec just makes it that much worse.

I think it is more like the EU would prefer a few large European companies and smaller non-European competitors. If this was SAP buying Sun, it would have been approved months ago.

I started using them initially because I wanted an email address @ my domain along with IMAP and fastmail was about the best provider out there. Now, I just like to have e-mail that is independent of the 'big guys' and that isn't going to go down. Also they have e-mail proxies that can get around any ISP or business port blocking. If you are happy with webmail and don't mind occasional downtime, gmail is fine, I use it, too.

I thought it was named that to show Japan's engineers that there are interesting jobs in Japan and please don't leave and work in the US.

A bushing failure could have started the main fire/explosion. There was a bushing failure at a power plant in the US a few years ago where parts of the bushing penetrated the walls of nearby buildings and started a fire in a nearby building. There isn't a great deal of insulating/cooling oil in a bushing so if there is a leak, things can go bad pretty fast. If the transformer tank steel wasn't particularly thick, I could see how a bushing failure could penetrate the tank and cause the transformer itself to fail.

Yeah, there are "environmental" groups that fight every kind of clean power plant. Hydro - kills fish. Wind - kills birds. Large scale solar - kills threatened animals in the desert. Nuclear - possibility of 'really bad things' happening, plus no place to put the waste long term (which they also fight).

T-Mobile in the US appears to be using 1700 and 2100. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile_USA_3G

So, what are you going to do with your unlocked 3G iPhone? The 3G only works with AT&T in the USA. Oh boy, I'm going to go to T-Mobile and surf on EDGE to save $20 a month. Us iPhone users are stuck with AT&T. It would be a bigger deal if there was a good cell network in the US, but they all suck.

I think Reid will end up backing the bill. The big casino companies would love to buy Party Poker and the other big poker sites if they are legalized. They already have their own online gambling sites overseas.