Because Rural people are rich. While country folks here in the US might be wealthy by African Standards, they aren't all that much better off.

I always found that to be a dumb comparison. They came back and plundered and eventually set up some colonies. However said colonies were in the tropics and already had flora and fauna (not to mention millions of humans already living there). This is so many orders of magnitude larger, it would be more akin to Columbus landing in Antarctica in a rowboat. The moon landing was a bit of a stunt more than an end solution as the commitment to funding was not going to happen. That is the other major difference. Why would such enterprises receive funding if there is no monetary return? Columbus came back because there was something of tangible (and re-sell-able) value. Find gold or oil on the moon (or some substance that would "solve the energy crisis") and people would be lining up to go. Perhaps "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" had it right, and we should just send up prisoners on a one way trip to build the colony as that would be a way to save some $$ on getting it done.

If the system is already on / always on when a person comes in to use the room, chance are they won't notice. If there is sufficient noise going on in the room, one might not hear the camera moving around and while a person might see that, they'd have to be bored and looking directly at it notice. Do you really notice how many systems (HVAC, Lights, computers, A/V) are on when you walk into a meeting room? Especially if you aren't using them or they don't appear to be doing anything they get ignored. Now the beeping of somebody trying to call in requesting that you answer the Video Call, would surely get noticed. That is why the auto-answer should just go away and die. That would solve 90% of the issue (the other 10% being public addresses).

it's having it set to auto-accept. I understand why people leave it on, it's because they are lazy. Either the person installing it doesn't want to field support calls every time an admin assistant or board member can't figure out that video/tv doohikie, or they don't want to take the time to train the folks on how to use it. I suppose "ease of use" is another excuse, but in the end this is akin to leaving your cell phone set to auto answer. Nobody has their cell/desk/home phone set to just pick up, you have it ring. Why should a "video phone" be any different? These things need to be publicly addressable because of the nature of who you may need to connect to. It's an extreme PITA to have to configure/re-configure for every call. Now the flip side of this is now more folks are going to try this sort of exploit on a public IP address and the phone will be ringing with spammers even if you have it configure to require a manual answer. So it looks like some of the ease of use of having a publicly addressable VC system is going to go away.

Lazy has nothing to do with it. On the days that the weather is fine I do sometimes bike or walk. The problem is getting kids to school (which is on the way in) and the fact that while this area does get tons of snow (77inches on average), it does have lots of snowy days or at least days with snow on the ground (almost 100 days last year).

Give the money to NASA and go for a 35 person habitat on 1 square mile of the moon. More useful things can be learned there.

This would be a great workplace incentive, providing free charging on your EV. I would seriously consider purchasing an EV as my commuter vehicle (and I have a less than 2 mile commute) if I could charge it at work (free gas, sort of).

It's not like they are all that standardized on tires and it's not just the right dimensions, but also matching the hubs/rims/lugnuts. If I have a compact car from one manufacturer, I can all but be assured that those tires will not work for your compact car made bye a different manufacturer (or even a different model/year from the same manufacturer of my car). Gasoline vs Diesel argument is almost like the AC/DC argument. I know there are some major differences, but it seems appropriate.

Apple is a recent phenomenon. They did have some laptops that charged at different rates than others (Macbook vs Pro I think or maybe 15 vs 17 inch). In any case, they only recently have them all on the same page (sort of I think the iDevices may still have multiple wattage/amperage).

You can't even get a single laptop maker to standardize within the models they currently offer. I find it difficult to believe that an industry that can't even standardize on the tires to agree on their connectors. It's a wonder they even all agreed to use Gasoline (and even then you have models that "prefer" specific octane).

I think you are missing another thing that happens on cruises: Present: "Hey look! We're drinking and having sex, but it's on a boat, which makes it super special!" Future: "Hey look! We're drinking and having sex, but it's in a LEO capsule, which opens up all sorts of possibilities, could be quite kinky/pleasurable, and super special!"

Where is the live organ donation sketch? Oh wait he actually checked it off on a card in that sketch. I find this area of the law (dealing with dead people) to be exceedingly odd.

That is where the bookstore needs to work with the registrar. If you don't put in your software/textbook requests/requirements by the deadline, you don't get your class slated in a classroom. If you are late you'll be teaching in the darkest dungeon, with little to no technology.

Why not work with the local "bookstore" to have available for a semester's rent an e-reader (kindle, iPad, Nook, etc) pre-loaded with all of your books? With some additional coverage for insurance for lost/stolen/broken devices. Nice for the students to just submit their course listing to the bookstore before the semester break and come back and get all of your "books" for roughly the same price (or cheaper if the e-versions would actually be reasonably priced...lol) as buying the hardcopy. The extra bonus is getting the reader (and possibly all of it's apps) to use of the semester. Seems like everybody could profit from the deal. Well, not the paper mills and printing press folks.

My biggest beef with HDMI is the various quirks you have to go through to make it work properly. Most of that is due to the HDCP handshake business. To me the real question is this: Can I buy something like an ethernet switch to connect all of my "magic" cat5 cabled devices together? Then I would be able to mix and match what I want displayed to where I want it displayed. All I want to do is watch any of my legal HD content on any of my legal HD displays without having to deal with severe cable length limitations or annoying signal routing/switching.