"Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea..."

Timezones? Where we're going, we don't NEED timezones.

Fair point. Just seems like there is too much interest/investment in incrementally improving existing (ie internal combustion) technology rather than the leap-forward, game-changing tech we need to save the economy/planet.

Awesome work, dudes. Way to spend years perfecting a technique that will be obsolete in a few short years when all the oil runs out...

It pisses me off when too many details ruin a film though, like Willy Wonka's childhood in 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I can't even see what they are getting at. It might turn them into some kind of financial intermediatory/broker, but certainly not a deposit taking and loan-making bank. At best they may come to rival travellers checks issuers, or e-money companies for their pre-paid credit service, but that is where the buck stops.

Oh, sorry, after looking at this, I think you may just be mixing up the USGS Instrumental Intensity scale with Shindo? http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake/c0001xgp/ Even so, it's clear from this that the worst shaking wasn't in Chiba.

Better write in to the JMA then and tell them they were wrong with their measurements and subsequent announcements which were available on their website, and broadcast on all Japanese TV stations then. Oh, and update that wikipedia article too, as it must be wrong.

??? What are you basing this on? The strongest shaking, as measured by the Japanese Meteorological Agency's "Shindo" scale, was in Miyagi prefecture (Shindo 7) whereas in Chiba it was Shindo 5+. Fool.

Indeed does sound almost exactly the same as Japan's early-warning system, as described here: http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/eew.html

The Japanese system displays an instant warning on Japanese TV stations accompanied by a loud alarm sound; activates alarms in construction sites, offices and homes (although this is not widespread in homes) and a warning on certain domestically produced mobile phones (to those who subscribe).

I remember the system incorrectly activated at least once before, when no earthquake followed, but has worked well on a number of occasions. Of course we promptly soil ourselves whenever it goes off in the office....

Unfortunately when spammers realise that this is possible, they can just strip the dots off any gmail address and be left with the correct address.

Finally! The quest to find an engine for my perpetual motion machine is over...OVER! Bwahahahahaha.

Screw this - I'm waiting for the first ROCKET pack!