Even a card carrying bleeding heart liberal such as myself realizes that if MS doesn't continue to innovate they'll be chewed up and spit out by the brutally competitive generic general purpose PC market. BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAA-snort-giggle.... Sorry, where was I?

I'll pretend that I Rayleigh Scattering is something that I picked up in a physics class and not something I looked up on Wiki when I got a cool new green laser http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering

Verizon, an ISP in New York, NY, USA actually did this ten years ago, they were planning on a thousand wifi phone booths in Manhattan by the end of 2003. And they actually did it, I'm not sure how many were actually installed but I used them on several occasions, they worked just fine. And they dropped the whole thing not too long later. Maybe people weren't within range, maybe the technology wasn't up to it, I don't know.

Survivor of the 4:00AM NYC alert debacle here.

I was told by the he idea of the 'amber alert' alarm blasting out of your cellphone is that if you're on the road you might see the car involved with the crisis and call it in and save the child.

Problem is that very loud alarm is going to tend to make people pull out their phones, type in the password, and read the message. But driving an texting is very dangerous and justifiably illegal. What are the odds of someone getting killed in a car accident caused by the alarm vs. actually saving the victim?

I'm thinking the car accident is far more likely.

PS If you haven't had the pleasure the alarm sound is VERY LOUD and, well, really alarming. When it went off in the very early hour my heart was pounding for a half hour and I never did get back to sleep that morning. I'm wondering how many people will get heart attacks from such an event, now that I think of it.

This makes sense. The original subway system started in Manhattan and it is still basically the hub for the entire system... if you want to go from the Bronx to Brooklyn you have to go by way of Manhattan. If you take the F train in Queens to go to Brooklyn you use the 'downtown' train, named so because it goes downtown when it goes through Manhattan. There are generally no direct lines borough to borough though there are exceptions, so Manhattan, while physically small, is disproportionately large in terms of lines and passengers served, as is shown on the circular map.

And how many deaths per dollar? A recent trial set that to be $150 plus disappointment. We're talking Texas here, of course.

I believe there are iDevice cables that don't carry data, only power. If not, there's http://www.kickstarter.com/, I'll take my usual 15%

Hold my beer and watch this! Those would be your red neck ants.

Eventually they'll be going to ME and then they'll start all over again.

Impossible, it would never work. Oh, well, there's http://store.steampowered.com/, which does what you're thinking of... damn, there's money to be made in there somewhere...

I think you have to come from a highly dysfunctional family to really appreciate this... I did have a really dysfunctional childhood and loved the show, two friends from relatively normal families just didn't get it.

The problem with rainwater harvesting that most of the worlds potable water already comes from rainwater... in anything approaching a largish scale you're going to be in conflict with river basins and the like and grabbing rain destined for forests, farm animals and crops.. The advantage of desalination is that you let nature harvest the rainwater and concentrate it for you and then just process that.

You have to wonder how someone in an airliner going 200+ mph could even see something that small going ~0 mph, much less be able to describe it in such detail...

Actually the Amtrak 'Metroliner' hits 140mph from New York to Washington, DC, and their somewhat more fancy Acela line does a bit more than that (and stops less often). It's not great but for that short stretch it's fairly modern train.

This just in from the NRA: The only solution to wildfires caused by guns is MORE GUNS!!!