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Comment Re:Farm GPS, airplanes, and who owns the bandwidth (Score 5, Informative) 197

Yes, but the towers are broadcasting signals that are orders of magnitude more powerful to ground receivers than the gps satellites. If Lightspeed was a satellite phone system (so if it was another satellite system producing the crosstalk), it would not interfere even if the frequencies were directly adjacent.

Comment Re:Time (Score 1) 709

In 1989 the Loma Prieta quake took out the upper deck of the Bay Bridge, but left BART's Transbay Tube undamaged. No one died on any of BART's elevated tracks either (I don't recall any stories of major damage either). The structures needed for HSR are not much different.

Comment Re:The reason people don't travel by train in the (Score 1) 709

If we actually had $100B to spend on California transportation infrastructure we should

1) Improve the 7(!) airports between the Bay Area and LA.
2) Improve commuter rail as the previous poster suggested. Grade separated BART down the Caltrain tracks, BART to San Jose, Geary Ave Subway (and those are just the Bay Area projects).

The flights are quite fast at roughly an hour in the air, and there are few weather delays. The local rail projects would vastly improve the commutes of many and make it enjoyable to be car-free in may parts of the Bay Area.

Businesses

Google To Shutter Knol, Wave, Gears 218

An anonymous reader writes "Google announced today on its official blog the impending closure of a number of its less successful services. In addition to retiring minor features like Bookmarks List and Friend Connect, Google has outlined a plan to close down Wave. The experimental communication medium will go read-only on January 31, and on April 30 they will shut it down completely. Also on April 30, Google will be changing Knol so that individual knols are not viewable, though users will still be able to download and export them until October 1, at which point they'll disappear entirely. Google Gears is also getting the axe, as is Search Timeline and the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative."
The Internet

Syrians Using Donkeys Instead of DSL After Gov't Shuts Down Internet 207

abhatt writes "Rebelling Syrians are using all possible alternate methods to pass information to the world amidst a total blackout on the internet by the Government. Believe it or not, Donkeys are a part of the revolution now. From the article: 'To get the news out, activists have been smuggling videos to Jordan through the desert and across a nearly 80-kilometer border Jordan shares with Syria. Some risk approaching the border with Jordanian cellphones to report to the outside world and send clips. It's a dangerous task because the Syrian and Jordanian armies traditionally have the area under heavy surveillance to prevent the smuggling of drugs and weapons into the kingdom or further to the Gulf states.'"
Iphone

Verizon Finally Unveils Apple iPhone 480

Velcroman1 writes "The most asked question in all of technology finally has an answer. When will Verizon get the iPhone? The answer: early next month. Verizon COO Lowell McAdam unveiled a new iPhone Tuesday during a presentation in New York that was short on surprises as most of the tech press already knew what was coming. 'If the press writes about something long enough and hard enough, eventually it comes true,' McAdam joked. Nevertheless, the move clears a major hurdle for Apple as they face increasing competition in smartphones, particularly from devices based on Google Inc.'s Android software which has exploded in popularity. Verizon's Lowell McAdam described the unveiling as a 'great day for wireless customers across the US.'"
Democrats

Democrats Crowdsourcing To Vote Palin In Primaries 1128

SharpieMarker writes "In what could be the most extreme and influential crowdsourcing project ever, Democrats are beginning to organize to purposely vote for Palin in the 2012 Republican primaries. Their theory is by having Palin as an opponent, Obama will have the best odds at winning reelection. Recent polls have shown that Obama comfortably leads Palin by 10-20 points, but Obama is statistically tied with Romney and barely ahead of Huckabee. They even have a state-by-state primary voting guide to help Democrats navigate various states' rules for voting Palin in Republican primaries."

Comment Re:Good! (Score 1) 450

Agreed - where are the brownouts in CA? I live here, read the newspaper, and I don't hear about them.

We've had rolling blackouts
1) in 2001 due to Enron
and
2) when it gets > 100 F in the summer across the entire state - so one or two afternoons every 3-5 years or so.

Comment Re:Canceled in Season 2 (Score 1) 238

> The last few were bizzare self-indulgent crap where King appears to have simply transcribed his therapy sessions in the wake of his being hit by a van.

Agreed, writing himself into his own novel was *weak*. I also thought he borrowed far too heavily from Harry Potter in the last one.
The first 3 were great, I really liked the 5th as well (4th was good, could have been its own novel). Way downhill on the 6th and 7th.

Comment Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower (Score 1) 313

Really? I have not. I have the latest/greatest Mac Book Pro with i7, etc. I've gotten a *lot* of the "there may be a performance problem" message and finally turned my settings way down. I've been hugely disappointed considering this was supposed to be a badass laptop playing a "not quite hardcore" game. I remember playing the original Starcraft on a Pentium Pro running NT4 (ah DirectX 2, is there any OS you weren't on?)

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