I think -if I can add to part of your point- that Apple plays a really important part in the industry, one that Apple-haters (or maybe, simply, avoiders should really be thankful for.

Apple is a marketing powerhouse, this we all know. And while at their core, Apple's phones aren't hugely more revolutionary than some others (and in some instances, they ARE unfathomably better), competing phones have to have a feature set and level of overall quality and functionality that are amazing, in order just to differentiate themselves from Apple- or maybe, just to get their product out from behind the Apple smokescreen.

Don't get me wrong, I am an iPhone fan (I don't have one because of AT&T and my unwillingness to pay $70/month for a phone), but I think now that several years in iPhone production, the rules of the game are becoming clear: if you're going up against Apple, you've got to bring a product that is better than the iPhone at everything, because its image factors in to its user experience, and that's a tremendous hurdle to overcome.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't anything new and at least a couple of companies already do this exact same thing. Go to Maps on your iPod touch and hit Locate. It'll put you right on the map and it doesn't have anything resembling a GPS chip in it. And let's say that you're standing in a field of 4 "linksys" and 5 "NETGEAR". It knows the MACs that are linked to those SSIDs, so it can look at the signal strength of each and triangulate your position. In fact, access to a service like this is built in to Location Services in Snow Leopard.

Questions are spot-on. Would mod + if I had points.

This is a really good idea. I just can't say enough good things about this idea and the common sense in which it seems to be rooted.

... I remember DirectX 7 quite well.

Well if you tested every scenario, you'd know about all of the bugs and vulnerabilities, now, wouldn't you? ;)

Let's not go crazy here, I mean, there's not a whole lot that's relatively modern about this if the thing was developed in the friggin' '70s and operates without an efficient backup system. If anything, it's an example of how much society would _BENEFIT_ from a modern system.

I sure hope that DHS knows exactly what a cybersecurity expert is...

The web developer side of me says, "Yeah, this probably will not add conformity to things."

The shit-disturber side of me says, "Take that, Redmond."

Have the self-righteous pricks who made such a mess of IT at the turn of the decade stopped thinking that their unchecked and non-methodical actions are "glorious"?

http://osuosl.org/ I realize that page alone doesn't speak toward the everyman experiences of linux users on campus, but I can say, they [comp support services on campus] do a very good job.

Could not agree more. The people in this thread are hitting it right on the head. I wish we could tag this question as "troll".

I do realize that, because I grew up in Southern Oregon. Trust me, I lived 180 miles from Portland and most of the people in the state, let alone the country, don't even know it's there. But we have to look at population centers, and I just don't think the population in the more-northern part of the state is large enough to warrant running the line all the way to the Siskiyous.

Everyone here is talking about the northeast and midwest, what about the damned west coast? Linking San Francisco to LA is huge, by itself. Linking Seattle to Eugene or Southern Oregon would be amazing. The commuter possibilities are endless here. Take Portland to Seattle, for example. Many people hop that via plane even though it's only about a 3 hour drive. Turn that in to a 1.5 hour train trip, and guess what? You've linked two cities with amazingly effective public transportation, cut down on the pollution of a plane or many individual autos, and perhaps increased the number of people who are willing to commute between the two large cities and their metro areas.

Someone mod this up, the original parent is completely missing the boat (train?)

Look at California: it takes a full 8 to 9 hours to get from the north end of that state to the south end. If they can connect the Bay Area to Los Angeles and make it a 2 or 2.5 hour trip, it'll be a huge boon (HUGE) to everyone from tourists to commuters to business people.

There are fantastic possibilities here, they're not trying to send little Johnny from NY to California by rail.