Is this the new Clippy?

This is a company that used to be a part of GM and when GM spun it off into its own business they used it as a way to jettison all of the most useless members of upper management. These folks ran the company into the ground in a very short amount of time and then went through the longest bankruptcy in US history.

There have been a number of really cool products that they were developing that they inexplicably shelved, so I won't be surprised at all if they get this working really well and then decide to pack it away and never do anything with it.

It's also used in the aerospace industry a fair amount.

s/EE circles/Engineering in general

Well if Hamas treats the people nicely, all will be well except for the occasional Israeli attack when a rocket gets lobbed into Israel by some village idiot. If not, the people of Gaza revolt and we have another Syria in our hands except with higher likelihood of Israeli intervention...

Perhaps I should have been more clear. I think it's a bad unit to use, because it's being used to purposefully scare people. The large order of magnitude of the measured values is misleading. Saying 1 Trillion Becquerels makes it sound a lot worse than it actually is.

While it's not a good thing, using Becquerels is a convenient way to make something sound worse than it actually is. It's 27 Curies, which is about 0.18% of the activity of the sources they use for some gamma sterilization machines (which can be around 15000 Curies or 555,000,000,000,000 Bq). Now that is a scary amount of radiation.

Something something...Magnuson–Moss Act has nothing to do with being able to buy aftermarket parts. It's about warranties.

Some friends of mine did exactly this as a research project last year.They did some testing at NASA Langley using some of their low pressure testing facilities.

It should be possible in a few years for sure and it may even be possible now. That being said, it's quite possibly the least efficient way to do anything anywhere, especially so on Mars. The rotor blades have to be enormous in order to generate enough lift. They also made some assumptions about materials used that aren't realistic right now, 5 years from now, probably, but not right now.

Tried watching stuff before on my Samsung Galaxy S4, display was horrid. I honestly have no desire to watch a movie on anything smaller than my Kindle Fire's 7" Display. Call me a snob but...

Likely I'll pay the price hike, but if they want to earn money, how about something like this. Currently (as many know) Shared Amazon Prime Members can only use the 2 day shipping benefits, not the Streaming Instant Video benefits. How about for $40/member/month more, change that? This way I don't have to beg my wife for her last login all the time and can use my account instead. Also perhaps, allowing 2 linked prime accounts who both have instant video access to get to each others separately purchased (non-prime) instant videos? This way I can even get to my wife's video library and watch something of hers if there's something in there I want without needing a second purchase. Just sayin...

1) Before I leave back home, image laptop, and either post image to online cloud drive or ship DVD's/USB drive back home 2) When I get confirmation everything is backed up or arrived back home, wipe Hard Drive, show customs empty laptop on arrival 3) Re-Image when I get back home. Sad I'd have to go through all that....

You definitely weren't hearing sonic booms from a B-52! It's max speed is 650 mph which is a whopping .85 Mach.

That being said, B-52s are really loud and their engines do have a very distinct scream.

In your case I'd say a no-notice departure is a bit more acceptable (hey if you're leaving anyways). Still if you know you're staying say, longer than 3 months, or your function isn't fully replaceable yet, even a reduced notice may preserve remaining good feeling and get you a decent reference going forward.

At one point their 4G was nice in my area, beat out my Home Internet at one point. However it seems like the 4G WiMax service is in a state of decline. Can hardly get a 4G Signal at my house anymore, and anywhere else I go in Denver it's non-existent. For high speed I'm pretty much stuck with Wi-Fi. What I'm doing is moving to Boost Mobile, which though a Sprint Subsidiary is cheaper and will offer 4G LTE at the same time as Sprint when the LTE service here in Denver is ready. My rationale is a few things:

1) Boost Mobile is dirt cheap, for the price I'm paying now I'm willing to put up with near non-existent 4G
2) Don't need to worry about the lack of roaming, Sprint's voice/3G network is adequate for my needs, though I find myself somewhat envious of my friends on 4G LTE networks, when I compare phone bills I lose my envy real quick
3) If Sprint/Boost ever gets 4G LTE I'm Contract free and able to make the decision to get a hot new phone at the Sprint subsidy again (or another provider if I really get sick of Sprint/Boost and decide I need an awesome 4G network instead), no penalties involved