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I have been involved in developing infotainment solutions for cars :D

Are you talking about what buttons to have on the dashboard? Almost all high-end cars have buttons which allow the user to switch between various sub-systems (Audio/video playback, Navigation, Phone, Settings etc). Along with that, they also have a rotating knob for scrolling and selecting items. See Audi's MMI or BMW's iDrive for inspiration.

as I understand it, the Prius has an interesting transmission that doesn't really use gears. I'm not entirely clear on how it works, but I guess it's a smooth continuum rather than the distinct steps of gears.

What you describe is called a Continuously Variable Transmission, found on older light vehicles such as DAFs and on newer Audis.

The Prius and other hybrid vehicles work by having a small internal combustion engine power a big alternator that charges a big battery, and in turn, the battery powers electric motors in the wheels through an electronic power controller.

So in effect, there is no linkage between the engine and the wheels: the engine works at its best RPM all the time, and the battery "buffers" the stop-and-go, and can be recharged when the car slows down, which allows having a much smaller engine for the same apparent nippiness of the car.

Are doomed to re-watch it.

Imagine a terrorist organization that detonates a bomb in the fissure. It is the stuff movies are made about.

Sounds almost like an atomic bomb in the san andreas fault.

I was a SFV (read the article) for Microsoft's Digital Nervous System. Granted it's not a product/technology per se, but after reading "business @ the speed of thought", I thought Gates had hit the nail on the head.

Now that some time has passed, I realize I was hit over the head by the Microsoft marketing machine. I'm sure when 'ol Billy releases his next ghost-written book, millions will buy it. I'll just keep using Linux and coding with C thank you very much.

a big thing in digital audio is to keep a fully digital path all the way to the very last, then have a top D to A converter right in the amp and straight to the speakers

This is an exceptionally good idea if you use your computer as a music box. I had no idea how much degradation was going on until I bought a cheap Maya 5.1 sound card ($40USD) with optical S/PDIF out and used fiber to connect my PC and receiver. The difference between my SB card with analog out and the Maya card w/ optical out is night and day in terms of sound quality, and I attribute much of that to the lack of noise, and the rest to the superior D/A converters in my receiver.

MS has made a phone. link

Granted it's old, and not sold anymore, but you hooked it up to your serial port, and when there was an incomming call, it could screen it for you and give different answering machine messages to different people. Pretty cool.

This is not new. In 1997 I bought a VCR which automatically skips commercials, all by itself.

It does this by rewinding to the beginning of the recording and analyzing the tape looking for the moment of black screen and zero audio level that typically marks the beginning and end of commercial breaks. It places index marks on the tape at these points. It takes about 5-10 minutes per hour of recorded material to mark a recording.

When you watch the tape, it detects the index marks and automagically fast-forwards through the commercials, resuming normal speed at just the right point. It works like a charm, and only occasionally misses a mark, in which case you can recover quickly using the remote. I'd say it is 95-97% accurate.

The technology is called "Commercial Advance" and is trademarked and patented. Don't confuse it with the "commercial skip" function on some VCRs, which is simply a 30-second fast forward to be used manually.

To this day I continue to be amazed by 3 things:
(1) it works as advertised;
(2) it is still on the market and has not been suppressed by advertising interests;
(3) my VCR is made by RCA, and RCA is owned by GE, which also owns the NBC network, whose revenue stream this product subverts. (Panasonic also ships this feature on some of its VCRs).

There are more details and a review here .

Lots of VCRs do this now-- they tag the commercials on the tape for auto FFWD when you replay it. Look for the "commercial advance" logo on the box/VCR. Since cheapo commodity VCRs can do it (although I don't know how...) it's a no-brainer to stick it into a PVR.

Here's an article about one model. (just a quick search on google)