The 1st Congress (who could be presumed to know what was intended by the 4th amendment) passed a law explicitly allowing for searches of anything and everything at the border.
The 4th amendment does not prohibit search/seizure without a warrant; it prohibits "unreasonable" search and seizure without a warrant. "Reasonable" can be determined by statute, subject to review by the courts.
When it comes to border crossings, lawyers are not different from any other citizen. The only things exempt from search at the border are diplomatic pouches.
Tesla's work involved magnetically coupling the receiver with the transmitter. Recently MIT even used it over short range to provide useful amounts of power with reasonable efficiency. (Witricity is a spinoff from this effort. Their first predicted application is indeed wireless small-device charging.)
Pointedly, the wireless power transmission isn't using radiative broadcast for this; they are using magnetic fields.
You can transmit useful power using 2.4GHz signals, but it is either directional or it is contained (like your kitchen microwave.)
The GMO corn is used because it maximizes yield per acre. We eat more corn than we would otherwise because of the subsidies, but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't eat corn at all without them. It remains a good animal feed, the base for an inexpensive sweetener, a good source of oil, an excellent base for fermented beverages, etc.
Unsubsidized corn would still be GMO, if available, so the farmers could maximize their profit.
Initially, I imagine that until GM releases battery wear life figures, it will be difficult to estimate costs per mile. Their batteries will be cycled more often, due to the lower capacity, but they have chosen to extend pack life by only charging the cells half full, and begin recharge at 30%. (It's unclear if that's 30% of total cap., or 30% of the cap they actually use.)
1) Get the 300 mile range out of your head. That is the factory-fresh range. The batteries won't be factory-fresh for long. Their own estimates for the roadster pack are for nearly 1/3 capacity loss after only 50k. I can easily drive 200 miles in a single stretch. I do so every time I visit my parents; it's not an unusual road trip for anybody. (It's 250 miles, one-way.) 2) Yes, the Volt battery will wear out, as do all Li batteries. However, since it is much smaller (and will have fewer cells) it will inherently cost less. Initially, I imagine that 3) Tesla, absent a gigantic fusion of capital, can't afford a nationwide network of charging stations, nor is the power grid equipped to handle them. 4) I did compare a 17" touchscreen to a simple single-speed 4 cyl. engine. I imagine the software to drive all that 17" touchscreen goodness is rather non-trivial. You can't determine complexity by counting moving parts. And why do you keep harping on the exhaust system? It has all of four parts: the Cat, two O2 sensors, and the muffler. 5) I imagine the largest market for quickcharge stations would be long-haul routes. Given the highly-used long-haul I-95 Corridor, the power feeds required for all those stations would be mind-boggling. 6) According to a website referenced on the Tesla Motor Club forum, there are currently 18 Charging stations in North America. This is hardly a "network." I'd be surprised if any of those could feed more than one car. Oh, and they aren't quick-charge stations, they are 3 1/2 hr stations; hardly "quick." 7) The Volt most certainly is NOT a "Prius made by Chevy." Think of it as an electric car with a generator under the hood. All of the complexity involved in Toyota's system to have the engine and electric motor working at once disappears. Instead, it's no more complicated than your alternator driving a motor. 8) The full-range S is priced at 65k. The Volt is expected to come in at less than 40k. That isn't 10-15k. (The Volt will lose money out of the gate, just as the Tesla did...)
The Tesla Roadster and S are certainly useful exercises in design, and are, and probably will be, in the future, great testbeds for EV development. But right now, I just don't see them providing the flexibility needed for a primary vehicle. If they can chop the price in half (so you can buy a gas-powered backup), and show a track record of affordable battery depreciation, yes, but not until then.
The Volt provides a great compromise: enough juice for most commutes, along with infinite range for when you need to go farther, and NO purpose-built charging stations (or easily-accessible 220V outlets) required when you are away from home.
300 miles is not a full day of driving, period. After the battery pack has worn down some, the 200 mile range you are left with is quite limiting indeed.
Without battery standards, and millions of Tesla vehicles on the road, who is going to build those battery-swapping stations that get around the range limits? And buy the batteries to stock them? I cannot imagine a nationwide network of battery charging stations for a single niche brand of car.
They most certainly DO NOT charge to full on a standard 110V line in 3-5 hours. (110V * 20A * 5 hours != 85kWh. The Telsa website says the 110V charger is 5mph of roadster range.) A single quickcharge requires an 66-kilowatt feed (480V, three phase, 80A.) A network of quickcharge stations, each with multiple outlets is almost inconceivable with the current power grid.
Next, their more "consumer-oriented" product is most certainly NOT shipping next year. (The S is not a consumer-oriented product, and it still isn't actually here.) That would be the BlueStar, and there aren't even models, much less prototypes or a schedule, available.
The 50k solid lifespan of the battery is very relevant when you have to pay for a new one; this drives up the cost of a Tesla trip by a huge amount. It costs waaaayyy more than $4 for that 200 mile trip when you take the costs of the battery wear into account, which you can be sure a battery changing station would. For the Roadster, pre-paying seven years in advance for the battery (with a half-life of 100k) runs $12,000, giving you a CPM of $.12, making the cost per change $24, just for the battery (which isn't even available for immediate ship at that price, not counting the electricity itself, the station, its facilities, or profit. If you want to stock your station today with batteries, they'll run you triple the price, giving you a cost per 200 miles of $72. (I will admit this is Roadster battery pricing, but S battery pricing is yet to be released.)
And let me get this straight: you are touting a 17-inch reconfigurable touchscreen as a feature (why does a car need a 17-inch touchscreen?), and then complaining that the single-speed, 3-cyl engine with no gearbox in the Volt is complicated?
I don't WANT to spend an extra 10-15k to get off of electricity entirely. I want to spend less money and be able to use the wall power for my daily commute, and gas to go as far as I want.
The large battery pack that is supposed to produce that range will weigh over a half ton. And 300 miles still isn't a full day of driving. On a car not shipping yet and with no firm production date. And that is the range fresh out of the factory; for the Roadster, the specs call for the range to drop by nearly a third after 50,000 miles of use.
Swapping batteries at gas stations? Without even hints of a standard for battery packs? Not a chance. Not for a very long time. And not without major upgrades to the electrical infrastructure. (The size of the feed for even a single busy "refueling" station would be mind-boggling.)
Again, the Volt is the car for today. The Tesla products, etc. are cars for 20 years down the road.
The virtually inevitable future of ground transportation isn't petroleum, since we will indeed eventually run out. However the obstacles are too many for a pure EV to be used as anything but a commuter car. (Namely, EV's are entirely useless for long-haul driving, with the even the longest range vehicles only providing less than 1/4 of that needed for a long haul trip. And no, you can't quick charge without MAJOR upgrades to the infrastructure.)
Doing the lion's share of your driving on batt., charging slowly at home, and still having the gas capacity for a long-range trip is a good compromise, and one that I think will carry us through the next couple of decades of auto development.
SirWired
P.S. I'm surprised at the number of articles that are so impressed that the engine isn't connected to the drive wheels. This is how locomotives have worked for decades, albeit for different reasons.
There is no better way to sum up some of the gaps between theoretical and applied science other than: "This contradicts basic observational evidence, like We. Are. Here." Did the proponents of the "classic" model not notice this minor flaw in their reasoning?
There are many different surgeries done now where the patient is not rendered unconscious. Advances in technique and in local anesthetics have made the precision nerve blocks required possible. However, make no mistake, you aren't wide awake and cracking jokes while the surgeon does his thing; you are doped to the gills with tranquilizers. It would be very bad if you panicked or tried to move around during the surgery. Keeping you awake is done because it is easier to keep you from not dying when they aren't trying to put you to sleep, shut down sensation of pain, and cut your memory. They don't do it because it's really cool, or to educate the patient.
The law does differentiate between nude and obscene/exploitative images. You may freely publish an image of a child with a skin disease in a medical journal (although the face is always obscured in some way.) You may publish images of nude children as art (although not art that is erotic in any reasonable way) or journalism (think the famous image of a burned child in Cambodia during the Vietnam war.) Those objecting to the images on the ground that they violate child porn laws are morons.
There are plenty of reasons to object to full-body scanners, but this isn't one of them.
You can separate business and personal finances with the help of a small-business accountant. There is no need to deal with the massive pile of annual paperwork that a corp involves just for that. (Annual "meetings" of the "shareholders", periodic "meetings" of the "directors", "stock certificates", etc.) All that is really overkill for a husband-and-wife business.
Incorporating a tiny, tiny, business has far fewer advantages than most entrepreneurs think, and, as you are finding out, imposes a large pile of PITA paperwork burdens. A cookie-cutter S-corp with only you and your wife as shareholders is not likely to provide much protection from legal liability, which is why most people incorporate to begin with. The courts could quite possibly see that the corporation is merely a layer of paperwork on top of your own personal assets. In any case, the legal fees fighting that issue in an attempt to protect your personal assets could easily bankrupt you, personally.
Yes, it is possible to build an S-corp that provides a proper layer of abstraction between you/your wife, and your corporation, but the time to do all that would have been when the corporation was set up, not now. When the S-corp is set up, and maintained, in a sloppy manner, the courts find it far easier to pierce the corporate veil.
Take the money you would otherwise have dumped into legal bills, and spend it on a decent liability policy instead.
First, the vast majority of code in this world consists of relatively straightforward (if tedious to write) database applications. A CompSci degree is most certainly overkill for the lion's share of this code. (Note: This is the most common kind of programming that gets outsourced, which might be why the OP is having trouble finding a job doing it.)
However, for hairier apps, or more abstract things, the well-rounded background provided by a CompSci degree is valuable. A CompSci degree will include a broader range of technical courses, along with courses in business, economics, and "teach you how to think" classes like history, calculus, physics, etc.
As a side note, Slashdot should have commented on or re-worded the question, which was most obviously written by somebody who is pissed about a lack of job opportunities for his/her degree-less self.
Personally, I have yet to directly use my degree in Computer Engineering at all. In ten years, I haven't written a line of code, haven't assembled a single circuit, much less done any calculus or physics. But in my department, it is easy to tell who has gone to college and who hasn't, by means of how long it takes them to absorb entirely new topics, approaches to problem solving, etc.
It most certainly is possible for a 2-yr grad (or even somebody with no formal training at all) to produce great code, and it is possible for a PhD to produce code awful beyond belief. But all else being equal, if I was hiring, I'll take the college grad any day of the week.
Yes, many homes have non-earthed sockets. And they are all quite old homes, as those have not been up to code (meaning, not eligible for use in new construction) for decades. And I'm pretty sure if you find light-socket to 3-prong adapters, they most certainly are not UL listed, and not up to code. Plug in 2 to 3 prong adapters are designed to be attached to the socket mounting screw, which is supposed to be grounded.
Oh, and there are plenty of UK homes with 2-prong outlets also.
And I'm not seeing big problems with no shutters or non-insulated live pins.
Also, you have high-current branch circuits, which can have safety problems all their own.
If you want to put pdfs on a Kindle, you have five options:
1) e-mail the pdf to Amazon, they convert it, and send it wirelessly to your Kindle for $0.15/MB 2) e-mail the pdf to Amazon, they convert it, e-mail it back to you for free, and you transfer it onto the device using USB 3) You use any one of a number of different conversion packages to convert it yourself and transfer it using USB. 4) You download a.pdf Kindle plugin off the web and install it on your Kindle. (No it isn't Amazon-supported, but it works just fine.) 5) Buy a Kindle DX, which handles them natively.
If T-Mobile plasters their name on the contract, the device, and the service, then the buck stops there. Period. Internally, T-Mobile can choose to blame the Easter Bunny if they like, but ultimately, it was T-Mobile's responsibility to ensure that their customer's data was properly protected. This absolutely could have been prevented by audits of Microsofts/Danger's operations, checks of backup integrity, tighter contracts, etc. T-Mobile can go try and sue MS to get their damages back, but in the meantime, customers can, and should, be blaming (and suing) T-Mobile.
Speak for yourself pal. I am waiting for my "Google Money Tree" kit that I just ordered online! It was even free!* I am on my way to easy riches! What? You are skeptical?! A Mom from [insert geographic location here] just made [insert some amount between $2k and $3k here] last week! If it worked for her, it'll work for everyone!
SirWired
*Free period lasts for 4.2749 days, and must be canceled via papyrus sent via carrier pigeon to avoid monthly charges of [insert credit limit here.]
30,000 is a measly 60 reams of paper. All but the cheapest, lowest-end piece of crap should be able to handle more than six cases of paper before kicking the bucket. If standards are that low, just about any SOHO printer should do the trick.
It is highly likely that they can recover the box in the repair depot. You can flash chips without removing them from the board if the board designer was thinking intelligently. In my company's HW dev labs they re-flash bricked system boards all the time; they can also do so in the factory. If we couldn't fix RMA'd sysplanars, field flashing bugs would be a complete and total disaster.
The ever-useful Google/WikiPedia combo pointed to a research report estimating the global size of the software industry at $308B in 2008. Saving $1T by not paying licensing fees to an industry worth 1/3rd as much would be a neat trick. Especially given how even $0 Open Source software is not free to support.
On a strict IT budget cost-effectiveness basis, the most uptime for your dollar will be Windows (Windows admins practically grow on trees, so they are cheap) on some commodity Pizza Box servers, connected to some cheap NAS storage and networked with crap switches. If you are an IT manager looking for your short-term bonus before you move onto greener pastures, this is a great idea! There is a good chance you will be able to hold things together long enough to get your bonus, and then get outta there.
Of course, if you actually care about the business IT is supposed to support, you will get a setup a bit more trusty. But if the IT manager isn't incentivized for long-term uptime stats, it just isn't gonna happen.
Slashdot Mirror
The 1st Congress (who could be presumed to know what was intended by the 4th amendment) passed a law explicitly allowing for searches of anything and everything at the border.
The 4th amendment does not prohibit search/seizure without a warrant; it prohibits "unreasonable" search and seizure without a warrant. "Reasonable" can be determined by statute, subject to review by the courts.
SirWired
When it comes to border crossings, lawyers are not different from any other citizen. The only things exempt from search at the border are diplomatic pouches.
SirWired
Tesla's work involved magnetically coupling the receiver with the transmitter. Recently MIT even used it over short range to provide useful amounts of power with reasonable efficiency. (Witricity is a spinoff from this effort. Their first predicted application is indeed wireless small-device charging.)
Pointedly, the wireless power transmission isn't using radiative broadcast for this; they are using magnetic fields.
You can transmit useful power using 2.4GHz signals, but it is either directional or it is contained (like your kitchen microwave.)
SirWired
The GMO corn is used because it maximizes yield per acre. We eat more corn than we would otherwise because of the subsidies, but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't eat corn at all without them. It remains a good animal feed, the base for an inexpensive sweetener, a good source of oil, an excellent base for fermented beverages, etc.
Unsubsidized corn would still be GMO, if available, so the farmers could maximize their profit.
SirWired
Oops... forgot to complete 3...
Initially, I imagine that until GM releases battery wear life figures, it will be difficult to estimate costs per mile. Their batteries will be cycled more often, due to the lower capacity, but they have chosen to extend pack life by only charging the cells half full, and begin recharge at 30%. (It's unclear if that's 30% of total cap., or 30% of the cap they actually use.)
1) Get the 300 mile range out of your head. That is the factory-fresh range. The batteries won't be factory-fresh for long. Their own estimates for the roadster pack are for nearly 1/3 capacity loss after only 50k. I can easily drive 200 miles in a single stretch. I do so every time I visit my parents; it's not an unusual road trip for anybody. (It's 250 miles, one-way.)
2) Yes, the Volt battery will wear out, as do all Li batteries. However, since it is much smaller (and will have fewer cells) it will inherently cost less. Initially, I imagine that
3) Tesla, absent a gigantic fusion of capital, can't afford a nationwide network of charging stations, nor is the power grid equipped to handle them.
4) I did compare a 17" touchscreen to a simple single-speed 4 cyl. engine. I imagine the software to drive all that 17" touchscreen goodness is rather non-trivial. You can't determine complexity by counting moving parts. And why do you keep harping on the exhaust system? It has all of four parts: the Cat, two O2 sensors, and the muffler.
5) I imagine the largest market for quickcharge stations would be long-haul routes. Given the highly-used long-haul I-95 Corridor, the power feeds required for all those stations would be mind-boggling.
6) According to a website referenced on the Tesla Motor Club forum, there are currently 18 Charging stations in North America. This is hardly a "network." I'd be surprised if any of those could feed more than one car. Oh, and they aren't quick-charge stations, they are 3 1/2 hr stations; hardly "quick."
7) The Volt most certainly is NOT a "Prius made by Chevy." Think of it as an electric car with a generator under the hood. All of the complexity involved in Toyota's system to have the engine and electric motor working at once disappears. Instead, it's no more complicated than your alternator driving a motor.
8) The full-range S is priced at 65k. The Volt is expected to come in at less than 40k. That isn't 10-15k. (The Volt will lose money out of the gate, just as the Tesla did...)
The Tesla Roadster and S are certainly useful exercises in design, and are, and probably will be, in the future, great testbeds for EV development. But right now, I just don't see them providing the flexibility needed for a primary vehicle. If they can chop the price in half (so you can buy a gas-powered backup), and show a track record of affordable battery depreciation, yes, but not until then.
The Volt provides a great compromise: enough juice for most commutes, along with infinite range for when you need to go farther, and NO purpose-built charging stations (or easily-accessible 220V outlets) required when you are away from home.
SirWired
300 miles is not a full day of driving, period. After the battery pack has worn down some, the 200 mile range you are left with is quite limiting indeed.
Without battery standards, and millions of Tesla vehicles on the road, who is going to build those battery-swapping stations that get around the range limits? And buy the batteries to stock them? I cannot imagine a nationwide network of battery charging stations for a single niche brand of car.
They most certainly DO NOT charge to full on a standard 110V line in 3-5 hours. (110V * 20A * 5 hours != 85kWh. The Telsa website says the 110V charger is 5mph of roadster range.) A single quickcharge requires an 66-kilowatt feed (480V, three phase, 80A.) A network of quickcharge stations, each with multiple outlets is almost inconceivable with the current power grid.
Next, their more "consumer-oriented" product is most certainly NOT shipping next year. (The S is not a consumer-oriented product, and it still isn't actually here.) That would be the BlueStar, and there aren't even models, much less prototypes or a schedule, available.
The 50k solid lifespan of the battery is very relevant when you have to pay for a new one; this drives up the cost of a Tesla trip by a huge amount. It costs waaaayyy more than $4 for that 200 mile trip when you take the costs of the battery wear into account, which you can be sure a battery changing station would. For the Roadster, pre-paying seven years in advance for the battery (with a half-life of 100k) runs $12,000, giving you a CPM of $.12, making the cost per change $24, just for the battery (which isn't even available for immediate ship at that price, not counting the electricity itself, the station, its facilities, or profit. If you want to stock your station today with batteries, they'll run you triple the price, giving you a cost per 200 miles of $72. (I will admit this is Roadster battery pricing, but S battery pricing is yet to be released.)
And let me get this straight: you are touting a 17-inch reconfigurable touchscreen as a feature (why does a car need a 17-inch touchscreen?), and then complaining that the single-speed, 3-cyl engine with no gearbox in the Volt is complicated?
I don't WANT to spend an extra 10-15k to get off of electricity entirely. I want to spend less money and be able to use the wall power for my daily commute, and gas to go as far as I want.
SirWired
Petroleum will eventually be depleted to the point where it is no longer an economically viable fuel for everyday transportation.
That better?
SirWired
The large battery pack that is supposed to produce that range will weigh over a half ton. And 300 miles still isn't a full day of driving. On a car not shipping yet and with no firm production date. And that is the range fresh out of the factory; for the Roadster, the specs call for the range to drop by nearly a third after 50,000 miles of use.
Swapping batteries at gas stations? Without even hints of a standard for battery packs? Not a chance. Not for a very long time. And not without major upgrades to the electrical infrastructure. (The size of the feed for even a single busy "refueling" station would be mind-boggling.)
Again, the Volt is the car for today. The Tesla products, etc. are cars for 20 years down the road.
SirWired
The virtually inevitable future of ground transportation isn't petroleum, since we will indeed eventually run out. However the obstacles are too many for a pure EV to be used as anything but a commuter car. (Namely, EV's are entirely useless for long-haul driving, with the even the longest range vehicles only providing less than 1/4 of that needed for a long haul trip. And no, you can't quick charge without MAJOR upgrades to the infrastructure.)
Doing the lion's share of your driving on batt., charging slowly at home, and still having the gas capacity for a long-range trip is a good compromise, and one that I think will carry us through the next couple of decades of auto development.
SirWired
P.S. I'm surprised at the number of articles that are so impressed that the engine isn't connected to the drive wheels. This is how locomotives have worked for decades, albeit for different reasons.
There is no better way to sum up some of the gaps between theoretical and applied science other than: "This contradicts basic observational evidence, like We. Are. Here." Did the proponents of the "classic" model not notice this minor flaw in their reasoning?
SirWired
There are many different surgeries done now where the patient is not rendered unconscious. Advances in technique and in local anesthetics have made the precision nerve blocks required possible. However, make no mistake, you aren't wide awake and cracking jokes while the surgeon does his thing; you are doped to the gills with tranquilizers. It would be very bad if you panicked or tried to move around during the surgery. Keeping you awake is done because it is easier to keep you from not dying when they aren't trying to put you to sleep, shut down sensation of pain, and cut your memory. They don't do it because it's really cool, or to educate the patient.
SirWired
The law does differentiate between nude and obscene/exploitative images. You may freely publish an image of a child with a skin disease in a medical journal (although the face is always obscured in some way.) You may publish images of nude children as art (although not art that is erotic in any reasonable way) or journalism (think the famous image of a burned child in Cambodia during the Vietnam war.) Those objecting to the images on the ground that they violate child porn laws are morons.
There are plenty of reasons to object to full-body scanners, but this isn't one of them.
SirWired
You can separate business and personal finances with the help of a small-business accountant. There is no need to deal with the massive pile of annual paperwork that a corp involves just for that. (Annual "meetings" of the "shareholders", periodic "meetings" of the "directors", "stock certificates", etc.) All that is really overkill for a husband-and-wife business.
SirWired
Incorporating a tiny, tiny, business has far fewer advantages than most entrepreneurs think, and, as you are finding out, imposes a large pile of PITA paperwork burdens. A cookie-cutter S-corp with only you and your wife as shareholders is not likely to provide much protection from legal liability, which is why most people incorporate to begin with. The courts could quite possibly see that the corporation is merely a layer of paperwork on top of your own personal assets. In any case, the legal fees fighting that issue in an attempt to protect your personal assets could easily bankrupt you, personally.
Yes, it is possible to build an S-corp that provides a proper layer of abstraction between you/your wife, and your corporation, but the time to do all that would have been when the corporation was set up, not now. When the S-corp is set up, and maintained, in a sloppy manner, the courts find it far easier to pierce the corporate veil.
Take the money you would otherwise have dumped into legal bills, and spend it on a decent liability policy instead.
SirWired
First, the vast majority of code in this world consists of relatively straightforward (if tedious to write) database applications. A CompSci degree is most certainly overkill for the lion's share of this code. (Note: This is the most common kind of programming that gets outsourced, which might be why the OP is having trouble finding a job doing it.)
However, for hairier apps, or more abstract things, the well-rounded background provided by a CompSci degree is valuable. A CompSci degree will include a broader range of technical courses, along with courses in business, economics, and "teach you how to think" classes like history, calculus, physics, etc.
As a side note, Slashdot should have commented on or re-worded the question, which was most obviously written by somebody who is pissed about a lack of job opportunities for his/her degree-less self.
Personally, I have yet to directly use my degree in Computer Engineering at all. In ten years, I haven't written a line of code, haven't assembled a single circuit, much less done any calculus or physics. But in my department, it is easy to tell who has gone to college and who hasn't, by means of how long it takes them to absorb entirely new topics, approaches to problem solving, etc.
It most certainly is possible for a 2-yr grad (or even somebody with no formal training at all) to produce great code, and it is possible for a PhD to produce code awful beyond belief. But all else being equal, if I was hiring, I'll take the college grad any day of the week.
SirWired
Errr... last time I went to the UK, most bathrooms had a 2-pin "shaver" plug.
Was I imagining things?
SirWired
Yes, many homes have non-earthed sockets. And they are all quite old homes, as those have not been up to code (meaning, not eligible for use in new construction) for decades. And I'm pretty sure if you find light-socket to 3-prong adapters, they most certainly are not UL listed, and not up to code. Plug in 2 to 3 prong adapters are designed to be attached to the socket mounting screw, which is supposed to be grounded.
Oh, and there are plenty of UK homes with 2-prong outlets also.
And I'm not seeing big problems with no shutters or non-insulated live pins.
Also, you have high-current branch circuits, which can have safety problems all their own.
SirWired
If you want to put pdfs on a Kindle, you have five options:
1) e-mail the pdf to Amazon, they convert it, and send it wirelessly to your Kindle for $0.15/MB .pdf Kindle plugin off the web and install it on your Kindle. (No it isn't Amazon-supported, but it works just fine.)
2) e-mail the pdf to Amazon, they convert it, e-mail it back to you for free, and you transfer it onto the device using USB
3) You use any one of a number of different conversion packages to convert it yourself and transfer it using USB.
4) You download a
5) Buy a Kindle DX, which handles them natively.
SirWired
If T-Mobile plasters their name on the contract, the device, and the service, then the buck stops there. Period. Internally, T-Mobile can choose to blame the Easter Bunny if they like, but ultimately, it was T-Mobile's responsibility to ensure that their customer's data was properly protected. This absolutely could have been prevented by audits of Microsofts/Danger's operations, checks of backup integrity, tighter contracts, etc. T-Mobile can go try and sue MS to get their damages back, but in the meantime, customers can, and should, be blaming (and suing) T-Mobile.
SirWired
Speak for yourself pal. I am waiting for my "Google Money Tree" kit that I just ordered online! It was even free!* I am on my way to easy riches! What? You are skeptical?! A Mom from [insert geographic location here] just made [insert some amount between $2k and $3k here] last week! If it worked for her, it'll work for everyone!
SirWired
*Free period lasts for 4.2749 days, and must be canceled via papyrus sent via carrier pigeon to avoid monthly charges of [insert credit limit here.]
30,000 is a measly 60 reams of paper. All but the cheapest, lowest-end piece of crap should be able to handle more than six cases of paper before kicking the bucket. If standards are that low, just about any SOHO printer should do the trick.
SirWired
It is highly likely that they can recover the box in the repair depot. You can flash chips without removing them from the board if the board designer was thinking intelligently. In my company's HW dev labs they re-flash bricked system boards all the time; they can also do so in the factory. If we couldn't fix RMA'd sysplanars, field flashing bugs would be a complete and total disaster.
SirWired
The ever-useful Google/WikiPedia combo pointed to a research report estimating the global size of the software industry at $308B in 2008. Saving $1T by not paying licensing fees to an industry worth 1/3rd as much would be a neat trick. Especially given how even $0 Open Source software is not free to support.
SirWired
On a strict IT budget cost-effectiveness basis, the most uptime for your dollar will be Windows (Windows admins practically grow on trees, so they are cheap) on some commodity Pizza Box servers, connected to some cheap NAS storage and networked with crap switches. If you are an IT manager looking for your short-term bonus before you move onto greener pastures, this is a great idea! There is a good chance you will be able to hold things together long enough to get your bonus, and then get outta there.
Of course, if you actually care about the business IT is supposed to support, you will get a setup a bit more trusty. But if the IT manager isn't incentivized for long-term uptime stats, it just isn't gonna happen.
SirWired