They mention 'sideways', and I thought they just meant rotating about the depth of the rack (ie, so a 19" rack would be about 11U wide), but the discussion is talking about the fans being 15" away vs. 25"... which makes no sense, as they're mentioning servers being 47" deep. I think they're talking about side venting, which is what Suns _used_ to have, but you'd have to get these 30" wide racks (so there'd be ducts on each side for airflow in/out)
And we have the useless quote:
"In a data center the air conditioning is 50 feet away so you blow cool air at great expense of energy under the floor past all the cables and floor tiles," McKnight said. "It's like painting by taking a bucket of paint and throwing it into the air."
I'm not going to claim that forced air is more efficient than bringing chilled water straight to the track, as it's not -- but the comparison is crap -- anyone who's had to manage a large datacenter will have had to balance ducts before -- it's not fun, I admit, but you don't just pump the air in, and expect everything to work.
Then there's the great density -- 82TB in 7U. I mean, that's not bad, but the SATABeast is 42TB in 4U (unformatted), and I'm going to assume a hell of a lot cheaper. (although, it's a lower class of service). And HP's not using MAID yet, but spinning all of the disks.
My suggestion -- skip the article. It reads more like a sales brochure, with very little on the actual technical details of what they're doing.
You've obviously never heard of Virtual Game Station, or emulators in general, then. Virtual Game Station was important at the time because it emulated a current gen console on current gen PCs. (well, okay, Macintoshes... this was back when RISC was still king of the hill).
If the Wii is really as underpowered as a people claim, and the controlers are just bluetooth, I'm surprised that I haven't seen emulators for it yet. (and before people say that'd be legal, remember that the US Supreme Court said that it'd just create more market for the games (and peripherals, being they're bluetooth), and the Court of Appeals declared that reverse engineering is fair use... I know, you're asking, 'what about the DMCA?' Well, oddly enough, that was passed in 1998, and the complaint wasn't filed 'til 1999... but Sony never brought the anti-circumvention provisions.
(note -- I'm not a lawyer, and I have no idea if any new laws apply, and it's likely that current manufacturers would try to claim relief under the DMCA)
Bad choice -- Clay pigeons don't spray plastic shards and toxic chemicals everywhere.
When I have shot up laptops or other electronics, I've pulled the batteries and screens, and then set up a tarp underneath where they were hanging so I could clean up easily.
Laptops only make good targets because of the keys -- try stripping them off one at a time from 200 yards. But I can just as easily use a $10 keyboard for that. The one time I did set up a laptop to shoot at, we put it with the targets for people with pistols -- I got maybe 3 shots at it before someone took a 12ga to it.
I'm guessing that it's more like 75% wished they had done the things necessary to have offspring, so that they could then have them go into IT.
Maybe I've just worked at places with younger staff, but I've never seen more than 35% of the IT staff have children anywhere I've been, and if their kids are at the age to get career advice (ie, high school or after), the parents were jaded enough to not recommend it as a choice.
Whatever next? Software expands to fill the hardware available....?
It's been true for years -- just look at all of the extra crap in OSes and applications that would've been unconceivable years ago.
When we had to worry about optimizing for CPU cycles, memory usage and/or application size (lines of code), we'd program in assembler for the inner loops at the very least... now we use lazy garbage collection and higher level languages so we don't have to spend as much time writing code, because the CPU is cheaper than the programmer's time.
Games are written to make use of every bit of GPU and CPU they possibly can -- if you have a 2 year old machine, it's unrealistic to expect to be able to play the latest FPS out there without needing to upgrade your processor. And with Vista, it's the same for buying a new OS. Even linux and *BSD don't run in nearly the same footprint as they used to. (I remember running a picoBSD box in 1999 that fit on a 1.2MB floppy disk... I think the machine was a 386).
I don't think I can agree enough about the hobby project / coop aspects. They do give slightly different information about the person, though --
Coops / Internships will be more structured, and the person will typically be working to a deadline, so it can be considered real work experience.
Hobby projects show that you're not just looking at programming the thing that you do to make money, but that you enjoy it enough to do it when you're not getting paid for it. That's a big consideration for me for personality, and how well you'll fit in with our team.
...
The last programmer I hired, the decision came down to hobby projects -- the one programmer who had the experience we wanted took another job before we finished our interviewing. We then had to decide between four people who had basically a bachelors in CS or a related field... we went with the non-CS major (but he was informatics, so still had a bit of a CS background), because he had hobby projects and based on that and his references, we thought he'd be the fastest / most likely to learn what we needed him to.
But, with that same argument -- which constituents?
Say that on paper, it costs 2x as much to recycle vs. landfill, but that the increased costs are in labor for sorting, etc. (I'm just making up random numbers, I have no idea what the actual economics are of recycling). So, the constituents might be those who'd be employed in the recycling industry -- although, the jobs might be lower paying than those in the mining industry.
So, although there's increased costs, if it reduces the unemployment rate, and the money goes back into the local economy (including the tax base). At what point is it then a toss-up between recycling vs. landfills?
Of course, there are still a number of variables I'm not considering -- if we have to wash our food containers before recycling, how much extra water is used in the households vs. just going to a landfill; how much extra carbon is used in having both recycling and trash trucks collect each week (for those where it's not handled by the same truck), etc.
I'm not going to say that one is better than the other (I'm guessing that it's likely a function of just what is being recycled, and how it's being processed in that particular area), but that there are probably dozens if not hundreds of variables for each situation that suggest which way to go in this decision.
I've been against legislation for the various 'Net Neutrality' acts, as lawmakers typically have no clue what the actual issues are.
Yes, in this particular instance (screwing with larger downloads / file sharing), it hurts some of their customers, and I hope that in our capitalist market, people would _switch_providers_. (The bigger problem is that many people don't have a choice in broadband providers... and claims of 'unlimited' service which isn't)
But if the requirements for Net Neutrality are written so that all traffic has to go through (no 'blocking' of 'signals'), we're opening a massive can of worms -- Virus filtering? Illegal. Spam filtering? Illegal. Parental filtering? Illegal.
As part of the 'CAN-SPAM' act (of course 'can' is translated as 'have permission to' or 'preserve' not 'to cancel or abort'), they defined what _wasn't_ spam (including information on how to be removed from the list, non-forged headers, etc.) If someone were to actually send what I'll call "legal spam", and the ISP blocked the message from getting to its recipient, would the "spammer" be able to sue the ISP?
I think it's an important test case to consider when looking over any proposed laws regarding "net neutrality". Also, consider the ISP's ability to block botnets, viruses and other infected systems to keep them from adversely affecting their networks, their customers, and the internet as a whole.
Disclaimer : I used to work for a small (~2k user) ISP, and was active in some spam-filtering groups.
I don't work for an ISP currently (I did in the past), but let's consider the situation --
Someone sends a list of 100+ users to the ISP. Those customers pay $20-100 per month for connectivity, depending on the service and area. It might take 2 years before the trials find if the customer is or isn't guilty.
So, if we assume 2 years, $20/month -- that's $480 per user... at 100 users, that's $48k. Can the ISPs sue for lost revenue?
For big ticket users, it might be even more... and that doesn't even run into the issues of loss of reputation for disconnecting an innocent party, which might impact other people's decision to use them or not.
Because the judge forced them to. (that's what the issue of 'contempt' is -- being arrested for not following the judge's orders)
However, if you read the article, you'd see that the RIAA still can't contact _any_ of the students, because they don't know which ones have an attorney, and they're not allowed to contact those who have an attorney. Not being an attorney, I don't know what use having the names actually does the RIAA in this state. (they could try dragging the names through the mud, but then they've got a case for libel or slander against them)
First, this has to do with surface reflection, and transparency would require the light to go _through_ the material, not simply absorbed or reflected. And second, for it to be far behind, that'd suggest it hasn't already been done:
I had issues looking for a cell phone with at least as long of talk time as what I currently have, specifically _without_ a camera, due to security requirements with places I occasionally travel to. Here are a couple that I found. (note -- I got different results with them, so they might not all know about all currently available phones):
Because it's convenient. Just as with the arbitrary number for the UNIX epoch, the Carrington rotation number, the NOAA active region numbers, and the solar cycle number are just sequential starting at an arbitrary time.
(okay, ARs cycled at 10,000 in 2002 so it's only 4 digits, but it's still a sequence)
Very few things in the sky move, or if they do, they're moving very little, so there's little change with time, if you use the correct coordinate system.
However, I've talked to the folks that are designing the data systems, and they're talking storing about 30TB/day, with 65PB of images, 70PB of metadata over 10 years.
It doesn't go too in-depth on stuff, but it'll give you general concepts to consider, and is a generally fun read. It's the first book I typically give to folks new to UI design.
Slashdot has nothing on dupes compared to the headline news...
Well, so long as it involved interns and politicians. I can't remember how many times the news seemed preoccupied with Chandra Levy, Monica Lewinsky, or whatever mostly unimportant event that got covered each day with slightly new 'breaking' information. If you want that, you have to go to Digg to see what each 'breaking' website has on the latest Apple rumors.
At least Slashdot doesn't do the completely useless teasers... 'Will we get snow tomorrow?' I'm guessing you could've told me in the time you toyed with telling us before every commercial break, making us think it's going to be on right after the commercials, but saving it for the LAST thing. I'm surprised they haven't tried 'Are tornados coming and should you run for your life? Find out next!'. Nope, we can go straight to the article, discover the article summary was completely inaccurate and/or misleading, without having to sit around for 45 minutes.
It's crap like this why I don't watch the TV news anymore. I do listen to news on the radio, and they do the same thing, but I get traffic reports every 10 minutes, which is important in the Washington, DC area -- I just don't listen to it for 2 hrs straight, or I know I'll hear the same stories repeated.
Pressed or burned CDs? Pressed tend to have a much longer shelf life, but they're significantly more expensive to master, as they expect to make up for having cheaper per-copy costs.
And how many 20+ yr old CDs do you have that _don't_ play just fine? If you have 24 ("dozens") that are fine, but 200 that aren't, then it's not particularly good for archiving. Even if you only lost 1%, someone has to determine at what point they need to do a media refresh so they don't lose the 1% and/or how many copies they need to create to increase the odds of there being at least one copy preserved.
And how many of them seem to be just fine, but actually have bit errors that your ear can't tell? CDs are intentionally written in such a way that a single bit won't be as significant. Whereas, with other types of data, a bit may corrupt the entire file.
I might be more paranoid than normal, but I'm in a field where I manage large amounts of data which we're required to preserve forever. (well, once they've exceeded their useful life, we pass them off to other folks for long term preservation, but we do manage data that we've had to refresh multiple times, and it sucks having to hand-load a few paper case sized boxes filled w/ CDs so you can get the data verified and put on new media.)
I can see quite a few reasons why they might not want or be allowed to 'just open source [it]':
If the game is based on a franchise / IP they licensed, they might be unable to release those rights.
If based on a franchise / IP they own, they might be unwilling to release it due to concerns they might allow anyone to create and publish derivative works.
If they game uses an engine or other software they've licensed from other companies, they might be unable to release it.
If the game uses an engine or other software the company considers to be part of its competitive advantage, they might be unwilling to release it to the general public when it might be used in later games and/or licensed to other companies.
If the game hasn't been well screen, both in terms of content seen in the game as well as information in the source code, there could be negative PR if certain types of elements are found. (eg, the potentially offensive character that one of the artists put in as a joke, a frustrated programmer with a paragraph of derogatory comments about his manager, or something similar to 'hot coffee').
If the code is cleaned up and finished, it could potentially compete with the other games that the company might release in the future.
All you need is one unlicensed song left in there, and you can expect to be sued out of existence.
The process of vetting the software for release to make sure it's clean -- that you're allowed to release it, and that it won't adversely impact the company is something that takes time and resources, and although might earn them points with some members of the community would likely piss off their publishers and distributors. It's unrealistic to expect that it's 'free' for a company to make their their demo open source, and that it'd be in their best interest to do it.
If I had the mod points, I'd give you one. (I was thinking 'local road, for local people', but close enough)... but I don't think most Americans would get the reference. Even when I try to tell people about it, they assume I'm talking about that movie with Sean Connery. And of the people that I've tried showing it to, only 1 out of 5 was willing to sit through more than one episode.
I can't see the DS being turned into a phone... but the game boy micro's about the right size for a cell phone. You just gotta figure out where the keypad would go. (and it can't go outside of the d-pad or ab buttons, because that'd affect how you hold it when playing a game) If you made it thicker to add a slide-out keyboard, I could see it as a cell phone.
Military Bases : Andrews AFB, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Ft. Meade (also NSA), Naval Support Facility, Pax River Military Hospitals : Walter Reed, Navy Medical Center (also NIH) NGA (formerly NIMA) (Bethesda, MD) NASA : Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD) Census Bureau (Suitland, MD) NOAA (Suitland, MD) US Marshall Service (Baltimore, MD)
I'm sure I'm missing a few... but it's a good thing that the feds are in DC, and won't be affected by this, eh?
* Disclaimer : I'm a contractor at one of the above mentioned facilities, in a role that would be taxed under the new laws... and there's no way in hell I'm relocating to Va -- the commute sucks, and I have no plans on moving.
Slashdot Mirror
And we have the useless quote:I'm not going to claim that forced air is more efficient than bringing chilled water straight to the track, as it's not -- but the comparison is crap -- anyone who's had to manage a large datacenter will have had to balance ducts before -- it's not fun, I admit, but you don't just pump the air in, and expect everything to work.
Then there's the great density -- 82TB in 7U. I mean, that's not bad, but the SATABeast is 42TB in 4U (unformatted), and I'm going to assume a hell of a lot cheaper. (although, it's a lower class of service). And HP's not using MAID yet, but spinning all of the disks.
My suggestion -- skip the article. It reads more like a sales brochure, with very little on the actual technical details of what they're doing.
You've obviously never heard of Virtual Game Station, or emulators in general, then. Virtual Game Station was important at the time because it emulated a current gen console on current gen PCs. (well, okay, Macintoshes ... this was back when RISC was still king of the hill).
... I know, you're asking, 'what about the DMCA?' Well, oddly enough, that was passed in 1998, and the complaint wasn't filed 'til 1999 ... but Sony never brought the anti-circumvention provisions.
In the end, Sony bought Virtual Game Station from Connectix to keep the Playstation emulator off the market.
If the Wii is really as underpowered as a people claim, and the controlers are just bluetooth, I'm surprised that I haven't seen emulators for it yet. (and before people say that'd be legal, remember that the US Supreme Court said that it'd just create more market for the games (and peripherals, being they're bluetooth), and the Court of Appeals declared that reverse engineering is fair use
(note -- I'm not a lawyer, and I have no idea if any new laws apply, and it's likely that current manufacturers would try to claim relief under the DMCA)
Bad choice -- Clay pigeons don't spray plastic shards and toxic chemicals everywhere.
When I have shot up laptops or other electronics, I've pulled the batteries and screens, and then set up a tarp underneath where they were hanging so I could clean up easily.
Laptops only make good targets because of the keys -- try stripping them off one at a time from 200 yards. But I can just as easily use a $10 keyboard for that. The one time I did set up a laptop to shoot at, we put it with the targets for people with pistols -- I got maybe 3 shots at it before someone took a 12ga to it.
I'm guessing that it's more like 75% wished they had done the things necessary to have offspring, so that they could then have them go into IT.
Maybe I've just worked at places with younger staff, but I've never seen more than 35% of the IT staff have children anywhere I've been, and if their kids are at the age to get career advice (ie, high school or after), the parents were jaded enough to not recommend it as a choice.
I have moderator points, but there's no option for 'wrong'.
The current exchange rate is almost US$2 per 1 british pound. At the current exchange rate, it'd be $1158.
When we had to worry about optimizing for CPU cycles, memory usage and/or application size (lines of code), we'd program in assembler for the inner loops at the very least
Games are written to make use of every bit of GPU and CPU they possibly can -- if you have a 2 year old machine, it's unrealistic to expect to be able to play the latest FPS out there without needing to upgrade your processor. And with Vista, it's the same for buying a new OS. Even linux and *BSD don't run in nearly the same footprint as they used to. (I remember running a picoBSD box in 1999 that fit on a 1.2MB floppy disk
I learned from the second edition (red cover) circa 1995 for SunOS and Solaris, on the advice (and tutoring) of the two senior sysadmins at my work.
I'm currently teaching my neighbor FreeBSD using the third edition (purple cover).
The latest version still covers UNIX in a generic sense, with specifics needed for Solaris, HPUX, Linux and FreeBSD.
I don't think I can agree enough about the hobby project / coop aspects. They do give slightly different information about the person, though --
Coops / Internships will be more structured, and the person will typically be working to a deadline, so it can be considered real work experience.
Hobby projects show that you're not just looking at programming the thing that you do to make money, but that you enjoy it enough to do it when you're not getting paid for it. That's a big consideration for me for personality, and how well you'll fit in with our team.
...
The last programmer I hired, the decision came down to hobby projects -- the one programmer who had the experience we wanted took another job before we finished our interviewing. We then had to decide between four people who had basically a bachelors in CS or a related field ... we went with the non-CS major (but he was informatics, so still had a bit of a CS background), because he had hobby projects and based on that and his references, we thought he'd be the fastest / most likely to learn what we needed him to.
But, with that same argument -- which constituents?
Say that on paper, it costs 2x as much to recycle vs. landfill, but that the increased costs are in labor for sorting, etc. (I'm just making up random numbers, I have no idea what the actual economics are of recycling). So, the constituents might be those who'd be employed in the recycling industry -- although, the jobs might be lower paying than those in the mining industry.
So, although there's increased costs, if it reduces the unemployment rate, and the money goes back into the local economy (including the tax base). At what point is it then a toss-up between recycling vs. landfills?
Of course, there are still a number of variables I'm not considering -- if we have to wash our food containers before recycling, how much extra water is used in the households vs. just going to a landfill; how much extra carbon is used in having both recycling and trash trucks collect each week (for those where it's not handled by the same truck), etc.
I'm not going to say that one is better than the other (I'm guessing that it's likely a function of just what is being recycled, and how it's being processed in that particular area), but that there are probably dozens if not hundreds of variables for each situation that suggest which way to go in this decision.
I've been against legislation for the various 'Net Neutrality' acts, as lawmakers typically have no clue what the actual issues are.
... and claims of 'unlimited' service which isn't)
Yes, in this particular instance (screwing with larger downloads / file sharing), it hurts some of their customers, and I hope that in our capitalist market, people would _switch_providers_. (The bigger problem is that many people don't have a choice in broadband providers
But if the requirements for Net Neutrality are written so that all traffic has to go through (no 'blocking' of 'signals'), we're opening a massive can of worms -- Virus filtering? Illegal. Spam filtering? Illegal. Parental filtering? Illegal.
As part of the 'CAN-SPAM' act (of course 'can' is translated as 'have permission to' or 'preserve' not 'to cancel or abort'), they defined what _wasn't_ spam (including information on how to be removed from the list, non-forged headers, etc.) If someone were to actually send what I'll call "legal spam", and the ISP blocked the message from getting to its recipient, would the "spammer" be able to sue the ISP?
I think it's an important test case to consider when looking over any proposed laws regarding "net neutrality". Also, consider the ISP's ability to block botnets, viruses and other infected systems to keep them from adversely affecting their networks, their customers, and the internet as a whole.
Disclaimer : I used to work for a small (~2k user) ISP, and was active in some spam-filtering groups.
I don't work for an ISP currently (I did in the past), but let's consider the situation --
... at 100 users, that's $48k. Can the ISPs sue for lost revenue?
... and that doesn't even run into the issues of loss of reputation for disconnecting an innocent party, which might impact other people's decision to use them or not.
Someone sends a list of 100+ users to the ISP. Those customers pay $20-100 per month for connectivity, depending on the service and area. It might take 2 years before the trials find if the customer is or isn't guilty.
So, if we assume 2 years, $20/month -- that's $480 per user
For big ticket users, it might be even more
Because the judge forced them to. (that's what the issue of 'contempt' is -- being arrested for not following the judge's orders)
However, if you read the article, you'd see that the RIAA still can't contact _any_ of the students, because they don't know which ones have an attorney, and they're not allowed to contact those who have an attorney. Not being an attorney, I don't know what use having the names actually does the RIAA in this state. (they could try dragging the names through the mud, but then they've got a case for libel or slander against them)
First, this has to do with surface reflection, and transparency would require the light to go _through_ the material, not simply absorbed or reflected. And second, for it to be far behind, that'd suggest it hasn't already been done:
Oh, like we don't get enough dupes currently...
I had issues looking for a cell phone with at least as long of talk time as what I currently have, specifically _without_ a camera, due to security requirements with places I occasionally travel to. Here are a couple that I found. (note -- I got different results with them, so they might not all know about all currently available phones):
Because it's convenient. Just as with the arbitrary number for the UNIX epoch, the Carrington rotation number, the NOAA active region numbers, and the solar cycle number are just sequential starting at an arbitrary time.
(okay, ARs cycled at 10,000 in 2002 so it's only 4 digits, but it's still a sequence)
Yes and no.
Very few things in the sky move, or if they do, they're moving very little, so there's little change with time, if you use the correct coordinate system.
However, I've talked to the folks that are designing the data systems, and they're talking storing about 30TB/day, with 65PB of images, 70PB of metadata over 10 years.
See "LSST: Preparing for the Data Avalanche through Partitioning, Parallelization, and Provenance" by Kirk Borne (abstract is on page 19 of the workshop summary, and there's a quick summary presentation)
If you want a quick overview, that even your manager (might) understand, see Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
It doesn't go too in-depth on stuff, but it'll give you general concepts to consider, and is a generally fun read. It's the first book I typically give to folks new to UI design.
Slashdot has nothing on dupes compared to the headline news ...
... 'Will we get snow tomorrow?' I'm guessing you could've told me in the time you toyed with telling us before every commercial break, making us think it's going to be on right after the commercials, but saving it for the LAST thing. I'm surprised they haven't tried 'Are tornados coming and should you run for your life? Find out next!'. Nope, we can go straight to the article, discover the article summary was completely inaccurate and/or misleading, without having to sit around for 45 minutes.
Well, so long as it involved interns and politicians. I can't remember how many times the news seemed preoccupied with Chandra Levy, Monica Lewinsky, or whatever mostly unimportant event that got covered each day with slightly new 'breaking' information. If you want that, you have to go to Digg to see what each 'breaking' website has on the latest Apple rumors.
At least Slashdot doesn't do the completely useless teasers
It's crap like this why I don't watch the TV news anymore. I do listen to news on the radio, and they do the same thing, but I get traffic reports every 10 minutes, which is important in the Washington, DC area -- I just don't listen to it for 2 hrs straight, or I know I'll hear the same stories repeated.
Pressed or burned CDs? Pressed tend to have a much longer shelf life, but they're significantly more expensive to master, as they expect to make up for having cheaper per-copy costs.
And how many 20+ yr old CDs do you have that _don't_ play just fine? If you have 24 ("dozens") that are fine, but 200 that aren't, then it's not particularly good for archiving. Even if you only lost 1%, someone has to determine at what point they need to do a media refresh so they don't lose the 1% and/or how many copies they need to create to increase the odds of there being at least one copy preserved.
And how many of them seem to be just fine, but actually have bit errors that your ear can't tell? CDs are intentionally written in such a way that a single bit won't be as significant. Whereas, with other types of data, a bit may corrupt the entire file.
I might be more paranoid than normal, but I'm in a field where I manage large amounts of data which we're required to preserve forever. (well, once they've exceeded their useful life, we pass them off to other folks for long term preservation, but we do manage data that we've had to refresh multiple times, and it sucks having to hand-load a few paper case sized boxes filled w/ CDs so you can get the data verified and put on new media.)
- If the game is based on a franchise / IP they licensed, they might be unable to release those rights.
- If based on a franchise / IP they own, they might be unwilling to release it due to concerns they might allow anyone to create and publish derivative works.
- If they game uses an engine or other software they've licensed from other companies, they might be unable to release it.
- If the game uses an engine or other software the company considers to be part of its competitive advantage, they might be unwilling to release it to the general public when it might be used in later games and/or licensed to other companies.
- If the game hasn't been well screen, both in terms of content seen in the game as well as information in the source code, there could be negative PR if certain types of elements are found. (eg, the potentially offensive character that one of the artists put in as a joke, a frustrated programmer with a paragraph of derogatory comments about his manager, or something similar to 'hot coffee').
- If the code is cleaned up and finished, it could potentially compete with the other games that the company might release in the future.
All you need is one unlicensed song left in there, and you can expect to be sued out of existence.The process of vetting the software for release to make sure it's clean -- that you're allowed to release it, and that it won't adversely impact the company is something that takes time and resources, and although might earn them points with some members of the community would likely piss off their publishers and distributors. It's unrealistic to expect that it's 'free' for a company to make their their demo open source, and that it'd be in their best interest to do it.
If I had the mod points, I'd give you one. (I was thinking 'local road, for local people', but close enough) ... but I don't think most Americans would get the reference.
Even when I try to tell people about it, they assume I'm talking about that movie with Sean Connery.
And of the people that I've tried showing it to, only 1 out of 5 was willing to sit through more than one episode.
I can't see the DS being turned into a phone ... but the game boy micro's about the right size for a cell phone.
You just gotta figure out where the keypad would go. (and it can't go outside of the d-pad or ab buttons, because that'd affect how you hold it when playing a game)
If you made it thicker to add a slide-out keyboard, I could see it as a cell phone.
Military Bases : Andrews AFB, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Ft. Meade (also NSA), Naval Support Facility, Pax River
... but it's a good thing that the feds are in DC, and won't be affected by this, eh?
... and there's no way in hell I'm relocating to Va -- the commute sucks, and I have no plans on moving.
Military Hospitals : Walter Reed, Navy Medical Center (also NIH)
NGA (formerly NIMA) (Bethesda, MD)
NASA : Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD)
Census Bureau (Suitland, MD)
NOAA (Suitland, MD)
US Marshall Service (Baltimore, MD)
I'm sure I'm missing a few
* Disclaimer : I'm a contractor at one of the above mentioned facilities, in a role that would be taxed under the new laws