It may seem like alot, but 1M will not be nearly enough.... Here is why:

- There are about 10M RV owners in the US, and quite a few live in them year-round. Many of the ones I know are full time telecommuters

- Quite a few people living in Rural areas do not have Cable/Wired-ISDN/4G connections

- Boats/cars/trucks

- Military *will* want access....
So, I imagine the first round of being able to "purchase" a station becomes available, it will be sold out in days (if not hours) of the offering....
(Too bad you can't pre-order....)

I would add:

7. NK Nuclear test mountain collapsed in on itself and would require significant resources to rebuild. Resources that they no longer have the economic means to acquire.

Agreeing to denuclearize means they get a win without having to substantiate it....

Some could consider this a troll, and I apologize to them since this is an honest question based on this statement, but with regards to abortion - Would killing a female fetus be even more egregious?

Really miss OMG Ponys!!!! Think that was the best slashdot 4/1 ever....

I thought it was the "next" season of Arrested Development (At least, if memory serves me, was the first Popular "Episode Dump" that I remember...

This is why I won't buy a kindle.
One of the dangers that this shows is straight from 1984... How can we trust history when it can be deleted or altered at whim. How can we be sure if the books we download are not altered in any way - At least in Non-DRM form, they can be archived to ensure the consistency of the text over the passage of time

After all, We've always been at war with... (checks kindle) EastAsia

Because of high concentrations of pesticides - If you could spray more frequently, you would not need the high concentrations, therefore less run off... A UAV could be as cheap to operate as any other farm implement without needing specialized training to operate.

Have you ever tried to get next-day delivery to a rural area? There are many parts of the country still that are over 200-300 miles from any major airport. Private pilots are often contracted by the USPS to ferry mail back and forth to these areas.

Quite possibly - Pilots are limited to how long they can fly per day. Because there is a shortage of qualified pilots, it limits the time and increases the expense of search and rescue operations.

I believe that it would be more than niche applications. There are many areas in aviation where UAV's would be a boon.

For example, UAV's could be used for fire suppression applications - Whenever there are forest fires (or even the threat of), UAV's could be prepositioned and in the air in a matter of minutes.
Crop Dusting - UAV's could perform this function with better precision, for longer hours.
Post/Parcel delivery
Search and Rescue

All these applications are prone to pilot fatigue and are dangerous commercial applications - I am sure there are many, many more applications where UAV's would make more sense and improve aviation safety.

I for one welcome our new meme-stealing overlords.

Warning sign #1 -- you are discussing slashdot IDs.

Warning sign #2 -- your slashdot ID gains you major bonus points.

At the university I work at, this question has also been brought up. In a time when university budgets are getting tighter, IT directors always want to cut costs, and outsourcing email seems to be a hot topic. However, there are some serious considerations:

1. FERPA: Outsourcing email opens up the university to all kinds of possible litigation in regards to the federal FERPA regs. How is this addressed?

2. LEA Compliance: Along a similar line, there are time when an institution is required to produce email to law enforcement. How is this handled, what is the process, how long does it take, and what safeguards are in place to protect the students privacy? These are valid questions that, from a monetary standpoint, can cost the institution much more than they would save by outsourcing if not handled correctly. And that would be from a single instance - any sizable institution will have this situation occur multiple times per school year.

3. Security: As we have seen with the recent scandle with Gov. Palin, it is not very hard to crack an email account - Within an institution, attempts to access the account can be monitored, even limited to specific addresses if need be. If the university is doing any kind of research, outsourcing could open up the institution to IP theft not only from other institutions, but from foreign agencies... Just one breach could end up costing the institution millions in research grants. So, the question to ask would be how would this be addressed?

4. User support: At the institution where I work, our help desk staff provides support 24X7 - when there is a problem, how accessible is the companies' help, and how is that support billed??? Is there a phone number that can be called for support?

5. Along with the user support, how does the company handle user education? Yes, it is easy and intuitive for users to use gmail, yahoo, etc... but do these companies do any kind of proactive user education (such as preventing them from replying to known phishing sites...)??? At the institution I am at, we proactively try to handle spammers, phishing, etc... to protect our users (and the university).


These are just things off the top of my head... I am sure I can come up with much, much more of an argument to keep university email inhouse (this doesn't even address future possibilities such as integrated messaging - i.e. tying voicemail to email, etc....)


I must admit that I am biased, however... I am the email administrator at a major university (and I *LIKE* my job ;-) )