Why is the tens digit flipping down, instead of the ones digit? This must meant that Apple is cheating by counting ten sales for every one actual sale.

The X110 has been available in Canada for several months. I bought mine in January from FutureShop.

I didn't realize it wasn't available in the USA, which explains why it got admiring glances in the press room of a software convention in Orlando last month

FutureShop now sells a more expensive version of the X110 with a 6-cell battery. I got a 9-cell battery from HongKong through eBay; it lasts 7 hours.

Replace the hard drive with a 40GB SSD.

Max out on RAM.

This was the last remaining cell phone plant in Germany.

German labour costs are 10x more than in Romania.

Countries like Hungary provide 50% relocation assistance to high tech companies.

EU no longer provides relocation assistance, after it helped AEC move from Germany to Poland.

The EU gives up to e50 million in subsidies to corporations.

The agreement between Nokia and the EU had ended, so Nokia has no need to repay the e88 million is government subsidies.

It is foolish of the EU to subsidize corporations.

The primary reason that I still hang onto my 9-year-old Epson PC-800 digital camera is that it does timelapse photography -- from one picture veery 10 seconds to once a day -- up to the capacity of the memory card.

Unfortunately, the largest memory card it handles is 96MB (128MB makes it crash), but I can still get over a thousand photos at 640x480 resolution -- sufficient resolution for creating timelapste movies.

Many Canon cameras can do timelapse, but are limited to taking just 100 photos at a time -- a curious limitation.

>"...including our neighbor to the north...

Whose name we don't recall.

The fundamental flaw with the Mio brand is that they will not sell European maps to North Americans. This Belgium company told me that they might do it -- one day. Meanwhile, I leave for France on Sunday with no map of the country.

In January I saw a demo of a music robot at an industry event. It was designed in Japan, and looked a lot like this one.

The two wheels move independently, and so it is able to "dance" to music that is provided by an iPod that plugs into the unit, or from music streamed over its wireless internet connection.

I wonder if this new Sony device is licensed from the Japanese robot developer ZMP.

Here's what I wrote about it back in january:

"Yoichiro Dan of Japan’s ZMP gave a live demo of their Miuro robot (short for “Music Innovation based on Utility RObot technology”), the sixth of a series of educational and consumer robots developed by the company. Miruro is a music player with wheels – and speakers in the wheels. It gets its music from an inserted iPod or other MP3 player, or wirelessly from the Internet. It has a half-dozen dance modes, where it wheels and jitters about in time with the music. Sensors keep it from falling down stairs, off tables, and bumping into people."

Air Canada already has jets that provide 110v power and entertainment systems for everyone in economy class. There is one 110V outlet per three seats. The entertainment systems provide about 40 movies, tv shows, etc. There is also a plug that lookes like USB, but I couldn't get it to work -- a future game controller, perhaps?

A problems with the system: it crashes mid-flight, so then you have to fast forward through an hour's worth of movie to get back to watching. After it was rebotted, it crashed a couple more times.

This sure is a pleasant surprise! Some months ago, i emailed them to see if they had plans for an Internet radio. They said no, but that they would pass my idea on to their engineers.