I still find airline pricing humorous...

Southwest

Delta

I still find it so funny that airlines like Delta and United try to fool us or blame the government and airports for the cost of airfare going up. They itemize taxes, do not even mention the cost of baggage until later, when you checkin, and so many people still do not look at the details. They see 165 and 175 and head for Delta... "it's cheaper".

Meanwhile, Southwest is totally transparent "this is what we are charging you, for everything."  Why would you ever fly Delta?!? 

Okay, okay... I do fly Delta.  Why? Legacy. We have miles there, we have companion tickets due to our credit cards, and disentangling requires a (I know, little) bit of effort. Sometimes we fly Delta (two people for about $500) RT from ATL-SMF.  Then it is worth it... sort-of... I always have to remind myself that I pay for the credit card... then I remind myself that we don't have to pay for checked bags... and sometimes my wife and I have 2 checked bags!  Also, sometimes when time is tight, it is great to fly direct.
 Cracked me up last time we flew, Delta tried to put both bags under my name and charge me a baggage fee for my second bag. That was at the counter in Sacramento. What!!! Do they think you are so dumb as to NOT know!?!?  Yep, unfortunately, I think that most airlines do thing we are dumb.

One more rant... about our pets... (see my Change org pet petition).  On Southwest, we never worry about the crate not fitting under the seat. It just DOES.  On Delta, lots of different aircraft and seat configurations... always a concern... and they bother you more about the pet.

Done!

Microsoft's underwater datacenters

This is about http://natick.research.microsoft.com/ and a worry about the future.  We already place a large burden on the oceans.  They take our waste products and our effluent.  All of these things raise the temperature of the oceans somewhat. Microsoft's impact might be minimal but I am as concerned about thousands of datacenters off our coasts as I am hundreds of oil wells.

How far away can the noise of the system be heard by whales and dolphins?

We know that pollutants travel differently in air than in water, but one of those pollutants is sound. http://dosits.org/faq/ has some interesting facts about sound in water and the impact on ocean life.

I am not an expert on datacenter noise, the impact of sound on local ocean life (and how far away the sound travels from the datacenter) nor how much heat thousands of such systems could transfer to the gigantic heatsink of the oceans, lakes and rivers that may eventually be used to cool datacenters.  I just have this sense of dread of yet another way to use and abuse our environment to allow, and encourage, data collection about each and everyone of us for the sake of market research, and monitoring our behavior for other reasons.

Just saying...