I live in a city of about 150,000 people. The most common airplane operating out of our airport is the Beechcraft 1900D, which seats 19 people. Trips are to the closest centres, which are all within 300 km.

So 9 passengers is a little low for replacing these planes, but it's only off by a factor of two. And range is just fine. So there's a market right here for planes that aren't that far off from what this company is offering.

By announcing this product, they have at no cost to themselves gained advertising of Star Citizen all over the Internet. Who knows, they might even sell one or two, but it doesnâ(TM)t matter. They have brought the world to their web site, which was the real point all along.

I know reading is hard and all, but the summary goes on to say (emphasis added):

Your broader point is taken, but I think in Marchionne's case, this isn't ridiculous. He was born in Italy, grew up and was educated in Canada, and has worked extensively in Canada and in Italy (the latter including his stint as CEO of FIAT.) His dual nationality is an important part of understanding how he came to be in the position he is in.

A 20 oz coke has 240 calories. Drink one every day, and you’ve consumed 1,680 calories over a week. If those are surplus calories, that is enough to gain about half a pound a week, or about 25 pounds over a year. If you're over-eating in other parts of your meal, you have more reason to hold back on the sugar-sweetened beverages, not less.

Of course I think we can all agree that it's better to be drinking water. But people are allowed some pleasure in life.

Going from memory here, and things may have changed completely in the meantime. If your applet could live in the sandbox, then great. But many applications needed to get out of the sandbox. Remember this was long before cloud storage, so many apps required access to your file system, for example. Or apps might require access to your email client or your contact list. And so you'd sign your applet and have it ask for permission to access outside the sandbox, which in the end made it no different from ActiveX.

I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm remembering wrong. :-)

I worked with ActiveX technology close to 15 years ago. It was a much simpler era, where there was little need to worry about platforms other than Windows+IE, and where most of us hadn't really caught on yet to how ruthless the hackers were going to become. And frankly there wasn't a whole lot of alternative for pushing real app functionality from the web in those days. Some people were using Java, which certainly wasn't any more secure, and eventually Flash began to gain traction. So it's not completely hard to understand how we got where we are.

I'll already be very happy with a device that at a glance, tells me what time it is and when my next appointment is. I would strongly consider buying one just for this alone. In meetings, it comes over far ruder to grab your phone and start tapping away than to quietly glance at a watch.

The fitness tracking features will replace the device I currently use. Big win.

If I can control my podcast and audio book playback without getting my phone out of my pocket, then it will be a win when walking or biking.

I do enough travel that wrist-based navigation while walking through an unfamiliar city is attractive.

And basic home automation like adjusting my wemo lights or thermostat are a big win if it means I don't actually have to have my phone with me while shlepping around in the house.

A lot of people seem excited by notifications. I will likely turn most notifications off. I'm bombarded by enough distractions through the day already.

This is rather like that old one about are you still beating your wife?

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Personally, I thoroughly dislike Windows 8. Enough that I'm now a Mac user. But I'm seriously considering moving my mother over to it.

I would set up a start screen that shows just the most basic icons: mail, web browser, photo viewer, Word, and that's just about it. I could pin her favourite web sites to the start screen as well.

She really has no need to ever see a desktop. She never runs an application in any mode other than full screen - she has no idea how windows work despite my many, many attempts to teach her. And if you stick to the metro part of Windows 8, the risk of viruses are pretty low. (Although to my knowledge she's never had a virus.)

I'm actually thinking Windows 8 might be a good fit, for exactly the reasons that I hate it for my own use.

The Christian Science Monitor had an interesting piece a while back on the stress of remotely participating in combat:

It's obviously not comparable to driving a LAV in convoy wondering when the next IED is going to detonate. But it appears to be a much tougher job than many of us would think.

We've been looking to convert one of our in-house applications to a touch UI. This allows us to continue using Visual Studio and C#. We don't care about desktop or Metro. Our app will run full-screen, so users won't see anything that's under the hood.

Sure, we could rewrite the whole damn thing for iOS or Android, but why?

This is all making me feel pretty good that my son is attending a Waldorf school. They have huge emphasis on creativity, learning by doing, and loads of physical activity. They run counter to the modern focus of ever-earlier literacy and testing, so that kids have time to blow off steam outside, build things, and tell stories.

Judging by the gender balance in my kid's school, a lot of other parents of boys are thinking the same way.

That's actually not so dumb. France did this in 1970, except they moved two decimal points.

And fortunately you need go no further than TFM to find out that you don't have to. Subscription is just an option. You can still buy outright if you want.