Exactly! Progress is slow. We get dazzled by pretty colours. All the GUI interfaces are going to change for reasons of style rather than usability. Some usability will be gained and some lost. CLI is a much more advanced interface still. GUI is still in primary school repeating mistakes and forgetting priorities.

Contrary to our willingness to follow trends real technological progress is much slower than the hype.

CLI is finally becoming a mature interface. Bash is pretty good. It's taken decades to get to this point.

We still don't really know how to make a good interface that uses a mouse and a touchscreen is 22nd century stuff. Sure, you can get stuff done with those tools but often it is only a specific thing and as software becomes newer the technology and usability of it decreases/changes. Good things that work get forgotten or overlooked. There are plenty of GUI advances in the 90s that we don't have anymore. Evolution takes millions of years. Human progress is faster but it is still generations.

For example:
Skype style video is at least as old as the 1960s. It's become usable now by a lot more people but it really took that long. But then the company Skype with their proprietary interface might not last forever. So it might have to be re-invented again.

The first step to genocide in Nazi Germany: ID papers that differentiate mostly heterogeneous people based on "race." The first step in genocide in Rwanda: ID papers that differentiate mostly heterogenous people based on "race." The first step in Arizona...

Of course that is an extreme comparison and there is no indication of genocide in Arizona. However, the question remains: Why follow in such despicable footsteps?

Xenophobia doesn't help us. Shame on those cowards who brought this into law and allowed it to stand. When will they ever learn?

Thank you for your ambitious start. Please do us all a favour and shrink the rest of the Olympics down to that size too!

Sincerely,
The citizens of the host contries paying the massive public debt for the private advertising spectacle every 2 years.

I am so much more happy with my city now that the 2010 Olympics are behind us. It's like a veil of idiocy was lifted. For one thing, there a lot fewer short sighted mega-projects that will cost the taxpayer "nothing" (actually about 25 years of debt)

What? Common sense like that makes you sound like a terrorist!

Get on it you commies.... er, no I mean... Islamofascists lurking in the closet! Why don't you bomb the lineup already!?

Those guys are a serious let down. $1Trillion dollars on the military every year and all we get are IEDs in the countries we are invading. Unreliable. Gotta take 'em out. Same as Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. Those guys wimped out. How are we supposed to have a war against evil if all you do is hide in an apartment watching TV for 9 years. Getting executed by seal team 6 (judge jury and executioner biatchez!!!) was the most exciting thing to happen to him in a decade. Loser.

Good example. Because sometimes people see those things. Human perception is psychological fundamentally. There is no reductionist science that will make is into something fully rational. Sorry, religious 'scientifical' types, uncertainty is the only certain in this universe.

The conclusion "lossless formats and a decent pair of headphones will do a lot more for your audio enjoyment than 24/192 recordings" does not prove the headline "24-bit/192kHz Downloads Is Pointless"

The article points to the visible light spectrum as analogous to the audio spectrum. This makes more clear the faulty reasoning. Light is not sound. Light is quantum at its source not analog. The best analogy for quantum (to explain that mysterious atomic effect in human perception terms) is.... digital! Analog does not resemble it so much.

What is "Fluorescence"? How do overtones and ultrasonic noises interact with audible noises? The answer is simply: They are. Do we understand it fully? No. Sorry, but that is not what Science means. If you think that Science means we know all these things for certain then you don't understand the word science. For you science has become a religion of certainty and false security

  What organ causes hearing and where is "sound" created? The Brain.

To me this argument is like a teenager trying to say that only certain drugs will get you legitimately high. That someone 'couldn't really" have narcotic effects in their brain because they weren't using the "real" stuff. (Near beer vs real beer, or lotsa vodka vs only beer...) But one is conflating the mechanism with the final effect. If the final effect is psychological then ALL TRICKS TO ACHIEVE THAT END ARE VALID. Yes, there a physical limits that are known and are important and it is important to debunk pseudoscience that is glossing over that stuff. However, sometimes that is simply not the important question. Sometimes the important human effect is not in the realm of the known or is in the realm of the psychologically subjective. In that case, don't discredit the whole branch of human knowledge called science by applying it to something for which it is not suited. Like the question of "what kind of art is scientifically best" you are getting into angels on a pinhead territory and then look to the company you keep.

Watch the daily show. Then you can see Fox news credibility laid bare. However, I do agree one shouldn't but much more faith in any of the competitor's options ("Liberal" as you illiterate "Americans" mistakenly call it.)

As long as we leave out the militarism, paedophilia and everything else lord baden powell.

It's disappointing the ratio of critique of the question to answer of the question on this page. AFAIK everyone is cynical pessimistic and generally useless on this topic except one person who suggested looking at open source hardware and one baker who is all DIY.

When did we just decide to give up?

Seriously though I wish that open source programmers set up a general donations website (for their work, not hollywood shlock) Because I would donate more if it was easier. I wanted to donate to rsync but apparently it's not possible. There are so many awesome programs just given away for free and I really value them.

Actually they lose money because they had a very tenacious promoter of their movies working hard for them, even breaking laws, all for free. But now he is in jail. Of course it's important to make the odd symbolic bust to keep the price of the bootlegs high. Same as with the war on drugs there are only two proponents for the war on piracy: cops and robbers - everyone else is a casualty.

So his crime was giving instead of taking. The MPAA hates Christmas. They want to change it to "It is better to receive than to give."