DVD, WTF is that and why do we still have them.

Because some people want to have unilateral possession of content, not subject to the decisions of others. What is available for streaming now may not be in the future, for many possible reasons. Ownership matters. I've put a lot of movies on my Netflix Instant Queue, which are now not available either via streaming, or at all.

Example: I want a full collection of Looney Tunes, the same ones I grew up with as a kid. Can't get 'em now because many episodes are "politically incorrect". Ditto Disney's "Song of the South".

It's why people buy books instead of relying entirely on the public library. Borrowing (which streaming amounts to) is fine for most content, but sometimes you want to own a copy not subject to whether the library has it available or not, either for your own convenient access or to satisfy "I own a copy."

[Darn thing ate my > character in the title.]

You carry a laptop because your desktop is too big to haul around. To get portability, you compromise power & capacity to achieve size and weight.

The iPad-style tablet is a recognition that something like 80% of what you do with a computer doesn't need the capacity, power, and I/O of a desktop, so leave that stuff on your desk and take the screen, connectivity, and not much else with you instead.

A laptop computer is a compromise. A tablet is meant to complement a desktop.

Natural selection will provide some interesting long-term consequences.

So when will the browser and operating system achieve a seamless integration? Why do we keep thinking in terms of "browser" and "web page" for what's becoming just another storage/source of executables?

This has been attempted several times in the past (Java Launcher (?), Active Desktop, etc.). Just fuse them already; the concept of "browser" is becoming an obsolete construct, impeding semantic progress.

The key amounts to a "true name", a label which is identical to the natural essence of that which is named. I'd never considered it anything other than an amusing literary device until now. Calling it "the HD-DVD key" is akin to "He Who Must Not Be Named". To state the true name itself - which is the only way to give an accurate reference thereto - is to reveal the great secret (of a now-defunct format - heh) and incur the wrath of the MPAA. To reference it using a peculiar sequence of colors is playing "I'm not saying it" games, akin to trying to tell someone the secret name without actually saying it. You cannot tell someone not to use that sequence of numbers, a short enough sequence that it could in fact be used by accident, without violating the [potential] copyright.

Upshot: the key amounts to a true name, and you can't assert legal right to a name and then prohibit anyone from ever using it (even in appropriate context). It wasn't copyrighted, it can't be copyrighted (heck, the copyright notice would be longer than what's copyrighted), and to ban use of the "free speech flag" is tantamount to fearing the utterance of "Voldemort" - silly. If there is in fact an issue, it need be fixed by means other than fearing a "true name".

...and just showing up isn't good enough.

Most discussions about failure in education fails to note the student's own failure to DO THE WORK.

About 1/3rd of my students fail, not because I'm tough or the material is hard or whatever the usual excuses are - they fail because they just don't do the work! Online quizzes not even opened/started, online discussions not participated in, homework assignments not submitted (not even a "I'm confused" text file as I recommend)...I am very sensitive and responsive to even slight attempts at effort, but if they don't do anywhere close to enough work - and I mean if I gave a 100% on every assignment they did do it still wouldn't hit 60% for the course - then there is nothing anyone else can do for them.

If you are willing to do the work, you can get a fine education at any school at any price.
If you are not willing to do the work, you will fail and lose a lot of money in the process.

And yes, for-profit tech colleges can be trusted. If their product (education) sucked as bad as is implied by the question, they would soon fail because (hey, get this) they didn't do the work.

Don't you sleep?

The device is under 9mm thick. Making the battery replacable means you have to add two more layers of thickness around the battery module itself, another layer inside the battery bay, a little space for fit tolerance, all adding up to non-trivial increase in overall thickness just so a small percentage of users can actually replace the battery (most who say "I want a removable battery" won't actually do it). Never mind the extra space/weight needed for the connector, interface circuitry, and other stuff. In addition, the replacement battery would have to be almost as wide as the iPad, only ~3mm thick, and somehow strong enough to not bend & break. Solving all that just isn't worth the problem being solved.

The 10+ hour run time is real. Are you REALLY not going to have a chance to recharge, using a 2 cu in charger, during that time?

In a year of heavy use, I've drained my iPad battery at most a half-dozen times, maybe twice when having a charger nearby wasn't a viable solution.

Coupled with that sentiment is the problem of portability: your electronic desk may be bigger than your real desk, but it's not going anywhere either. Tablets make information portable; before viable e-tablets, printing was often done just so you could take information to a meeting. So long as I can get info onto my iPad, I much prefer taking one slim device around the office than "wait a minute, I have to print a copy of that..."

Known terrorists have literally been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Yassir Arafat.

At this point, if anyone gets the prize who deserves it, the reason isn't because they deserved it. Assange will get it, not because he deserves it, but because it would embarrass the USA.

It's a good award to refuse at this point.

The Total Perspective Votex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain--since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation--every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.

Trin Tragula--for that was his name--was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.

"Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex--just to show her.

And into one end, he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other, he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain, but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

-- The HitchHiker's Guide

Groan. We've been hearing "they're too expensive!" since 5 seconds after the iPad was announced.

Depends on your application.
If a smartphone's ~4" screen is good enough for you, great.
If a notebook's weight, origami, and ~4hr battery life is good enough for you, great.
If a desktop's raging horsepower and screen size, tethered to the wall and weighing lots, is good enough for you, great.
Those are not sarcastic comments.

Some of us want a usably large screen of the sub-notebook variety (~10"), ultralight weight (~1.5lbs), right-now setup (no unfolding & balancing, instant on), always-on power (~11 hours), and always-connected (3G). Ergo the tablet, iPad in particular, fulfills some people's needs.
Mine paid for itself in about a month. That's not "too expensive", that's cheap.

So...is this a return to the days of building computers from discrete components (separate basic electronic components wired together), just smaller?

Who's going to build the first nano-PDP8?

Japan can operate high-speed rail because most of 100,000,000 people are within close range of a mostly linear rail system running the backbone of a long narrow island.

China can because the people will, in general, live where told and pay what told to build what told.

The USA can't because it would require laying new track across some six million square miles to connect dozens of cities spread between the disparate corners of Boston, Seattle, San Diego, and Miami, and because the population won't stand to be taxed for massive subsidies to a hugely losing investment.

I keep asking a question of proponents, and keep not getting answers:
On average, what is the total travel time and cost per passenger INCLUDING travel to/from terminals, vehicle ownership/rental costs to get to/from said terminals, waits for train arrival/delays, waits for security screenings, and adjusted for impact of limited luggage?
Answer: prohibitive.
All factors included, it's helluva lot easier and cheaper for me to throw two adults, two kids, two dogs, and a month's luggage in the SUV and make the 1000 mile drive 15 hours overnight from Atlanta to NY.
Trains are great for the few people who actually live near them and travel to places near them. Key words: "few" and "near". Most people will expend the balance time & cost from the actual train ride on travel to/from the train. What's the point? With air travel you don't have to run a 1000 mile stretch thru 1000 miles of back yards, AND you get there faster.