Crashed on my mac :) In any case, when emacs crashed for me it was well below the available memory limits on my machine. Not sure why it crashed though.

I just tried calculating log(500!) and it crashed emacs! Arbitrary precision up to its internal limits.

There's a difference?

I entirely disagree, depending on your definition of "smart." A program can be "smarter" than its smartest programmer in a particular field. For example, I can program a computer to play chess better than I can. I can program a computer to solve algebraic and calculus problems I'd never be able to tackle, and I am a good mathematician. I can foresee a program that can drive a car better than I can (smoother, fewer accidents, better gas mileage, etc.). Already there are programs that fly airplanes as good or better than fallible human pilots, or their programmers (who may not be able to fly at all). There are even adaptive algorithms that can cope with the loss of part of a wing, an engine, etc. very well (> human performance).

Even early AI showed that a program could diagnose diseases better than any given physician.

All of these are examples of programs "smarter" than their programmers. In the case of disease diagnosis, I doubt any of the programmers could do even a poor job at the task the program was good at.

What about hybrid cars, and electric vehicles? They have automatic transmission and achieve among the top fuel efficiencies. Would it even make sense for a prius to have a manual transmission?

Two books to look at Cormen et. al Intro to Algorithms, and Bentley's Programming Pearls. The second is more practical, the former is used in many CS Algorithms courses.

That's why they invented the size_t type!

I use this type to ref all arrays, etc. whenever possible.

In my mind what will affect user experience the most is its accuracy, and latency. It uses a infrared camera, so I'm wondering if anyone knows the camera's specs, especially regarding resolution and latency. Without knowing these, it is difficult to evaluate what it is good for. The article quotes a several cm. accuracy, and 10 ms recognition time, but it not clear what the sensor's limits are, and how much latency there is in the processing.

It might not be cost effective for remodeling current airports, but we could do a lot better when we build new airports.

Cost computation would involve how many $$ it is worth to all those who are affected by increased delays, etc. vs. one time remodel. It might actually be cost effective to remodel. Lost wages, etc. might be enough to compensate. There aren't that many airports around.

Coffee not good? Not at the company I worked for. We had an espresso machine and it was wonderful. The company had one of the secretaries clean it and they bought coffee at the grocery store on their way in to work. But this was a small company. YMMV at large corps.

One other point, while it may seem quite a small thing, it was a large recruitment incentive. Any company that cared enough to provide free espresso seemed like it might be a nice place to work. This turned out to be true for this company. I'm sure it got them better people than they might be able to attract with salary alone.

The issue in my mind isn't about whether the tech gadget is getting better and/or cheaper, the issue is why education technology (including paper/pencil/books/crayons, etc. as well as computer based) hasn't progressed much in many many years.

I doubt a case could be made for Moor's law applying to this problem, but we should be seeing progress of some kind.

I was an original Plato author, and have developed for that platform many years ago. I found it to be an amazing tool that could be used for many educational objectives. The high cost of Plato terminals limited the distribution of educational software developed for it. Newer lower-cost hardware can help that, but still doesn't answer why the software today seems to be worse and with fewer features than what was available 30 or 40 years ago.

I am currently researching how to use educational games to enhance learning, engagement and student interest in science and technology. I think the key to improving our educational system is to use proven methodologies to evaluate whether any potential new technology actually IMPROVES LEARNING. This is the key point, not whether kids like the cool new widget, but did the cool new widget actually get them to learn more than a control cool new widget.

Educational research is complicated by the fact that controlled studies are hard to do as the kids change, the teachers change, and doing large scale studies costs a lot of $$. Getting statistically significant results is difficult, and then doing follow-up studies to show that the results can be replicated in other school districts, etc. is often not done. But in the end I think our kids and our society need better education, so it is worth spending some $$ to improve outcomes.