This is confusing, as the Model M is based on a buckling spring, not a mechanical switch as the keyboards in the article have. Also, it's worth mentioning that there are vastly different Model M's--IIRC, the earlier ones have a softer feel, and the later ones require much more pressure. I have a Unicomp Model M, and it appears to be closer to the latter, which I dislike.

It's ridiculous that kids are growing up with chronic back pain as a result of having to schlep around gigantic backpacks full of books. My high school actually banned carrying backpacks between classes, mostly because of overcrowding, which meant that they had to allow extra time between classes to access lockers (and ironically probably also exacerbated traffic in the halls). All this led to decreased instructional time in any given day, more disruption of class due to kids not having enough time to use the restroom between classes, probably more violence in the overcrowded halls, etc. So, for purely logistical reasons, tablets are a huge win.

Biking is dangerous. I've been hit by cars accidentally at least 6 times and intentionally twice. No major damage yet, but it's been close a couple of times. Plus I've just fallen down on my own a couple of times.

It's a debatable point, but it's not too hard to find credible analyses showing that cycling is no more dangerous than walking, in some reasonable sense. If you've been hit that often, you may want to reevaluate your cycling habits--especially your road position. I'd roughly estimate that upwards of 95% of cyclists ride in a way that makes them dangerously prone to collisions. Usually, this means hugging the right side of the road, where you are likely to get hit by a car pulling out, or a door opening, or a car squeezing between you and oncoming traffic, or a motorist who didn't see you because you were hiding on the right side of the road. It's a testament to the safety of cycling that 95% of cyclists can ride so dangerously and yet are rarely involved in crashes. Riding safely, you shouldn't really be worrying about the danger of cycling at all.

The beeb has an article that addresses the apple thing--he often ate an apple before bedtime, so the fact that a half-eaten apple was found on his night stand wasn't unusual at all, and the apple was never tested for cyanide.

If Neanderthals and humans could mate and have fertile offspring, then why aren't they considered the same species?

The idea of a $100 master's degree is subversive, especially considering that a master's is the basic qualification to hold a professorship at a modern university

This is incorrect. A master's degree will, at best, qualify you to lecture basic classes at your local community college. Teaching at a university requires a PhD, almost without exception.

Yes, but is it an automatic automatic teller machine machine?

How many mobile OSes really need to exist? What is the competitive advantage of Windows Phone over Android? What compelling reasons are there for consumers and phone manufacturers leave their existing ecosystems for Windows Phone? Not having any specific problems is not the same as having a legitimate reason to exist.

What's the point of this post? I think it's pretty obvious SJ didn't walk into his parents' garage in 1977 with a chisel and a bucket of sand and walk out with an iPad. What he brought to the table was vision--something Xerox, IBM, HP, and the rest of the big players completely lacked, even to this day. When is the last time you saw a Xerox-branded PC? IBM sold their PC business to Lenovo, and HP decided to bet the farm on selling ink instead of making innovations. I could go on and on. Like it or not, Apple is one of the very few companies that decided to bet the farm on changing the way people use computers, and they succeeded, largely thanks to SJ.

I'm not claiming the man was a saint or even a nicer guy than Bill Gates--I just think it's sick the amount of venom directed towards one man that routinely gets Mod5'ed on /. for no particular reason. If you want to bash him for DRM, go ahead--he deserves it. But to write him out of the history books because you personally dislike him is just wrong.

Only in today's twisted world can creating Chinese-made, throw-away consumer goods sold for premium prices be considered "giving back to the world". It fits well with this whole mythology we're building up around the wealthy these days, how it's just such a burden being rich and all that...

I assume you must be RMS, posting to the web via an esoteric combination of shell scripts in order to avoid contamination. If, however, you're writing this from a personal computer, smartphone, tablet, or anything with a GUI, then you must be a huge hypocrite, since you owe it to Steve Jobs for bringing those tools to the masses.

This. I was once the victim of a violent crime--a mugging where physical force was used. I walked away bloody, but living. The police were nice enough to write up a report, but I never heard from them after that. I doubt they really ever investigated it, and I don't blame them. In a city with hundreds of murders annually, why bother? The police clearly have better things to do, and criminals know this. It's completely irrational to murder someone in order to rob them, unless the victim is armed and pulls their weapon--in which case, it's completely rational to kill them. My anecdotal experience from reading the paper is that the mugging victims most likely to be killed are off-duty cops who decide to pull a gun. I mean, if you were the mugger, why wouldn't you shoot in that case?

Although physicians occasionally do harm, their net effect on society, overwhelmingly, is to save lives. Guns, not so much.

My guess is that the decreased buying frequency due to less waste will almost certainly be outweighed by the increased buying frequency due to the product being easier to dispense. Think, "oops, I just squeezed out the entire bottle of ketchup again!"

In engineering research, there is definitely a positive bias; in fact, negative results are rarely published at all. This is both because negative results have less sex appeal than positive results and because peer reviewers are trained to outright reject publications without positive results. Although there is huge pressure to publish positive results, I'm not aware of systemic fraud in the literature. What does happen, however, is roughly this: 1) researcher gets great idea. 2) researcher tries idea. 3) idea fails to produce state-of-the-art results. 4) researcher adds hacks and kludges to marginally improve performance. 5) repeat steps 2-5. So, what you get in the end are journals filled with "positive results" that mean nothing and a bunch of "scientists" who make a living doing things that do not really resemble science at all.

Lethality of electric shock depends on way, way too many factors to make blanket statements such as above. For example, according to wikipedia, for a large contact area and dry skin, 5% of the population has a hand-to-hand impedance of 1,200 Ohms. 110/1200 ~ 100 mA, which is significantly above the 60 mA threshold for a fatal shock to the heart. 50% of the population are just about at the threshold. Also, broken skin, sweaty skin, duration of contact, etc. are all factors. This is also why you should never break the ground pin off of an electrical plug. Case in point: a Cleveland State prof. died in 2006 after touching a lamp with a broken-off ground pin.