There are possibly some hybrid scenario's conceivable in which an auto-automobile (how about calling them a2mobiles?) could serve a very useful intermediary purpose.

Highway driving is much simpler and much more tiring than city driving, so that could be an easy win. Especially with dedicated lanes for a2mobiles, the programming thing could become almost as easy as programming an elevator.

Yeah, I agree. The mix of computers and humans is probably a recipe for disaster. I've seen many a software package attempt to figure out what I want or intend to do and they usually get it wrong. Now imagine a computer trying to predict the actions of a mix of human and computer vehicles...

Right, too many future of battery stories but we're still stuck with the same old stuff.

Long lasting batteries are great but not as important as lower cost and higher capacity to weight ratio...

Never attribute to incompetence what can be adequately explained by competitivenes:

The noise you hear is from the Mercedes S-Class driving behind it trying to keep up.

I wouldn't pay to backup my (non-home) movies, but I would pay to backup my music documents and photo's which is under 1TB.

An external hard disk on premises is too risky. You could wipe it out during a backup operation. You could lose both the original and the copy in a flood, burglary or fire. Off-site backup is essential IMHO. And a colo server with 1TB+ storage is not really cheap.

It's cheaper than SMS, allows conferencing and really easy sharing of pictures, interface is better that regular Android SMS. Biggest drawback is that you can't use it from your computer. I also use Google Talk (now reluctantly hangouts) and regular sms. Never use MMS.

Yeah, I've been running that stuff for years after getting frustrated with commercial routers. Has been extremely stable.

Of course, being lazy I got it in appliance form from this place:
http://www.applianceshop.eu/in...

"Hopefully no huge flaw comes out on that without me noticing. That would be embarrassing."

Ultimately it's a matter of (perhaps misguided) trust...

You know how it goes with simple words or names that you have trouble remembering repeatedly? You get the wrong associations with people and objects end every time you can't find a word and you go through these wrong associations again you're actually reinforcing these pathways. So, next time you can't find the word or name, stop thinking! Or you may be stuck with a permanent misassociation.

I don't know about the Tesla, but my Ampera (the European version of the Chevrolet Volt) has a conditioning system for the batteries that cools or heats to keep them in the optimum range either when plugged in or when driving (although the latter also costs battery capacity). You can tell the car at what time you leave in the morning so that it can pre-condition the batteries for the ride.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

I'd be surprised if the tesla wouldn't have something similar.

Well, as far as eco-bookkeeping goes they'll probably be able to point to their electric bill and prove they use only hydro-electric from, say, the three gorges dam..

Same way I only use atomic electricity in my Ampera (aka Volt). Thankfully when everyone's killed their nukes the electricity will still keep flowing. I suspect my billl will look a little different though...

I'm OCD in that area too. I also have kids who can open (and forget to close) the garage door (which is invisible from the house).

So I set up two magnetic contacts to monitor the door status and connected them (as well as the door trigger) to a Flyport (PIC microcontroller with Wifi) which interfaces with my Linux server. I have a (mobile) web page that displays the door status accessible via the Internet (or Wifi). The web page is protected with SSL and a secret token. I can give out tokens to others that I want to give access to my home within a time window.

Also there's an RF controlled light in the living room that indicates the status of the garage door. I probably
should add one of those in the bed room.

Have a look at the Parallax Propeller for video output, apperently they're great for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJcbxrdErkY

Hi Adam,

"I think it's hard to compare countries like South Africa and Holland."

I agree, what comes to mind is the old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The text book system is working well enough as far as I can see.

X.

I just took my 7 year old out of a school that made a similar 'enormously bold move', yeah, and I'm an old time Slashdot nerd.

In the case of my son's school the idea was to replace all the practice material for all the important subjects by similar material on a (custom made) tablet. No writing skills were necessary anymore. Making math exercises is now a matter of guessing, the tablet will immediately respond with correct or false and the kid can go back and fix things.

I love technology and all but I'm seriously worried about what such a 'bold move' will do to my kid's future cognitive abilities. The long term effects of this are unknown. So we took him to another school where they teach according to the (properly debugged) Montessori model.

The kicker is that pilots for this system are going on on 10% of Dutch schools and none of the other parents of the 200 or so affected children seemed to be bothered by this.We'll probably know the results of this experiment in another 5 years.

You got the time frame wrong.
When OS/2 appeared Windows was already in use.
So OS/2 was competing with Windows from the start.