It's vastly easier to mold KDE into a simple desktop than do do the same with others. I played with XFCE and *Box window managers, but they can't touch how easy KDE is to configure. Besides, I like a lot of KDE apps, and they work well together. The arguments for a light window manager don't always add up to me. I'm not an extemist when it comes to picking software. That's why I like "mixing metaphors" like putting files and program launcher icons on the desktop. It doesn't make sense (is it a file or something else? why put stuff on the desktop, the thing the windows cover?), but it is really convenient.

There have always been strange ideas in KDE that some have found useful but others not so much. There was a simple file-share system, klipper, etc. Many of these quietly faded, but I'm sure they were a big help to someone, else they never would have been written. I feel like lots of plasma is the same, but who knows? Some parts will turn out to be great. In every way that it breaks some UI paradigm, there will be some other way in which that breaking will be useful.

I know, I know. This is probably different, but when I read the description, I pictured MS Bob with bright, colorful rooms that someone far away thought would put me at ease when using a computer. Then when I start a task, the helpful animated dog pops up, but instead of the vanilla "looks like you're writing a letter," some random jerk from the low end of the internet gene pool pops up and says something in between "Nice letter, fag!" and
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/4/27/

I feel like there's too much desktop in my face most of the time. I want it to be a helpful tool, but most often being helpful means staying out of the way. But I am glad KDE is so configurable, so I can mold it into the desktop I want. That part is great.

Major credit card companies depend on thousands of small merchants who use swipe machines. To improve security, these would have to be replaced. It'd be a big headache. Besides, the credit card companies have been quite successful at pushing fraud and "identity theft" onto the victims (merchants and purchasers). They are fairly protected against data breach, in a sick kind of way. Their problem has become your problem.

But medical offices aren't like that. They have computers (that are re-programmable). There are fewer doctors than general merchants who take credit cards. And medical data is more difficult to turn into revenue than credit card numbers.

I don't think that the money is the dominant part of what makes a good system. Very capable, secure systems can be built on the cheap. The basic things that need to be used are available in open source software (image manipulation, cryptography, databases).

"Can you imagine a million patient digital medical record breach? The black mail or power that could be leveraged over people?"

Yes, I can imagine such a breach. It'll probably happen eventually. Good use of cryptography can mitigate the damage. But the idea of filtering through a million records looking for good blackmail candidates, then conducting said blackmail ... for that effort, you could start a legal business.

Digital records make sense: they should be more secure and easier to transfer. There will be pain switching, but the new system will be more efficient in the long run. There were pains moving from horses to cars, from gas to electricity, from wood to coal. But they all got ironed out.

It sounds like a cool toy, but choosing the correct way to visualize data is really hard. Generally, picking which quantities to plot against each other corresponds to taking a lower dimensional slice of a data set. Picking the right slice isn't just difficult, it's a really important result of the research.

There have been lots of advances in trying to automatically determine these sorts of reductions (the Netflix recommendation contest brought a lot of this to public attention), but for many problems, the "interesting" lower-dimensional space that's plotted corresponds to some important symmetry of the data.

I guess what I'm saying is that in science (like in art) limitations sometimes help guide useful thinking. Just seeing "everything" in 3D 36 degrees with more dimensions represented as sound doesn't necessarily help that.

The humor content is different, to an extent. The American market is broader, though. Darker comedies aren't on network TV, but can appear elsewhere, especially on Comedy Central or Cartoon Network. Both have niche programs where bad people lose at life together.

Also: Many, many American sit-com writers have gone to Harvard. It's like a little factory that turns out awful writers who go across the country and create awful shows. I take it as a black mark upon Harvard. Look what they've done to our culture.

Your (b) is what happens now, but you're wrong about how much it helps the editors.

I'm sitting down the hall from three editors, none of whom receive money for what they do.
Being an editor absolutely helps with tenure cases. It mean the faculty member is at the top of her field, guiding its development. Service requirements, in the form of refereeing papers and the like, are a big part of how academics are evaluated by their employing university.

The full overview of scientific publication is: grant agency (mostly federal NIH, NSF, DOE, DOD) provides money to a scientist. Scientist does research, writes a paper. Paper goes to a journal where volunteer editors and refs put it through the paces. Then, at the end, some pub giant gets the copyright and sells electronic subscriptions to the journal back to the university for tens of thousands of dollars per year.

Of course, in some journals, they charge the author page fees too. Isn't that wonderful? Pay to write, pay to read.

I see the "future" of gaming in digital restriction management. Sports Game 2019 will automatically stop working when Sports Game 2020 is released. Moreover, maybe Sports League will convince Console Company to lock players out of the game when actual sports games are being played so as to conserve their audience.

Also, to shut down the used game market, games will become tied to the first console they're played on and won't work on others.

The rise of the big game financiers will push all games stories towards a generic formula that involves space marines. People won't like it, but what are you going to do, read a book! Muhahahaha!

Oh, sorry. Continuing, Rock Band 2020 will innovate significantly, featuring not only toy guitars drums and a microphone, but also a virtual hotel room that you wreck after the show for bonus points and a USB whiskey bottle.

It'll be a bright future!

But understanding of basic, basic facts is critical to using science. These ideas allow you to discard scores of hypothesis as silly before you waste time testing them.

Science aims at producing those "factoids". Aren't the products of scientific research what non-scientists want from scientists?

It's also worth noting that the lie detector has been involved in securing many FALSE confessions. DNA evidence later exhonerates the poor soul, but the lie detector was an important part of convincing him to sign the confession.

It's not just that the like detector is unscientific, it's that it is used to railroad people into confessing, rather than finding the truth.

This sets software apart from many other industries that have "satisfaction guaranteed" with some suitable asterisk. I just bought a new backpack and it came with a lifetime guarantee. I know software can't expect to match that, but the difference between "satisfaction guaranteed" and "you agree to let us make flames shoot out your computer" is really extreme.

But (3) isn't what's going on. The device shifts the content from text to speech. The buyer of the e-book doesn't have the right to distribute either the text or a recording of the TTS version. But the creation of the TTS version is certainly fair use. I can now buy a dead-tree book and record myself reading it. I can't sell the recording, but I can listen to it.

I could also cut up the book and turn it into a paper mache unicorn. Are you suggesting that I have to pay different royalties to the author based on my intent to create said unicorn?

One of the big applications of UWB is in wireless USB. Intel is a (well, the) big USB developer/backer. It makes sense they'd want this. It could be UWB AV connects take the long route into the market: first they're available as addons, then they're built into Intel's next line of laptop chipsets. Then device makers will release wireless usb widgets, then TV makers will think about UWB interlinks.

They want to make Ask Jeeves all over again in the url bar?

Don't search keywords do this better, and in a more controlled way? I set up a google maps search keyword of "map", then I know what happens when I type "map address". Similarly with other keyword constructs. Keywords let me build on the browser's functionality in predictable ways. Ask Jeeves? Remains to be seen.

(Although I am given to understand it is the FBI's premiere tool to search for terrorists.)

This will really put Shelbyville on the map!

I agree. There's no reason you can't have feedback in a finite state machine.

But the harder problem I think is properly displaying these emotions to the player, especially with subtle distinction. I've only seen one recent game (Mass Effect) that could occasionally use some small facial tics to give away emotional information. Changing dialogue would be very rewarding to the player, but difficult for the developer.