Depending on where you live. I'd say relative to 0 degree "I need a hat, warm jacket, and long underwear" and 100 degree "drink lots of water and wear the lightest fabrics I own", 50 degrees is pretty comfortable ("I need long pants, maybe a light jacket").

True, that is an excellent point. But note that the poll options are divided into 3 degree ranges. I, for one, know the difference between a 72 degree day and a 75 degree day. That said, I guess Celsius captures that difference just fine, so perhaps I've disproven my point. :)

Sorry, I should have said "an American person should be able to use both interchangeably". I of course don't mean the rest of the world should learn a system just because we use it. That said, I don't think there's anything /wrong/ with using Fahrenheit to measure temperature, whereas I do think it's wrong to measure height in, say, feet and inches. Fahrenheit, at least IMHO, has some justification for use.

Optical is great, but it can't deliver power, so I don't see this being used for peripherals (that'll be the role, I'm sure, of USB 3.0). Also, a 10Gb optical link seems a bit excessive to begin with for devices like keyboards and the like, so I couldn't imagine this standard even being used to replace the internal USB buses that are used in most laptops today.

What does that leave? As the article mentions, multimedia in/out and networking, presumably. Can you think of anything else? The obstacle I see with networking is that the world connects with RJ45, so for wired networking you'd still need an adapter.

So, that leaves multimedia. What I really see this being used for is a way to connect audio and video devices in a kind of "multimedia LAN". It seems very much in Apple's interest to develop a standard that would allow you to plug one cable into your device and then access your media from wherever. Consider addressing your desktop monitor and speakers as network devices, as well as your living room TV and speakers in other locations in your home. Baseless speculation? Mostly. But as of now, I'm not sure if there's any way to connect your iPhone to your TV and pump music through your speakers elsewhere, unless of course you're using Apple's wireless access point with a speaker jack, or perhaps the Apple TV.

I know it would come up at some point, but we should all remember the Fahrenheit scale was developed for telling temperature at a scale that made sense for people: 100 is pretty hot, and 0 is pretty cold. Fahrenheit also has more descriptive power due to smaller degrees.

Celsius is better for pretty much all other measures of temperature, of course, and I am of the opinion that a person should be able to use both interchangeably. It's not challenging to tell temperature using Celsius, I know, and I do admit that I would prefer we Americans used Celsius for that task if it would mean that the rest of my countryfolk would take the time to learn SI. That said, Fahrenheit gives us a tool designed for the job: you can remove bike pedals with a crescent wrench, but why would you do that if you had access to a real pedal wrench?

After reading a bit more about it, turns out the record is an average speed: you have to go run the track both ways, and then come back. They calculate the average speed from both runs. Makes it a bit more interesting than a drag race, huh? Making an engine that could do both runs untouched was part of their challenge!

If the /record/ speed is 367.382mph, but during the run the driver reached 380mph, I could imagine he must have been very uncomfortable smashed against the windshield of his "motorcycle".

Pray tell, what else do you expect them to say? "Our research doesn't really show any results to speak of... but here's a paper anyway!". Also, statistical significance is, well, significant. So they are accurate in saying it is a significant finding.

I wouldn't call the second group "power users". Practically everyone I know on my university campus puts their machines to sleep rather than shutting down precisely because they have tasks running in the background. I think it's a result of the highly mobile nature of people here: working in the library, then on to class, then somewhere else, etc. The applications we're talking about are browser sessions (say, 30 tabs open doing some kind of research) or editing documents, so I think this type of behavior is well within the reach of people most of us would not consider "power users".

*point and laugh*

Seriously, though. Years late and... conspicuously not needed?

Hey now. Not all of us in the South fit your stereotypes. Maybe there are more douchebags like the grandparent here, but quite a few of us "get it". I don't go around insulting your part of the country just because I meet an asshole from there, so I'd appreciate if you didn't do that to mine. I was just born here, not given much say in the matter.

kthxbye.

Which is my point exactly.

Apparently not.

Who would have thunk it, researchers at Microsoft getting the task done in the best way possible rather than being dogmatic.

Sheesh. Get over the FUD.

I completely agree. Synaptic and the whole "Add/Remove Software..." (I think that's what Ubuntu calls it) thing are fundamentally different ways of obtaining software than what people are used to with Windows or Mac. I told someone today that I had only paid for one (non-game) piece of software in my life, and they thought I meant I was a huge pirate or something. "Download" has become synonymous with "illegal" for most people and telling folks they can just download whatever software they want for free is going to require some serious de-indoctrination.

When that lightbulb goes off in someone's head that they can download any of the software in that big list for free, legally, and easily, and then that it (generally) just works... it's a beautiful thing. That's when I think people start to realize how awesome OSS can be.

Touche, you win this round. That's what finals will do to you. :)