The reason they aren't widely adopted has nothing to do with whether they are good or bad.
The reason thay aren't widely adopted is because most people just don't need one.
Alot of schools have installed smartboards. For the most part, I've never seen them use
the digitizer and defintely not enough to justify the cost. They are mostly used to show
movies and slides which could have been done at half the cost with a regular tv.

Here is a relatively economical digitizer($600) that just connects to any tv/projector: http://store.e-beam.com/ebeam-...
Here is a $500 projector that supports a light pen: http://www.mitsubishi-presenta... and I know there are many more.
There is also the wii remote which is dirt cheap if a little bit of DIY.
These are not near the resolution of a professional digitizer but would still easily match the resolution of the typical dry erase marker
and you can attach them to any tv that you have lying around.

It really depends on what your budget is and how distributed your team is. If there are only 2-3 different locations
then getting a couple dedicated OS X boxes just for a distributed whiteboard would be worth it.
I also work on a distributed team and I have considered spending a weekend playing with the wii remote hack to
see if I could get it working as a whiteboard. 40" lcds are cheap enough that if it actually worked, I could easily
justifying buying one for everyone on the team (but I probably wouldn't have to as they all probably already have
a TV available). That's really what is needed, a cheap (under $500) device like the wii remote hack that you
can plug into two or more tvs and have them all be interactive. Touch screens are expensive so it would need
to be either something like the wii remote or a webcam to remain cost effective. It would also need to be easily
installed and callibrated.

Yes, I do. Driving is relaxing to me. And being able to clock out and go home would
be beyond awesome. To an introvert, being around a bunch of people is probably
stressful but people don't bother me. Crazy deadlines and work following me home
is what the main stresses of my job are. A typical bus driver has zero responsibility
once they go home. A programmer is on the hook if anything breaks after they clock
out (if they are even allowed to clock out)

This isn't what happened to me. The first time I saw it (before I realized the controversy), it was clearly
white/gold but since then no matter how I look at it, it is clearly black/blue and I can't make it change
back to the white/gold. I tried finding the original picture I looked at which was white/gold but everything
in my history was now blue/black.

If I could get the same pay for driving a bus without the stress of programming AND get time off in the middle of the day,
I would quit my job as a programmer and become a bus driver tomorrow. Besides requiring more education, many of the
higher paying jobs also have more stress and more responsibility.

When I think of Unions I think of all the corrupt Unions that litter the USA. Standing unions are a corrupted version of collective bargaining.
Collective bargaining is good. I'm not a big fan of the standing unions we have today. If unions came into existance, fixed the problem and
then disbanding then I wouldn't have a problem with them.

Unfortunately, the main reason this hasn't happened is because it's easier, more efficient, and cheaper* to train one person and have
them work 60 hours a week than it is to train 2 people and have them each work 30 hours a week.

*It's cheaper even IF companies were required to pay overtime (which many don't). Time and a half is cheaper than the added
expense of medical, additional training, and Brooks's law.

I would probably add entertainment as a different sector (although it technically might fall under service)
But unfortunately although entertainment is a large chunk of people's disposable
income, the majority of entertainment is also produced by only about 4% of the population.

If we only need 4% of the population to provide everybody's food, goods, services, and entertainment,
I'm not sure what we're suppose to do with the excess labor. Luckily, I think we're still a long way from
there. The service industry still has alot of room. There are plenty of services that people are willing
to pay for whether it is for a massage or for a housekeeper. General purpose housecleaning robots
are still a long way off.

That was my point. The number of farm workers has also drastically declined but in both cases
we haven't seen a huge spike in unemployment. I see these particular job areas reacting about
the same. There are occupations that are more worrisome but I don't see making an occupation
more efficient as being one of those areas.

These white collar jobs aren't being replaced any more than the spreadsheet and accounting software replaced the accountant.
There is still a human at the top. A computer can't completely replace a lawyer and won't be able to for a very long time.
This is just FUD. There are jobs that are at risk and just like what has happened with farmers, ditch diggers, and accountants
one person can now handle the work of 10 (or 100) people but as long as the pace is reasonable and there is still a need for
a percentage of humans at the top then we'll be fine. Let's start worrying about it when you see a mcdonalds, a public school,
or a hospital without any employees. Granted by then it might be too late but we're not there yet. Not even close.

I am well aware of how power is *currently* priced. There has been a move
towards more dynamic pricing at the residential level with smart meters and
I would think a smart meter should almost be mandatory for solar users that
want to buy and sell electricity. The average works ok for the average person
but it doesn't allow the average person to optimize their usage to help the
grid better cope. Certain things are fixed but it's very possible that if
consumers knew when electricty was cheapest they would do things like
charge their electric cars or heat their pool during offpeak times.
Solar users are a completely different scenerio and when electricity is
both coming and going then having a single fixed rate is going to allow
one or both sides to potentially abuse the system where dynamic pricing
is fairer to both sides.

This is exactly what net metering doesn't allow. It makes no sense to require power companies to
buy power from rooftop installations at retail.

So the speed of lookup affects retention? I don't believe it. Just because it takes 30 seconds to look up a word in a paper dictionary
vs 1 sec to click on a word isn't going to affect how well you remember that definition.