It's a real shame about the missing webcam. They'd make such nice portals if they had them:

Put two iPads back-to-back. You could see right through them.

Put two iPads on opposite sides of a wall. Instant window.

Mount an iPad in the kitchen; mail another to grandma and grandpa. An intergenerational wormhole for family to stay in touch.

Mash up a classroom full of iPads with chat roulette. Try to figure out who's match with whom. Turn to face a neighbor to make the longest continuous viewing path.

Two iPads, one bed. Fun views for you and your partner.

I enjoyed Independence Day and Men in Black, too. Both were fun, a little wacky, not terribly sophisticated, but they suck me in every time they're on TV.

So my only concern is the sequel part (Good Movie 2: The Quest for More Money). Men in Black (1997): 7.0/10.0 on IMDB. Men in Black II (2002): 5.6/10.0.

And shooting two sequels at once triggers the klaxon of bad movie alarms. See the Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean trilogies for two examples of twin sequel abominations.

Actually, there is a demo to download. You just have to move your mouse along the w-axis to reach the link.

A leap year miscalculation is no worse than the skewed random shuffle bug reported in Microsoft's browser selection screen yesterday. If that's the problem with these PS3's (which I doubt), it could be something similarly brain dead:

int year = getYear();
int shortYear = year % 10;
bool leapYear = ( shortYear % 4 == 0 );

Somebody tested that on 2001 through 2009 and declared it good enough.

You're on the cutting edge of technology, so nothing seems magic to you. But my less technical family members thought many computing tasks were magical the first time they saw me do them:

• Play CD-quality music without a physical record
• Video chat
• Install new software
• Order greeting cards with family photos on them
• Find the answer to any question in 60 seconds
• See the weather forecast without waiting for the 6 o'clock news
• Get driving directions for vacation without going to AAA

Some people can't program their VCR's (and don't even know the difference between a VCR and a DVR). A portable box that does 80% of what they would do on a PC but without needing me around to make it work would be magic.

While I agree with your sentiment, I'd like to point out the irony in posting to complain about how people shouldn't post to complain about stuff they don't like. I wonder if there's an xkcd about that.

Or they could follow their own lead:

• Civilization IV - October 2005
• Civilization IV Warlords - July 2006
• Civilization IV Beyond the Sword - July 2007

Those game companies are all releasing cool games and then expanding the game with new missions, units, and game mechanics in the years that follow. What jerks!

Actually, I should have added:

• Civilization IV Beyond the Sword (Mac) - July 2009

I'll be happier if they release the Mac versions of Civ V less than two years after the PC versions. Simultaneously would be delightful. And the ability to actually play online against PC owners without crashing two hours into the game would be superb.

Maybe you should be counting the distance from where your mom was at the moment you were born. Taking into account my current geographical position, the rotation of the earth, the time of the year, the movement of the solar system through the galaxy, and the expansion of the universe... my answer is still "More than 15,000".

Do not try to dodge the atoms - that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: there are no atoms.

Charge a fixed price for the amount of volume occupied by the passenger

I'm having terrible visions of ticket agents playing Tetris to figure out whether or not a plane is overbooked. One of them calls out over the airport public address system: "Is there a tall skinny person who wants to fly to Dallas? I need a tall skinny person!"

This is a law to create a thoughtcrime. Terrorists apparently aren't deterred by threats of punishment after committing their acts; they tend to administer the ultimate punishment to themselves. So governments want ways to prosecute illegal activities before they happen. Thus the threshold of illegal activity moves back from detonating a bomb to building a bomb to designing a bomb to talking about a bomb to thinking about a bomb. It's not irrational to prevent devastating acts by illegalizing their precedents; we already have laws against carrying certain weapons, even though just carrying a weapon doesn't hurt anybody. But when the laws start focusing on speech then the rational response becomes fuzzy.

The Map Publishing feature is interesting to me. I have released dozens of popular Starcraft maps and distribution has always been a problem. For one, maps are copied peer-to-peer, so the only way to get a new map is to find somebody else who happens to be hosting it at the moment you're looking. For another, maps are not cryptographically signed, so it's trivial for somebody to alter a map so they can cheat in the game. Although I have a reputation as a skilled mapmaker, there are maps circulating with my name still on them that are rigged or badly modified.

On the other hand, the viral transmission and mutation of maps is part of what keeps the mapmaking community alive. Players find a map they like, try to modify it, and set the new version loose in the wild. If it's good it will spread and become the basis for others to tinker with.

So the Marketplace sounds like a potentially good way to encourage the creation of polished maps. But I wonder if closed-source mapmaking can really keep pace with open-source development or if many players will accept (or even discover) pay maps.

TheNevermind

I am underwhelmed by the iPad and watching the keynote presentation it looks like Steve Jobs is too. This is not an exciting device and Apple's marketing department is spinning its wheels like a Mini Cooper in a blizzard to hype it.

But you know what would be really cool? An iPad with amazingly good performance. Thirty-six hours of battery life instead of ten. Three hundred dot per inch screen instead of a conventional resolution. Ten terabytes of storage so you can carry all of your documents and media with you. A case the size and weight of a magazine. Or a price tag around $200 so people could afford to get it as their secondary or tertiary computer.

I do see a place for the iPad's configuration: simple, limited, and cheap. It could make a nice ebook reader, emagazine, photo viewer, video screen, navigator, board game, writing pad, magic tablet of fun. But its capabilities seem too tied to old-fashioned technology to be cool.