I'd like to point out that box office returns are not a measure of how much the people liked the story after they have watched the film. In my part of the world, people generally pay before they get to watch the film. The decision to pay, and therefore increment the box office return value, hangs upon factors such as word of mouth, critic reviews, marketing, exposure, curiosity about new technology, graphics fidelity (as seen in marketing materials), admission price and affinity for popcorn. The story is just a sub-factor of word of mouth and critic reviews.

I believe being paid hundreds of million dollars for art is indeed insane. I don't think anybody really deserves to be paid that much, no matter what they do. Especially artists, since their work, unlike that of doctors, engineers, scientists or farmers, is of little benefit for humanity.

I'd say it's almost as polite as not selling hamburgers to fat people. If you were fat, would you really consider that polite? If you were a soldier, would you really consider it immensely polite on the part of GameStop if they made a product unavailable to you strictly based on your occupation? Would you consider that any better that racism?

Overkill? Are you kidding? It wouldn't work well at all. Firstly, most kitchens don't have a huge empty wall to project to. Secondly, they require darkness to work well. Thirdly, the person standing in front of the projection area would cast a shadow, ruining the illusion (you can usually only change the angle by about 15-25 degrees in either direction optically). Finally, there's no place to put the camera - it would have to be placed outside the projection area, which would mean the other side would see you at a sharp angle - which is not what you want. There's also the small matter of having an extremely bright light shining in your kids' eyes whenever they turn away from the picture. Projectors are nice, I use one instead of a TV, but in this case, they're the wrong tool for the job.

Security trumps a few CPU cycles. End of story.

I wouldn't worry. In modern society, every time you open your eyes, there's a very strong chance you'll see some text somewhere, be it an advertisement, a book cover, some text on a screen, your cell phone. There's so much text around that children haven't the slightest chance of not learning how to read unless they have some kind of rare medical condition that prevents them. Of course I'm not talking about poor children in Africa here - I'm sure the iPad version of Alice is not much of a problem for them. And as far as interactivity replacing text is concerned, I wouldn't worry about that either - it's just an evolution of the medium. If interactivity is readily available and easy to implement, there's no reason authors shouldn't embrace it to enhance their works. If they, or their publishers misuse it, I'm certain the readers will set them straight with their wallets.

When you wrote touchscreen, I thought you meant a capacitive touchscreen, like the iPad has. Those don't work with pens since they can't distinguish between the tip and your hand. If it's anything like Penabled screens, great. I'll look into the U820. Thanks for the tip.

Oh, I see you're one of those people who know exactly when you're leaving at least a day in advance and know exactly what media files you want to take with you. Or you simply never use your media outside your home network. Glad it works for you. That doesn't mean it works for everybody.

Problems with your pet toy:
- Screen resolution. Very many UIs just won't fit. They may be badly designed UIs, but I need them nonetheless.
- No pen. Seriously. I want to take notes and make drawings on the thing. A finger just doesn't cut it and has no pressure sensitivity.
- No 3G modem. Wifi is nice, when you're in range. Netbooks are mobile devices to be used where no WiFi has gone before.
- 1 USB port. That means I can have either my mouse or my pendrive. But not both. I often need both.

If some company solves these problems, I'll buy one.

It's not like they couldn't produce mindless drivel like Friends with actors who will work for much much less. If the production costs are too high, then they need to lower them and arrive at a better, smarter business model. If you're making a show that needs 24 million customers to sustain, stop, and make something else. If your actors are asking for a million per episode, hire some that don't. I'm sure there are plenty of actors just waiting for a chance to get in front of an audience.

Is that you, Michael?

It's true that absolute openness is, at least right now, impossible. But there have been many games that have given the players much more freedom, like the original Fallouts. Meanwhile Oblivion and Fallout 3 are open only in the sense that you can go where you like and complete quests in random order. Even if you do get a choice from time to time, it has no real consequences.

Well, basically, because Microsoft says so. If Windows were a Linux distro, that approach might be viable. However, it isn't, and it has a proprietary license. A license that is no longer available for purchase. Any corporation that decides to keep using XP will have to face either never buying a new machine again, or supporting 2 or more operating systems. Sounds like a maintenance nightmare to me.

Actually, I'm just waiting for a render job to complete. I post because I need to waste away two more hours and because I enjoy disagreeing with strangers on the internet, much like others enjoy FreeCell. I replied to your particular posting because I feel strongly that jumping to conclusions is deeply wrong. If you feel your time is being wasted, my apologies. I'd like to point out though that you're free not to reply.

What are you, a negativity radar coupled with a beowulf cluster of Delphic oracles? There's clearly not enough data in his postings to positively determine his state of mind, his level of satisfaction from his work or anything else about him to override what he is clearly stating, much less give any useful advice.