Get a Nexus 7.

Costs US$199, most games are under $5. Goes with the kids in the car, in the bedroom, but still easy to confiscate and lock away.

Far better selection of educational games, not just twitch reflex shooters.

Serves double duty as a media player. Movies, music, Youtube.

Serves triple duty as an internet research / learning tool. How do volcanoes work? Look it up.

With Android 4.2 you can set up individual user accounts for each child & parent, so the whole family can use it. But it's still cheap enough that you can buy one for each person if you wanted.

Honestly, why would you get a console?

Apple: Our iDevice is now FREE but requires an iCloud account. iCloud is $39 a month.

Motorola: Hey, where's our 2.25%?

Apple: Hahahahaha.

The Singapore Flyer (540 feet) just has a really long platform. The wheel moves slowly enough (2 rotations per hour) that you can simply step into your capsule. They can slow it down even further for wheelchairs if needed.

After a few weeks of 8 hour bathroom breaks they'll give up on this plan.

Who says it's for humans? Parcel shipping is growing year on year. A few of these Mach 6 shuttles linking continents makes "same-day delivery" a reality. For a price, of course.

.. a top-level domain for happy people?

Apple's design concepts revolve around a simple experience for the 80%, and accessibility support for the 20% has historically been a long time in coming. It took 3 years for captioning to arrive on their Apple TV platform, and the iPhone didn't get accessibility features until its third iteration. I can and have recommended Apple products to others, but for this reason I am unable to use them myself.

I cannot think of a worse company to have a lock up on accessibility-related patents :(

The trouble is, people are lazy. If given a car like this I would just be, or pretend to be, asleep/drunk at every opportunity, letting the car do all the driving.

So you end up with a "fully autonomous" car anyway, just not a very good one.

Better to aim for perfection right from the start, Google Car style. (How very at odds with their usual ship-the-beta approach!)

The market always provides through emergent behaviours. I am expecting this to be the next big thing from Google. Individuals will take it on themselves to cover the zoning board and deliver reports on Google+ / Blogger. Similar to Youtube, Google will start profit-sharing with producers of quality and unique content, delivering a cut of the advertising revenue straight to their Google Wallet. Thus local journalists receive an income stream.

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.

Having had dealings with several Brethren families this absolutely rings true. Historically they have shunned the internet, radio, newspapers and television. However they still need to run their (normal) family businesses and doing business as much as possible with other Brethren only gets them so far. They now "bend" the rules a bit to allow them to operate in today's market. So they'll have a home or office network of computers but only one with an internet connection, tightly controlled so it can only access industry websites and those of suppliers and customers. The need to satisfy religious beliefs while having a minimal grasp of technology means that they will invariably contract someone (preferably another Brethren even if they are only slightly more tech savvy) to supply this infrastructure for them without really understanding the complexities or legalities involved.

(fixed formatting, sorry!)

Microsoft: You had to marry me, your parents gave you no other choice. Well, I cheated on you. Many times. And you can't do anything about it.

Apple: If you wanna marry me, it's gonna cost you a huge dowry. It's your choice, but once you're in you have to do everything my way. I wear the pants here.

Google: You can marry me if you want or not. It'll be an open relationship, we'll try lots of new things. You might not like some of the things I do, but you can leave any time.

Is it any wonder that the Microsoft way breeds the most resentment?

Microsoft: You had to marry me, your parents gave you no other choice. Well, I cheated on you. Many times. And you can't do anything about it. Apple: If you wanna marry me, it's gonna cost you a huge dowry. It's your choice, but once you're in you have to do everything my way. I wear the pants here. Google: You can marry me if you want or not. It'll be an open relationship, we'll try lots of new things. You might not like some of the things I do, but you can leave any time. Is it any wonder that the Microsoft way breeds the most resentment?

It seems to me Canonical are hoping to piggyback on Android's popularity. By shipping along with a recognisable and proven OS, they get their foot in the door with carriers and customers. As kludgy as the dual-OS approach seems, I have no doubt their end goal is to displace Android entirely and ship a pure Ubuntu phone that does everything in docked and undocked forms.

gah.. I meant to type, *IRIS* and Jeannie