Now you will tell me there is going to be an attraction on Disneyland and Disney World that will fly you to Endor on a spaceship, and will sell you Star Wars souvenirs at its exit.

Wait... did that happen already? No way!

Well, then maybe this is their opportunity to create a SW theme park. We'll have Leia and Chewbacca characters walking around the park, R2D2 wastebaskets, you name it.

I've had a Samsung Galaxy S II for about a year now and love most of it. However, from a phone and email functionality standpoint I miss my Blackberry keyboard, one-key memory dialing, key-remapping, and several other features you can only do with a physical keyboard.

If BB ever makes the Wifi-hotspot functionality available, I'm switching back without a second thought. I would then get a wifi pad for maps, flipboard and the like (Nexus 7 or Transformer Prime. I would even consider an iPad...). A phone should remain a phone, smart or not.

If BB never offers wifi sharing, I'll probably get a Motorola or Samsung Android phone with a physical qwerty keyboard. Wifi sharing is a must.

I agree there should be software patents, but not on the algorithm or process itself but on the code. That is, the specific code that somebody when into a hard time to develop should be allowed to get a patent. However, I can develop a similar functionality with another completely different process and/or language, it should not be considered a patent violation. The issue here is allowing a company to patent the process itself. It is absurd. In this case, a swipe to unlock or a pinch-zoom funcionality. It is only natural to use that way. Innovative, yes. Then the company (Apple in this case) gets the benefit of selling a lot of iphones for being the first to market such a device. But this is very different that to allow a company to hold the rights to use that functionality they just came up with. The process should not be allowed a patent. I find it similar to patenting the process of utilizing a shoe sole from heel to toe, describing in detail how to do it and then patenting it. I could sue all shoe manufacturers for making people use the shoe that way. Or, if somebody patents the way to turn a wheel in a car with both hands: it would give somebody rights to every single car in the world. It is not only absurd. It is moronic.

Exactly what I was going to say, probably less eloquently ;-)

I believe it is from "The Wrath of Khan": http://imdb.to/YVtby

I agree with your post. However I believe it goes beyond only the actual math skills. Math and physics force us to think beyond the obvious, and help develop the growing brain of a teenager, precisely when it is needed. Studies show that although no more neurons are grown during the teenage years, connections are still being made, and a pruning process takes place, which removes those skills not being used. Math exercises those connections and creates new ones, helping the person acquire capacities which may be more difficult to get afterward.

I participated in a very big government migration in Mexico. In the office apps, the killer app was powerpoint vs. OpenOffice Impress, basically because of compatibility issues. Excel vs. Calc was not such a big deal, probably aside from macros. However, anything related to presentations that would include tables would need a little tweaking.

At the end, user perception is all that matters. It stops a project in its tracks. It is not the OOo apps are difficult to use, or that incompatibility is that extensive. It all boils down to change management. Our project is not moving forward as expected because of the speed of the deployment: we purchased 40,000 new PCs with OpenOffice preinstalled (instead of MS Office). Try to handle a help-desk service for that volume. Even if only 5% of the users call to request assistance, absolute numbers play out against you and everything smells like failure (project-wise).