BTW, in my experience going with any onboard sound card is not the best way to go these days. I used to use lots of different high end sound cards, but now that new high end DACs (digital analog converter) actually have USB input, the best way to get sound out of a computer/digital device is the same way you get it off a high end turntable or CD transport - go from source to DAC, then convert it. The device drivers that allow you to treat an attached USB device as a digital audio device are very good, available for all platforms, and quite simple.

So forget the sound card completely (and definitely dont use the onboard sound), go with a DAC that has USB and you will be amazed. Can also pick and choose a DAC that suits your requirements and pricepoint without messing about with your system config ... Like i said, this is a huge deal for folks who like to use computer based audio sources. Least it has been for me ...

Really? A fictional guy when there are so many more unbelievable real folks to choose from? Maybe Leonardo da Vinci? I mean, he was so cool he had a cartoon superhero named after *him*. Ok, so it was a mutant turtle, but still ... ;-)

VirtualBox on Android. Why not?

Or at least some sort of microkernel based virtualization ... forget about antivirus, firewalls, and all that noise. Just give me a fire and forget OS that is refreshed anew with each power cycle. My cell phone is *supposed* to be an appliance, after all. Keep the data on the network, and refresh the OS from a known good copy every time i turn it on ...

Who am i kidding, there is too much money in OS vulnerabilities for this to ever fly ... ;-)

Only one thing, really. Contracts and other signed documents. As far as i know there is no way to electronically sign formal contracts in a generally accepted fashion. If that capability was available i would never use faxes/scanners or paper again except in very rare circumstances ...

Anyone have a good approach to the legal signature problem?

Just force everyone to use a versioning system. Wouldnt take a lot of tweaks to make an existing open source versioning system suitable for various types of data sets after all. Just depends on whether the data you are using is compressed, but even so the meta data and analysis associated with the raw data is unlikely to be compressed ... the hard part would be convincing everyone involved to actually use it. jmho and ymmv of course ... ;-)

In point of fact, democracy has also failed everywhere it has been tried. As has every other political system so far. Nothing lasts forever, and sometimes you just have to clear the boards and start over, hopefully having learned something from previous efforts. ;-)

No, no, you dont squeeze the contaminants out, you refine em out. Presto instead of a cost center disposal has become a profit center. ;-)

The real answer to this is that if you actually want something done, get an engineer. Or a mathematician. Or a physicist. If you want to write tracts, pamphlets, get media attention, or anything like that, then you go prospect the philosophers and the liberal arts folks.

But if you want to build something, you find an engineer. Especially as the math/physics guys are likely to spend an infinite amount of time trying to figure out how to do it right rather than just getting it done. ;-) Why is this newsworthy, again?

Thats just blatantly untrue for me anyway - i am using the VirtualBox open source edition extremely frequently and i get USB support out of the box for input devices, mass storage, etc. So far i havent found anything 'bad' about it, and trust me, i have been looking. Are you using the latest versions and have you actually *tried* the USB support?

Frankly i like VirtualBox better than any other commercial or open source solution for virtualization, and i have tried them all. Maybe when a good microkernel virtualization system comes out that handles devices including graphics well, but until then or i run across something VirtualBox doesnt support, it has my vote ...

This is really awesome. I love solidworks and autocad inventor, great apps. But of course, they waited to give out free windows licences till just about a month *after* i got rid of my only remaining microsoft machines which were used exclusively to run these two applications. bah humbug, after finally getting out from under the microsoft heel now i have to go back again. At least i still have xp pro licences lying around. ;-)

I guess i just dont understand why they decided to use scala rather than a robust and long standing language like erlang. Odd design choice.

By the way, a friend of mine actually recently wrote an interesting article about how engineers can do their own small scale manufacturing. Its in product design and development magazine, and the article can be found here.

Basically my quick version:

1) start a corporation
2) buy your own CnC/rapid prototyping tech or plan to outsource prototyping efforts
3) build prototype
4) use rapid prototyping techniques to refine product
4) outsource final product manufacturing
5) sell product online through various channels
6) profit!

Actually makes quite a bit of sense these days. I wrote a short article about the current trend toward decentralized manufacturing as well ...

Or, rather, "Who Watches the Watchmen?" indeed, eh?

Which is what they should have titled this poll ... ;-)