Multitouch is significant to the mobile battle because it enables the use of gestures, which allows for sophisticated interactions on small devices

You don't need multitouch for gestures; in fact, gestures are an alternative to multitouch. And it's also not needed; even software on iPhone and iPad doesn't use multitouch consistently, with some applications only using it for scrolling, others only for zooming, and few applications supporting rotation or more complex gestures. Someone has had too much of Jobs's cool-aid.

And, besides, Apple didn't invent multitouch, and neither did the multitouch company they bought. What Apple did is what Apple always does: they pick some technology, try to get exclusive use of it somehow, and then hype it up, creating the impression that their products are unique and must-have devices.

You can see their m.o. illustrated nicely in their negotiations with Swype: they were quite interested in Swype when they thought they could get an exclusive deal and dropped it like a hot potato when it turned out they couldn't. Apple isn't about choosing the best technology, they are about choosing something that's different from everybody else and creating the belief that it is better through marketing.

The oil isn't mainly leaking from the drill hole, it's leaking from a pipe; that's why the flow rate is considerably lower than what the platform would have yielded. And the drill hole is not 5 ft in diameter anyway.

Furthermore, we're not talking about a thin layer of rock, we're talking about 3 miles of rock (under 1 mile of water). That's not going to just collapse because there's a small hole in it.

Yes, the oil spill is bad, and, yes, it will kill many animals. BP was careless and should be held responsible. And people should be prudent while stopping it. But it isn't the end of the world.

I think manned space exploration is a waste of money right now. We need to develop better propulsion systems first and work on space biology, and neither of those is going to be advanced cost-effectively by shooting people into space.

Projects like the Mars rover and Cassini have yielded enormous amounts of material. Let's blanket the moon, Mars, Titan, and asteroids with rovers and automated labs. Let's send gliders to Venus and the gas giants. Let's watch it all in HD stereo, create virtual worlds that allow 3D walkthroughs, etc.

Let's give schools, universities, and anybody who wants to pay a little money telepresence on the moon. Let's develop the robotic technology to prepare a moon base, and the propulsion technology to get to the outer planets fast.

In a few decades, manned exploration will be easy. But if we make it our focus now, all the science and engineering that we should be doing will be put on hold and we'll end up with the same situation that we have been in for the last half century: we may get a man to Mars, but we won't be able to do it again for a long time.

If you're going to punish people for things they do on the Internet, then holding operators of open WiFi spots liable is really the only logical consequence--otherwise you could rarely prosecute.

Germany is somewhat ahead of the curve since Germany effectively has no anonymous speech anyway as far as the government is concerned (phone, internet connections, etc. are all registered with the government). But the same kind of liability is likely going to start appearing in the US if we aren't careful.

You wouldn't be charged for "aiding" a criminal (which requires intent), but you might be liable for negligent entrustment:

http://injury.findlaw.com/defective-dangerous-products/defective-dangerous-products-law/firearms(1).html

It's the same thing with a lot of other dangerous things: nuclear materials, poison, explosives, etc.: you need to store them reasonably securely, both to prevent accidental use and to prevent theft.

There are some excellent IDEs for Python. They don't "come with" Python because they are big and somewhat platform dependent. Python IDEs that are useful for scientific work include Python(x,y), Sage, reInteract, and DrPython (you can find them on Google).

You're right that Python syntax is not perfectly adapted to scientific use, but I haven't found it to be a big deal. By being based on a general purpose language, however, you get a huge set of libraries that you simply can't get for MATLAB. And maybe Python will eventually adopt a couple more infix operators for common matrix operations.

I don't want to load 20 modules before I can begin coding. I just want to input my algorithm and get a result I expect

In the real world of scientific programming, that's often not enough. A lot of scientific software needs to collect data from instruments, parse, format, deal with databases, perform visualizations, present user interfaces to lab assistants, interface with foreign libraries, etc. It needs to be unit tested, regression tested, maintained, reused, refactored, etc. Scientific libraries often become big and complex with hundreds of modules and tons of name conflicts.

A language that just loads everything into a global environment and lets you code some matrix multiplications is fine for classroom use, and it's also fine for graduate students who come up with an algorithm, publish a paper, and move on. But that's not good enough for a lot of real-world scientific applications. Another big problem with MATLAB is its licensing and pricing (Octave and Freemat don't address that issue because they aren't fully MATLAB compatible, meaning many libraries just don't run in them).

As a VHLL, Python strikes a good balance between software engineering support and support for scientific programming. And its libraries have long surpassed MATLAB's, except for some specific domains. One could probably design an even better language for serious scientific programming than Python, but until someone does, people are likely going to stick with Python.

If MATLAB works for you, fine, stick with it. But don't presume based on your very limited needs to talk about what "scientific programming" is all about.

It is very simple to solve this democratically.

Nazi Germany was overwhelmingly Christian and voted to deprive non-Christians of their civil rights and later kill them; tyranny of the majority is not democracy.

The US Constitution has the non-establishment clause; you can vote as much as you want, it's not going away. You probably can't even eliminate it with a Constitutional amendment.

Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products

I can think of one: mafia protection rackets. And they survive such rampant rip-offs of their products for pretty much the same reasons software companies like Microsoft do.

The seniors can pray all they want, wherever and whenever they want. But the organization providing the meals cannot ask them or encourage them to pray, and a lout group prayer is not acceptable either. The organization can hold a moment of silence during which everybody can pray or do whatever else they like.

Pray on your own time, not during federally funded events.

Terms don't just have dictionary definitions, they also have political, historical, and emotional significance. The term "liberal" has a specific political meaning when applied to someone nominated for the US supreme court justice.

Basically, if you insist that "fair use" is a "liberal" cause, you are hostile to fair use rights because you are trying to associate them with the left wing of the Democratic party, which doesn't have the power to defend such rights.

If you care about "fair use", then it's important to ensure that everybody understands that fair use rights are as much a conservative as a liberal cause.

So, tell me, which is it? Are you trying to kill fair use rights? Or are you such a pedant that you insist on reciting dictionary definitions even if it hurts your cause?

She is a US judge going for a political confirmation hearing. Of course, the term "liberal" has US political connotations. The word "liberal" in the US has the connotation of "libertine", and when journalists start describing people facing confirmation hearings that way, it's often an attempt to kill the confirmation.

(What "non-American speakers" think about her confirmation doesn't matter.)

Of course they are not, a number of the apps on the phone already run in the background. It's all about battery preservation and helping the user not have to manage tasks. It's about design, not technical ability.

Android is multi-tasking and there is nothing to "manage"; you switch to applications by tapping on their icons and they behave as if they are always running. Behind the scenes, the OS stops inactive tasks. And on Android, it's easy to see where the battery is going, and it is not multitasking, it's the screen and wireless. Furthermore, the iPhone doesn't get better battery life than other 3G smartphones.

In different words, Apple and Jobs are lying through their teeth.

Also, those examples are pretty fiddly

There's nothing "fiddly" about being able to sync music wirelessly to any server you want, or being able to share all your on-device files wirelessly with your laptop.

again the iPhone OS multitasking changes are about making 90%+ of desired multitasking uses possible

They're only "90%+" because iPhone users are so controlled by Apple that they don't even know what a smartphone should be able to do.

The safe harbor only applies to sites that don't actually publish anything! How could we have been so stupid not to realize that!

Hierarchical models of object recognition are decades old, as are attempts to implement them. This work doesn't yet work better than other engineering solutions, and it isn't obviously any more plausible than other approaches. So, it's a nice start, but it isn't a breakthrough.