They are about as powerful as the small form factor mobo-cpu combos that are available for these types of projects anyway. You can get most of the functions you want/need (phone, bluetooth, music, movies, GPS) with the exception of controlling the HVAC. And as a bonus you can take it with you and use it the rest of the time you are *not* in your car. Trust me, I looked into doing this for my 2005 Subaru Impreza, the DIN slot was the right size and everything, but it was completely not worth the time/effort. Some other guy had already done it so I even had steps to follow, but to get it to look right, he had to get some plastic custom fabbed from a machine shop. If you're planning on doing the car-puter for any purpose other than fun/hobby, you're wasting your time.

I like all of the ideas he mentioned, from the uniqueness of each ballot, to the tear off receipt, to the shredding of the plaintext ballot "key". These are great for maintaining anonymity, but what about ballot stuffing? How do you prevent someone that's been dead for a couple months from "voting"? My polling place didn't ask for ID, just my name, I imagine that probably happens quite a bit...

Here's the difference though - with MMOs (and mind you I don't play them), at least you are thinking, developing strategies, and possibly working together with other players to achieve a goal, whether it is a quest to obtain some valuable object or just to level up. Disagree as much as you like, but there are some skills you learn there that are actually somewhat useful in the real world. Even first person shooters help you with hand-eye coordination and physical tactics to move around enemies. What is the goal with Farmville? Isn't just an endless cycle of growing virtual stuff that you possibly paid real money for? I'm pretty sure it's not going to make you a better farmer, because it doesn't teach you anything about ideal growth temperatures and light levels, soil composition and pH, etc. It really does just seem like a time-killer and you may as well be counting blades of grass. Oh wait, I know...it's a "social" game, it must help you with social skills. Right, because you grow a virtual vegetable, and then send someone a non real time impersonal message saying you'd like to give this non-existent item to them as a gift...did I mention Facebook promotes the degeneration of basic social skills like face to face conversation?

It's usually the poor time estimation and "I need this done yesterday" deadlines that undermine us. In software at least, it is somewhat difficult to say, "this problem will take 0.5 days to diagnose/resolve", or, "this feature will take 3 weeks to implement". Project managers are usually either too lazy, too incompetent, or too preoccupied with other things to follow a problem/feature through to it's logical conclusion step by step. And to accurately estimate these things, you really do have to just think them through and break them down into 1 day or less sized tasks. In my experience, giving a developer a task that takes more than 1 day to complete is a surefire way to waste time and ultimately to potential failure. There are exceptions to that, and the guys that shine usually can handle bigger tasks and divide them up just fine themselves, of course. As an analog, if I told you to go build a house, you'd probably (unless you are a general contractor) say, "I don't know how/can't get this done". But if I told you to go get your property surveyed, then to think about how many bedrooms, bathrooms you needed, and then to bring your survey to an architect with your bedroom/bathroom requirements, as well as a rough estimate of your housing budget, you'd prolly be able to do those things and be well on your way to getting your house designed/built.

Agreed - and probably only a large percentage (44%) because Nokia is such a global leader in cellular devices. I don't think people are buying Symbian, they are buying Nokia hardware that happens to run Symbian. It's not like iOS/Android, where people are more entranced with the operating system/user experience than the device it comes on. Symbian has been around for a while, longer than both of it's major competitors. If it's not dying, it's at least not getting the market attention that iOS and Android are...

I agree - the Xbox360 or PS3 is definitely the way to go, especially if you already have one. Can't speak for PS3, but with Xbox360 not only can you stream movies but also music and digital photos. Pair that with online gaming and Netflix and you have a pretty solid package right out of the box, and the box is likely cheaper (and less work) than putting together a mini-PC to do the same task. I think all the latest MS OSs have UPnP support built in, and that's all you need on the server end to get things going. Even with the OSs that don't natively support it, it's easy enough to graft it on ( I've done this for Server 2003 for example).

Right, because when the masses elect someone, they *never* make a mistake (George W. Bush, twice!)...

This is an interesting discussion.

For argument's sake, let's replace the word "church" with "humanity" in your paragraph:

The history of humanity has been one of a struggle to obtain power, whether it was through religion, war, money, or some other means. Religion, for a time, was a convenient vehicle to get a large number of people on your bandwagon and eliminate the competition. As you mentioned, ignorance and irrationality are bad and do play their role in all of this, but it is naive to assume religion is the root cause, it goes much deeper than that.

I don't know if I agree with your assessment of religion as the root cause of most conflicts. Making a blanket statement like that isn't much better than Hitler's mantra of blaming Jews for all the world's problems. Religion might be a convenient scapegoat, but probably isn't the root cause. In any case, the kind of instinctive reactions to people/animals that look different would have pre-dated Christianity by quite a bit, I'm talking caveman era stuff, where you unexpectedly encounter another being and have a reaction. War is kind of planned, and even then, the uniforms are different on each side :-)

Actually I was not pushing the racial differentiation, simply the difference in how other tribes/groups/animals looked, since it is not just language, culture, and gene pools (which may have been similar for tribes residing close to one another). The tribes differentiated themselves with head dress, face paint, color of clothing, etc. They looked distinct from one another, how pronounced that distinction was is another matter. It still supports the "does not look like me" argument I mentioned in my original post.

You learned the difference - but our ancestors survived because they instinctively associated "does not look like me" with "will kill and/or eat me", not necessarily "wants the exact same thing we need to survive", as the GP mentioned...

No. Not having meetings improves meetings :-)

To be serious though, the points you mention are good ones, I'd also like to add, invite a "bad guy" - the bad guy's role will be to kick meeting derailers in the junk :-)

"the EULA is rarely enforced in a fashion most people would notice or would care about."

If this is the case, is there really an issue? If they tried to enforce it, a bunch of people would probably realize they are doing silly things and stop giving them money...

"citizens should just bend over and take it."

No one is shoving the operating system down your throat, if you don't like the EULA, as mentioned above, switch to an alternative OS. The corporations can only put in "whatever egregious language they want" if you (and a bunch of others) fork over money to them. Stop giving them money, and you'll see how quickly their EULA changes...