The government bailed out General Motors, not General Electric.

But it's not speech recognition. Watson is getting its input via text, it's not doing any speech recognition. And lest you think this gives the computer an unfair advantage, it's nominally the same advantage championship Jeopardy players can pull: they can read the text off the monitor screen faster than Alex Trebek drones it out.

For larger screens, you want to see multiple things at a time.

You do. And I do.

Novice users don't. They're just doing one thing at a time anyway, so multiple windows are just another way to confuse them.

And really, the need for multiple tasks depends on what you're using it for. If I'm working, I'm probably needing to keep track of more than one thing at a time, which yields multiple windows (and multiple monitors now). But I'm doing lengthy, complex tasks.

If I'm doing a single, focused task like cooking, multiple windows are bad. Or if I'm doing a single short task, such as checking the weather, having a bunch of windows just gets in the way.

Explain to me, then, how, if they're going to get me to buy a tablet to replace my mac, they're going to allow me to operate my recording studio running Digital Performer married with NI Kontakt, with music written in Sibelius notation software, album art created in Photoshop, all organized by project?

Yes, the iPhone OS is great for simple communcation, but when you get into the serious business of project workflow, and use many different applications communicating with each other in tandum to output one finished product, the "grab bag" organization of the iPhone does not begin to cut it. You don't even have to go to my extreme to reach the level of complexity that the iPhone can't handle it. We're all doing projects and hobbies on the laptop/desktop that require this type of cross application organization.

One thing to consider is that if you want to stream a class from a regular webcam you will not be able to see what is written on the board due to the low resolution.

Also, the teacher will walk out of view of the camera as they write on the board.

My school had motion tracking cameras. It looked like a normal video camera on a tripod, with a motor attached. The teacher would wear some kind of tracking device on their belt, and the camera would automatically follow them.

You would also want to consider a "smart board". Something that digitally records what the teacher writes on the whiteboard.

Pretty much, unless you script and edit a filming session while splicing in closeups of the board, your result will not be as useful as it could be.

Yes - Pixar's RenderMan supports it already.

I store encrypted volumes in a file, so that technically is one file, I don't think it should count.

I posted anonymously by mistake. Sorry. Just to add something: what's the big deal with pressing Fn? Do you write that much with your pinky while navigating files?

this gives new meaning to the phrase "cold, hard cash"

Want to stimulate the economy and bring jobs back? Announce that as of next month all imported goods and services are goods and services are required to be produced under the same regime of labor laws, environmental protection regulation, product safety standards, liability laws and accounting standards used by US companies. Any company that wants to sell to US markets must be accessible to US investors. Anything not meeting these standards will be subject to a tariff that will begin at 10% and escalate by 1% each month until the 200% tariff rate is reached. There's no reason why we should lose the quality of life that our parents, grandparents and the generations before them worked and fought for just because someone somewhere else can cut corners and externalize costs to make things cheaper. We are losing everything because we are compromising our standards for marginally cheaper products and service.

One major reason that health care is growing to such a huge percentage of our expenses is that it is a service that is not exportable and relies mainly on products and technologies that are highly developed and thus only come from the developed world where things are expensive. Everything is cheap in China: Goods, services and lives are all had for a pittance. If we fail to rely on our own industry in our own regime of regulation, we will ultimately reduce the value of what we own and who we are to the same level as the Chinese or the Cambodians or the Malaysians or whoever else pops up as the next country stable enough to build factories in to exploit wage slaves and ruin the local lands and seas. China has had a tremendous stimulus by sucking the money out of us for over 20 years. They will have the rest of the world to as their market and they will have most of our technology to use to continue their ascension. Without the tidal wave of money flowing from our coffers, they will have to figure out how to grow in organic, sustainable ways and how to do it without outlandishly rewarding their upper class while exploiting their lower classes. They may even decide that the one-party system isn't all it's cracked up to be. Whatever happens will be better for us and better for them. We wont have lead or cadmium infested toys and jewelry. We won't have toxic drywall, or deadly dried milk or malware-infected routers. If we don't wake up and start doing this, we're going to have to stop trying to live in a developed nation with all of the rules and regulations that we put upon ourselves because no one is going to be able to afford it. You're about to travel to the third world. Just sit back on your couch and watch the decent continue. When you go out the front door in 10 years. It will be your neighborhood. Thank you George, Bill, George and Barak.

I don't give a rats ass about politics. And now is not the time to say this party is better than that.
They all suck!
So shut up and give some money to the Red Cross or the charity of your choice.

Wikipedia has a nice mnemonic device:
Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring.
Or “BUSIER” bacwkwards. :)

At least here that’s the case. So there really is no advantage or point to removing it.

How about we re-purpose that key to a generic KVM switch button?