P300 has been around quite a while in psychophysiology, turning it to terrorists sounds like a possible beat up to meet priority funding by NIH or similar? though they just might be onto something if the implementaton issues could be sorted. Implementation wise OK lets see its usually a 20min setup to get the electrodes on the 'perps' head, then sit them into a shielded room, get them relaxed and get them to not move around too much as muscle movement artifact washes out EEG signals. Now put them through a few hundred trials of questions and answers so you get statistical validity, process a few GB of data and hey presto an answer. FWIW I hope it doesn't become a part of airport security routine checks ;)

Lots of this stuff now has programming components so he might stumble into it anyway!

The real key is not XP or OSX but engagement of students. Why not go for whatever is the cheapest solution, heck netbooks might be the way to go and spend the rest on something that is really engaging, lights the creative spark etc.. . Something lego Mindstorm for example http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/history/default.aspx I am sure there are others out there as well

..we're rooting for you!

never mind the learning effect of typing the same phrase multiple times, it normally favours the later trials so maybe a baseline offset is required and the last phone might come in a bit slower than thought. Of course to be truly scientific he should have worn two blind folds? FWIW anyone debunking evidence based research would do well to participate in a double blind crossover trial of efficacy of parachutes since they have never been proven to be effective through the use of a control group ;)

Wait till the machine is slow..call the boss over and give him a demonstration of something that you have been working on that will get him excited. Have him wait around while the pizza wheel turns... apologise profusely, use task manager or look for active connections to track down the problem voila new computer or action

We regularly take our iPhones swimming, admittedly we double bag it and its deliberate. We found the sensors in the iPhone are useful for stroke analysis and biomechanics and its cheaper to buy an iPhone than build our own custom hardware for some applications.

What about Tasmania - the apple isle!