Haha, hear hear to old wisdom and the billions of articles online about every piece of hardware imaginable! That made me feel a LOT better :)

Wow, you took the words out of my mouth man. I have been using computers all my life, and the gigahertz race made sense back then.. Now? Lol... I realized I might as well give up trying to stay with it because you only need so much power to run Wordpad, Excel, watch DVDs/movies and surf the web. I just don't feel like it is worth the time commitment to know what's what. I spent 400 bucks on my laptop, and it does everything I need (HD video, compiling code, photoshop, opening 40+ tabs), is ridiculously fast and stable, has all the space I could ask for, and is now turning a year old. I think it has 2 cores? Maybe?

I should probably admit I feel really ashamed whenever I think about upgrading.. Mostly because I end up on NewEgg, then find myself spending 4+ hours googling every piece of hardware with the terms "TomsHardware" and "Guru3D" before it. Please tell me I'm not alone...

Also.. I do not know why it posted as anonymous coward, that original post was me, and for some reason I do not see it normally. I thought it got lost in the void.

Yeah, most definitely. This is definitely a huge leap in the right direction, and I am pretty excited about the future implications of such a device being developed. I would mod you up if I could; those are all definitely great examples of early devices that were all developed from infancy and became huge benefits and relatively inexpensive. Good post :)

"A large enough population for this scam"? Those are your words, not mine :P

Going by your guys' logic, since this is before it hits the "mass-market" (1 year away), all logic of what is practical gets tossed out the window? Is that what you guys honestly believe? The thing weighs 84 pounds, it was slow as molasses in the video, and it takes 5 minutes to get into and out of which I can definitely foresee turning into a huge headache for a few of the tasks it is really useful for. I will give it props that it has 2 hours of solid battery use.. but only because I realize its limitations and the real-world applications of it include operating stationary equipment, going up and down flights of stairs, and reaching things that one could not normally reach in a wheelchair.. all within the confines of ones own home OR with the help of someone else if used outside (defeating part of the independent, feel-goodiness it is trying to provide).

I believe that if you are going to create a product, especially one that has been a long-time coming for people, you should NOT overhype it like this one so evidently does. Give truth, show what it is capable of, and be honest in its limitations. Does 84 pounds seem lightweight to you guy? What about to someone in a wheelchair who might be convinced they need this to become an independent person again?

Don't get me wrong, I am really impressed with what they accomplished. There is a HUGE amount of potential there for future devices, and I am really looking forward to the innovations and products that fork off from this. But we should be at least a LITTLE realistic about the product.

You know what, pump the potential for all the information is EXACTLY what you want, because if you are interviewing workers for a job, then you probably have the experience that you are hoping they have a little of, and maybe they have experience in parts that you do not have. That is a good question.

Uhm, after watching the video at the bottom of the article, did anyone else get the idea that the thing is an impractical gimmick used to siphon money from the rich & wheelchair bound? The thing moved so slow in the promotional video.. he said it took him 3 days to get used to it, which is really quick, but for a promotional video, wouldn't you want to show how useful it was? I mean.. it took me 10 seconds to realize the bit where he was walking up the stairs was not in slow motion. Am I just expecting too much ..?
Kind of makes me wonder, I mean, was 2010+ hyped too much? I have already given up on the hovercraft replacing the car, don't let me give up on exo-skeletons too (at least James Cameron is trying to keep the hope alive).

I like the second paragraph you had, making sure a team works well together is a huge part of it, but asking your candidates about a comparable project? I mean, on the one hand it is an amazing question because it forces the potential employee to relate and think, and their response will give you great insight into their thinking process, programming method, and give you the added bonus of seeing just how intimate they were in their previous projects.
On the otherhand, it smells like pump the potential for all the information you can get out of them before you decide whether you want to pay them -_- Which do you think it is more of, an assessment question or an pre-employee extraction question? And also, do you think that the person hiring will already be aware of the issues and approach-possibilities (thus allowing them to better gauge the person)?

It is very likely the customer service representatives who are offering those service blocks to better accommodate those customers are the better representatives who are actually trying to do a good job. And people wonder why customer service for some companies is so horrible, it is because of policies like this.