I think it dates back to when intellectual work was a lot rarer, and managers tended to be either the only skilled worker, or amongst the most skilled, and things have not really caught up with the fact that now managers are frequently managing workers who are at least as skilled, but in very different ways.

I don't even understand the question.

Why would managers be innovative? You might as well ask why managers aren't great chefs; that's not what they do.

This sounds to me a little like some of the management worship that's going on these days, where those who work in management presume they're doing an inherently harder job, or simply that they're more skilled than non-management. So far I see little evidence to suggest management is inherently more difficult than any other mentally-focused skilled job.

I don't even know where to start with how bad an idea this is. Going to try, though:

There's nothing stopping you from doing this already (for example using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard) ) - the fact that many people don't is primarily because it's expensive and the result isn't actually that useful. Heating controls are already sufficiently advanced to know that I want to have the house at a certain temperature when I'm likely to be around it, and I don't really want to micro-manage my heating. I can see use to having lighting turn on just before I get home, but that's about it; there's no way in hell I want to be digging through menus on my smartphone just to turn the light on/off.

Appliances tend to require manual intervention anyway; a toaster requires bread, a cooker requires food, the coffee maker coffee... I might as well set them up while I'm there.

TV/DVD player - okay, we're getting somewhere at least. However, you are going to be physically present when you want to use these devices, and they're easily controlled by well designed, purpose-specific devices of an appropriate device (remote controls). I can actually control my TV from my tablet; I believe I did this twice, once to discover I could, and a second time to show someone else.

Delivering some hardware, I'll concede as not that tricky. Delivering a fairly advanced piece of kit at a very low price is another matter. Doing it on the relatively limited scale we are talking here (Kickstarter's statisics would suggest not too many over 800 kits going out: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console?ref=live - add up the numbers for the $699 and above pledges) is particularly tricky.

I can't find any off the shelf Tegra 3 boards; the nearest option is the KTT30 ( http://emea.kontron.com/products/boards+and+mezzanines/embedded+motherboards/miniitx+motherboards/ktt30mitx.html ) which is unpriced and "Coming Soon!", despite a number of articles expecting it to come out in Q4 2012. The devkit board retails for 529 Euros ( http://shop.seco.com/carma-devkit.html?___store=eu_en&___from_store=eu_en ) by itself, for comparison.

It's worth saying that the Nexus 7 hadn't been announced when I said this, and even if it had you have to wonder whether removing the touchscreen is enough to save 50% of the price, especially with Google's ability to use economies of scale to mitigate R&D costs. I would point out that the Nexus 7 is predicted to be selling around a million a month ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9645052/Google-Nexus-7-tablet-sales-approaching-1m-a-month.html ), or over 20 times the pre-orders for the Ouya. Even then the Nexus 7 is generally presumed not to be making a profit on hardware (which the Ouya will have to do).

Well, I said it couldn't be done, I was wrong. Very well done to them!

> There is NO benefit for customers from this at all that I can see.

Okay, lets assume it costs (all in, with all your overheads, taxes, etc.) $x to fly a plane from A to B, and it will carry y passengers. So if the airline can sell y seats at $x/y each, it breaks even. If it doesn't believe that's possible, it won't run the flight, no-one gets to fly from A to B.

So how about instead they sell a small number of seats at a vastly inflated price (we'll call it "Business class" shall we), in return for benefits that don't cost nearly as much as the price difference. Suddenly the rest of the seats can be sold more cheaply and the flight goes ahead still.

We can continue that, to differentiate people who kinda fancy going from A to B (ie for a holiday), from those who have to (ie for work). If you can persuade those who have to, to pay more, they can drop the prices for those who do not have to fly, again making it more likely the whole thing will go ahead.

If you ever actually have to price things, you very rapidly discover that many things are only cost effective with differential pricing depending on willingness to pay.

People make these things so complicated.

They'll pick the lock on your door, replace your whole motherboard, and leave. Flying bugs would be an incredible overcomplication.

> If you believe the NSA is watching you, then try taking your meds and refer to the moderately paranoid measures.

In the unlikely event that the NSA or other similar organisation is watching you; if you have to ask /. for security tips, you've gone terribly, terribly wrong somewhere.

Erm, I'm fairly certain they were being sarcastic...

GoG.com 's been having a great sale, and is all DRM free, in case anyone's missed it so far...

We have wifi infrastructure in place anyway, and many of the students have mobile devices. It's therefore not a lot of developer work to have our university mobile app be able to say "Yeah, I'm on the right network" on a daily basis, or on request when students are meant to be in lecture, or something. In comparison to fingerprint checks we don't have to equip every lecture theatre with fingerprint scanners (probably two, so we have a backup in case of problems) and computers (again, two) and then maintain that extra infrastructure.

The in depth checks are a right pain, but we legally have to do them, so nothing's going to change there either way.

Sorry, realised this is obvious to me, but requires explanation.

There are fixed things we absolutely have to check, such as checking visa & passport at the start of the academic year (might be each semester, not sure off hand), but there's a more flexible set of requirements in checking the student is generally attending the university.

What that means is we can tell students they need to be attending tutorials regularly and/or taking out books regularly or can be expected to be called in for an ID check if we haven't got any other proof they're actually attending the university. We don't want to spend time pulling students halfway across town so we can glance at their passport and tick a checkbox any more than they want to have to do so, so anything we can do to minimise the number we do that for is a good thing.

Customers, technically, but anyway...

We do not have a general policy of failing students for not attending most lectures. There are exceptions; if you're doing Chemistry and completely fail to attend a safety briefing (I believe they're all either routinely repeated or can be repeated if there's a good reason why a student was absent), for example, that can basically be degree ending right there (you cannot be allowed into the lab, so cannot do coursework). There are similar examples in most sciences and Medicine.

What we're talking about is fulfilling a legal requirement in one case, and helping us manage resources in another (by providing additional assistance to students most likely to benefit from it).

> This has the advantage of not hassling students who feel that their time is better spent in the library instead of at lecture.

Which makes me think, why aren't we using book lending as an activity...

From my point of view (as a non-academic who works on improving university administration), it matters for a few key reasons:

1. Students who don't turn up to lectures are more likely to drop out of university. This particularly goes for students whose attendance was good and tails off, so we want to spot them early on and ask if they need any help (academic or personal).

2. If a student turns up mid-way through semester with problems, we're inclined to be a lot more sympathetic (and devote more staff time to helping) if you've attended class. If you didn't attend class and then don't know the material, it could be argued that's rather your own fault.