I don't blame them. After the first episode, it was pretty clear it wasn't going to be an informative show about science.

Let's say, just for fun, that it's 20%. An absurdly high estimate. Even if we also pretend that we don't have any information about them, it's still sufficient to make mandatory voting effective.

Of course, we do know who they are, so it's a silly non-point.

It requires that we mail a letter, possibly a follow up or two. We already know who voted and who is eligible to vote, so it's not like any further investigation is required.

We have lots of things with mandatory participation now and we've managed to get along just fine. Somehow, the Soviet-style enforcement squads have not appeared.

I'd like to see more voter participation. It's important. Even if enforcement is weak or non-existant, it should still be enough to increase voter turn-out rates significantly. (Believe it or not, people don't actually want to break the law, even when there are no consequences. Not everyone is a paranoid anti-government conspiracy theorist.)

On the problem mentioned in the summary, publicly-funded elections would be a much more effective solution. Our political leaders should be beholden to their constituents, not to their contributors.

Good, then you know that we have a record of who voted. Congratulations, you're almost there!

How so? We know who voted and who did not. We also know who is eligible to vote and who is not. No spying, investigation, etc. would be necessary. We already have all the necessary data.

They do that already. It's why I pay my taxes instead of ignoring them.

They already are!

Sure, they'll miss a small minority of people who fell off-grid, but who the hell cares? I suspect that existing records will cover well-above 99.9% Do you think it would be completely ineffective if it wasn't 100% perfect?

You're clearly a bit paranoid, so I hope this didn't disturb you too much.

I'm going to guess that you've never actually voted.

If you had, you'd know the answer.

Not really. It becomes difficult to find good apps, as they're lost in the flood of terrible apps. The number of so-called "zombie apps" on iOS was over 75% sometime last year. It's become a crap-shoot for both users and developers.

I'd like to see specialty stores, preferably curated by communities. Great apps are far less likely to get lost, and crap apps are far less likely find a home there at all.

Apple adds something like 60,000 apps per month, which easily explains the sever quality control issues and persistent discoverability problems. Smaller, community driven, specialty stores won't have that problem
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Besides, competition is always good for consumers.

Indeed I do.

What I'm advocating here is a plurality of stores, not a single store, preferably community driven.

We've tried the walled-garden approach. Both users and developers suffered. It didn't work, but that doesn't mean there isn't value in curation or in having a known, trusted, vendor. That's why I'd like to see more stores, with specialized interest. Crap app developers can still have their wal-mart style marketplaces, we'll just have other, better, options.

But that's the wrong approach.

You're a iOS users, so you're well-aware of how much absolute crap has found it's way in to the App Store. That's not to criticize Apple, there's crap in every OS's store, Google, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Amazon, even Mozilla have "curated" marketplaces full of garbage -- and the cream rarely seems to float to the top.

We've tried the monolithic do-everything marketplace. All we got was the great app-count war and more fart-apps than I can reasonably estimate. What I'd like to see is a lot of smaller, preferably community-driven, stores. If I have a special interest in waffles, I could use the Waffle Aficionado's store to find a small selection of highly-recommended waffle apps. If I like candy-themed match-three games, I could use the Triple Candy Club's store to fuel my addiction.

An open platform, supporting a variety of marketplaces, would be a huge win for the consumer. This is possible on Android, if you change a setting, BB is a bit more locked down, as you need to have your apps signed and connected to your computer even after switching to developer mode, but it's still a possibility. It's obviously seamless on FirefoxOS (like it used to be on BB). Vendors can even distribute their apps directly from their website.

So why aren't we doing this? There are already alternative app stores for Android, why haven't we seen any specialty stores?

I'm not sure what you find funny.

Performance is better over all, which is what matters most. The UI change is what bothers most people, so they can use one of several free tools to replace it. I've adapted and no longer care that things are different.

Though I've found that I use the search feature in windows 7 a lot more than I did prior to my exposure to windows 8. It's surprisingly convenient.

It's better than 7, so I don't have any complaints. It takes 5 minutes to get your start menu back, if that's what's bothering you.

Point an adult at it and Weizenbaum will tell you how disturbed it make him feel to see adults attribute real intelligence to a computer program.

Hey, let's face it -- chatter bots haven't exactly advance much farther beyond Eliza.

I should probably point out that this is a toy. They're not out to produce some advanced AI program; they want to make a slightly improved talking doll to sell to young girls.

Remember: the only reason Siri needs to talk to the server is to avoid a short training session. That bit is all about voice recognition. On the chatter-bot side, more computing power isn't going to net you any significant gains. It's still just as bad as it's always been. Just ask Siri.

I think you underestimate the state of modern technology, or the computing power necessary for speech recognition software suitable to the task. While I'm not familiar with the internals of the toy, I suspect there exists a micro-controller capable of adequately meeting that need already on-board. Ditch the wifi and you'll even save a bit of money.

Like I said before, reduce the vocabulary and you can skip the training step. After that, something like this was well-withing the capabilities of my old 66mhz IBM Aptiva with 8mb of RAM. If a training step can be integrated in to play, even better.

Why can't it happen locally? We've had "learning" chatter bots and local voice recognition for ages. Worst comes to worst, have the kid read the doll a story for the training portion and you're good to go.

Really, I don't see why we couldn't even cram the whole thing on the doll. With a suitably restricted vocabulary, you wouldn't even need a training portion.

That doesn't explain the comic book.

Do girls just naturally need a vacuous form of entertainment?

WTF are you talking about? Barbie dolls have been subject to (rather harsh) criticism as long as they've existed.

But, kids love the damn things and most parents don't care enough about those issues, even if they agree that they're serious, to let that influence their purchase. It's really easy to say "it's just a doll" when your kids is clamoring for one, a relative buys one for her, she's bombarded by Barbie ads on the television, etc.

Truth be told, this isn't about Barbie so much as the countless toys and media that send the same message. Barbie gets the most attention as she's been the go-to example since your parents were children. There are dolls now that make Barbie look practically wholesome, after all. But that doesn't mean there isn't a serious problem.

Only if you assume she's extraordinarily tall and anorexic. On average, she's got 3.5" waste and a 5" bust. At 11.5" tall, that's pretty top-heavy! Now, this is after the much-publicized downsizing her upper-body received sometime during the age of Netscape. Let's be honest about this.

But we're just picking on a popular example. Mattel has a number of dolls that make Barbie look positively wholesome, even through the eyes of the hairiest radical feminist your imagination can conjure.

Why wouldn't it? Do girls have some aversion to microscopes? Now that you mention it, a barbie themed microscope wouldn't be a bad idea. There are a number of companies already that sell microscopes and telescopes designed to appeal to girls. You'll have a hard time, unfortunately, finding them at the local brick-and-mortar.

That you would even ask such a question is troubling. The very idea that enough girls would want anything to do with microscopes for such a toy to be economically viable seems impossible for you to imagine. That's the entire problem. We have this odd cultural belief that things like microscopes are for boys and that any girl interested in things like microscopes is deviant (or going through a phase or whatever).

Kids are sensitive to that. Imagine taking a girl to a toy store and seeing here develop interest in a display microscope. What will she do when she finds that the only microscopes for sale are marketed toward boys, with no 'gender-neutral' or 'for girls' options? (Note: This is the most plausible scenario.) What message do you think that sends to her? How does that change her understanding of how microscopes and other scientific equipment relate to gender? Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing for girls? Society in general?