I still thought Opera had advertising in the interface, and had actively avoided using it. After your comment, I read their 1Q report -- apparently they're working on back ends to compress web data to send to their Opera mobile browsers (less bandwidth), along with a Google partnership for the desktop search (and other ventures).

I wondered how long it would take for streaming movies to get ads embedded within, or around the display frame. Combine this innovation with the picture recognition advertising technology, and preference targeting, and I'm afraid the synergy of the underlying revenue stream would be insurmountable.

Would Dish Network or DirecTV have prior art on some aspect of this? They both currently have integrated ads within the program guide. Or the TVGuide channel, with the incessant video ad at the top? Did someone think to include an ad frame on the new TVs that connect to the internet and show videos and web pages? How about Microsoft's and Dish Network's WebTV? Video games with a "pay to continue" timer?

We've set up a system in which the priority is short term quarterly gains, and that's what we get. If you want a viable society in the long term, you have to invest in basic research.

For now, quarterly results are great, because we're still coasting on all the innovation of previous years. There has been no disruptive technology to dislodge this mindset.

However, if one or two companies have a mindset of finding a competitive advantage by doing research for a couple of years, they could leapfrog existing companies with their newer processes. But, no guarantee of finding an advantage. It takes visionaries to look farther than the quarterly cash flow sheets.

Most companies will not do long-term research until necessary. The advantage of waiting for a new innovation to appear (from someone else's research) is that it's not near as expensive to clone the advantage for yourself.

So, our current model is that small companies spend lots of money looking for competitive advantages against larger companies, find one, and promptly get bought out or cloned.

Or perhaps having every guard in every town on the continent kill you on sight? You think people would randomly attack strangers? Ganking would vanish in a heartbeat. You'd probably end up with a feudal system very quickly, where everyone was in one of a few massive guilds that would issue kill on sight orders for anyone that harmed one of their own- this may not be what the designers/players want, but it would work. Make losing hurt and the ganking issue solves itself

What you are describing was implemented in Ultima Online. Kill a player, all the guards in cities mark you KoS (kill on sight). The solution was to not go to cities anymore. No banking, but there's plenty of killed player corpses to loot.

So, roving gangs of PKers hang out at the load points between areas, and kill your character while your computer is loading the next area's graphics. The solution for a while was the formation of anti PKers, who would descend in mass and swarm a PK group. But, now their characters were also flagged as PKers.

So yes, it ended up as a feudal system. Unfortunately, it was a world where the PK eventually won.

At least I'm not the only one watching these programs -- Holmes on Homes may be the one you are referencing.

Ideally, an older contractor (or programmer) has to have a young mindset. Continuing to do what has worked in the past makes it harder for your work to interface with current methodologies. Writing database software using ODBC.DLL calls or not using Ditra under your new bathroom tile floors -- it means that your work will not mesh with current practices.

I would expect a specialist in their field to remain mostly up-to-date on their knowledge, or let me know they specialize in a particular older technology. Or, one would hope, they can do both.

We are talking about making the distro as lite as possible. Putting the entire games suite takes up another big chunk. I never understood the reasoning behind the "games suite" to begin with. Wouldn't it be better if people chose their own games?

For most Windows users, there are only four games -- Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, Minesweeper, and (for some) the pinball game. When they see all of the games available from the live Ubuntu CD, they are interested in finding out more. As a selling point, seeing the list of games already installed has impact on end users. Showing them all of the games available for free via the package management system just seals the deal.
(Yes, XP has the Internet-enabled games as well. Meh.)

I think the solution is to make the buttons themselves say what they do, rather than clicking Ok or Cancel, have the button say "Exit crashed program", or "Install new program" or what have you. Always being OK or Cancel conditions people to just blindly click.

The Apple user interface guidelines have always stated that verbs should be used on command buttons. Inserting a blank disk under Mac OS pops up the "Format" or "Eject" dialog box. On Windows, the text says "To format the disk, click OK. To quit, click CANCEL" with "OK" or "Cancel" buttons.
Of course, if you put something other than OK or CANCEL in the dialog box, most Windows users freeze up. They don't know what to click.
Making users read the dialog box text helps. Just make sure the text is actually useful for making a decision.