I describe what I think the public-school classroom will look like in 20 years, with a large, fantastic computer screen at the front, streaming one of the nation’s most engaging, informative lessons available on a particular topic. ...And I stopped. This guy doesn't get it.

You could have the most engaging, informative lesson on the face of the planet, and kids may still not listen to it. Maybe they didn't get much sleep last night. Perhaps they ate at McDonalds for breakfast and have a sugar rush. Sometimes they feel depressed, because they just broke up with their significant other. Maybe the topic is about mathematics, a subject that's just difficult to understand. There's a possibility the student is dyslexic. And this is not even the tip of the iceberg.

Generally, humans need inspiration, and they are best inspired by other humans, education no exception. There is a small subset of students who possess enough initiative and tenacity that, even at a young age, they find success by their own merits. But the majority of students face challenges that interfere with their motivation to learn. They need to be coached through these challenges, actions requiring insight into the human psyche, something computers have yet to achieve.

To draw a parallel, do we yet see any high school sports teams being coached by a computer? Shouldn't a computer be better equipped to analyze plays, to determine strengths and weaknesses of players, and to determine strategies that have the greatest probability of success? What does the coach have that the computer doesn't?

A _design_ flaw that effects all cars of a particular make is likely to result in a class action. A _manufacturing_ defect that effects only your car, or just a few cars, would be an individual suit, not a class action. Also, a class action is often initiated after an individual suit - a plaintiff shows that the defendant owes them, then lawyers put together class action to represent all similarly affected individuals.

Even when there is a class action first, an individually who has been greatly harmed is unlikely to join the class. I just received a check from a class action against Toyota. The check is for $29. Someone severely injured by the flaw wouldn't have joined the class, they sue individually (and maybe settle after filing suit) to get a more appropriate remedy for their specific situation.

I'm just waiting for someone with money to bring the situation to its obvious parodic conclusion and be carried up to the top on a gilded litter dressed like Xerces.

Thanks to Google's project Calico, I would like to be the first to wish Dan a speedy recovery.

Time to call out the truant black hole...

Slack is the king of these parodies... Oh wait, that's REAL? Seriously?

Spending on research has been constantly growing over the past 50 years, and private spending is well ahead of Government spending. There really isn't a "cutoff" in funding, unless a cut from a 5% increase to a 2% increase is construed as a cut (in a time when inflation is running around 2%).

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding with regards to what ResearchKit is about. It's not HealthKit, which is aimed at helping people to be healthier. It's ResearchKit, which is aimed at connecting medical researchers with voluntary subjects who are willing to submit anonymous data. As it is right now, researchers seeking data on how well a treatment affects a disease need to first seek out people with that disease, then they need to either bring those subjects into a doctor's office to be tested, which is typically done on an infrequent basis, or they need to rely on self-reporting out in the field. There are numerous flaws in those methodologies, leading to all sorts of lies, omissions, and other forms of error creeping in. And that's the best we've had to rely on up until now. Plus, response rates are ridiculously low since there's no great way to put researchers in touch with potential subjects, and even when potential subjects are aware of the research, most don't want to deal with the hassle.

By increasing awareness, taking the hassle out of it, and even promising to open source ResearchKit, Apple is providing a foundation on which researchers can finally address those issues. They're putting the diagnostic tools directly into our smart devices, and are doing so across any platform, thus allowing the researchers to get frequently-collected data from subjects under actual conditions, rather than having to rely on faulty self-reporting or infrequent lab visits. They can also get a much wider swath of data, allowing them to have more certainty about their results, along with a better understanding of what "normal" looks like. Even if a hypochondriac is using an app that relies on ResearchKit, it's a win for all of us, since it helps to establish more baseline readings from which we can better understand how our bodies are supposed to be behaving when we're in the real world, rather than in a lab. Moreover, it may eventually help to establish a baseline reading for them, which could then be used to show them that their readings are in line with where they were before when we knew they were well.

All of which is to say, this has nothing at all to do with people fretting about being sick, and has everything to do with helping research doctors better understand diseases and how the treatments they are providing address them. Joke about it if you want, but it sounds like a worthy goal to me.

The main problem is here the ease of duplication. You have here a commodity where nearly all the cost of its creation is fixed. Per unit costs are negligible, and duplication of a unit is trivial. If you are allowed to duplicate and distribute the unit you paid for, depending on the total market there is actually the danger that the maker cannot sell many units, resulting in you having to pay for the total production cost, or market forces dictate that this commodity cannot be produced anymore due to higher cost than benefit.

In a nutshell, if you can copy as you please, people whose income depends on producing content will stop doing so.

We could now start a debate whether that would actually be a good thing when people start creating content (or, if you please, art) out of love instead of base desires like money. One thing would still remain, anything where production takes many years and costs lots of money will not be produced anymore. There would be no blockbuster movies and no AAA games. And yes, again, it's debatable whether that would actually be a bad thing.

What I can agree with is that copyright has gone out of hand. That's true. We're now at the insanity of the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. In other words, it's unlikely that the works of the Beatles, which were created half a century ago, will go into PD before I die. That's essentially copyright for over a century. Copyright originally was meant to give a creator an incentive to create, so he could recover his expenses and reap the rewards for his art. But where is the incentive if I can milk a single hit forever?

Original copyright was 7 years. And back then, that was pretty tight. 7 years was not a lot of time for an aspiring artist to get his book printed and sold. Some managed to get into a second issue and still earn royalties for that, but usually, especially for young artists, those 7 years went by VERY quickly. Back then it took a lot of time to get a book edited, printed and distributed. Advertising was WAY slower (and less efficient) than today, and by the time most people actually learned of the book and wanted to buy it, copyright was expired, other editors printed copies and the original author got jack.

And that's when copyright went bananas. Today, we have INSANELY long copyrights while at the same time the time from conception to distribution can be measured in days. Hours sometimes, even. That simply makes no sense anymore.

So I do not agree that I should be allowed to do "whatever I want" with the work. I should be allowed nearly everything, in this we can agree. I should be allowed to use it however I please, view and listen to it in whatever fashion I please and if I do not want to use it anymore I should be allowed and able to sell it. I should not be allowed to duplicate and distribute it, though, at least for a sensible period. The original 7 years sounded very sensible and I think reducing copyright to this 7 years would allow copyright to become again what it was meant to be: A tool to balance the interests of creators and consumers of content.

Why? My Note 2 has 1729 hours (and counting) uptime right now. That's over 10 weeks since the last reboot. Still runs fast and responsive... Why reboot?

My Note 2 is rock-stable like yours. I just checked - 1729 hours and counting since last reboot. Battery easily lasts from 6 AM to midnight (30+% left when it finally hits the charger), with moderate use (30-40 minutes of voice, a few dozen texts, and 70-80 e-mails, with a bit of GPS and web access mixed in). Rock solid device, plenty of battery life - and I love the note-taking ability with the pen!

Got 1729 (and counting) hours on my Note 2 right now... It just runs and runs and runs... Reboot? What reboot?

Got 72 days so far (and counting) of uptime on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 - nice Android experience as well! It's fast, responsive, does everything I need, and hasn't been rebooted in a long time. Is that your definition of slow and unusable and unstable?

1729 hours and counting... So it's been a little over 10 weeks since the last reboot. That's fairly stable, I think...

So ... you enter it into a competition where exactly that is being tested? I'd rather let that AI play in some online casinos...

Wait... who says that's not already happening?