Microsoft routinely grosses more than Hollywood does at the domestic box office.

Hmm, that's an apples-to-oranges comparison because that's Microsoft's international gross income compared to Hollywood's domestic income. But still ... I thought it somewhat eye-popping.

Isn't that symptomatic of how the "net culture" has changed, though? Back when Slashdot was new, being on the Internet was something few people did, even less so without inhibitions. It was the lair of tech and science geeks, and that was that. People would dig up interesting science/tech articles and then the comments would debate it over and over (with of course random quotes).

However, nowadays you can't help but notice the politicization of the Internet and, by extension, of all things related to computers and science. I'd argue the politics section you noted highlights that fact: politics now influence this community far more than it did before. There are now ideological debates, megacorporations to praise or decry, lawyers to monitor, laws to bash or applaud... Blogs, social networks, all have changed the face of the Internet and I only believe it normal that Slashdot changed to reflect that.

I honestly wouldn't mind seeing more science and tech articles and less law stuff, but at the same time I'm glad I have a good source from which to read the latest developments in copyright crap or ISP abuses... I guess. Bah, you see my point!

Certainly, but given that there's no magic way of turning ordinary matter into antimatter, the only way of getting that 18 tonnes of antimatter is to make the stuff --- which is where the 4e21 joules of energy comes in.

And frankly, if I wanted to devastate a planet and had 18 tonnes of antimatter around, it would be far more convenient just to take the lid off the bottle than to do all that fiddly messing around with space travel.

(Right now state of the art is just about at the stage of producing one fundamental particle of antimatter at a time. I recall a few years ago that someone had actually managed to assemble a single anti-hydrogen atom that was stable for a while, until they dropped it.)

Stories like these illustrate the reason why I've stopped using these social networking sites, especially Facebook. The amount of scams on there is ridiculous... all of those little "games" that your friends ask you to sign up to play are just scams to get you to agree to give them your contact information. Now lobbyists are succeeding to make themselves even more unreputable. Way to jump on the bandwagon.

See the problem with that approach is that there is nothing to fall back on if you drive the private insurers out of business

Yes, because having them rely on medical diagnosis for medical problems will bankrupt them. They should be charging fees for what they deliver. If their fees can't cover what they promise to deliver, then there is some problem with their fee structure. Trolling sites with pictures for evidence of fraud may be appropriate (or not, I'm just not getting into that), but canceling treatment payment against the written policy should be illegal (I say should be because I know it is in some places, but don't know about all, not "should be" in the sense of I wish it were). If they are accusing her of fraud, then they should do so and cancel it because of that. If they are coming to a medical diagnosis from a couple snapshots, they should be thrown in jail for practicing medicine without a license, then shut down for unethical practices.

Indeed, the global cooling scare that reached its peak around the early 70s attributed the cooling to particulate emissions in the atmosphere. We cleaned up our particulate emissions quite a bit after that.

1. Voice commands will work really poorly in crowded places. I'm trying to picture how I'd use voice commands reliably in Denver airport.

2. Any sort of holographic projection thing is going to require something to project on. For privacy reasons you'll often want something you can hold up to your face, and there are many surfaces that would be impolite to use for a holographic keyboard. If you have something you're holding up to your face, now you have to hold the watch steady relative to it... you'd be better off with a detachable LCD screen. At which point you might as well put the phone hardware in the LCD screen instead.

3. Again, ergonomic factors dictate that a watch is not more convenient than a phone for making calls. My watch has one button on the front and four out of the way on the sides. More buttons on the front would make it harder to use (it is typically pressed blind, sometimes while wearing gloves, usually while very tired and out of breath, and for my purposes I need fairly precise timing). A phone needs... a numeric keypad! A device with an effective keypad and be easy to talk into, something good enough that I'd prefer it to my landline, would have to be big. You could have a Bluetooth thing that looks like a phone or a headset or something... but, again, you might as well just make that the phone instead. If you get a call on your watch-phone and don't have a headset with you, what can you do about it? You just get a ring, and maybe you can listen to the message.

Windows 7 now features a math input panel, which converts handwritten mathematics to MathML. You can see screenshots at this link: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2008/10/29/windows-7-math-input-panel-screenshots

I definitely approve of companies patenting technology I never want to see anywhere.

Linux has been at it for 15 years and (as indicated by an earlier slashdot story this very day) sound is still broken out of the box on Ubuntu.

And you still can't reliably cut and paste between apps.

Not exactly ready for prime time.

Really, that's funny because who is it that implements software that the manufacturer didn't think of or didn't want to spend time on? It's kind of an odd statement to make, because having a thriving enthusiast community is something which sells an awful lot of units. People tend to be pretty jaded about certain things like marketing, having enthusiasts to make the recommendations and help out new owners is a pretty significant resource to have.

I would also argue that almost no one knows how to cut a feather and write with an inker. Writing has always evolved. Only the volume and quality of written works is important.

- Parallel Extensions to .NET
- Surface
- Photosynth
- WorldWide Telescope

I don't know if Parallel Extensions is worth $8 billion, but it's a huge deal and the cornerstone of the ManyCore/Multicore work MS is doing. It's pretty freaking cool. (And the Mono folks have already implemented it...)

It's not the same principle at all. This ruling is based on the fact that Blizzard distributes its software under an end user license. The GPL is not an end user license. The GPL gives you a blanket right to make copies of the software for any reason, to modify those copies as you see fit, and to use the software in any manner you like. The only thing you may not do without following the GPL is distribute modified copies to other people.