"Although a 50 inch 8K display on my desk would be a wonderful thing for my work computer."
Agreed, but I'd get more increase in productivity from a decent chair.
Huge pixel count. Great. Seriously, I like it. I can view DSLR photos in full resolution.
But it's going to take a long time for bandwidth available to most folks to catch up with the needs of 3840x2160. Hard to imagine the data flow necessary for 7680x4320 being available to most of us for years. In fact, that's about the fastest being rolled out to residences today. Then what? Then there'll have to be sources. Netflix's servers don't provide 1080p for me now, having an ISP that doesn't interfere and 50Mbps bandwidth on DSL, which should be just about enough for even uncompressed video.
Hey, at least the focus is on pixel count instead of idiotic curved screens and 3D. What would be real advances? Holographic 3D and quality programming. Now we have who knows how many TV channels and networks, but only about the same number (very few) of quality shows as we had 50 years ago, not long after the FCC head's "television is a vast wasteland" comment.
SAS may be the best answer to "query huge amounts of data in sometimes rather odd ways". Using SQL Server for storage is fine, but not using anything else in front of it (SSAS is useless) is bringing a knife to a gun fight. Trying to do everything in a relational way means tying a hand and a foot behind your back. The real world doesn't neatly fit the model, hard as you might try to make it, so performance suffers greatly and doing unusual ad hoc things takes longer to figure out. Get SAS to send pure relational operations to the DBMS to do but perform other operations within. SAS's own SQL engine gives the user much more convenience since it supports SAS's functions and macro language, far richer than plain DBMS's, but I haven't found it to be particularly quick. In interoperability, SQL Server continues to improve, but SAS still works better with many more other applications. It has always been a best choice for moving data around. Organizations often choke on the licensing model, since most do "capital investments" every few years instead of paying a "licensing fee" every year (hefty, but does include some of the best support going). All this was about plain SAS. SAS/BI is really the product SAS will try to sell you to do what you describe; I haven't used it so can't rate it.
As far as those comments about writing code with SAS being "terrible", well, it can be inconsistent, but mostly those people have just never grasped the somewhat unique models it uses of handling observations. I find T-SQL to be seriously lacking for many tasks. If going all-MS, get VS and use a regular procedural language along with SQL Server.
At some point in the future we'll either talk about how dorky people looked fumbling with their slab phones all the time (I always have) or just think of them like pocket watches—a machine put in use before it was miniaturized. I suspect that in the old days glancing at your wristwatch during meetings was tolerated a lot better than pulling out your pocket watch.
The Pebble is definitely more attractive than most others, certainly more than what the Apple looks like so far. Surely the fans will buy Apples, but I'm guessing Apple won't dominate the market or even lead the way this time. Until we have some kind of I/O that displays stuff in our eyes or brain without Glass and reads thoughts, seems like the wristwatch is the least intrusive, most convenient device.
I want features that have already appeared in watches: time display, stopwatch, alarm, tides for anywhere not dependent on downloading, barometer/altitude, compass, glow-in-the-dark, survivability from shock/EM fields/water/heat/cold, good styling (very few smart watches are much less than ugly), programmable remote control, good battery life, and durability, all in one. Add to that rudimentary navigation (only signals from GPS satellites necessary, and maybe not even that), Bluetooth, an accelerometer, and a great programming environment for those not wanting the hassle of a ridiculous tool chain.
A fatter version should have something like FindMeSpot functionality—SMS to satellites.
Oh yeah, and a friendly price.
City and school buses are the perfect target for hybrid ICE/Electric propulsion (along with FedEx and UPS delivery trucks). They accelerate and decelerate a huge mass every block or so. Recapture as much of the energy as you can while slowing to speed up again. The power of the ICE needn't be anywhere close to what it is currently. Maybe not even electric—some mechanical means of storing energy for short periods would be helpful, and probably a lot cheaper. Just DO SOMETHING to avoid throwing away all that energy put into accelerating every block.
Since there's already a lot of experience using CNG for buses, use that and avoid much of the complicated emissions-control equipment. Buses are so big that putting a reformer on board and fueling them with methane but powering them with fuel cells might be feasible.
If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.