Please define "better". For myself, the greatest achievement of humankind is the advancement of knowledge about the world. Depending on what your priorities are, you could argue that a different era was "better" (e.g. less polution, less stress [doubtful], more "natural", or whatever floats your boat). But if you give up on what makes us what we are, you could argue that the best way to live your life is to be in a coma. Yes, today sucks but it is still better than any day before. YMMV.

One drop is about 0.05 ml, i.e. 20 drops per mililitre. (When talking about water.)

You're missing the point. It's not that we should all get down to the lowest common denominator, it's about having useless visual bling (that is annoying and distracting even for a healthy person) that serves no useful purpose and CAN'T BE SWITCHED off making the phone unusable for people with a medical condition.

Again, the solution is not to force everyone to use a static UI, it's to give people the choice. Which is something Apple never does, I guess because then there would be people who switch it off and then complain that it does not work. I am an iPhone 5 user recently switched from Android and while the phone works just fine, I sorely miss the ability to actually customise anything.

I'm not a Star Trek fan but this always reminds me of A. C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. It is exciting to live in the future.

It is very easy to make a test that detects 100% of patients who will eventually get a disease. Just make it always say "positive" and you're done. The hard thing is balancing the ability to detect a disease and avoid false negatives (sensitivity) with the ability to detect absence of disease and avoid false positives (specificity). Related to this are the positive predictive negative predictive values. Since Alzheimer's is very difficult to diagnose clinically and the only definitive proof is a biopsy/autopsy, I very much doubt a screening test would exist with a 100 % sensitivity and/or specificity.

Ever watched a Shuttle returning?

Space X is posting updates here: http://www.spacex.com/webcast/ , unfortunately there is no live video feed, only status updates.

Wonder no more: they'll get beaten up just the same. See here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/16/augmented-reality-explorer-steve-mann-assaulted-at-parisian-mcdonalds/

The official site now has a video that includes some of the on-body camera shots, I am sure we will see many more of them as the footage is processed. I believe he had a couple cameras mounted on the suit, so don't worry.

I had the original for 18 years. Then a wire broke in the PS2 cable. It is possibly the best piece of hardware I've ever laid my hand on.

Wait. These articles are able to glorify Putin in anyone's eyes? I thought by now every new piece about how he saved a puppy from a burning house serves only to further ridicule him and make fun of him. He tries so hard that it became a kind of comedy performance. With a lot of these articles, couple years ago, you could mistake them from something from Onion.com. He became a caricature of himself, an iron-fisted evil dictator who's trying so hard people laugh at him.

I am not so sure there is that much to be ticked-off by. Sagan's widow is quoted as saying that "...Sagan would have been thrilled to see his life’s work made available to the public." That does not sound like a greedy estate trying to get rich from selling stuff she inherited (not that there would be anything wrong with that). TFA is unclear on what the money went towards, I can imagine that transporting, sorting, filing and displaying the (large) collection is no easy feat and that the money is perhaps to be spent on that? Mrs. Druyan was not only Sagan's wife but also co-author, I don't see her as waiting for the highest bidder to auction off her inheritance.

"Utterly dominate" as in ~8 % of the mobile phone market? Or ~25 % of the smartphone market? Apple is big, but utter domination looks different, IMO.