I said this half-jokingly as many of these disruptive changes have been made in response to Apple's popularity and explosion in the tablet/phone market.

I see these OSs merging in terms of how they perceive user tasks. The old Unix/Windows model was that you had a bunch of applications running simultaneously, which the user had to manage themselves. In Mac, it feels like the emphasis is on working with one application at a time. This can be seen when the (File, Edit, View, etc) menus change context with respect to the selected application. Unity, and it looks like Gnome 3, are moving in this direction.

For users who are used to one style, completely revamping the UI also means revamping and disrupting everyone's personal workflow. What if I want to browse and code simultaneously? If the UI prohibits such behavior, than I'll have a hard time getting work done.

I don't have a problem with the changes, but I do have a problem with these changes getting shoved down everyone's throat without proper support to revert to a classic look. A lot of the 'core' features that are being added, could simply be mods on top of the existing desktop instead of the buggy restructuring that's currently going on.

After a few more iterations, it'll look just like OS X.
:P

Just a minor correction, but Amazon is slightly better in that you can buy a non-DRM mp3 and back it up to your hearts delight (provided you register a computer to download from them). But otherwise, your point does stand that physical media has intrinsic value due to owning it. I dread the day when we go pure digital and lose fundamental rights not just to music/movies but books (i.e. knowledge) as well.

Yes, but why do women have to be the ones to stay home? Aside from the first 6 months or so of nurturing, any household task that can be handled by a woman could be handled by a man. Having some kind of work/life balance is good. Dumping all those responsibilities on an individual just because of their gender or some historical notion of roles is unjust.

On that note, his sample size seems a bit small...

Why the hell can't we progress unless there's some bogeyman to 'win' against. It seems like the same people who want to cripple funding for the sciences and technology suddenly get interested if someone else puts bigger phallic-shaped rockets into space. Oh no! The Chinese might establish a space station! Well good for them. I hope they continue doing well, as that seems to be the only thing that will drag us out from our caves.

Racial impurity is a social construct not a scientific one.DNA just exists. People with different DNA exist based entirely on the random mutations that occur within DNA and the natural jumbling that occurs at conception. You can NEVER have a pure or identical specimen because natural life proceeds through change. Therefore, the notion of purity is established as arbitrary minute differences that can always change to fit someone's political agenda.

orly?

Increasing the data cap is a small step in the right direction, but unfortunately Comcast continues to treat its own Internet delivered video different under the cap than other Internet delivered video. We continue to stand by the principle that ISPs should treat all providers of video services equally.
Cnet News

Found an interesting quote which highlights some of the points I was thinking about:

The internet like any other information medium can be used to help or harm someone. If we're not aware of its capacity to harm someone like encouraging someone's guilt or inciting a war, our naivete could allow gross forms of injustice to occur.

I'd argue that different communities already enact a type of self-censorship. E.g. forums not allowed to show porn or use abusive languages. Members of these communities are usually ok with this type of censorship because they a) don't own the site and b) probably do not have strong opinions against the policy. Also, they don't have to view the material to be 'informed' about it.

I think there are many aspects that make it difficult to have a debate about internet censorship that doesn't lead to knee jerk reactions. Those aspects would be: 1) definition of censorship and 2) definition of the role of the internet.

For example, I may consider censorship as a form of banning illegal material: murder, rape, child abuse, etc. I'm sure if you started up a server that hosted outright snuff, society would find a way to shut you down.

For point 2, if the internet is considered a service in that it just sends bits to you, then adding a layer of censorship could inherently harm its usage. If it's a content delivery system then deciding what content to show/not show may make sense.

I'm not trolling for an argument. Rather I'm trying to understand what different people's interpretation of censorship and internet are.

I mostly agree with your point. But there are some things I wouldn't mind seeing censored: hate speech and real violence to other people (for the sake of promoting violence). Censorship can be used as a brutal means of thought-control. But, I also think it can be used to establish healthy normative behaviors within a community. What happens when the line between entertainment or health curiosity is blurred with the accepted abuse of another gender or race? Do we as a society shut abusive types of media down or give up on censorship because it can only lead to inevitable misuse?

I ask these questions because I really don't have a good answer for them. : /

No. The problem is, this task depends on a LOT of contextual information that simply is not in the medication list. Like what is the patient taking from another doctor? Is the patient taking their pills? Did they stop due to: unknown reaction, felt better, forgot, rationing the pills because they cost too much, or didn't feel like it? Are the pills actually helping? Are there any conditions which may affect the effectiveness of the pills? (using pills as a catchall for whatever is prescribed). Sometimes the complete medication list is not stored in the computer or even in a collection of files across computers, but can only be revealed through patient-doctor interaction. And it's not just the pharmacist who performs reconciliation, rather this task may be performed at different levels of care by focusing on a different facet of the patient. Despite how useful computers are, there's a lot of process they simply cannot replace; streamline: maybe, replace: no.

That sounds like how most grant-funded research occurs.

True. When it's 2-3 people, an individual tends to put a lock on it until they've done all their changes (2-3 days max). If the group becomes larger, it gets placed on a website; People edit the document and upload their most recent copy. Ultimately, there is some group coordination that goes on beforehand and Word becomes a poor-man's version control. Dealing with these hassles in an organized fashion is still cheaper (for time) than requiring everyone to learn LaTeX+svn.

Nice. I look forward to that update. I hope it's compatible with docx; that would make it easier to transition between the two.