I love Google Docs. But, in the end, Word has been around forever, it's very mature, and it has features that fit any conceivable needs. It also has the advantages (and disadvantages) that come with being local to your machine instead of living in the cloud. Google docs is great for a quick and dirty word processing or a collaborative project, but you shouldn't try to write a novel with it.

After they started weighing the Higgs, it went on a diet.

I wondered about that too. Of course, if a few family members had already donated, and you knew it was only a matter of time before they caught you, it might be worth turning in your own DNA so you can later sow doubt with a "If I were really guilty, why would I have turned in my DNA?" defense.

Or maybe not. Who knows at this point?

You sound fun at parties.

I don't even really see that as a joke. It's in those quiet moments that my brain will often present me with an idea seemingly out of thin air. Who hasn't been dealing with some particularly tricky problem, mulled it over, banged their head against the wall on it, and then while they're eating lunch or taking a shower - BOOM - your brain suddenly puts the right connections together and you have some new insight.

Smartphones seem to be stealing away all the quiet moments of our lives, and I've come to realize that those quiet moments are important. Not just for our peace of mind, but for our ability to really let our brains work well. Lunch has disappeared as a quiet time. The toilet has disappeared as a quiet time. I honestly think it's a problem.

I experimented with not doing any "compulsive consumption" on my phone a few months ago, and while this is purely anecdotal, I felt like it really did improve my concentration overall.

But, this is really a non-story in any case, neither Torvald's political opinions nor Romney's assessment of airplane windows should matter to us

Wait, you seriously think it doesn't matter if the most powerful man in America is aware of something as basic as pressurized cabins in airplanes? I mean, don't we want the President to be, you know, smart?

Per my eyes and ears, no, he wasn't joking.

How many innocent people have we wound up executing? We'll never know.

How many innocent people have we wound up throwing in prison until they die? We'll never know.

Maybe we won't know an exact number, but we know the number is less. Because if/when exonerating evidence turns up they can take advantage of it by, you know, still being alive.

Now everyone can have easy access to the world's deepest cesspit of racism, misogyny, and murder-porn.

remove regulatory barriers that protect outdated technologies and business plans from innovation and competition

"If you elect us, we will get rid of net neutrality so fast it'll make your head spin."

I don't think they need to be mandatory, but I think what *should* happen is we need to publicly shame these parents. Every time a kid dies of Whooping Cough, those parents need to be on the news the same as if they'd drowned their kid in a bathtub.

IT Departments are innately conservative. Doing something different can get you fired. It's the same thing that led to the "no one ever got fired for buying Windows" line in the '90s. Hell, IT Departments are just now beginning to get off of XP. A radical change like 8? It's not going to fly. Windows 8 needs to become "normal" to the IT Department before they'll allow it in. In fact, I bet it'll end up being a lot like Vista. IT will hold off until 9, when issues that crop up with Windows 8 have been ironed out.

As an owner, in my experience the nice thing about the battery dock is that you don't *have* to be near an outlet. All the internals of the tablet are in the tablet itself, so the keyboard/battery dock is just that. A keyboard with a big battery. So you can juice it up overnight and drop it into your bag when you leave the next morning. For someone like me, a field engineer, that's a godsend. I never know when I'll be near an outlet. Now, admittedly, I may be a special case. But it's definitely nice for someone who's on the move quite a bit.

The full size USB port is on the "lapdock." Once docked, it basically has a full keyboard (better than most netbooks I've used) and a full sized usb port. With a USB to Serial adapter, I use mine to connect to Cisco switches quite often.

OK. TWO people will have to pay $50 for 1GB of data, which they have to share!

You're right, that sounds so much better! A $150 ($130 plus tax and then all the little fake "fees" and "services" they apply to the bill afterward) for two smartphones with ONE WHOLE GIGABYTE TO SHARE!