That's the beauty of it. As far as the advertiser is concerned, it doesn't matter which!

Please tell me you're kidding -- only one year?

The flash retention problem is going to turn out as bad as the Capacitor Plague. A device that has periodic access to a power source could be designed to refresh its own flash, but anything that ends up sitting on the shelf for extended periods is going to be trouble.

Along with error rates, what will happen to retention times as the cell size shrinks?

Supposedly, flash memories have expected retention times as short as 5-10 years or so (if not refreshed by re-writing), thanks to gradual leakage of the trapped charges they use to record data; this value is expected to drop as flash cells get smaller. I've had gadgets whose firmware mysteriously become corrupted after sitting around for a few years, and sometimes they could be revived by re-flashing them -- I sometimes wonder if this kind of retention problem could have been responsible.

Switch to FluMist (nasal spray flu vaccine), it's produced using a cell-culture process and is completely egg-free. There might be some other brands now too, not sure as it's been a little while since I last worked in the influenza vaccine business.

I am currently in medical school, and am looking at about the same amount of debt (all medical school, undergrad paid off already). That being said, I go to a state school (plus started with some savings, plus have some parental support). The amount of financial support each state gives to their schools varies greatly depending on the state though. Grants are uncommon (since everyone expects doctors will become rich) unless you you meet special criteria -- impoverished background, under-represented minority, or are affiliation with a cultural/ethnic/religious group backed by private donors (also heard of a few set-up by patient advocacy groups and rural communities).

Private schools can be stupidly expensive (some run 70k+ a year), I wouldn't go to one unless my family was rich.

Around here I think you can expect 35-50k a year, depending on what program you're in. While this isn't too bad for a family medicine residency that goes 3 years, others can go as much as 7-8 years (but you'll be earning more afterwards).

An Ob-Gyn's typical malpractice premium is easily more than a family doc's entire yearly salary. An average general surgeon can expected to be sued every five years. The cost and risk of malpractice varies greatly across specialties; your wife is probably in one of the "safe" specialties (Family practice, Peds, Psych, Derm, a couple of others), or has her malpractice subsidized.

I used to work for GlaxoSmithKline.

While Slashdot likes to rag on Big Pharma, GSK really doesn't get enough credit for it's charitable work, like their Lymphatic filariasis eradication campaign. They are the last of the major pharma companies that still has a tropical infectious disease division; it doesn't make any money, yet they've continued to operate it all these years, since the days of the British colonial period.

Taking things to the opposite extreme, what about "games" that are all story, with minimal game play, like Ren-Ai games?

Or to take it even further, kinetic novels, such as Planetarian?

I dunno. If their peripherals (like their optical mice) had been created by any smaller company, we would have considered that company's hardware to be pretty damn good. It's only because Microsoft is so enormous that accomplishments like the IntelliEye disappear in comparison.

Thing is, if Apple successfully manages to fend off FRAND abuse while enforcing it's own patents, we end up with a very perverted situation -- the more frivolous a patent is, the more it's worth -- because "rounded corner" patents are free of mandatory licensing requirements, while fundamental technology patents have their value capped.

Supposedly, there's a similar issue with used medical equipment and supplies. I've heard of charitable donations getting into trouble because it was considered to be illegal export of medical waste.