Let me get this straight: after basically ignoring the Fifth Amendment, you now expect the courts to play fair?

Canonical sees the tablet and smartphone as the leading way people deal with computers in the future. So they're concentrating their efforts not on the desktop, but on an opportunity that Microsoft doesn't currently dominate. It's an interesting strategy, and if it pays off, Canonical might even be able to use a market edge in tablets and smartphones to erode Window's dominance on desktops. Unfortunately, that means we have to put up with crappy experiments in interfaces while Gnome, Unity, and even Microsoft work this out.

Personally, I've switched from Unity to Gnome 3. It seems a little more stable right now and lets me work a little faster. These are modest improvements at best, and even with a bunch of Shell Extensions, I'm not satisfied.

Well said. I wish I had mod points. I'm left with applauding your post and leaving my own little tag so I'll stumble across yours again and have the pleasure of re-reading it every few years.

As for the Apollo flight computer, a very limited orbit-tracking version might have been possible but integrating error would have made it deeply suspect over such a long time period I think. In terms of all the other things the Apollo computer did in terms of attitude control and timing the firing of thrusters correctly, I doubt you could make a one cubic foot mechanical or electromechanical computer do that.

I'm not suggesting that a mechanical computer could have replaced the Apollo flight computer. But if improvements in pre-calculated tables allowed ballistics and even rocketry to develop a little faster, mechanical computers might have come in handy for pre-Apollo rocket launches. What's the minimum computer functionality required to put a man into space? On the moon? And maybe some of the computing work could have been shifted away from the vehicle to a dedicated Flight Computations building on the ground.

But the Industrial Revolution was in full swing by the 1830s. In many ways, Babbage's ideas were a product of that era. I don't think the world would be too terribly different a place than it is today. Perhaps, with proper error-free reference tables, science and engineering would have made a few more advances, but the complexity of all those moving parts in Babbage's Analytical Engine would have prevented something like Victorian PCs. I think the big change would have happened around the second World War, where ENIAC and similar computers would have been hybrid machines combining established mechanical computational constructs with vacuum-tube electronics to speed up calculations. Might the Germans have used aluminum calculating machines for more accurate V1 and V2 missiles? Could that have made a difference in the Space Race, or would that still have to wait for the weight-saving economy of the transistor and integrated circuits?

The thing to remember about technological progress is that invention is an interdependent process that involves more than just science and engineering, but politics, religion, and other social customs. Maybe the Analytical Engine would have gone nowhere until the invention of modern electronics. Or maybe minds like Tesla and industrialists like JP Morgan would have seized on the potential and changed everything. The most optimistic estimate would be that it would trigger a Victorian or at least Edwardian Internet era, with speech, information, and ideas flying around the planet at the speed of an automated telegraph. But computing with gears and the odd solenoid is a clumsy, tricky thing, and I can't help but think such ideas would have only tiny influences on our modern world.

This looks suspiciously like an effort to make the use of Predator drones in conjunction with police investigations seem acceptable to the general public. The fact is the Department of Homeland Security was behind the use of drones in this affair, and this is yet another camel's nose under the tent. A few more stories like this and then stories about the use of drones in police surveillance will no longer be "newsworthy". That's when their use will become truly ubiquitous ... when no one's paying attention any longer.

Hmmm ... it had the opposite effect on me. I started to look as regular kittens as a kind of veal. PETA should be wary of unintended consequences.

Well, to be fair, those aren't more aircraft carriers, they're being built to replace the Enterprise and Nimitz class carriers which are due for retirement.

But ... I agree with your point. Just one aircraft carrier less and you can afford to more than double your space program's funding. Our short-sighted leaders are selling out our future national security and scientific eminence in favor of having some shiny new sabers to rattle.

I agree that this needs to be approached with caution, but I wonder why the article speaks only of two failures. I get the impression the program is larger than just two patients, so what happened to the others? Did they also meet with tragic consequences? Without full disclosure of all failures and successes, it's impossible to accurately assess the results. We're left with a horror story told with cherry-picked data.