However, only in the most limited of senses. I have a Necomimi, and although it is largely a novelty toy, the brain-wave reading technology is real and works. Trying to control the way the ears move by altering your basic brainwave state is, in fact, a simple form of neuro-feedback.

Old samplers are rather a victim of that. The hardware is often fine and can still crank out some awesome sounds, but they are often diskette based and storage technology has moved on hundreds of times faster than synthesizor technology.

The Ensoniq scene has almost abandoned the EPS series because they used double-density drives and DD 3½" floppies haven't been made for years - and HD floppies aren't reliable in DD drives. Nowadays even HD diskettes are losing their stored bits. *All* the people keen to keep the ASR-10 alive have shifted to SCSI solutions because floppies are just not reliable anymore.

Wade.

That's about 20 tons for those who don't or can't think in terms of thousands of pounds.

They actually put research into the layout on the Frogpad, which explains it's non-qwerty, non-alphabetic arrangement. This new one he's just gone for alphabetic order.

It's Google trying to consolidate identities by weaning people off passwords.

I have multiple identities on the 'net. Deliberately. For instance, I don't need my workplace associated with sites that don't need to know. It's the same reason I hate Disqus and will not comment on sites that use it. It's one reason I moved my blog off blogger. Google have shown they do not understand why people want multiple identities - but they have to support it because when they try to not, they find the negative feedback is deafening.

TL;DR: I Am Not A Google Identity. And I wish to remain that way.

There was a standard for inductive charging paddles some years ago. They had the interesting advantage that they were completely waterproof.

Why has that been thrown away?

For instance, Australia always puts elections on a Saturday.

Then, too, Australia also has a Federal election commission, unlike the many state-based ones in the US. And mandatory voting, too. And pencil-on-paper ballots. And instant run-off. And we almost always know the result of the election before midnight of the election day.

Remind me again what is so great about how voting works in the US? It sounds very broken, actually.

Have a look at app.net, then. It's aiming to be what Twitter could have been.

Then pick a month of the calender, please, rather than a season of the northen hemisphere. The Internet has been global for decades and it's long past time the US recognises that.

Wade, who was annoyed by that just the other day somewhere else on the 'net.

This is what I do. I've got it all on one PC that knows how to turn itself on and off at the right times outputting to a projector. I find I can usually rely on the EPG and look through upcoming programs every once in a while. I do forget what nights things air on...

She needs to hear the other point-of-view from someone she trusts and respects. Someone she will listen to and actually take it onboard when they tell her she's being pretty stupid and wasting her own time. Probably someone she works for at one of the sites she maintains. And if you locate someone, be nice. Real nice. I shouldn't need to say it, but distingush between Ms Schwager and her actions and also between her actions and these organisations. Point out how her idiocy is making them look bad.

Wade.

Electric car makers are recreating the performance of petrol-driven cars with electric drive-trains, and then selling them as "more environmentally friendly". This is completely mis-marketing. The problem is, as many people have commented, the manufacturing techniques are not environmentally friendly.

The current prime culprit is the lithium batteries. This is touted as energy efficient storage, which it is, but it ignores two problems: whilst it is not a rare-earth, mining it and manufacturing with it has been linked with large environmental problems. And the recycling industry is minuscule. By contrast, lead-acid batteries are a very well known and mature technology, and the recyclability of lead-acid batteries is better than 97%. The only problem is that they're heavier than lithium.

I think electric car makers need to figure out how to live with that problem. It would mean they can make and sell electric cars for considerably less than they are doing at the moment. And that means people would find them affordable and would buy them. It also means they could make them user-replaceable. As for lack of performance, that shouldn't be a problem. People buy and use many many small, underpowered cars that struggle to beat a bicycle down a hill.

The other problem is the infrastructure for charging. Research proceeded apace some years ago for a paddle-based system for electric cars to charge whereever they were parked. Whilst this seems to have been abandoned, it does show that the problem of infrastructure *must* be tackled by manufacturers. They need to look at the history of how the petrol delivery infrastructure developed and see what they need to leverage to make that work. And they need to look at working together, not in competition. A battery exchange system might be one answer, but you have to be able to put Ford batteries into Mitsubishi electric cars (for instance).

Just be aware that he has some strong views on JavaScript and it's foibles which you may find you need to disagree with.

Your post reads a lot like all those people who hate PHP. "It has all these things wrong with it!" Well, actually, no it doesn't - because most of them aren't a problem to the people busy using it effectively. JavaScript doesn't have 'inferior' abstractions: it has *different* ones.

I have programmed a lot over the decades in both strongly typed and weakly typed languages - too many to name. I've come to Java in the last few years after a much longer time in JavaScript and PHP (and others) and have experienced the reverse of the OP's problem. But it's only a problem if you let it be a problem. Solving problems in an untyped language has some fundamental differences to a typed language. Get over that and a lot of the perceived 'problems' Just Go Away.