I get that this could be great for mimicking the mouse click/drag, or for interactive boxing games. But what about its law enforcement potential? How long until this is used to detect possible domestic violence?

"How much poor gameplay will players suffer through in exchange for utterly amazing graphics?"

It's just like real life! Incredible graphics, but with long stretches of boring mechanics. How long will we tolerate it?

Try GBrainy. It's a brain teaser sort of thing. I found it when it came with Edubuntu.
https://live.gnome.org/gbrainy

Yes! I saw this just yesterday, when an installation progress bar filled completely. I was pleased, but a moment later, it started over again with no indication that anything had happened. This repeated several times, each one reinforcing the hard truth that I had no idea how long the process would take.

Even better would be something like a "63 out of 150 MB copied" meter that was 42% filled. I would think total file size might be more accurate than number of files.

I think that's kind of what the OP was wondering: is there some simple reason (like counting number of files-- a fairly arbitrary number-- instead of number of kilobytes) why are they so inaccurate? How hard would it be to make a list of the procedures to be executed, determine the amount of work to be done, and have the meter reflect how much of that work had been completed? I can understand the "estimated time remaining" varying greatly when downloading over a questionable internet connection, but surely disk write speeds could be estimated relatively accurately, right? And how much could "unexpectedly" happen? When Step 1 of the installation is "Preparing to install," wouldn't the application know already what it planned to do? Or have we actually progressed to the point of our scripts having whims?

Note that all the serious Black Friday shoppers (and presumably many of those who work at the stores) are currently a little preoccupied. That may affect the poll results.

Not sure that's appropriate for a siren.

What, too obvious?

Oh, right! He forgot that Blackwell's just on the other side of that pond. Why in the world was he checking out the local bookstore, anyway?

I took "from the landscape" to mean "from the [local] landscape."

These guys are extremely efficient. They came to a town near me when I was in medical school, and believe me, they make a huge difference on a tiny budget. http://www.ramusa.org/

http://paizo.com/beginnerbox
I think some table-top roleplaying games would be the perfect solution.
The only problem I foresee is an abnormally high rogue-to-paladin ratio.

And how in the world could lasers possibly have military relevance?

Uh, and just where did you get the "scratch" for those tools? And I certainly *hope* you're not talking about using the Sun's energy to fuel the wind currents powering your generator. Isn't our environment doing enough for you already?

So it's completely meaningless, then. Excellent. Why would anyone on Vista or 7 care exactly how many days of XP support are left? Seems like a slap in the face, honestly. "Hey, XP users! Check out this clock we made, it tells you how much time you have left with that software you bought from us. Oh, what was that? You can't run gadgets on XP? Oh, snap! Guess it's time for an upgrade. Here, buy one of our new products and be like a cool person!"

I can't tell if my sarcasm was too subtle or if yours is simply more so.