the idea of constructing robots from modular parts is really cool. On the other hand, I've never found myself in a situation that called for a tree-climbing robot-snake.

True. It's not possible to copyright a fact. However, the question at hand was whether whole articles can be "borrowed." In order to cite facts, someone must be willing to write those facts into a new article. On the other hand, most of these topics are probably covered already in Wikipedia, so maybe a quick citation wouldn't be such a problem after all.

"webcam chat" not "webchat"

Is anyone really surprised someone finally offers this service? It's basically omegle with webcams. It's not a real stretch to go from anonymous chatroom to random chatroom to random webchat.

My college actually switched to Gmail recently. The only real problem I've had is that Google confuses my college Gmail calendar with my regular Gmail account. I still haven't figured out how that's even possible.

LAN parties are great, but only if you plan to make a day of it. If I could have four computers permanently set up and ready to go, that would definitely beat out a console. Even so, portability is another plus on a console. It's easier to bring the entire party in console form than to bring one computer to the LAN party.

I think there's something to be said for a tool that's designed for the job though. What I like about the Wii, for example, is the ability to play games with three of my friends and feel like I'm playing with real people. Fraging a guy who's half-way around the world just isn't the same.

On an engineering feat of this scale, you're bound to encounter some serious obstacles. If Windows 7 suffers a debilitating break-down every other week, will we assume the future is trying to prevent Microsoft from destroying the world? Well...maybe that's a bad example.

Pirate: I'd like to borrow some money.
Banker: For what?
Pirate: I'm planning a bank robbery. The return on your investment will be considerable.
Banker: That sounds reasonable...

Obviously space exploration has fueled a great deal of technological advancement in the U.S., but are there any other reasons to go to Mars? I know we like to explore and whatnot, but space exploration is an expensive pass-time. If technological advancement is the only practical benefit, let's just spend money directly on technological research instead of touting it as a positive side-effect.

If you actually read the article, they explain that the goal of this program is cost-effectiveness, and that implementing the network you just described would be too expensive.

The article doesn't say much about what "good" means. If they tested what I assume are the 16 most popular products and none of them achieved "very good," by what standard do they judge? A ranked list would have been more useful for me.

Also, I find it ironic that "average" is one of the scores. "Good" and "poor" imply an objective scoring system, but "average" would imply that the score is relative to the rest of the group. : )

That was my first thought too. Maybe they meant that it is one of the most prestigious awards and that it is the only general award, not that it is the most prestigious, general award.

This is an interesting idea, but I wonder what additional cost and labor is involved? I know the Florida ballot count debacle wasn't all that long ago, but are we that concerned about votes not being counted?