If you do go with R, be sure to check out Rstudio (rstudio.org), which is a very nice front-end for R.

In response to the posters who tell you that R is low quality because it's open source, I can tell you that's nonsense. I have Stata, Matlab, and R on my machine, and access to SAS on a research server. There are times to use each, but all else equal I use R. It's not trivial to learn, but it's a powerful high-quality piece of software, widely used in the statistics community. Whether it's appropriate for your use depends on you and the task. But it's great software.

I got fed up with Firefox's creeping RAM consumption. I would have firefox and a bunch of other stuff running, then I'd launch Virtualbox and the whole machine would come to a grinding halt. I would check and discover that Firefox was consuming 2gb out of 4. Switching to Chrome fixed that problem. I love Firefox, but it simply wasn't working well. They say they've finally fixed the RAM consumption problem, but then they said the same thing a few versions back.

I want to do a quick calculation in mathematica. I don't have a mathematica license on my personal machine. I log in to the research server, launch mathematica remotely, do my thing, log off.

Are you really claiming this is use case is no longer important? At my university I see it all the time.

Maybe I'm missing something.

Out of curiousity, what do you dislike about the nook + cm7? I ask because I have the same. I put swype on it, and it works quite well for my purposes (browsing, pdf reading). The absence of GPS and camera is unfortunate, but I knew they'd be missing. Only problem I've noticed is that for some reason gmail doesn't sync well.

I liked labs, but I like great *finished* software even more. In my experience Google is great at rolling out early versions of cool software but often failing (or taking ridiculously long) to add critical features that would really make it complete.

If Larry Page is telling the troops that they now have to finish that final 10%, I'm all for it.

And for those complaining about innovation: G+ isn't innovative??

Are you using LaTeX to write your papers? If so, I *highly* recommend Beamer, which is a LaTeX style. It's pretty customizable, so you should be able to create eye candy with a little investment. But I love its straightforward use of LaTeX syntax. You display a presentation with a pdf viewer such as Acrobat. If LaTeX is installed correctly, there should not be problems with red X's. And you can just cut and paste equations and includegraphics commands from your papers.

If you're not using LaTeX, well, then, never mind!

The "better option" that the airlines almost never take is to book you on another airline. Of course, that would cost them money as opposed to making you wait for an empty seat, which costs them almost nothing.

You have a legitimate beef, but shouldn't you be complaining to congress? (I just now clicked your link -- nice site! -- and I see that you live in Scotland. Not sure who you should complain to.) Instead of dealing with copyright in a serious and thoughtful way, in the US we get asinine and cynical legislation like the Sonny Bono copyright extension act and the DMCA. It's no wonder that average folks have no respect for copyright, and one certainly can't expect Google to show more respect than is required by the law.

I feel at least some of your pain -- I've written a textbook and pdfs of my book are widely available. I'm not sure what the new world will look like (and not sure that my current work on a new edition will ever be repaid). But I also recognize --- speaking here about my case, not yours --- that a large percentage of the effort devoted to a new textbook edition is all about marketing and killing the used book market, which for most books is a social waste. These incentives *should* go away. The current model is broken. (My editor argued with me about this until she read Chris Anderson's "Free".) I don't know enough about photography to have an opinion in your case. But we need a less corrupt legal framework for sure.

Anyway, best of luck with your work.

Thank you for quoting this. I saw this yesterday and was trying to square it with the google video in TFA that suggests that only your contacts will see your +1s. After they got keel-hauled for Buzz, I can't believe that Google is introducing this without being completely explicit about the control you have (or don't) over who sees your recommendations.

If I could select a group of contacts who would see my +1s, I would use it.

One loan application that he acknowledges filling out had true income information from a recent year. For another, in which the income was clearly exaggerated, he claims he did not fill out the application and handwriting evidence may support him.

Moreover the jury found him not guilty of providing false information to the bank, but guilty of mortgage fraud. Huh?

The guy doesn't come off as clean, but it's not clear he should be in jail. It's an astonishing story and worth a read.