I agree. Thats a real credibility buster for second mention. Ubuntu a disappointment because it hasn't unseated Windows in a few years -- C'mon! Anyone using Ubuntu would not call it a dissappointment. Its a great product. The main reason more people don't use it is because (1) it hasn't reached critical mass (yes I know thats a bit "chicken and egg") (2) Geeks who support relatives/companies/schools with bootlegs. If people stop reinstalling windows for people who can't find the cds, the lost product stickers, or don't have licenses to productivity and other software, I think many people would be using ubuntu and other linux distros.

Don't men pee sitting down in Germany? Not sure if a society where fellow men don't pee standing up can be considered cool.

Since when does quantum physics make something impossible? Probably never.

Seriously! Thats all he needs! Why the big hubub? Mostly he'll need ram!

I used to use Joomla 1.5 for my company site. Then tried doing it over in Drupal and Wordpress. If you have a single maintainer, Wordpress wins hands down on both the easy and extensible ends. If you know any php you can do a lot with Wordpress and the functions are well documented. Its was much easier to customize templates in WP than an Joomla or Drupal. If you just want a site or blog out the box, and cant code to save your life, templates and plugins are easy to use.

You could choose not to accept government funded healthcare. How is that gov't control? Many doctors don't take any insurance. Insurance companies reject procedures and medicine all the time, but based on budgets not on science and stats.

Or the Secret Service planted fake plans to mislead an adversary. We'll probably never know.

I'm pretty sure that linux can run linux.

Uh? I've been using boxee for about 6 months. Not vaporware. Didn't even get a private invite. Signed up at the site, a week later got the invite. Oh wait -- are you a windows user? That must be the issue. Linux and mac have had boxee for a long time.

P-e-d-a-g-o-g-y look it up. Its not as simple as saying X amount of people use it. I've seen plenty of people use them. How does one know they are effective without actual pedagogy & studies? How do you know that the teachers who use whiteboard effectively wouldn't be just as effective without them? How do you know if those same teachers aren't more effective without them? Its not that simple. Teaching is a science. Show me the pedagogy. Show me the studies not sponsored by interactive whiteboard companies.

I'm not saying don't use media, I'm saying don't spend $ on proprietary whiteboards that are unproven in pedagogy. Even in the example you pointed out, the majority the benefit is from the careful use of media. Your lesson example had nothing to do with an interactive whiteboard and would have completely worked with a projector as I had suggested. Creating and using Media is well understood, and widely understood to be beneficial in the pedagogy.

As for the formats, don't be an idiot. Because someone releases a reader for their files doesn't make it an open and interoperable format. If you can't modify the file to use it for your lesson then you can't teach. Just ask the folks in the UK trying to put forward a standard whiteboard format, so that publishers, schools, teachers can share user created content that are device independent.

1) It doesn't solve the problem of peak uranium. Just like oil, the scale of the a uranium powered age is 1-2 lifetimes. Not good enough to be a "solution".

2) Has anyone demonstrated and had repeated a fusion reactor that is net energy positive?

3) 99% reduction of waste still leaves the 1% of waste that lasts 10k to 1m years. You minimize the problem, but still don't reduce it to a human scale.

4) Transport. How do you get the waste from 10-15 LWR to one of these? Oh thats right you have to transport it by train and truck. Just dandy! That's not an accident waiting to happen at all!

5) How is this better than Thorium cycle based reactors? Liquid Thorium reactors apparently don't require mixing fission and fusion (KISS), produce waste that last 300 years not 1m, burn thorium for which we have supplies for ages and even mine from other planets, and can be started and stopped safely reacting to peak demand, and were safely demonstrated in the 60s.

I'll take a flyer, but I'm not going to tho

Interactive whiteboards are crap. There is little teaching theory behind there effective use. They can't be used as regular whiteboards when computers or networks are down or bulbs burn out, and they lock you into proprietary formats that will burn you if you ever want or need to switch.

If I had to do the same, and someday I may, I'd load up a customized linux distro on netbooks and have them available on carts. Save your money for the good classroom projectors, splurge on the network -- buy good routers, get good coverage, get good bandwidth -- and reserve a repair and replacement budget. Few people remember to budget for good printers, digital cameras, a few webcams, digital mics, a few digital camcorders. The idea would be to give kids access and permission to create media. Good projectors are worth it because the teachers don't have to turn off the lights to use them.

Above all else: Budget for things to break and get stolen! Don't scare teachers and kids into not using the equipment!

Shows how much all these posters know.

MKV is an excellent container format. It supports multiple subtitles, chapters, menus, multiple audio/video streams. Its just now gaining popularity, so people are right to want to convert it to play portably. The whole idea is that if divx has accepted it for divx 7 then, it will be compatible with the next generation.

I'd understand if MP4, M4V, MPG, or AVI were actually as GOOD and as OPEN as MKV, and MKV were closed or limited in licensing in any way, but none of this is the case. If people never pushed for new standards we'd all still be using animated gifs.

Face it: MKV is a great container format for doing everything a DVD can in less space, in a single file.