Not on planet earth. MS has 80% of the corporate desktop environment, but for everything else, they are irrelevant. Web, mobile, embedded... you name it. What's the latest market share of IIS? Less than 15%.

And here is another... I was just reading the news about all the GOP candidates doing the last minute push in Iowa. And all the media outlets are reporting this as a simple matter of life.

Let me ask you this. If you were making an important decision with lasting impact in your personal life, would you do it hastily based on the last minute information you manage to gather? Of course not. You would take your time, do your research, and give it careful thoughts over a period of time. Now why would it be any different when it comes to a presidental election?

Last minite political campaign should be illegal. In an ideal world, all campaign activities should cease, say, three months prior to an election, so that the voters can have a cool-down period, let the heated rhetoric and emotions subside, and use facts and logic to pick their candidate.

But then, it would require an informed, educated, and rational consitiutency with an attention span longer than a TV show episode...

Here is the thing. Science is hard. Thinking is hard. Most people would rather live a comfortable lie than facing the cold, hard truth.

Well, here is the cold, hard truth: Learning is HARD. Period.

Some kids, for one reason or another, are more interested and motivated in learning than others, but they are a small minority. (Nerds are among them, but that's another story.) Even so, they are mostly only interested in learning a subset of the subjects offered as the general education. Most other kids couldn't care less and are in school only because they have to.

Electronic gadgets are not going to help much. Short of the invention of a knowledge serum (e.g., a shot for advanced physics, another for Greek history), or a Matrix-style interface, there is no easy way out.

And the web was created at CERN. Enough said.

If you ever applied for a patent you'll know it's just a standard procedure in patent application.

Basically, you list all known prior art to the best of your knowledge, and then state the advantages of your invention over prior art. In fact Google wouldn't be doing a good job (and risk having the patent application rejected) if they didn't mention the Slashdot mod system and its perceived shortcomings.

Of course, whether the whole idea is patentable to begin with is another story.

As I said in the past, here is a simple solution: Make the patent ownership non-transferable.

The original purpose of patents was to provide limited protection for inventors for their time and effort, NOT as a weapon of dubious litigation among megacorps which routinely "acquire" patents and have nothing to with the original inventions.

Well the Peloponnesian War predates this clock by about 300 years...

But the ancient Greeks indeed came so close to the scientific and industrial revolution that it makes a fascinating fiction of alternative history. For example they even had working steam engine and railway around the same time period of the clock:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diolkos

Interesting thought experiment.

I think one of the biggest problems of people in depression is the inability to snap out of the moment and see the bright side. Whatever happening (or not happening, for that matter) in their current life is precisely what's dragging them down. If they could manage to cut all cords and start a new life, they would've already gone through a major "paradigm shift" in their mind and snapped out of it, and ironically no longer needed to start anew.