Indeed, the global cooling scare that reached its peak around the early 70s attributed the cooling to particulate emissions in the atmosphere. We cleaned up our particulate emissions quite a bit after that.

1. Voice commands will work really poorly in crowded places. I'm trying to picture how I'd use voice commands reliably in Denver airport.

2. Any sort of holographic projection thing is going to require something to project on. For privacy reasons you'll often want something you can hold up to your face, and there are many surfaces that would be impolite to use for a holographic keyboard. If you have something you're holding up to your face, now you have to hold the watch steady relative to it... you'd be better off with a detachable LCD screen. At which point you might as well put the phone hardware in the LCD screen instead.

3. Again, ergonomic factors dictate that a watch is not more convenient than a phone for making calls. My watch has one button on the front and four out of the way on the sides. More buttons on the front would make it harder to use (it is typically pressed blind, sometimes while wearing gloves, usually while very tired and out of breath, and for my purposes I need fairly precise timing). A phone needs... a numeric keypad! A device with an effective keypad and be easy to talk into, something good enough that I'd prefer it to my landline, would have to be big. You could have a Bluetooth thing that looks like a phone or a headset or something... but, again, you might as well just make that the phone instead. If you get a call on your watch-phone and don't have a headset with you, what can you do about it? You just get a ring, and maybe you can listen to the message.

Windows 7 now features a math input panel, which converts handwritten mathematics to MathML. You can see screenshots at this link: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2008/10/29/windows-7-math-input-panel-screenshots

I definitely approve of companies patenting technology I never want to see anywhere.

Linux has been at it for 15 years and (as indicated by an earlier slashdot story this very day) sound is still broken out of the box on Ubuntu.

And you still can't reliably cut and paste between apps.

Not exactly ready for prime time.

Really, that's funny because who is it that implements software that the manufacturer didn't think of or didn't want to spend time on? It's kind of an odd statement to make, because having a thriving enthusiast community is something which sells an awful lot of units. People tend to be pretty jaded about certain things like marketing, having enthusiasts to make the recommendations and help out new owners is a pretty significant resource to have.

I would also argue that almost no one knows how to cut a feather and write with an inker. Writing has always evolved. Only the volume and quality of written works is important.

- Parallel Extensions to .NET
- Surface
- Photosynth
- WorldWide Telescope

I don't know if Parallel Extensions is worth $8 billion, but it's a huge deal and the cornerstone of the ManyCore/Multicore work MS is doing. It's pretty freaking cool. (And the Mono folks have already implemented it...)