The thing doesn't sound very useful if the only way to erase is to wipe the entire screen. I'd like to use something like this to replace pencil-and-eraser for math, but not if it's like using a pen...

If you think more abstractly... There's no reason that "counting" has to denote that you mentally encode a number in decimal notation. If you can remember some nontrivial quantity, regardless of what process you use to recall it, I see no reason why you can't call that "counting".

For example, we can say informally that a pushdown automaton has the ability to count, because it can retain some unbounded memory of the number of symbols it has encountered. The information is there, even if you can't directly ask it and get an answer like "613".

Anecdote: Microsoft was pitching student-discounted Windows 7 on my uni campus a few days ago. After waiting patiently through a demonstration of the silly window gestures, I asked a rep how I would go about opening an SSH terminal. His recommendation was "go to Google and download something".

You live by your customers being idiots, you die by your customers being idiots.

I'd bet that if AT&T has decent voice coverage and spotty 3G, it has benefited from a lot of customers not realizing that those coverage areas can be different. Verizon's ad turns the same ignorance against them, and now they're upset about it.

The notion of a mobile phone service provider suing anyone over being misleading is astoundingly ironic.

Why would you need an anti-virus if you have a router whose firewall is worth a damn ...

Maybe if you own a laptop and sometimes leave home with it.

A 1-file software package... like a .deb??? Double-click in Nautilus to run gdebi-gtk, click "Install package", done. No "applications folder" necessary.

Are the doctors and lawyers the ones who can't repay their student loans?

How can one message be harassment?

Why can't they both have some responsibility? The point is that the poke and defriending are equally trivial. It shouldn't matter which one of them is responsible - It's such a small thing that the government simply does not need to get involved.

... I can count the audience members on my fingers.

That's not saying much... I doubt the theater can even hold 1024 people ;)

Also, if they're still 'friends' on Facebook, the restraining order should be nullified.

Likewise if she didn't change her phone number and move to a completely new residence the restraining order should be nullified. see how absurd that is when you apply it to the physical world.

The victim probably has so many friends she didn't think to remove the offender.

While she was filing a restraining order, it seems like de-friending the person might have been a reasonable thing to think about.

Facebook de-friending is at most a 60-second process. Even if she "forgot" to do it, she can notice the poke, and then do it. Yes, we have restraining orders so that people don't have take drastic steps like change residences to get away from someone. But shouldn't there be SOME aspect of personal responsibility in this process, so the government doesn't have to protect you from your own voluntary connections on social networking websites?

Add in the tendency of youth to rebel against authority, push boundaries, and do stupid things ...

At least for me, school is what created that tendency. I was a pretty laid-back kid, but when you're stuck in classes for 7 straight hours every day with "work" that generally entails little more than copying text from one page to another, you look for anything to occupy your mind. The most readily available thing (for those not quite mature enough to know better) is just to bug the hell out of others.

College-age students don't need to have an attention span for more than a couple classes a day - Why does anyone think that younger kids can sit still for 7 hours to do anything meaningful?

We have the same sort of policy at my work - unlocked machines are open to pranks. This has the nice side effect that it encourages people to learn more about Linux as they try to invent more creative trickery.

So if I was to mail you a package with three sticks of dynamite, a blasting cap, and had it rigged to blow up when you opened it... it'd be your fault for getting blown up?

Almost a good analogy, except that mail bombs are not sent as frequently as malicious emails. If a significant portion of packages contained explosives, then yes, we probably would hold recipients accountable for not taking appropriate precautions when opening their mail.

Unethical? Why? Best Buy is trying to sell Microsoft products, so they're training their employees to sell Microsoft products. Seems straightforward.