And they showed they know how to do photo software with both iPhoto (which pretty much eliminated the market for Photoshop Elements on OS-X) and with Aperture (which competes toe to toe with Lightroom).

On the other hand I think Steve Jobs made a great point about this at the iPhone OS 4 event. If your end user has to use some sort of process management you have failed. The more I have thought about it the more I agree, only coders and debuggers should have to deal with process management. If I'm not working on the project I don't care about processes, and unless your program is screwing up my system I don't care about processes.

Of course he's not limiting himself to only free apps, just as right now paid apps can run ads if they want to (for example the CNN does this). Very few companies can get away with this though, most users will refuse to pay for most applications with ads.

I think the Apple solution is super smart when it comes to battery life, and I imagine it incorporates tech from OS-X's Grand Central Dispatch.

I feel I have to respond since you were modded insightful instead of funny. This is for the free apps that display ads (like a few of the ones I have). These applications can now use iAds if they want, or can use AdMob, Greystripe, or roll their own solution.

I think this happened to GE towards the end of Welch's reign. I remember for a while they were really good at recruiting great people out of college, and people who would have potentially been at the bottom tier were able to work less than a year than jump ship to higher pay and better conditions. Who knows how many quality people and ideas GE lost out on because of that.

I work in the steel industry, you insensitive clod!

I'm talking genetics too. It is a bit more complex than the simplification PBS treats it with. Genetically there is around a 1-3% difference between current humans in the world. There are no stark lines when comparing genomes. Scientifically race doesn't stand. Please see Dr. Craig Venter's research on the human genome in this regard. The differences between race are crazy small, and things you might attribute to one race (for example in America the sickle cell attribute is associated with people of African descent) are actually non-existent (people of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Indian descent have developed the sickle cell trait - it correlates to malaria distribution better than population groups). Evolutionary scientists have pretty much rejected race, and even social scientists have switched to self-identified ethnicity. If you are trying to group people into races, the clade I described were the last accepted groupings, but fell out of favor with science in the 1970's. Even in the 1960's Livingston concluded that there were no races, but instead only clines. Even with the clade view there are huge problems, which also exist in the model you propose, such as the European/Caucasian grouping being as large of a swath as it is due to social reasons rather than science.

Umm.. no. African includes Nigerian, Bantu, and Bushman. Caucasian includes Italian, English, Iranian, Indian and Lapp. Oceanian includes Australian Aborigine and New Guinean. East Asian includes Japanese, Chinese, Malay, Polynesian, and Micronesian. Native American includes Eskimo, Brazil Indian, and Alaska Indian. Now current theory under this breakdown is that Native Americans split from East Asians, but to say they are of the same would be the same as saying Caucasians are Africans. This is viewing races as a clade. There are interpretations of race besides viewing us as subspecies of a general ancestor, including that race is nothing more than a social construct.

I think you are definitely recalling incorrectly. The way you describe race is controversial, but if you are going to buy into it you have at least Africans, Caucasians, Oceanian, East Asian, and Native American.

What kind of bank do you use? My credit union provides Visa debit cards with their checking accounts and there are no fees attached. In the 8 years I've been with them the only fees I've had is using non Co-op ATMs (no free from my credit union, just the ATM owner/network). If you don't have the cash in your account than your card is declined, as simple as that.

How you interact with data. There was a great lecture at MIT on on this that is on iTunes. With the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch you have to remember you are interacting with the data directly, there is none of the abstraction that a mouse induces. I think this is best displayed in the iPad photo app, the way you can glide through albums or use a spread gesture to peak inside of stacks.

Can you please link to a cheaper one? One with a similar size screen? I would really like one, but there seem to be an extreme lack of links or product names in this thread. And according to the Ars article I read a week or so ago no potential competitors were interested in aiming at below $500.

Obviously it must be extremely hard to do on a computer - every bar, shop, and lumberyard I got to uses computer systems and I can't put anything on my tab at any of them. There are some bars that will let me keep a tab, but they make me give them a credit card before they start it and make me close it before I leave.

So because GQ and Gilette aren't good at aiming ads to their demographic you are punishing Ars for it? The reason you probably can't get ads for the stuff you're interested in is because you use ad blockers, smart companies marketing geeky stuff know their audience is very likely to have ad blockers so they don't put their advertising money there.