Look at the stats. The old ones never really go away. They just get overshadowed by the newer ones. A little bit of trickery is also done with counting variants as separate malware. Anything to keep the stats down.

I don't want a touch screen. How about saving the touch screen and making a $150 laptop? The touch screen is just unwanted extra cost. I have a hard enough time keeping the screen clean without people intentionally smearing their grubby fingers across it. It's definitely not anything I want to pay extra for.

Netbooks are quite useful. I'd also like to see more ARM units with long battery life. The netbook form has more room for battery than a tablet does so there really aren't any excuses any more for not having 10 - 12 hours of battery. That's enough to get through a full day at a conference or long flight with transfers.

M$ did cause Nokia to tank. That was done via Elop. The topic of Elop comes up often at Tomi Ahonen's blog. He is the most accurate mobile forcaster around and has on multiple occasions enumerated the damage being caused by Microsoft's Elop at Nokia. Nokia was at the top of it's game when Elop killed it. The Linux phone that he stopped was getting better reviews than the iPhone. But at this point there's nothing viable left and he's even brought in more people from M$ than just himself to ensure that the damage is permanent. Most of the talent has been fired or left on their own. If you want to look for progress, you'll have to turn away from Nokia and towards Jolla. That's just a sample of what the state of Washington can expect with microsofter in charge.

It's not just the war spending, it's how the money is spent on war spending. An already expensive situation is made even more expensive through no-bid contracts and private contractors in general. You have Halliburton and Xe (formerly Blackwater) and many other private contractors gouging the government for services that would have been much more inexpensive and efficient if still done by the military. Yes that includes all those growing numbers of no-bid contracts that this administration is continuing to hand out, just like the previous one did.

There may be a usual reason to ensure disclaimers, etc are read, but javascript is definitely not the way to go. You can very easily require a specific http referrer URL by configuring Apache to require it for a file or directory. Or you can simply have a plain old README or LICENSE file included in the tarball. Javascript just hurts usability and makes things over complicated and broken.

Some have four chemicals in their eyes. Specifically, some women can see four colors instead of our standard RGB. Also, some animals can see into the UV range.

You forgot Zune, Kin, and Xbox. Yeah xbox is still a money loser in spite of all the paid hype. It has lost $3 billiion in 10 years and is kept alive only by money from the Windows (OEM) monopoly and the Office (file format) monopoly. It has by far the most hype, so that may be why perception flies in the face of reality.

I thought constant-speed wind turbines were an outdated technology already. The wind blows with varying force, the turbine should be able to adapt. More energy can be collected by variable speed turbines. The fixed speed turbines are also, as you point out, higher maintenance.

You certainly can grow things up north, but the main problem is that while this sort of thing will expand the northern limits of arable land, that won't come close to compensating for the much more productive land further south that will suffer desertification.

That's a point that many miss. Not all land is equally productive. On some land you can get a high yield with minimal effort. On other land it takes all kinds of effort and chemicals. Unfortunately between urban sprawl and global warming we are losing the former. I've only seen one or two new subdivisions built on boulders or bedrock. I've seen hundreds tearing up rich fields prime for farming. That's not land we can get back. The best use of that land is for growing food.

In addition to the soil, there are factors like light and microclimate. The best farm land was scoped out before the 1900's and if we pave it over, it is gone.

The USDA has updated its map of plant hardiness zones to reflect the new, warmer conditions. You can argue about whatever you want to argue about, but the reality is here that you can grow things further north than you could before.

Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party has a good summary of the attempt to ban porn as well as a call to action. Apparently getting e-mail through to the parliamentarians is not as straight forward as one might wish. Christian EngstrÃm, MEP, also of the Swedish Pirate Party has a good analysis of the attempted ban. Basically it's a grab at control and censorship under another guise.