This is exactly what patents *should* be used for: secure rewards for innovators who take the risk of bringing out a future-leading product.

The US auto companies who had a product vision apparently inspired by Country & Western music unfortunately passed on the opportunity, and now they'll have to pay.

Don't assume a domain that appears unused is being squatted. It might be used for email, and it might have various unpublished subdomains that are being used.

Sure, but that particular phrase won't help much (I tried), and I think it would be hard work to find a reliable set of words to filter away. Furthermore, you might remove more than what you want (for example the site you want, if it contains a link to sites for price comparisons).

The real problem is that you sometimes want to exclude classes of sites.

That is a great idea! In my simple test, it did filter away some of the annoyances (kelkoo for example), but left some other sites in (swedish sites, that's where I am). At any rate, it is a step forward. Thanks.

That is useful if a single site is the problem, but how do I say "I do not want results from any price comparison site"? This is a problem I see more and more of: searching for a product can bring up pages of more or less lame price comparison sites before meaning ful sites. The actual producer of the product you are looking for is surprisingly often way down in my listings.

Staring at a console? Ewww. Ever heard of GroundWork?

I wish they would cover the entire ocean surface. There is a lot of interesting stuff out there, and last time I checked they only show the coastlines. Would be fun to see tankers in the middle of the ocean, killer waves on the loose, plastic garbage collected in the middle of the south pacific, tiny sailboats in the middle of nowwhere, reefs, whales, giant squid, narwhal - maybe even Cthulhu is out there somewhere.

Someone got me to mix up the programming environments! My son has tried Scratch, not squeak...

Aw, I got it wrong: I mean Scratch (from MIT), not Squeak. Scratch is great! We have not looked at squeak.

I am also a fan of mindstorms, as many others replying in this thread, but I have seen that kids tend to "get stuck" simply building Lego... With motors and whatever of course, but the actual programming part has become parenthetical and very simplistic.

There is nothing wrong with that, of course! I have recommended mindstorms as a xmas present just a few days ago, but if you are really looking at teaching programming, then you will have to work a little extra to make the kids focus on the programming part.

Squeak is quite similar to the mindstorms programming environment, all graphical, and the kids will have a blast.

So, buy the kids Lego Mindstorms for christmas and use Squeak for teaching programming...

My 12-year old son has had a great time with squeak, and so has a couple of his friends. You can make some simple but fun games and you work with graphics all the time, which that age group really wants.

Using squeak, you get acquainted with all the basic concepts of programming, so I believe it is a terrific starting point. Both my son and a friend of his are now ready for the next level, writing programs, and we just have to find what would be the suitable continuation (no pun intended!)

Nice username! But judging by your userid (525388), you got that short name quite some time ago.