I'm still trying to figure out why he decided that this was an example of thinking like a computer scientist. I think it makes a better illustration of a naive 8th grade economics argument.

Even assuming that Alzheimer's will not directly cause death (there is a possibility it might), there are many lethal complications and problems that are directly or very closely caused by Alzheimer's. Consider that HIV/AIDS is not a direct cause of death; all else equal, no vital organs shut down when the immune system dies. No one considers HIV/AIDS as anything but terminal. A quick Wikipedia jaunt and a two minute Google search tell me that Alzheimer's is in fact fatal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer's_disease#Prognosis

It isn't "50% of disc media". The 50% figure is for -players-. How many people kept buying new VCR's at thr analogous age and price point for DVD's relative to Blu-Ray? I think half the market of new players is actually pretty atrocious. Blu-ray players aren't that much more expensive that the purported additions shouldn't have overcome the price gap.

No yel-- Auuuuuuuugh!

The best way to lose weight is to do both. Diets primarily burn through the glycogen before any fat is broken down. See: this wikipedia article. Speaking of low calorie foods, try celery; it has a negative calorie balance! Combined with a lower nutritional value than most common lawn grasses, celery is a completely useless food.

Do any of you British slashdotters in University have access to the full text of the second article? The brief description in the "methods" section doesn't say if the researchers were monitoring or controlling the diet of the subjects. It seems absurd that they would not, but it's possible that the lack of weight loss was partially caused by an increase in caloric intake. After all, the stated intent of the research was to study how the health benefits from exercise are affected by changes in body weight, not whether exercise is necessary or sufficient to achieve weight loss. The major result from the British study points out that exercise can make one a healthier and happier individual even if one doesn't lose much weight. The Colorado study refutes the popular notion that exercise causes an "afterburn" of fat. Both exercise and a diet change are necessary for weight loss, but neither one is sufficient by itself. Why is this surprising to anyone?

A big difference between the case in the article and the counter-examples most people have been coming up with seems to lie in the legal definition of blindness. Notice that the plaintiff requests better "visual cues" for certain tasks. Brandon likely is legally blind and not actually Helen Keller style blind. I have several friends who are legally blind without glasses or contacts, so the threshold is quite a bit higher than you might be thinking. All Brandon seems to be asking for are some easy UI design improvements and options. Hell, I'd wager that the same improvements would make it easier for elderly people to play these games. This is a quick issue that could easily be solved by farming it out to a different company or even mods. Simple UI improvement isn't that hard or expensive. As per the rock climbing analogy, imagine that you could climb fairly well, but had trouble tying many of the knots. A gym that ignored your request for help in tying these knots would be full of asshats. Probably not lawsuit worthy, but still not something very difficult for them to do. If Brandon was completely without sight, this would be a stupid lawsuit setting a bad precedent. However, he's just asking for some user-interface options and improvement, which isn't that unrealistic a thing to want. Hell, installing elevators in certain buildings is a far bigger pain in the ass.