Honestly, I get to a point where I end up with 20-40 tabs open in each of ten different windows. Then Firefox gets too slow and I bookmark everything and start over...

To carry that analogy forward a bit...

Suppose the magical cooking machine had a "mashup" feature where you could combine the best elements of various meals that have been created by those who came before you. You could then post your creation for the world at whole to try, where it would then, in turn, be eaten and reviewed.

Creativity would explode!* And the tools to create new dishes, previously accessible only to those with years of dedicated training, would be available to everyone. Sure, you'd get a lot of crap, but you'd also get some truly innovative and wonderful meals. Much like the process of evolution.

As someone said earlier, there are smart people, and there are dumb people, and the Internet won't change that. There are also those who want to create, and those who just want to passively consume. The Internet won't change that, either.

But the Internet is an extremely powerful tool for those who are smart and/or creative. I have the world's biggest library and university at my fingertips, and so does everyone else. For those who want to (or are compelled to) take advantage of it, the possibilities are endless...

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* The globalization of food has created some homogeneity, true. You can find McDonald's and Starbucks everywhere you look. But it has also led to a huge burst in creativity, especially in terms of fusion. For instance, I doubt you'd find an Indian-Mexican fusion restaurant in 1940. Pumpkin enchiladas, anyone?

It all depends on how you want to traverse the tree. Depth-first or breadth-first. The Internet is not exactly a tree, but many parts are tree-like. Knowledge is the same way.

I tend to traverse depth-first, so visiting a top-level node (which is really more of an entry point) inevitably leads towards a deeper traversal. Often, it doesn't take long till I hit something that's quite informative and thought-provoking, and I'm done drilling down (or over, or up), so I go back a level or two and continue. But I wouldn't call this skimming, exactly.

This approach to learning is much more interactive than reading a book about the same topic, and it's usually more rewarding to me as well. A book provides a framework, and often a hypothesis. But if that's given to you up front, it takes all the fun out of it. And in many areas (particular where rapid change is happening) it's just not possible. You need to be able to synthesize your own frameworks to make sense of what's happening.

You sound like my three-year-old. But then again, I'm not doing much better.

Personally, I would go with iPad Maxi. And I do mean personally. If, that is, I didn't have a Y chromosome.

I liked the iSlate name. You could have done some pretty cool graphics on the case to go along with it, too. I guess that "iSlate" could be rephrased as "Is Late," but compared to iPad...

Just wait until Apple makes the iWii emulator available.

iWii on my iPad...

The iPod came out in late 2001. The iPad (Fujitsu version) came out in 2002. It was a real product. I don't think you can call Fujitsu a trademark troll here.

Let's add to the car analogy.

20 or 30 years ago, cars needed a lot more maintenance than they do today. And automatic transmissions weren't as common. So people were generally more connected to the road and more skilled under the hood. But most people (then and now) use a car as an appliance, and they want it to be as simple and trouble-free as possible. End of story. They don't have the slightest interest in even shifting gears, let alone changing the oil. They just want to get in, turn the key (or press the power button), shift into "D", and go.

There will always be those who do want a stick shift and will tinker under the hood to tune their car's performance. And this is a good thing. But the vast majority of drivers are not like this. They don't care if they *can* pop the hood because they never will.

Sometimes things do manage to work out for the best.

But then, you discover that your child's toys are full of lead (or worse, cadmium), that practically all canned foods contain BPA, and that building codes are sometimes ignored, especially in countries like Haiti.

You definitely want to make sure that the multi-ton metal box you ride around in is not provided by the lowest bidder.

And maybe those mass-produced foodstuffs are truly scary, and really shouldn't be called foodstuffs.

I, for one, am worried.

That wouldn't work since the data file comes in on stdin, right? But this line should be equivalent:

./lug UA129086 - - - < luggage.dat

Even World War II was largely an information war. Cryptography and code-breaking to find out what the enemy was planning, where their fleets were, etc. Very much a geek war.

I wonder if people without this genetic variant are quicker learners in general. Or if the quick learning is limited to spatial and motor skills. I'd like to see them study other activities, like playing video games of other types, learning some non-physical skill, rock climbing, playing basketball, riding a bike, etc. It would be interesting to see where correlations pop up.

Particularly if the ads are targeted to a specific viewer's interests and demographic group. If I could use TiVo's thumbs-up/thumbs-down feature on ads (a la Pandora), and that data went back upstream, coupled with my basic demographic data, that would be valuable information as well.

42...?