I've been using the same wired mouse at my office for 13 years. Its a Logitech M-U0007 (I think it's called the M500 now). No signs of wear on the cable at all.

Came here to say this. Glad to see others agree.

I grew up with a knock off that My dad purchased ages ago, and even as a knock off, it's my favorite place to sit when I visit his house. Amazon sells real nice looking knock offs for about $600, but I can't vouch for their comfort...

Obviously on the fly translation is only possible in exceptionally small cases. The point I was trying to make, however, is that if the speaker is speaks more than a single sentence, the software should be smart enough to begin translating the completed sentence while the speaker continues to talk, thus minimizing the lag. People don't always communicate back and forth with single sentences...

I think the use of the phrase "real time" is a bit sensational. To me, that suggests that the translation is being heard on the recipient's end while the speaker is still speaking.
Obviously there has to be some delay in order to account for sentence structure differences between languages, but the fact that the speaker basically has to complete a paragraph and then wait for it to go through makes it seem like their software is "simply" taking the output of dictation software, piping it into Google translate, then piping it into a speech synthesizer, and then making both parties wait for it to finish speaking. It looks like a promising start, and I'm sure it's not a trivial feat.
Star Trek, I suppose, has given me high expecations for how a universal translator will work...

All I know is I've been terribly dissapointed with Unity. It looks like it's trying to be hip and cool, but feels so clunky that I give up after using it for more than 5 minutes.

I haven't given KDE much of a chance yet. It seems to be getting high marks from the crowd here, so Maybe I'll try it out.

I'd like to see a Desktop Environment modeled after OpenStep. It just worked and felt light without feeling cheap. Ah, the good old days...

One of the most interesting parts, I thought, of the behind the scenes for Episode IV was the part where they show the footage Lucas used to model the dog fights in space. He spliced footage from old WWII films, and when watching the spliced footage (that they copied nearly frame for frame) I knew exactly what part it was portraying in Episode IV. Star Wars is certianly heavily influenced by WWII films.

New, as in, nothing like it visually had been seen on the cinema screen. So many films have common themes that I dare say there is no such thing as a new idea as any can be traced back to something that's been done before in cinema, theater, or literature. But for me, I can't think of anything pre Star Wars that really compares in how the story was told.

Yeah. Why fly down the trench? It goes all around the entire death star! Just go directly to the exhaust port... It's true though, the movies are more about conveying a story than being an accurate representation of what military tactics and government would be in that setting.

At the time of writing this, there are 0 votes for any of the prequel trilogy! That's what I would have hoped for, but not what I expected. Of course, then I noticed that only 19 votes had been cast... Episode 4 was amazing because it was such a well-executed, new idea. Episode 5 was amazing because of the actors' chemistry, the additional special effects, and the twists and surprises. The rest are just money-grabs...

Wow. That's actually quite interesting! Thanks for enlightening me. Well, as superficial as it is, I'm glad the new UI is here. I like it when application refine things to make better use of space.

So... It looks like chrome now?

Don't get me wrong... I like the look, but it seems somehow.... unfirefoxy...

No worries. I keep an old machine around on Tiger instead of Leopard just so I can run old apps when I'm feeling nostalgic...

No, Leopard (10.5) was the last version to support PPC. Snow Leopard was the first to be Intel only.

That's interesting. During my wife's first pregnancy we ate peanuts all the time, and lived on peanut butter sandwiches. The kid nearly died when we first fed him straight-up peanut butter, and had to go to the ER by ambulance and give him steroids and epinephrine.

We've now been living in a peanut-free environment for the second child, yet the second child has no peanut allergy.

Obviously blanket statements like yours are ignorant. People develop allergies for various reasons, not just environment, or not just genetics.

Unheard of != did not exist.

Of course things were less well known back then, but there were also smaller communities, so there were less chances of running into people with allergies. Now we have social sites where we see the communication of thousands of people we've never met in real life. I only know 4 people will peanut allergies personally, and only live near 2 whom I see on a regular basis, yet in this thread, I've already read posts from 10 or more people with the allergy. My point is, just because we didn't hear about it as often back 50 years ago doesn't mean it wasn't a frequent occurrence. Other factors have to be accounted for.

Secondly, I've always wondered if a reason for less prevalence of allergies in the past was due to kids with allergies dying from the allergy without the allergy ever being diagnosed...