That's right, because seeing a few photos of Titan is *exactly* like being there, or seeing a video of Jimi Hendrix is just like meeting him. By that logic I've probably been to about every country on Earth, just by seeing the photos. Excellent - no need to travel or explore any more!

Sigh. In fact, herein lies another perfect example of co-discovery and/or "the wrong one gets the credit" [delete as appropriate], for although Edison always gets the credit for the light bulb, Joseph Swan actually filed a patent for it *months* before Edison, and even had the first house in the world lit by electric light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan). Edison's patent in the US was for *a direct copy of the Swan light*, and his work was mostly based on improving Swan's invention (I know Wikipedia's not always the authoritative source on these things, but this chimes with other documentaries I've seen on the subject).

The iPad is simply a piece of consumer electronics, it is not what we would consider a true PC. As such, it doesn't matter if it's not open, can't run random application "x" or whatever, in the same way as I don't mind that my Logitech Squeezebox isn't a SatNav or my microwave oven can't show TV pictures (even though it looks like it could). I would never buy an iPad at the current price, but I might buy one if it ever got down to ~$200, just to leave lying around the lounge for some casual browsing or game play, even though I would prefer to be able to install whatever applications I wanted. I would *never* buy one to replace my laptop or desktop - these are where I code and hack about and edit photos by the thousand - something that the iPad is never going to be good for. Netbooks are cute 'n' all, and are generally an improvement over the ipad in someways, given a real keyboard and software open-ness, but they still wouldn't fulfill my needs for many of the things I do. If I really had to choose out of the two, a netbook would win for various reasons, but if I had enough cash to burn there would be a place for all of these different devices. Horses for courses.

Ah yes, great idea - because isolating an entire generation in their own rooms [ok, more than usual], with no real human contact, will really help to foster sociability and reinforce social cohesion. "Other humans: yes, we've heard of them..."