Also: http://xkcd.com/297/

Ah, a vi user I see. Fixed that for you. You might be interested to know about paredit-mode, if you ever decide to convert.

Our brains like to map things in a model similar to that which we already know. I can write on a piece of paper, I can doodle. I can draw arbitrary lines and shapes wherever I choose, and I can put it in a physical space on my desk which isn't limited to my screen real estate. It is real to me, in a way that a window on my desktop is not. It follows laws of physics. The matter will not be destroyed if my machine reboots and I forget to click save.

Because our computer applications do not follow the same laws as our physical world, we can't think about them in the same way. In many cases we don't need to. There are advantages of course to not being restrained to the laws of the physical world. We can make copies of our data, we can apply different templates and formatting to it without rewriting the content.

Can we create technologies which carry both the benefits of the digital world and the solidity and predictability, and reliability of the physical world? I think this is possible, but it requires a much greater discipline than we normally apply to our product design. It requires that intuitive workflows be established and well supported, and that the interface itself have parallels to our experience of the physical world. It requires a lot of thinking about what we do and how and why. We just don't hold ourselves to very high standards in this regard. We are lazy. And we are unimaginative about the ideal role of technology.

From my experience, healthcare insurance companies are disgustingly inefficient from an IT standpoint. I've worked at two, including one major national provider and one that is the main provider for state employees where I live. Both of them were using outdated technologies and hiring entire departments of people to manually push claims through the system, since their software was consistently unreliable. Quality software in this industry would cut out a huge amount of overhead. It would also force a lot of lazy people to find new jobs, so there is a big political force in these companies opposing this sort of change. I think the best hope for this market is competition. The industry needs some startup companies who are doing things smarter, faster and better, and are taking huge swaths of customers away from them. That's the only thing that will actually motivate them to change. I'm looking for a bill that actually finds a way to encourage and help new companies get started in the industry.

What about those who prescribe medically needless tests to avoid ridiculous litigation? Will they somehow benefit from additional legal oversight?

Life on Earth is now 4.8 Billion years old and no one's found us yet.

...but this is one of many possibilities 20 years from now, and probably not a likely one.

Compared to the promise of stripper factories and beer volcanoes, what does the Church of the Subgenius hold for me? Enlightened path, indeed...

We are not idiots. Steve Jobs will lead us to freedom.

You know what they say. Heir today, gone tomorrow...

I think he already answered that. His second paragraph talks about the occasional need for dynamically generated SQL. Dynamically generated != prepared, therefore you have your 1%.

Fuck yeah! That's the spirit. Bring back the /. I know!

I think the GP was talking about DRM/anti-pirating measures, not the user controls. Essentially they're trying to turn computer games into the black box that console games are.

Good points. I find the map features interesting as well. I like the idea of having some sort of organization there, as with Starcraft you just had people appending a bunch of random ascii characters to a name and throwing it out there. Dunno about others but I often found it confusing to determine exactly what I was looking at. Giving the option of paid maps/mods is a good idea too... players can decide for themselves whether something is of value, and conversely map/mod makers will have to tell a convincing story in order to get people to pay.

Also really looking forward to a more robust set of editing tools. One of the funnest things for me was building storyline maps. Triggers were a wonderful asset for that, but some customization was still missing. Can't wait to get my hands on the new map editor.

Yup. There's still quite a few playing Diablo 2. Though Blizzard has pissed a lot off with the upcoming patch... lot of failed expectations there.