Look at the EcoBee, and without reading any instructions or manual, attempt to change the temperature lower or higher. Do those "menu" type buttons do that job? Or is it a touch screen? Those are not immediately obvious, and most of the population would say the same thing.

Nest is an attempt at making the interface in such a way that the usage is obvious to most of the population without looking it up in a manual. Right now, that costs extra, but maybe not for long.

Most insurance plans do not cover purchases of hearing aids.

An inductive loop is usually a loop worn around the neck. The product I linked can be said to have 2 inductive loops, but smaller and sized for the behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids.

I use hearing aids as well, but instead of an inductive loop, I use this.

Since it's right next to the hearing aids, I don't get a lot of EM noise unless it's a really loud EM source (such as microwaves or the subway).

This could be a boon for speech recognition systems, especially for use in areas with lots of environmental noise, or even just a little.

Maybe even the effort in clearing out the environmental noise will lead to the ability to clean out the "noise" (accents, minor physical fluctuations) from a person's speech- perhaps to such a point that the complexity of the software speech recognition problem is reduced.

Actually, there was a new demo released quite recently for the ZX-81. Find it at pouet - http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=53834 , or you can just head straight to YouTube to watch a video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X92xvLlbnVg

Except for record contracts are NOT employment contracts. The bands are not employed by the record companies, the contracts are usually for the set number of albums. By standard recording contracts, the artist in this instance is the one who's most likely right.

I think they'll go out of business first.

There's this thing they invented recently, when working with fractions it's real useful... it's called rounding. Really great stuff, makes life a lot easier.

Yeah, but the clauses that say they can change the terms on their whim have repeatedly failed to stand up in court because they are against the law. Those are there for people who don't know better and won't get a lawyer involved if they think they are screwed already.

Funny... when it comes to wanting to take away our civil liberties, I have a hard time telling either party apart.

Maybe the GameStops in your part of the world are different than the ones here, but I am unaware of anywhere that sells used PC games - for exactly the reason you quote above. This entire conversation is NOT about PC games, it's about Console games.

It's a phenomenon known as Limb Darkening, due to the characteristics of the Sun's photosphere.

There's a pretty gigantic middle ground, though, between the gigantic corporations that can afford to spend a fortune on their development cycle and the open source software... a group of companies that produce software, but can't afford to pay for perfection out of the gate. It's unfortunate, but it is a direct result of the increasing complexity of software and its interactions with other parts of your system and the network in general.