I was lucky enough to attend the Aichi World Expo in 2005. The "robots" were pretty good, but not really autonomous. Software is were the work needs to happen; and IBM it working on that in a sense. So, well done Asimov. Kinda.

Second (or fiftieth) on the swing out/hinged wall-mount rack, if you want wall mounted, it's the best way to go. (I haven't used them in IT, but I have used sound equipment in a swing out rack and it's great when you need to add or change something quickly). I would avoid a 42U rack in a home environment unless you *know* that you will need all that space (also, many 42U racks will not fit through the average closet door). A good compromise may be a 25U rack, a simple four-post design is very affordable (especially when compared to the overall cost of building a new home) and should provide more than enough space. Utilizing sliding mounting rails and cable management arms should reduce the need for access to the rear of the rack enough that you can just push it against a wall and forget about it.

I think you've hit on the core problem. Speech would be a very poor input method for our current computer usage models. However, speech could be useful in communicating our desires to a computer, which then carries them out in a much more autonomous fashion than today.

My favorite line from the article:
"Compliance, that's all we've ever wanted," said Senior Assistant City Atty. Wayne Winthers.
I damn near coughed up a lung after reading that. Sounds like they want some lawnthink.

From blogsouthwest.com: "Mr. Smith originally purchased two Southwest seats on a flight from Oakland to Burbank – as he’s been known to do when traveling on Southwest. He decided to change his plans and board an earlier flight to Burbank, which technically means flying standby. As you may know, airlines are not able to clear standby passengers until all Customers are boarded. When the time came to board Mr. Smith, we had only a single seat available for him to occupy. Our pilots are responsible for the Safety and comfort of all Customers on the aircraft and therefore, made the determination that Mr. Smith needed more than one seat to complete his flight. Our Employees explained why the decision was made, accommodated Mr. Smith on a later flight, and issued him a $100 Southwest travel voucher for his inconvenience. You've read about these situations before. Southwest instituted our Customer of Size policy more than 25 years ago. The policy requires passengers that can not fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling. This policy is not unique to Southwest Airlines and it is not a revenue generator. Most, if not all, carriers have similar policies, but unique to Southwest is the refunding of the second seat purchased (if the flight does not oversell) which is greater than any revenue made (full policy can be found here). The spirit of this policy is based solely on Customer comfort and Safety. As a Company committed to serving our Customers in Safety and comfort, we feel the definitive boundary between seats is the armrest. If a Customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a Customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement." It looks like the incident was cause by the circumstances of his ticket. They're saying that it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't elected to fly standby.

That's true, and why I personally think hybrid sports cars don't generally make a great deal of sense. However, from what I've been able to find, the Porsche system is apparently lighter than the equivalent battery-based hybrid system, and in a 24 hour endurance race like the one this car will be competing in, efficiency becomes really important, probably more so than being able to overtake in the corners. That's one of the reasons diesel cars do so well at LeMans, even though many of the gasoline-powered cars can corner faster, over the course of 24 hours the efficiency and straight line speed advantages allow them to win.

I thought that too, but I guess 'MW' means 'Modern Warfare' now. But it's still Mechwarrior in my heart.