Oops, that should've read "Gollem and Unison", and hopefully Unison has an API from which to create an Android app...

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/152262 http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/154149 One of those must have a api...

Is that like an officially sanctioned package repo from Apple, kinda like the ones provided on any given linux distro by their respective parent organization? how innovative!

Funny you drop that link--the iPad doesn't quite address the same needs as the Connect-A-Desk. After all, this could be useful in different types of scenarios that require you to be on your feet and on the move, such as construction work, archeology, hell even writing. I can almost picture someone doing an experimental narrative/stream of consciousness type dealy while (day-) hiking about. Of course, the same things could be accomplished with an intermediary step before the data/narrative/thoughts get digitized. For example, you could just use an audio recorder, a camera, or even a simple notepad. Still, in the age of blogging, facebook and even twitter, this type of setup may be more than just dorky tech-fetishising. Yeah, sure, you could also use an iPhone and the like, even an iPad but, iroincally enough, the same feats would be cumbersome to accomplish than using this torso strap for your laptop. Then again, perhaps the iPad could fill the need if you had a a split keyboard on each bottom quadrant of the screen, when held horizontally, so that you could conceivable use just your thumbs to type.

Methinks MS is acting preemptively for fear of Chrome OS.

"...very, very olds new in social science circles."
So old, in fact, that it's often problematized in many fields that study different aspects of human culture.
One of the problems with a theory of sociocultural evolution is that it confounds often whimsical changes in human culture, which happen often within generations and that can have tumultuous effects on a given culture, with the slower, biological changes in the longer-term that Darwin had in mind. From this confounding of biology with the more abstract, higher-level semiotic systems that define human and, to a significantly reduced-degree, other animal cultures, comes a belief that human culture and the power structures that come about as a result of it, follow a well-defined and universal series of evolutionary mile-markers on their way to "civilizational" status.
In fact, A current but ever-present, historical example of the problems with these theories is the flawed dichotomy between civilization and barbarism (see here and here).
So, essentially, what Hawking has re-discovered is an age-old trope that saw a very real, and conspicuous apogee during the European wars sof Colonization and continues to this day (here, here and here). But in fact, this age-old dichotomy is not common only to the western world--the Mexica (or "Aztecs") and their Andean counterparts, the Inca, conceived of many smaller groupings of indians near and beyond their periphery as savages and barbarians.
If there's an important distinction to be made in many of these civilization vs. the savage examples, it's that the technology that humans create can in fact follow an evolutionary trajectory (ie, one that gives us a better chance at survival as a species), but that the culture that produces it may arrive at different stages of that evolutionary path from wildly disassociated and subjective changes and vacillations.

For country-bumpkin Joe Hicks, 25 KB/s is almost a four-fold increase on an unreliable dial-up connection that may or may not peak at 7 KB/s. Maybe not "broad" enough for most us /.'ers, but certainly broader than DUN.

On that, should 1MB/s be considered Broadband? Either way, I'd say anything over the standard, consumer-level ISDN speeds of yore (ie, 128kbps) should be considered "broad".