Just imagine the user generated violent and gory pictures all over YouTube and blogs... no developer or publisher would like the face the resulting outcry.

Corporate languages like .NET, Java, ObjC and now Go are here to create barriers of exit and lockins, /. crowd remembers nothing.

> Any ideas on how this could be fixed?

Take a walk to the trusty stonewalled bank not a 'firewalled' phony bank, don't buy a Mac, another FOSS victory btw..

Bitcoin seams to be important only for the underground economy, that is why (i think) EFF and FSF withdrew their support, buying into it you are basically supporting all kinds of blackhats, just look it up at Wikipedia's Bitcoin 'concerns' section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

ReactOS will catch, the work seams to be almost done anyway, they only need to reach XP compatibility and that will be enough for 90% of uses. In fact Linux is a moving target, you write a driver today and tomorrow it will not work because Linus in his infinite bazaarish wisdom decided to redesign and rename some parts of the code that you were interfacing with. Now ReactOS, if you have a driver for the WinXP scheme then it will work today and more imporantly it will work forever, thanks to well defined and stable interface.

Yeah, those doubters will not be silenced by this, it doesn't look convincing enough, looks more like a bad photoshop job. Try harder NASA, this is crucial, we need to dismiss those confusions, more.. we need to annihilate any last shadow of a disbelief about the landing, otherwise it only makes things worse.

> Why is HAL such a good idea?

HAL and lack of standardised DDK is a major Linux turn away factor for many, sometimes you can't go 'open source' if 3rd party technologies and NDAs are involved. It would be more flexible to be able just optionally plug-in stuff without the hassle of sharing..

Linux kernel is very mature at this point, but some basic functionalities like HAL (hardware abstraction layer) are not present and not even planned. Linus is perhaps happy with the current 3.x state of Linux, but lots of people demand more.. I recently ventured to ReactOS website and have seen lots of activity in the SVN. This is maybe thanks to Google Summer of Code 2011 ReactOS involvement, lots of commits on daily basis in the trunk now, the project seams to be getting in motion again.

>> touch interface works best for viewing content, not creating

you are right, like 90% of all users are consumers, not creators.

You are right about the peripheral vision, but the readout of the cockit could be very ok, the resolution is there.

That would be an awsome feature for a flight simulator *yaw/pitch/roll sensing*, so you could really be able to, you know, "look around".

Once fusion or other excess power is viable, the abundance of energy combined with advanced automation and robotic technologies could easily enable even enormously large scale environmental projects that are out of reach today. For example large artificial ocean floating islands producing heat/cold/vapor could easily be manipulating atmospheric condition to prevent hurricanes... There is no doubt that there will be technology in the future that is capable to affect weather this way.

H will always leak, as it is the smallest atom (no containment can stop it completely).

IBM is retaining some inertia because of old reputation, but that is fading, numbers seam to be stagnant at best, reality is that they are just another IT industry service man, no "big blue" anymore. It is like if Jobs sold Apple hardware division to China, focused on "software solutions" and then contemplated about being a smart exec to cut the low profit margin hardware level stuff.

This is very relevant considering big Intel with their integrated GMA (graphics my ass) cards were barely capable to render OpenGL until recently. And this little thing really renders Q3@120fps ?! Hmm, that puts Intel to shame, but still kinda unbelievable...