Carmaker Volvo and shippers Bring has an interesting pilot underway in Gothenburg, Sweden. The Bring guy gets the GPS coordinates of your car and a one-time pass to open its trunk. You toil away at work, break for lunch and chat with your co-workers in your usual way. Meanwhile Bring delivers your package to your car. http://www.fastcocreate.com/30...

Yeah, that's very likely. But wouldn't it have been much easier for the CIA/FBI/RIAA etc. to make him "disappear" while in Cambodia? Sure, the Western nations have their problems, but when you want to do something that the average Joe finds despicable it's much easier to do it in countries without free press, where freedom of government information i lacking and where no part of affair affects any citizen of the country where it takes place? Had I been an evil mastermind of such a plot I surely would not have dragged it through the judiciary systems of (at least) two western nations (Sweden and the US) with the risk of civil liberties advocates and other peacemongers getting involved, but instead have sorted it out in the backwaters of southern Asia. But then again, why would a government that is incapable of completing any other task efficiently suddenly be any better than usual when it comes to covert black-ops?

I'm swedish and around here IKEA is a pretty big deal. Two years ago it was revealed that IKEA in the 80's contracted with factories in East Germany that used forced labour (i.e. prisoners) to build some of their products and it caused quite a bit of ruckus in swedish media. But I've heard nothing of IKEA employing swedish prison inmates, and Amnesty doesn't mention anything about it on their website (the .se-version) Three things might have been mixed up and created this myth: - The Swedish prison authority ("Kriminalvården") have small factories in some of the prisons and do produce and sell furniture (mostly to itself, as far as I've heard). - IKEA has in the past been known to subcontract with factories that have used forced labour. - Amnesty has criticised Sweden for other things, mostly concerning migration but also some practices and rules in the prison/police custody systems.

I do see such a problem. There are a number of reasons why internet connectivity is needed in a medical practice. - A medical practice is in many aspects a regular business where accounts have to be kept, orders be made and mails be sent. The internet is good for things like this. (A valid counter point is that this can be done on a another computer outside of the examination room.) - During an exam the doctor might want to look something up. Books are good for this, but the internets are better. - The eye and surrounding areas are best visualized by MRI or CT (the latter being preferred when examining a patient with a suspected metal fragment in the eye...) and these machines are not usually found in every doctors office. So you'll need some kind of mechanism for retrieving the scans from the radiologist. CD:s and thumbdrives are wonderful, but why not use the internet? - Same thing goes for medical records where one doctor in one office might need to look at the patients history from another doctor in another place. The internet is great for instantaneous access to data at another location. I'm writing this from a Swedish perspective and the US system might make my points invalid. But in that case the problem is the american medical system and not the internet.

I think your question should be broadened. Lenovo, HP and Dell as well as your local garage outfit offer a number of different laptop models that can run Linux and the programs (Open Office, Firefox) that the kids will want to use. So you could, in principle, choose any model and it would be fine. But there are more variables to it: - Do you need the computers next week, when the school year starts or whenever? - When the laptops breaks (and the will) do you want to ship them of for repair, bring them to a dealer, have them picked up at your office or have the company provide you with a replacement unit? - Do you intend to make upgrades/replacement of broken HDD:s/RAM/keyboards yourself? - What's your budget and will that money have to cover service fees as well? Anyone can provide you with the right (or sufficient) kind of laptop, but what should drive your decision is the sellers terms of warranty and service. Write down what kind of hardware you need and call a few different providers, or have them visit you (bringing coffee and cake!) to talk about the aftermarket part of the deal. If you just focus on the hardware you risk finding yourself stuck with broken computers that cost a fortune (fortune = price of a new unit) as soon as something brakes.

I've tried to find the original report, but it doesn't seem to be online. Too bad, what can be called a "simple algebra problem" might not be the same thing for a freshman as a professor. We have similar problems in Sweden. The solution is somewhat different though, we lower expectations instead. Many swedish universities have lowered their admission standards. We have a national standard for high school courses, with math courses going from A to E-level. (The F course, mostly covering discrete mathematics, was removed about 15 years ago.) Many universities no longer require the E-level course for their master programs in science, which means that new students in for example engineering, physics and computer science haven't heard of complex numbers, matrixes or differentials. Is this the beginning to the end of math? Probably not, but it means that new students have to spend their first months learning stuff that was common knowledge just 15-20 years ago. Computers and calculators are not the culprits, but I don't know who else to blame.

I asked the French who were right, and they promptly surrendered.