The first Guitar Hero was cool. The second one's refinement of the input system was welcome and it was a good game too. Rock Band was OK but everyone wants to play drums & not many want to sing or play bass. I guess if you've never played ANY other rhythm game, TTR is pretty cool. But honestly, you've never played any other rhythm game? What are you doing with an iPhone? Get back in the cave.

So if analysts just couldn't make it as consultants, are tech bloggers just bitter they couldn't get jobs at Gartner?

In the guy's defense, Prentice never talked about Guitar Hero, the BBC editors who chose pictures to accompany the article did. Prentice talked about face recognition software and some kind of brainwave input devices. Pretty big difference. It doesn't really negate the overall point of what you're saying, that obviously the mouse isn't going to die in 5 years. But I think the BBC article makes that point better than this bitter screed when Logitech senior veep Rory Dooley reminds us that a bare fifth of the world's population has access to the internet. Some of those future users might never touch a mouse thanks to the rise of touchscreens & such, many will probably first get online through a phone, and many will probably never have a machine that we would recognize as a standard desktop PC, but surely some segment of those 4+ billion people will someday have the pleasure of getting repetitive stress injuries from poorly designed mice and keyboards. Isn't progress grand?

Great plan, until they decide to team up...

@Pesco

Meh. My entire freshman class was supposed to read Pattern Recognition as "summer reading" before we got to college. Even the other sf nerds and Gibson fans didn't like it. The passage quoted above represents something close to half of the value of the book imho. (but of course, your mileage may vary!)

'd lk t scnd th thght tht thr r thsnds f wrthr css t thr. Scks fr th flks wh lst thr lptps, bt ll thngs cnsdrd ths s nt th knd f thng 'd cnsdr gd s f chrtbl dllrs. And to the poster who thought that 4 laptops would cost $8,000 - yikes! I'm thinking $1600 - you can run a word processor on an Eee PC, after all.

You know that one moment in Bioshock when you're in that room with the flooded floor, and you search the drawers, and the lights flicker out for a second, and you turn around and OHSHITHOWDIDTHATGUYGETTHERE?!?!?!

Yeah... but aside from that moment and a smattering of others, I generally find movies scarier. Maybe it's easier for me to suspend disbelief because it looks more real than a game? I don't know. But there are many things to be said for the virtues of gaming, even if this particular argument isn't universal.

I don't think BBG really wants to get into the fanboy wars.... but I feel compelled to point out the huge software disparity between the xbox 360 and the PS3 (naturally biased in the direction of my fandom). honestly - halo, gears, beautiful katamari, carcassone & bomberman live (and of course the rest of xbox live and the achievement system) outweigh even blu-ray in my book (though of course the best option would be not having to choose one or the other)

Well, neither Slate nor BBG exactly has the whole story right. Sorry Rob, but there are unlikely to be enough jobs for tech bloggers in the developing world to make much of a dent in global poverty, not to mention all the factors aside from getting unfettered computer access that allowed you to find yourself in the fortunate position you are now in. Fisman is wrong too, but not exactly for all the reasons these posts seem to think. The study he's discussing shows a negative correlation between school performance and computer ownership, but other studies show positive correlations between access to information and communication technologies and a household's economic well-being, which in turn generally leads to better outcomes for the succeeding generation. Then again, at the same time, it's really just too early to know what the long-term effect of giving poor Romanian (or Nigerian, or Brazilian) kids computers of their own will do. Some argue it's essential but with worldwide internet penetration hovering around 20%, obviously it's not truly necessary to have a computer to survive or even do a little better than mere survival. From a public policy standpoint, there are probably better ways to use educational dollars than Euro 200 or OLPC (not that the effects of such projects are strictly limited to education), but that's a different story altogether.

@9 (IWOOD)

The myth that only gay people get HIV/AIDS has long been recognized as offensive, inaccurate, and dangerous (for giving straight people a false sense of security). Unless some kind of time-warp is allowing you to post from the '80s, I suggest that you get a clue.

i was thinking more Forbidden Planet... this looks like the Krell brain-booster device - only now with multiplayer!

saw this last night and chuckled repeatedly... then got confused because i only counted 4 gadgets too. i think he's counting the grappling hook as 2, since it apparently takes the combination of 2 real-world gadgets to get the capabilities of a standard superhero grappling hook.

Very scary and very unsurprising that "piracy" is in there.

@ken hansen (#1)

Students aren't special? I think you're confusing these students with some kind of strange grudge against students with entitlement complexes or inflated egos. Students aren't special on some broad, over-arching level but there are some ways that, yes, they could be construed as special. In fact, one of those ways would be having a $65,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for your research. It's not like these are random kids with no legitimate purpose just asking for special credentials they don't deserve.

@Neven (#3)

Ever hear of the Jefferson Bible? or the Deists in general? how about Unitarian Universalists?

True, believers are measured in handfuls there compared to catholicism, islam, etc, but these sorts of beliefs are neither new nor without adherents.

I say call it what you want as long as you're not calling it an excuse for murder or oppression.

Besides, shouldn't we all know by now that GOD stands for "GOD Over Djinn?"

@Jack (#3)

it's called the price of oil...

Some situations are not really appropriate places to display how clever you are (or at least, how clever you think you are). The title of this post is in extremely poor taste, especially since as far as I can tell this is the first coverage of the trial on the Gadgets side of Boingdom - makes me wonder if this wouldn't have been mentioned here at all if you hadn't been so pleased with yourself over that joke.

It seems like most of the people commenting here know nothing at all about the Weathermen or the Weather Underground aside from what they read this week. It should go without saying that this is not a sound basis for condemning a man from society, even if only theoretically.

First I have a couple of recommendations for the ill-informed. There was an excellent documentary made about the Weathermen in 2002. (imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343168/) His memoir is also a good read. As far as broader '60s history if you're actually interested it shouldn't be hard to find something. Come on.

To #24 (Mr. Carnell):

Exactly which rights are you suggesting that Ayers kept people from exercising? The right of police to illegally surveil citizens? The right of our government to defoliate another country halfway across the world and kill untold numbers of its people in the interest of geopolitical maneuvering? The Weathermen bombed primarily government buildings, from draft offices and police stations to the Pentagon. The "prosecutorial misconduct" under discussion is something you may have heard of before, and if not, then something you should surely look into. It was called COINTELPRO.

Bill Ayers is a highly principled man. He fought for what he believed in, and whether you agree with his beliefs or not, you certainly have to respect that it takes much more chutzpah to do what he did than for the uninformed to criticize him in the comments section of a blog.

I feel compelled to fulfill Pentomino's prophecy... here's the xkcd masterpiece in question

http://xkcd.com/378/

Congratulations to your dear old grandma!

I for one dread the time when that kind of lifespan is more commonplace. I love technology but it's hard to ignore that it has a creepy side, and part of that creepy side is never dying. Apologies to Ray Kurzweil, but I don't really want to live forever.

love the longer-form post. Not that I blame you for pushing your other blogs but if I wanted to see the stuff on MM I'd go there, or at least set up a feed that would show me just about everything your MM posts tell me. I come here for those great moments when you actually *write* something (or tape it like the Heineken keg-fridge-thing review - excellent!).

Anyway to address what you actually say here a little bit, I think you're mostly spot-on. We're in a very messy transitional period here, with one complex and intensive set of technologies (collected and oversimplified as "the Internet") simultaneously disrupting many older technology-based industries at once (film, TV, music, newspapers, the list goes on). Someday when the dust has finally settled, it'll probably all just get piped directly to our brain, but until then we're probably doomed to these content-delivery wars.

@ #8 "For some reason, psychologists cannot."

This is a little unfair, and also blithely glosses over the actual reasons. To address the unfairness: most generalizations are somewhat inaccurate, including yours that all psychologists are completely clueless on the nature and possible causes of Warcraft addiction.

Now to the actual reasons. Would you also say that every doctor should know how to differentiate health from abnormality? Try and carry that over to the realm of mental health - I think you'll find it makes the assertion somewhat problematic. There is a lot that we still don't understand about the brain, especially regarding the how and why of consciousness and the highly contested distinction between sanity and insanity. Even the foremost experts in the fields that study these issues are far from understanding the phenomenon of consciousness, and it's not hard to look back in history and see the ways in which the definition of sanity has changed. And this isn't even to mention the difficulty of linking symptoms to underlying causes - if we don't know how consciousness arises we are going to get into trouble when we start trying to delineate its "proper" state or the reasons for the many different ways that this propriety might be disturbed.

Of course the DSM itself is no stranger to controversy and criticism in a number of ways, including the ways that it is used in diagnosis and planning treatment (e.g. the current spook story - not completely without merit - where depression is diagnosed by a doctor who simply goes down the list of symptoms like a checklist and prescribes pills if there are enough checks in the boxes).

To get back to this internet addiction business in specific, I think if anyone is "busted" by Silverberg's point about the doctor's conflict of interest it's the media and not Dr. Brock. That is exactly the kind of detail that can make a world of difference in how a news story is perceived by a reader, and no doubt the severity of this flap is due in part to the choice not to mention the connection.

Internet addiction is alarmist terminology but there is a grain of truth hidden in it. The Internet is powerfully attractive to many for many reasons, but time-limiting software and DSM disorder status are, imho, not even close to the most productive ways to discuss the complex ways that the Internet is changing our lifestyles.

Here's another voice pointing out that yes, Pesco's late to this party. Super Taranta! came out something like 9 months ago and was widely blogged and praised. Personally I'm not a fan. But if you like it, hey, good for you, and even better if the story of your discovery is as unique as this one is.

the boys at penny arcade weighed in on this very topic a little while back, illuminating a few very serious concerns that gearcrave.com seems to have omitted from its guide

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/10/10

those aren't mark's words, they're a quote from the blog post being linked. funny point though.

Chavez is not the philosopher-king. He's enacted some troubling policies and it seems as though he's headed down that familiar road to charismatic semi-socialist dictatorship. But damn, if he isn't the most huggable, entertaining leader in South America right now. I find it hard not to love someone who challenges America's power so boldly, if only verbally.u

Nice job, Mark! That may be the most subtle variant of the "OLPC-is-impractical" argument I've yet to see. It doesn't seem like a very fair complaint to me, though.

I'd really hate for these comments to turn into an argument over the XO-1 or OLPC, so I'd just like to end by thanking you for letting us experience TED vicariously.

i couldn't tell you where it started but boy do they love that expression in academia

@#19 (License Farm) -

aside from all the problems related to making claims about the soul and its nature in a political arena (ultimately just a thinly-veiled attempt to add weight to one's own stance without any substantive, real evidence or reasoning to back it up), i find it disturbing that your definition of a soul requires such malice.

dick cheney is without a doubt a bad, bad man and deserves punishment. one might even wish extreme humiliation on him. but wishing for someone's violent, painful death is another matter entirely. if you really, truly desire cheney's painful death, please for the sake of the rest of us liberals keep that sick, evil thought to yourself.

making claims about the possession of a soul being related to a specific desire for malice towards an individual or group of people is exactly the kind of ideology and dogma that religions and governments have used for years to justify horrible acts.

i don't have anything new to add, just wanted to be another voice questioning this new sponsorship. i'd hate to use a mean word like sellout to describe one of my favorite websites, but MS sponsorship does reek of compromised values...

gee, his voluminous and insightful commentary really gets his point across.

seriously though i have plenty of respect for John K. but when did he turn into such a fuddy-duddy? as if the "decline of culture" argument hasn't been attempted a million times, with better argumentation (and as if you can even call what's essentially a slideshow an argument). completely unconvincing. "oh my god, look how low kids wear their pants these days! and there are cheap toy factories too! surely the world is ending!" right.

in fact, one of the pictures he shows of '90s yogi looks very much like his own style... so if we're to believe his point, we're also to believe that he's partly to blame?

oh, godwin... i'm really curious to know if this thing causes long-term damage to hearing. seems like it easily could, especially with exposure of longer than a few seconds.

the girl holding the etys and blushing is a nice funny touch.

kinda cool video, really lame song. but what does the red glass part have to do with the glitterbead part?

TEDTalks are great! You can subscribe to them as an audio or video podcast - I just do audio so I can listen while driving or folding laundry. They are always informative and inspiring, very much in line with the boingboing sensibility.

Isn't it a bit unfair to be calling Amazon such harsh names when just weeks ago their mp3 download service was almost universally hailed for its prices and lack of DRM? Compared to almost everyone else, Amazon didn't drink the DRM kool-aid on mp3s, and as a result, their mp3 downloads are really pretty great. I understand that subtlety doesn't play so well in a 500-word(ish?) column, but ouch. If this is how we thank retailers for offering mp3s the way every commentator keeps saying we want them, why should they bother?