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Secretary Clinton and President Obama were asleep at the wheel even more than President Bush was regarding the 9/11 intelligence.

That's just proving the point that the Republicans lost any touch with reality over Bengahzi. A military assault on a CIA base in a warzone is comparable to "now you've covered your ass" on direct warnings that Al Queda was "determined" to attack the U.S. and might use hijacked planes to do so?

If you're Pete Hoekstra, maybe.

Ok then: http://jameslovecomputers.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/cracking-wpawpa2-network-keys-with-backtrack-5-tutorial/

Citation needed? The manufacturers typically tell you. For instance here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239045 it states "Budget-minded gamers and enthusiasts will benefit from the lower price of Kingston’s new HyperX 3K SSD. This solid-state drive combines premium 3000 program-erase cycle Toggle NAND with the second-generation SandForce controller" So it gets only 3% of the authors most optimistic graph! Kind of funny article actually. Like the mad scientist doing lots of good math but overlooking the most obvious information the ding bat brought along for comedy plot complications sees in a flash. I wrote a tutorial yesterday on how to make a ram drive on linux so as to avoid using your fancy fast flash drive. It can be found here: https://ioconnor.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/tutorial-on-automatically-moving-home-to-ram-drive-and-back-on-startup-and-shutdown/

This happened with Vox. They had tools to let you move it to TypePad or WordPress. I split the difference (my Vox archive is on TypePad, new stuff on WordPress.com). That said, this, as well as the Instagram situation last December, calls out a common issue, especially with free services. How are things owned? What happens if they go away. Almost all of the pictures on my WordPress blog are hosted at Flickr. Fortunately, Flickr's TOS are somewhat better than what Instagram proposed from the ownership perspective. However, I'm screwed if they go away. I suppose I'd be better paying for hosting (and, to an extent, I do with Flickr), but I'm not sure I can fully justify it for a hobby-blog. For many, self-hosting isn't an option: they lack the skills and (even modest) equipment to do so. I could do it, but there are a million other things I'd rather do with my time. Fortunately, both WordPress and Flickr have good tools for pulling information out, so, for now, I'm going to roll with that.

The WordPress import uses an XML file for import of text, tags, etc. but reads the images from Posterous while parsing the xml. This means that people who delete their blogs before import, or presumably who wait until after the end of April so not get their images imported, The images are in the backup .zip file but if you wait too long you could have to re-add them all manually.

So, despite "serious" news agencies (like Associated Press) saying otherwise, it turns out this thing wasn't just a 10 ton asteroid. Which isn't entirely unsurprising. Getting a shockwave like that simply took the energy of a small thermonuclear warhead.

Now I'm still wondering, what about the reports that the russians tried to shoot down the asteroid? It's not unrealistic it's like ... almost real!

So, despite "serious" news agencies (like Associated Press) saying otherwise, it turns out this thing wasn't just a 10 ton asteroid. Which isn't entirely unsurprising. Getting a shockwave like that simply took the energy of a small thermonuclear warhead.

Now I'm still wondering, what about the reports that the russians tried to shoot down the asteroid? It's not unrealistic it's like ... almost real!

Idiots have gotten "Alcoholism" classified as a disease, so technically a treatment that immunizes you against alcoholism would be a vaccine in the "one time immunization to a disease" sense.

At least in the common vernacular. In medical terminology vaccines likely do refer strictly to immunization against virii.

Virii is not a word.
Viri is a word, but is the plural of Vir.

Since I type of a lot of symbols and fewer numbers, it helps to be able to make typing symbols easier. I do this with an alternate layout that I can switch to with a hot key. It inverts the shift of the number keys and makes them sensitive to caps lock. I wrote a blog post about this. http://dctucker.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/keyboard-layouts/

I've written a more lengthy piece on this. In short: No way.

(Hint: The Hiroshima bomb (15kt) just about managed to break windows at 20km distance - and the altitude of breakup was at least 30km according to most sources.)

It starts, with a killer asteroid hurling towards the earth.

Our hero is summoned, and immediately springs into action.

He sets out with his trusty weapon to save the world from the danger of the week.

After a long and awesome journey, he finally reach his destination.

Finally there, he slowly takes aim, breathes, and fire at The Killer Meteor. The meteor, alerted to his presence, fights back. What follows is a long action sequence only slowing down now and then so our hero can do manly poses.

After a long battle, and lots of shooting and fishing was done, there was only a small fragment left, just enough to spend the CGI budget, and show everyone how dangerous The Killer Meteor could have been.

No one was killed, and the world was again saved thanks to our hero.

The End.

Read her blog before you run your mouth. http://deweyhagborg.wordpress.com/category/stranger-visions/

When I hear "expert on pornography", think of Jenna Jameson, not Gail Dines

I agree natural resources are not going to last forever. But the proposed "solutions" do nothing significant to fix the "problem" while allowing India and China a free pass.

WRT to links, here is one sowing how raw data is adjusted http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/fig_7-ghcn-averages.jpg

And here is one on how data sets keep changing:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/nasas_rubber_ruler.html#ixzz27YZRxqIW

Here is a little animation showing some modifications:
http://klimaforskning.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=825.0;attach=2823;image

Changing past data just seems sketchy to me. Especially if it is not transparent on your modeling and methodology.

A "Neurophone" is an ultrasonic transducer that uses bone conduction to present sounds to the inner ear.

How about a neurophone output?

The output could be spoken Siri-style messages, communication from the watch to the wearer would be inaudible to anyone else, there would be no need for a loudspeaker in the watch, or an earphone.

It is incredible that a post like the one above would get modded to a '5'.

It's this type of attitude that FUELS the kind of legislation that you see before you. It's like you're trying to douse the fire with petrol. Announcing to the world that Christians have "idiotic beliefs" only reveals yourself as a bigot, and if you proudly parade science as the reason for your bigoted attitude, Christians will gladly target science in all its forms. And that's exactly what you see happening.

There are plenty of Christians, even evangelical Christians, who have no problem with any field of science -- including evolutionary biology. For example, the American Scientific Affiliation (http://www.asa3.org) is a 70-year-old organization of Christians in science. They adhere to the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, and they accept everything that science reveals about the world. They have a peer-reviewed publication, Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith, which is quite good. They have sister organizations in the UK and Canada (http://cis.org.uk and http://www.csca.ca./

The BioLogos Foundation (http://www.biologos.org) is an evangelical organization which is attempting to reach out to fundamentalist Christians to persuade them not to treat the Bible as a science textbook. The Faraday Institute (http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Institute.php) is another organization of scientists who adhere to a faith, not necessarily Christian.

And of course, there's the Clergy Letter Project (http:/www.theclergyletterproject.org).

There are personal blogs such as http://www.truecreation.info/ http://www.letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/ and http://www.theistic-evolution.org/ which are reaching out in the same way -- specifically targeting the anti-science beliefs of Christians, and NOT their faith as a whole.

If you're really trying to solve the problem at hand (anti-science legislation) wouldn't it be far more wise to encourage Christians to review the work from the organizations listed above, rather than ramming your own atheist belief down their throats?

Actually, this has been done. The most useful progress indicators do the following:

1) Show overall progress
2) Show progress of subprocess
3) Have some type of message display that actually tells us what is happening (in fact having this may be more usefull than showing progress of the subprocesses).

Here are some examples of great progress indicators (granted, not all are installers, but they are informative):

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14684652/how-do-create-progress-bar-while-clicking-remove-button-in-nsis

http://doc.zarafa.com/7.0/Migration_Manual/en-US/html/images/MGR_Progress.png

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/Copy_files_with_Progress/copyfiles.jpg

http://help.comodo.com/uploads/Comodo%20Backup/b11a8045cb003891d886ace8f138a534/5eac818f1e1c4adc19d335055b06586b/d871fb826e82b18c4d9d5f28f76278a5/cbu_restore_final1_022012.png

http://openchrom.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/openchrom-installer-unpack.jpg?w=640

The last one I want to show is actually from a game I like, and I was having a ton of issues trying to find a screenshot of the progress indicator, so instead, I found a Youtube video. The installer is about 5 minutes in - when you first launch the game, you have a progress indicator, but, its a little dark in this video, in the upper left hand corner, you can see how many files there are, what file it is on, if its downloading or installing, etc. Probably one of the most helpful progress indicators I have ever seen:

http://youtu.be/ROOJFT6ae7M?t=5m2s

Please notice that the judge laid down two rules:

RULE 1. IN ORDER TO SUE A DEFENDANT FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, YOU MUST PROVE THAT THE DEFENDANT DOWNLOADED THE ENTIRE COPYRIGHTED VIDEO.

RULE 2. A “SNAPSHOT OBSERVATION” OF AN IP ADDRESS ENGAGED IN DOWNLOADING AT THAT MOMENT IS INSUFFICIENT PROOF OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

So looking at RULE 1 for a moment, suppose someone had an incomplete download that was missing important parts such as:
1. the unskippable commercials
2. skippable commercials
3. previews of craptacular upcoming attractions
4. the FIB warnings
5. the "Macrovision Quality Protection" notice at the very end
Etc.

Does that download count as an incomplete copy?

I am not a lawyer, so I wouldn't know.

Real men just put OJ in their morning coffee

No, real men put OJ in their morning rum.

No, real men drink "Jum." At least that's what Janitor says. "It's Jum and Tonic: Gin, Rum and Tonic. You can't get drunk on Jum, it's a breakfast liqueur." video here recipe here

https://itkan.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/megatrends-education/

They have been fixed up a bit to make them more presentable. http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/george-w-bush-sooper-genius/

How about a more informative introduction? All of the concerns raised have been addressed. If only people would avail themselves of a more complete understanding before vehemently opposing any sort of change, the world would be a much better place. If not though, the least you could do is keep quiet if you refuse to inform yourself.

This isn't change for the sake of change; the present VT system is seriously lacking, and has been since its inception.

For someone with atrocious spelling and grammar like me, this would have been a godsend. Some part of me thinks this may be a genuine psychological problem since I've always had trouble with both, including handwriting. I know it in my head, but by the time it comes out on paper, it's almost complete gibberish. This would have helped so much!

You can have a look on the possible plagiats on http://schavanplag.wordpress.com/ (google translation might be necessary for non German speakers). Note that this is basically the 'prosecutors' position (except that in this case the prosecutor is a community of people on the net) not the findings of the university.
How many of them would you have found without computer help?

And I don't believe that "important officials" are less likely to have their degree revoked in Germany. I think it is actually more likely for them. If she wasn't a politician, nobody would have spent all the work necessary to come up with the above list. If she wasn't, the university wouldn't have to make absolutely sure that nobody suspected them of granting her a favor. If she wasn't, the internal analysis of the university prosecutor wouldn't have been leaked making this a year long affair.

Axioms? e.g. as simple as Peano or as complex as Choice?
Regards Peano: http://numberwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/is-one-two-many-a-myth/

CC.

A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Note the accuracy part is NOT subject to perjury. So if you're an agent for a copyright holder (even if the copyright is for completely different content), then the perjury part does not apply. The civil penalties do apply.

Interestingly, in the copy of the email at http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/wordpress-removes-anil-potti-posts-from-retraction-watch-in-error-after-false-dmca-copyright-claim/ the complaining party got this wrong:

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.: Yes

There are some very interesting articles on the "bribes-for-PhD" scam in Germany: In 2008 Time Magazine reported on an investigation into around 100 cases of bribes for PhDs: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1919339,00.html. One blogger claims 500 to 700 PhD's are illegitimately "purchased" each year by aggressive career-climbing German lawyers, managers and politicians. The blogger provides numerous citations: http://ktwop.wordpress.com/tag/guttenberg-fraud/. In 2011, the DW German news outlet called some German PhD's "cut and paste": http://www.dw.de/academic-consultants-target-phd-wannabes/a-14852460-1.

The french had a good solution for politicians that got out of hand.......
Old solution to a modern problem :)

Go back and read the newspapers on microfiche of when Einstein made his discoveries. I doubt people were throwing parades in his honor.

See the front page of the New York Times for No 10 Nov 1919

This may be a bit of a far stretch, but I believe there is a fair comparison here.

Other than conflating core civil liberties with....consumer products? I'm sure Pete Hoekstra would approve, anyway.

Next up...a look back on how New Coke was just like COINTELPRO! News at 11....

HP is a total wreck of a company. Blowing billions on WTF acquisitions and going through CEOs like shit through a goose, not to mention a completely ineffective board of directors.

They used to be great. Their products were a dream of quality. I still have a personal collection of their to-die-for calculators. When the shuttle was first launched the astronauts were issued HP-41s in case they had computer problems or to aid in running experiments.

http://hpinspace.wordpress.com/category/hp-41/

Now they are nothing. They get most of their income from ink cartridges.

It started with Carly who gutted their R&D.

It is not going to stop in the foreseeable future.

RIP HP

Actually I think Dr. Changizi is just not traveling in the right circles. The connection between the audible behavior of natural objects and the construction of words and sounds is very evident in Japanese which is full of a huge number of onomatopoetic words. These words are written in phonetic (hiragana) characters though they usually have a root in a word that is based on a Chinese ideogram. And contemporary Japanese are very involved in devising new words based on a vocabulary of the kind Dr. Changizi suggests. This is very evident in two areas that have a huge social media aspect: manga and online chatting.

Manga uses the common Japanese onomatopeia words as sound effects. These can sometimes be made up (like "ka-shak" to load a shotgun, ka-ching is ringing a cash register, also in English I think, bicha bicha is splish splash, patan is a door slamming...), or the sound of wind, or an emotional reaction, or audio or visual special effects. Translators of manga are constantly needing to think up English language equivalents, or equivalents composed of English language phonemes.
http://oceanmoon.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/japanese-sound-effects-and-what-they-mean/
http://www.muri.se/misc/soundfx.html

Online chatting over various digital media in Japanese leads invents words so quickly it is often hard to figure out what it means to an outsider, and in particular has introduced new glyphs which are not Japanese or Chinese kanji ideograms, but are Unicode glyphs with some connection to Japanese i.e character fragments, greek letters (a small omega looks like a curly w and is used to depict a sly cat's nose and mouth), ascii art requiring multiple characters to draw a picture, "emoji" (literally "picture characters" but also sounds like "emotion characters" that are single character sized illustrations used by girls when typing short emails to each other), etc. It may be difficult to prove, but it is possible that the pleasure derived from devising text-like symbols that mimic faces and the real world could reflect something about the brain too.

Finally, Dr. Changzi talks about X, T and L junctions seen in the real world and presumably picked up by the preprocessing nodes behind the retina. I wonder why he doesn't mention Hangul, the Korean written language that was invented by a team of scientists and which is almost completely made of these elements as well as o-shaped elements which IIRC reflect how the word is to be pronounced.

Japanese and Chinese of course have kanji ideograms made of multiple parts ("radicals") and usually one such part is a clue to the sound of the character. Indeed it is possible to read such characters without sounding them out (without phonetics) in fact both Chinese and Japanese were written that way until modern history. Presumably it is that human languages including such ideograms reflect brain structures, and it is not the case that structures evolved after the development of drawings in the dirt.

In language, the most fundamental sounds you find are plosives like puh and guh and tuh that sound like hits. And then you’ve got fricatives like shuh and zuh. They sound like slides. You also have a third category: sonorants or vowels, letters like Y and L and R. They all have a ringlike sound. The three categories of phonemes are effectively the sounds of hits, slides and rings.

What’s been the reaction to your idea that speech and written language harness these properties of the physical world?
Overall, when I give these talks people are very excited because no one has put forth a view like this. People had noticed the observation that among the sounds of speech are all these similarities. But inside the sounds of speech are these fundamental common and natural sounds of solid objects. I have had great reactions among neuroscientists and linguists. But some linguists just don’t care how it evolved, they’re interested in formal logical rules.

I'm just thankful that we've made the news without any murders, theft, or corruption.

I thought that we had gotten rid of the idiotic school board when they disbanded it in 2002 and got Marilyn Bland and the others out of there. (although, we haven't gotten rid of her yet)

http://kleinschmidt.wordpress.com/2006/07/03/i-cannot-be-played-on-record-player-x/

Many people seem to still believe what they were taught 30 years ago about the population explosion. What was true then is no longer true - the world is changing rapidly, and one of the many ways it is changing is *reducing* our population growth.

Hans Rosling's videos are excellent, as well as engaging. I reference a couple others, and explore the issue of world population quite a bit more in this blog: http://globalconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/world-population-is-stabilizing/

Here are several references, and explanations for what has been happening and is likely to continue into the near future: http://globalconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/world-population-is-stabilizing/

It could also be the case that we will get our wasteful and destructive habits under control, figure out how to reduce our ecological footprint to zero and repair the damage we have done to the planet, tap into vast renewable energy resources available to us, thousands of times more than we currently use, and then resume growing the population to many billions more.

Solendra, look it up. Just because you are lazy or stupid doesn't mean it didn't happen.

ok, lets look it up: Solyndra recieved $535M in a federal subsidy, and in response, China put up $35 Billion to subsidize their own solar research and industry.

It appears that both an agressive foreign entity and a softening PV market played roles in Solyndra's demise.

what do you mean by 'look it up', exactly? i don't read publications that exist exclusively inside your political 'bubble'.

https://itkan.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/megatrends-education/

Education needs to be better fitted into today’s fast paced IT, and needs to take a page from the traditional trades with some kind of apprenticeship system”. He also believes a more hands-on approach is more effective, especially for IT prospects and workers that have disabilities. The older education system is left behind when it comes to offering more hands on work.

And a no an intern tied to the old collgle system / must have a degree does not really work and it's not really fixing the issues.
Interns need to open to all tech / trade schools / non degree classes / drop in classes. Also the tech schools and Community Colleges have more night classes then the older university system. Also most Community Colleges will let you take classes drop in / NON degree. also needs to be a REAL internship with real work kind of like an apprenticeship.

"As part of our contribution, the foundation took an important first step a few weeks ago and selected a vendor to build the open software that will allow states to access a shared, performance-driven marketplace of free and premium tools and content".

Rockheim in Trondheim does that - they play random patterns as well as what looks like cellular automata.

Sometimes, when you publish the code you used to develop new Biochemistry or Genetics solutions, you find that other scientists in other countries use your code to reverse engineer what you are working on - your results, if you will - to eliminate dead ends and publish a paper on what you invested years finding a solution for, but before you submit your paper that they "effectively" stole.

Fair enough, though sometimes getting out of the habit of 'releasing early, releasing often' can put academic developers on a slippery slope that ends with them closing the source. We use a well known (and excellent) suite of genomics software called GATK, originally MIT-licensed. Last year, the developers announced they were switching to a hybrid license, where the latest (unpublished) tools would only be available under closed source terms. The core (now 'lite') package would remain Open Source, and supposedly the new stuff would migrate to it over time as papers were published, etc. Now this has been retconned as a 'interim solution', and in all future versions the Open license will only apply to a basic framework with most of the useful stuff stripped out. Quite a few members of the genomics community are rather upset about the license changes, especially as there's a strong Open Source tradition in this field (a typical GATK data processing pipeline will depend on major components written by other developers that remain Open Source):

http://biomickwatson.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/gatk-why-it-matters/

http://blastedbio.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/free-for-non-commercial-academic-use.html

Option 1. (if your software is linux-native or runs stable under wine, needs no fancy gfx)
xrdp + wine - a remote desktop solution, integrates well, authenticates well
rdesktop can haz a seamless mode, preferred corporate solution
can be tunneled via ssh or vpn to add security
ubuntuwiki/xrdp

Option 2. (if your software is linux-native or runs stable under wine, needs no fancy gfx)
ssh -X remotemachine "wine remoteapp"
to integrate: ActiveDirectoryAuthentication

Option 3. (if your app only runs only on windows, you live in a reverse engineering friendly country)
(was?) LEGAL only in some countrys i.e. germany, sweden, ...
have a (possibly virtualized) xp/win7 box running your apps, modded with:
a. Seamless RDP hack (xp only afaik)
- SeamlessRDP
- Ubuntu/SeamlessVirtualization
b. Enable Multiple Concurrent RDP Connections
a bit hacky but it works, rly :> I've done this in small corporate environments, but usually in such situations you either have to choose between investing in making your apps run under wine, or pay m$ or a commercial opponent for their work.

Finally you could have a look at TinyCore as a nice toolbox to mend it all together.

anx XMPP ulzq de

I seriously doubt even a solid gold asteroid would justify the costs to go into space, mine it, and return said gold to earth--even if it were a relatively close solid gold asteroid.

You could recast it into a more useful shape

This is like saying "grep is useless because nobody's completely redesigned in in the last few months!"

maybe you missed this

The part quoted in the summary is definitely old news; I've written about bacteria in the clouds a couple of times on my science blog (seeding rain and doing chemistry while they're up there); some of that research goes back to the 1970s.

This study does bring something new to the table, though. They sampled cloud water before, during and after two hurricanes and used modern sequencing technology to study the community composition. First of all, previous studies have looked at clouds over land; in this study they show that bacteria are plentiful in clouds over oceans, too. Most of the species they found were bacteria that are aquatic on the surface. They also identified several groups that were found in all of their samples and a few that were exceptionally abundant; these might be groups that are well-adapted to the conditions found in the clouds and are the first steps towards understanding the ecosystem that might exist up there.

Yes, we knew there were bacteria up there. Yes, we might even expect that they would be plentiful, well-adapted and form an ecosystem. We still have to go and show it, though. That's how science proceeds: one step at a time. In fact, I might go ahead and write about this study for my blog, too.

The part quoted in the summary is definitely old news; I've written about bacteria in the clouds a couple of times on my science blog (seeding rain and doing chemistry while they're up there); some of that research goes back to the 1970s.

This study does bring something new to the table, though. They sampled cloud water before, during and after two hurricanes and used modern sequencing technology to study the community composition. First of all, previous studies have looked at clouds over land; in this study they show that bacteria are plentiful in clouds over oceans, too. Most of the species they found were bacteria that are aquatic on the surface. They also identified several groups that were found in all of their samples and a few that were exceptionally abundant; these might be groups that are well-adapted to the conditions found in the clouds and are the first steps towards understanding the ecosystem that might exist up there.

Yes, we knew there were bacteria up there. Yes, we might even expect that they would be plentiful, well-adapted and form an ecosystem. We still have to go and show it, though. That's how science proceeds: one step at a time. In fact, I might go ahead and write about this study for my blog, too.

You want to edit A/V stuff... on a cell phone?

Ok I think you need to step back for a glass of perspective and soda.

I think you need to step forward and see what people are doing on iPads and iPhones today. There are a lot of video CREATION and editing applications.

Why should Android users have to suffer with lower capabilities just because the technical elite deem some task silly, or only fit for "real computers"?

It's the worst form of technical snobbery to claim that device X "cannot do" Y, and undermines the very sprit of hacking itself that anything should be possible on ANYTHING with enough effort.

Hmmm...I was leaning towards the OP's position at first, but you make a very good point.

You also reminded me of one of my own pet peeves: the fact that the Handbrake developers decided that people should not be able to use their software on a netbook, despite the interface being pretty much completely scalable. They even throw in a snotty little dialog box that tells people that Handbrake won't work for screen resolutions under 1024x620...but it can operate just fine as long as you take out that artificial limitation, as this fellow demonstrates. Yes, it's slower (if you're actually running it on your netbook and not on an RDP session), and yes, the screen's a bit crowded, but it works and it allows me to re-encode video while away from my main systems. I set up an encode queue for overnight, and boom, it's done in the morning. On. My. Netbook.

Apparently it's been such an issue for Handbrake that it's made their FAQ page. The dev's response? "Please note, we do not intend to support netbooks or systems with low resolution screens." Now that's just being elitist.

So I suppose video editing on a tablet or phone should be just as possible, within limitations, as it is on a netbook. Yes, it'll typically take longer than it would using a 'proper' system, but that's one of the trade-offs one should expect. At least provide the tools, and let us decide how and where to use them!

Knowing the reputation of various UK administrations, it will be put to use to spy on people and fine them for small misdemeanors.

That's absolutely certain. How could anyone trust any council that uses anti-terrorism laws to monitor things that are between minor civil crimes and nothing at all?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/21/local-councils-abusing-anti-terrorism-powers_n_1819715.html

http://casualsunited.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/councils-abusing-their-power-and-using-anti-terror-laws-to-harass-the-public-edl-abuseofpower/

Microsoft BASIC and later Visual Basic: Unjustly despised, but introduced many to programming (and the very first ones were marvels of micro-programming too). Also interestingly portable at a time where portability was on nobody's radar.

Spectre GCR, a Mac emulator on Atari ST. A precursor of virtualization in my opinion, and a very smartly done one at that.

VMware for making virtualization available to the masses and enabling the cloud.

AmigaDOS for being the first OS with built-in hardware-accelerated graphics and sound.

The RPL system in the HP28 and HP48 series of calculator. Reverse Polish Lisp and symbolic processing on a 4-bit calculator with 4K of RAM? Seriously?

The Minitel system in France, including nationwide phone directory and dubious innovations such as Minitel Rose (porn in text mode at 1200bps, basically).

Postscript and the whole desktop publishing revolution.

NeXTStep (or whatever the CorRect CapItalizATION is), so far ahead of its time that it took years for it to reach its full potential in the form of iOS.

GeOS (already mentioned by someone else)

Mathematica. Just wow. But also forgotten precursors such as TK! Solver.

Lisp, Fortran, Algol, Pascal, Ada, Eiffel, Smalltalk and a whole bunch of under-utilized languages.

Much lower on the name recognition scale, Alpha Waves, arguably one of the earliest real 3D games, which also influenced the creation of Alone in the Dark.

Detailed analysis of the "analysis".