Yes, the Russians hypothetically could perform manned missions to the moon, but they haven't and if they continue down their roadmap as planned, won't perform anything like that for the foreseeable future. This makes my statement still correct, they haven't done it, and don't plan to do it, whereas the Chinese at least plan to do it and are working toward that goal.
ATV is still a LEO vehicle, and Mir-3 is conjecture (and at present development probably two decades away if ever).
Oh yes, that piece of paper will stop everybody, just like treaties stopped Manifest Destiny so well, or Operation Barbarossa. This is why I said, 'have you ever read a history book?' Sorry but I'm not a starry-eyed idealist enough to believe that a nation won't toss aside a treaty if it thinks the risks outweigh the rewards (whether they really do or not, my two examples are opposites in that regard at least in terms of outcome).
You need to get real, guy, because China is the only nation with real goals for manned flight outside of LEO. Russia is little more than a broken down space cargo hauler, the ESA has always piggy-backed off of the Russian and US space programs and shares their limitations and their LEO operative focus. Other Asian space programs are a decade behind China so as to be irrelevant. If the US abandons near/mid-term goals for ultra-LEO manned operations, the only country left with mid-term capacity for such operations is China.
China will have manned capability equivalent to Russia's in a decade or less. It will take that much time at least before India or Japan has capability comparable to what China has now (which is roughly equivalent to the end of the Mercury Program/beginning of the Gemini Program). The important thing is that the Russians have never done anything with manned flight outside of LEO, whereas the Chinese have stated goals. Whether or not they follow through is the question.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh god... mod this guy funny, I mean, really...
Do you honestly think that if the Chinese get a toe-hold on the moon after spending tons of money that they're going to share it with everybody else magnanimously in a spirit of ideal altruism? Have you ever read a history book?
I have only one point to take issue with your response: "[...] aging systems and cost runaways like Constellation."
Cutting edge in military and space applications never means bleeding edge. People would *die* . You can't afford to trade stability for fanciness when you have the possibility of hitting re-entry too steep and everybody burns to a cinder. The core operational technology of any manned vehicle must be old enough to have been thoroughly tested and already field-proven in some capacity.
The issue of cost is similar, if it takes more money to keep a mission crew safe and comfortable, you spend it. Granted not all cost problems are of this nature, but aside from administrative inefficiency, cost to improve the function of the program would be well-spent money regardless.
I was using 'do you work for' in the true astroturfing sense. I was literally asking if he were employed for the purpose of swaying public opinion with no or false disclosure. My statement may have been ambiguous if taken out of context, and could have included those people who work for companies who happen to have positive opinions of their company's product(s) but are not tasked with spreading positive opinions by their employer. However, the individual in question has made no disclosure, and so consequent to a suspicious pattern of behavior, I am asking him to confirm or deny his potential relationship, if any, with an interested party, whereupon he could, even if related, at least deny that he has been employed for the express purpose of improving public opinion, which would be the definition of astroturf.
In summation, do not presume that I do not know what I'm doing simply because I began in inquiry with 'dude'.
Dude... what is your angle? This is like the 3rd two line post I've seen of you in this topic cheer-leading this. I'm starting to smell astroturf. Do you work for Pennsylvania State?
My computer is now three years old, but I normally run several dozen processes, and I'm not afraid to get up around a hundred. I watch movies and play recent 3D games at the same time with two different browsers in the background with at least two dozen tabs each (and you know what a memory hog FF is, and Chrome starts a new process for each tab). If you're running out of physical AND virtual memory, upgrade. That's what the computer is telling you to do. Problem solved.
But if you or your wife doesn't really want a real computer, cool. Don't adapt. That gets lifeforms real far.
You have such a low opinion of parents' abilities it makes me wonder what happened to you in your childhood. You allude to fairy tales and yet speak of hypothetical 'best teachers on the planet' in a bid to somehow trounce my hypothetical 'best parents'. Either both are fairy tales or neither, and if they are fairy tales, as extreme hypotheticals are, why is it when there are flawed parents and competent teachers do you say send them to school, but where there are flawed teachers and competent parents do you insist on depriving children of the better option? Are you so biased that you think only one, perfect reality as you have conceived it exists everywhere and will result in the best outcome for everybody? How conceited can a person be...
Do you really, truly believe that the most wise and intelligent parent without a teaching credential is inferior to the worst, most ineffective person with a teaching credential? Really? And if not, you are denying potential advantages to children that might otherwise be subjected to poor, ineffective teaching.
Teaching ability is not created by an ability to pass a test and get a piece of paper. I know plenty of 'paper technicians' from being in the industry for a decade. I would take a guy off the street who could prove his ability based on criteria I devise above some guy who went to a local certification mill that teaches to the tests any day.
Religious reasons for homeschooling are not intrinsically detrimental to the education of children. My parents are devout Baptists, and they homeschooled me in large part for religious reasons. I was required to do Bible study every year for the nine years I was homeschooled. Ironically, this made me into a walking weapon of mass faith destruction after I renounced Christianity at age 17, since few Christians know a Bible as well as I do and where all its most egregious flaws are.
None of this prevented me from getting high SAT/ACT scores, or getting into the exclusive Honors Program at Seattle University, arguably one of the most respected schools in the state, and the program only takes 25 students per year, selected in ultimately by interview. It didn't prevent me from landing me decent-paying job and marrying a truly wonderful (and non-religious) woman who makes even more than I do.
I don't like Christianity, and I'm not going to encourage any exposure of my daughter to it, but I'm not about to place myself in position to dictate to people how they should live their lives. That makes you no better than a moralist religious nutjob yourself.
When a five year old strikes up a conversation about current events, or economics with a 10 year old, people see that as "weird".
This is the exact thing my parents recalled about me when I was growing up. I don't remember it well myself, but they said it was incomprehensible to other 5 year olds when all I wanted to talk about was the latest National Geographic article.
While this would be healthy in 13 year olds who have been properly socialized, it is not healthy in a room full of 8 year olds. When 8 year olds learn 'socialization' from other 8 year olds, their socialization skills get retarded, and they are not capable at 13.
I think that you go too far in suggesting the environment has a retrogressive/incapacitating effect, it merely creates a social development stagnation, preventing some who could mature more rapidly from doing so. Because my interaction with other people so frequently included adults and older minors it enabled me to break free of the social stagnation of the age monolithic classroom (I went from public to private school before being homeschooled, so I really know what every model looks like first hand). You're spot on about extra-curricular organizations as well, that's how I met most of my friends in high school.
I know that I regularly get accused of sheltering my child because I home school, as well as regularly accused of exposing my child to to more things than a child of his age can or should be able to understand. Often by the same person in the same conversation.
I expect I have this to look forward to when my daughter arrives at school age. I hate, hate, HATE how people go on about how a given child is 'too young to understand that' and of course they haven't tried. No, really, you mean they can't understand because you won't explain it to them? Shocking! There are only two ways that goes in the end, either the child is strong-willed and intelligent enough to think 'screw them, I'll learn it myself' or the child more often than not develops a subconscious aversion to learning because some knowledge is 'bad' (though of course eventually they learn all the bad things anyway in perspectives framed by other people, but the lifetime of a lax pursuit of knowledge well, that's a gift that just keeps on giving). Even a child who is naturally able to overcome the immediate barriers of family and society to learn independently is worse off. Because my parents refused to discuss sexuality with me I made it my mission to find out what I could on my own, consequently becoming exposed to porn at age 10, reading sexual self-help books at age 11 when the opportunity presented itself in libraries, etc. In hindsight such exposure was not healthy, but I was driven to it because it was either that or embrace ignorance. (Also in the same age range I researched far darker things on my own, including the 'experiments' of Dr. Joseph Mengele. Yeah, the last thing you want to do is try to overprotect a kid who craves knowledge and has access to a library.)
My goal with my daughter, beyond homeschooling her which I will do, is to answer every question she ever asks in my presence with the truth. It may not be every last detail I know about the question, but I am never, ever going to refuse to answer her, or as so many despicably do in the false pretense of 'protection' (innocence = ignorance) invent some lie so that the child can have a completely distorted view of the world into which they have to try to integrate their experience. That parents think that their fitness is defined by presenting their children the Sophie's choice of the need to either embrace ignorance/lies or learning 'evil' knowledge in secret like scholarship is a persecuted sect has always disgusted me to my core.
Speaking as somebody who was ACTUALLY homeschooled from 4th through 12th grade, I can say that you were probably not naturally social, and you're looking to scapegoat your environment/parents. It's really nothing to be ashamed of, you don't get to pick aspects of your own nature, but blaming other things won't help.
You were immature for your age? I had the exact opposite experience. Most of my friends were adults, and to this day it seems I have an easier time with older people. My "peers" were always too immature for me and never well-enough-read.
The program you were in sounds terrible. The homeschool group I was in produced National Merit Scholars. Your opinion is charged by your negative experience, just as mine is by my positive experience, which is why studies are valued over anecdotes.
Uh, that's why they left. That's why we're talking about it. They sought refuge where it is legal/valid to homeschool with certain conditions, as opposed to being completely illegal/invalid. I think it is you who is missing the point, as in this branch of the discussion we're talking about anecdotal experiences within the US homeschooling system generally and not really the Germans of TFA specifically. Do you know what 'context' is?
I was merely arguing within the GP's context. I myself support US withdrawal from the UN. We have bankrolled them and been one of the pillars of UN 'peacekeeping' forces for too long, and they constantly work at undermining our sovereignty as thanks. Screw em.
What's important is simply following the steps outlined by where ever you live. Laws vary from state to state. Some require parents to have certain certifications, others college degrees, others a certain number of college credit hours without a degree requirement, or like my parents had to do, working with a supervisory teacher. Many states require some kind of registration regardless of the option you choose. If you skip steps and don't comply with guidelines, then of course colleges/universities/employers are going to look at you suspiciously if they look at you at all, but once again, that's what you get with individual responsibility. It's up to parents to get it right, just as it's up to them to figure out their taxes if they do them instead of taking them to a tax preparer. Exactly the same principle, unfortunately failure to dot i's and cross t's with the responsibility of homeschooling more often becomes the problem of the kids than the parents.
Parents may not provide a bigoted education (at least according to the UN, which is not legally binding most anyplace), but there is no fundamental incompatibility with parents providing and education that is less or at the very least no more bigoted than that provided by the state. In fact there are countries where state schools are highly bigoted by that definition, the Middle East comes to mind, so in such places homeschooling may more often than not be more progressive.
Sorry you had a bad experience, and obviously your parents didn't really know what they were doing and didn't plan ahead, but that doesn't mean the practice should be illegal. I was homeschooled for the last nine years before college (yes, I went), and my parents had the presence of mind to work with a private school for the last three of those years. I took lab courses there (one a year: Chem, Bio, etc.), met with a teacher once a week who rubber stamped all the work I did at home for my mother (who put together the curriculum and graded my work). I graduated with a diploma from the school which continues to keep my transcripts.
Homeschooling is an individual experience. It can be done poorly or above reproach. Don't judge everybody based on a limited sampling, even if that's your own family. And as for being social, I have all the friends I want, and I'm married.
Stand back, I'm going to drop a car analogy on this.
Cars used to be mechanical and fairly standardized (manufacturers' parts weren't necessarily compatible, but the tools required to take them apart and the fundamental knowledge for troubleshooting problems were). Most 'normal' people did not want to work on them to any serious degree, and they would take their car problems to mechanics; however, diagnostics and repair for those mechanics did not vary too much (speaking generally) from brand to brand let alone model to model. More importantly, anybody with a mind to do so could buy some fairly standard tools and learn how to be their own mechanic.
Then came the age of automotive electronics. The electronics were made proprietary not only in terms of physical I/O, but data I/O as well, consequently, without specialized expensive diagnostic hardware and software provided by the manufacturer, diagnosis and repair became much more difficult. Worse, the interface and parameters of the electronics now varies not just between manufacturers, but between models, which puts a lot of pressure on independent shops vs. dealerships, and will eventually squeeze them out of business. And repair and maintenance at home? Ha! Forgeddaboutit.
This is what things like the iPad will do to the computer field, eliminate independent support and eliminate end user administration. It's a battle for the soul of technology.
My wife and I have said for years that tablets are stupid and will never be more than niche (we used to work together at a place the provided tablets as an option and very few people took advantage, many who did regretted it). The only people who *might* need (Wacom-like) tablets are artists. Otherwise the interface blows. Any competent person types faster than they write, and if you move to voice control there's no point in a tablet format to begin with. I think there's more future in something like MS Surface (cost and size regardless, future applications will probably use projection) for multi-touch manipulation than a tablet, simply because a tablet is too small a workspace to get more than one object and two fingers into comfortably.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the Russians hypothetically could perform manned missions to the moon, but they haven't and if they continue down their roadmap as planned, won't perform anything like that for the foreseeable future. This makes my statement still correct, they haven't done it, and don't plan to do it, whereas the Chinese at least plan to do it and are working toward that goal.
ATV is still a LEO vehicle, and Mir-3 is conjecture (and at present development probably two decades away if ever).
Oh yes, that piece of paper will stop everybody, just like treaties stopped Manifest Destiny so well, or Operation Barbarossa. This is why I said, 'have you ever read a history book?' Sorry but I'm not a starry-eyed idealist enough to believe that a nation won't toss aside a treaty if it thinks the risks outweigh the rewards (whether they really do or not, my two examples are opposites in that regard at least in terms of outcome).
You need to get real, guy, because China is the only nation with real goals for manned flight outside of LEO. Russia is little more than a broken down space cargo hauler, the ESA has always piggy-backed off of the Russian and US space programs and shares their limitations and their LEO operative focus. Other Asian space programs are a decade behind China so as to be irrelevant. If the US abandons near/mid-term goals for ultra-LEO manned operations, the only country left with mid-term capacity for such operations is China.
China will have manned capability equivalent to Russia's in a decade or less. It will take that much time at least before India or Japan has capability comparable to what China has now (which is roughly equivalent to the end of the Mercury Program/beginning of the Gemini Program). The important thing is that the Russians have never done anything with manned flight outside of LEO, whereas the Chinese have stated goals. Whether or not they follow through is the question.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh god... mod this guy funny, I mean, really...
Do you honestly think that if the Chinese get a toe-hold on the moon after spending tons of money that they're going to share it with everybody else magnanimously in a spirit of ideal altruism? Have you ever read a history book?
I have only one point to take issue with your response: "[...] aging systems and cost runaways like Constellation."
Cutting edge in military and space applications never means bleeding edge. People would *die* . You can't afford to trade stability for fanciness when you have the possibility of hitting re-entry too steep and everybody burns to a cinder. The core operational technology of any manned vehicle must be old enough to have been thoroughly tested and already field-proven in some capacity.
The issue of cost is similar, if it takes more money to keep a mission crew safe and comfortable, you spend it. Granted not all cost problems are of this nature, but aside from administrative inefficiency, cost to improve the function of the program would be well-spent money regardless.
This is so true it's sad that your AC status lends it no score...
I was using 'do you work for' in the true astroturfing sense. I was literally asking if he were employed for the purpose of swaying public opinion with no or false disclosure. My statement may have been ambiguous if taken out of context, and could have included those people who work for companies who happen to have positive opinions of their company's product(s) but are not tasked with spreading positive opinions by their employer. However, the individual in question has made no disclosure, and so consequent to a suspicious pattern of behavior, I am asking him to confirm or deny his potential relationship, if any, with an interested party, whereupon he could, even if related, at least deny that he has been employed for the express purpose of improving public opinion, which would be the definition of astroturf.
In summation, do not presume that I do not know what I'm doing simply because I began in inquiry with 'dude'.
Dude... what is your angle? This is like the 3rd two line post I've seen of you in this topic cheer-leading this. I'm starting to smell astroturf. Do you work for Pennsylvania State?
Maybe their computer is really, really old?
My computer is now three years old, but I normally run several dozen processes, and I'm not afraid to get up around a hundred. I watch movies and play recent 3D games at the same time with two different browsers in the background with at least two dozen tabs each (and you know what a memory hog FF is, and Chrome starts a new process for each tab). If you're running out of physical AND virtual memory, upgrade. That's what the computer is telling you to do. Problem solved.
But if you or your wife doesn't really want a real computer, cool. Don't adapt. That gets lifeforms real far.
I thought that was the target market of all Apple products... since forever.
How does it access YouTube without Flash?
You have such a low opinion of parents' abilities it makes me wonder what happened to you in your childhood. You allude to fairy tales and yet speak of hypothetical 'best teachers on the planet' in a bid to somehow trounce my hypothetical 'best parents'. Either both are fairy tales or neither, and if they are fairy tales, as extreme hypotheticals are, why is it when there are flawed parents and competent teachers do you say send them to school, but where there are flawed teachers and competent parents do you insist on depriving children of the better option? Are you so biased that you think only one, perfect reality as you have conceived it exists everywhere and will result in the best outcome for everybody? How conceited can a person be...
Do you really, truly believe that the most wise and intelligent parent without a teaching credential is inferior to the worst, most ineffective person with a teaching credential? Really? And if not, you are denying potential advantages to children that might otherwise be subjected to poor, ineffective teaching.
Teaching ability is not created by an ability to pass a test and get a piece of paper. I know plenty of 'paper technicians' from being in the industry for a decade. I would take a guy off the street who could prove his ability based on criteria I devise above some guy who went to a local certification mill that teaches to the tests any day.
Religious reasons for homeschooling are not intrinsically detrimental to the education of children. My parents are devout Baptists, and they homeschooled me in large part for religious reasons. I was required to do Bible study every year for the nine years I was homeschooled. Ironically, this made me into a walking weapon of mass faith destruction after I renounced Christianity at age 17, since few Christians know a Bible as well as I do and where all its most egregious flaws are.
None of this prevented me from getting high SAT/ACT scores, or getting into the exclusive Honors Program at Seattle University, arguably one of the most respected schools in the state, and the program only takes 25 students per year, selected in ultimately by interview. It didn't prevent me from landing me decent-paying job and marrying a truly wonderful (and non-religious) woman who makes even more than I do.
I don't like Christianity, and I'm not going to encourage any exposure of my daughter to it, but I'm not about to place myself in position to dictate to people how they should live their lives. That makes you no better than a moralist religious nutjob yourself.
When a five year old strikes up a conversation about current events, or economics with a 10 year old, people see that as "weird".
This is the exact thing my parents recalled about me when I was growing up. I don't remember it well myself, but they said it was incomprehensible to other 5 year olds when all I wanted to talk about was the latest National Geographic article.
While this would be healthy in 13 year olds who have been properly socialized, it is not healthy in a room full of 8 year olds. When 8 year olds learn 'socialization' from other 8 year olds, their socialization skills get retarded, and they are not capable at 13.
I think that you go too far in suggesting the environment has a retrogressive/incapacitating effect, it merely creates a social development stagnation, preventing some who could mature more rapidly from doing so. Because my interaction with other people so frequently included adults and older minors it enabled me to break free of the social stagnation of the age monolithic classroom (I went from public to private school before being homeschooled, so I really know what every model looks like first hand). You're spot on about extra-curricular organizations as well, that's how I met most of my friends in high school.
I know that I regularly get accused of sheltering my child because I home school, as well as regularly accused of exposing my child to to more things than a child of his age can or should be able to understand. Often by the same person in the same conversation.
I expect I have this to look forward to when my daughter arrives at school age. I hate, hate, HATE how people go on about how a given child is 'too young to understand that' and of course they haven't tried. No, really, you mean they can't understand because you won't explain it to them? Shocking! There are only two ways that goes in the end, either the child is strong-willed and intelligent enough to think 'screw them, I'll learn it myself' or the child more often than not develops a subconscious aversion to learning because some knowledge is 'bad' (though of course eventually they learn all the bad things anyway in perspectives framed by other people, but the lifetime of a lax pursuit of knowledge well, that's a gift that just keeps on giving). Even a child who is naturally able to overcome the immediate barriers of family and society to learn independently is worse off. Because my parents refused to discuss sexuality with me I made it my mission to find out what I could on my own, consequently becoming exposed to porn at age 10, reading sexual self-help books at age 11 when the opportunity presented itself in libraries, etc. In hindsight such exposure was not healthy, but I was driven to it because it was either that or embrace ignorance. (Also in the same age range I researched far darker things on my own, including the 'experiments' of Dr. Joseph Mengele. Yeah, the last thing you want to do is try to overprotect a kid who craves knowledge and has access to a library.)
My goal with my daughter, beyond homeschooling her which I will do, is to answer every question she ever asks in my presence with the truth. It may not be every last detail I know about the question, but I am never, ever going to refuse to answer her, or as so many despicably do in the false pretense of 'protection' (innocence = ignorance) invent some lie so that the child can have a completely distorted view of the world into which they have to try to integrate their experience. That parents think that their fitness is defined by presenting their children the Sophie's choice of the need to either embrace ignorance/lies or learning 'evil' knowledge in secret like scholarship is a persecuted sect has always disgusted me to my core.
Speaking as somebody who was ACTUALLY homeschooled from 4th through 12th grade, I can say that you were probably not naturally social, and you're looking to scapegoat your environment/parents. It's really nothing to be ashamed of, you don't get to pick aspects of your own nature, but blaming other things won't help.
You were immature for your age? I had the exact opposite experience. Most of my friends were adults, and to this day it seems I have an easier time with older people. My "peers" were always too immature for me and never well-enough-read.
The program you were in sounds terrible. The homeschool group I was in produced National Merit Scholars. Your opinion is charged by your negative experience, just as mine is by my positive experience, which is why studies are valued over anecdotes.
Uh, that's why they left. That's why we're talking about it. They sought refuge where it is legal/valid to homeschool with certain conditions, as opposed to being completely illegal/invalid. I think it is you who is missing the point, as in this branch of the discussion we're talking about anecdotal experiences within the US homeschooling system generally and not really the Germans of TFA specifically. Do you know what 'context' is?
I was merely arguing within the GP's context. I myself support US withdrawal from the UN. We have bankrolled them and been one of the pillars of UN 'peacekeeping' forces for too long, and they constantly work at undermining our sovereignty as thanks. Screw em.
What's important is simply following the steps outlined by where ever you live. Laws vary from state to state. Some require parents to have certain certifications, others college degrees, others a certain number of college credit hours without a degree requirement, or like my parents had to do, working with a supervisory teacher. Many states require some kind of registration regardless of the option you choose. If you skip steps and don't comply with guidelines, then of course colleges/universities/employers are going to look at you suspiciously if they look at you at all, but once again, that's what you get with individual responsibility. It's up to parents to get it right, just as it's up to them to figure out their taxes if they do them instead of taking them to a tax preparer. Exactly the same principle, unfortunately failure to dot i's and cross t's with the responsibility of homeschooling more often becomes the problem of the kids than the parents.
Parents may not provide a bigoted education (at least according to the UN, which is not legally binding most anyplace), but there is no fundamental incompatibility with parents providing and education that is less or at the very least no more bigoted than that provided by the state. In fact there are countries where state schools are highly bigoted by that definition, the Middle East comes to mind, so in such places homeschooling may more often than not be more progressive.
Sorry you had a bad experience, and obviously your parents didn't really know what they were doing and didn't plan ahead, but that doesn't mean the practice should be illegal. I was homeschooled for the last nine years before college (yes, I went), and my parents had the presence of mind to work with a private school for the last three of those years. I took lab courses there (one a year: Chem, Bio, etc.), met with a teacher once a week who rubber stamped all the work I did at home for my mother (who put together the curriculum and graded my work). I graduated with a diploma from the school which continues to keep my transcripts.
Homeschooling is an individual experience. It can be done poorly or above reproach. Don't judge everybody based on a limited sampling, even if that's your own family. And as for being social, I have all the friends I want, and I'm married.
You, sir, are the winner. This discussion is over.
Stand back, I'm going to drop a car analogy on this.
Cars used to be mechanical and fairly standardized (manufacturers' parts weren't necessarily compatible, but the tools required to take them apart and the fundamental knowledge for troubleshooting problems were). Most 'normal' people did not want to work on them to any serious degree, and they would take their car problems to mechanics; however, diagnostics and repair for those mechanics did not vary too much (speaking generally) from brand to brand let alone model to model. More importantly, anybody with a mind to do so could buy some fairly standard tools and learn how to be their own mechanic.
Then came the age of automotive electronics. The electronics were made proprietary not only in terms of physical I/O, but data I/O as well, consequently, without specialized expensive diagnostic hardware and software provided by the manufacturer, diagnosis and repair became much more difficult. Worse, the interface and parameters of the electronics now varies not just between manufacturers, but between models, which puts a lot of pressure on independent shops vs. dealerships, and will eventually squeeze them out of business. And repair and maintenance at home? Ha! Forgeddaboutit.
This is what things like the iPad will do to the computer field, eliminate independent support and eliminate end user administration. It's a battle for the soul of technology.
My wife and I have said for years that tablets are stupid and will never be more than niche (we used to work together at a place the provided tablets as an option and very few people took advantage, many who did regretted it). The only people who *might* need (Wacom-like) tablets are artists. Otherwise the interface blows. Any competent person types faster than they write, and if you move to voice control there's no point in a tablet format to begin with. I think there's more future in something like MS Surface (cost and size regardless, future applications will probably use projection) for multi-touch manipulation than a tablet, simply because a tablet is too small a workspace to get more than one object and two fingers into comfortably.