A normal watch is going to get bashed around, bumped into things, and generally get itself some abuse. The crystal is going to take daily abuse, and the strap needs to be pretty solid.
And I'm suddenly imagining someone with a busted screen on their expensive toy. And I suspect tech companies making a watch will not really be focused on the things which makes a watch serviceable in the first place.
LOL, it's not meant to be used to tell you the time.
It's for... well, apparently it's for app notifications and Google search.
Now you too can look dorky talking into your watch.
There will be early adopters, there will be people who subsequently think "WTF did I buy this for again?", and there will probably be people who will tell their friends just how awesome it is.
Me, I'm firmly in the "Meh, whatever" camp. But, apparently I'm not nearly as wedded to my phone as everybody else.
Checked baggage is scanned as well. Actually if you put electronics (or any valuables) in your checked baggage, you have good chance of never seeing them again.
Because nobody actually keeps proper tabs on the baggage handlers. Which, considering they have access to all of the baggage, and are occasionally caught using their access to smuggle stuff is mind boggling.
I'm of the opinion the baggage handlers need to be monitored much more closely.
And, as you said, nothing valuable in checked bags -- because I trust them to neither refrain from abusing things, or stealing from them.
Actually the PR does say they started with college students and then found some older people to play with
I was told once by someone doing their Masters in Psychology that the vast majority of research starts on university students, exactly as you initially described, and then moves onto a broader pool of people to eliminate that as a variable.
But undergraduate university students are probably the most studied group on the planet from a psychology perspective, precisely because for a little extra credit, or a small amount of cash, they're a readily available pool of subjects.
Which is odd, because you'd think by now someone would understand them.;-)
I just read this study as an example of how people are completely disconnected from their own inner life and addicted to constant stimulation. Seriously, an electric shock instead of enjoying a little bit of peace and quiet and a chance to gather yourself? What kind of total lack of self-control is that?
Honestly, the first thing I thought of was people who cut themselves.
One assumes that the inner dialog/feelings are strong enough (and negative enough) that this is seen as an "anything but that".
The few people I've met who were (or had been) cutters were very unhappy people, for various different reasons. Abuse, addiction, loss, all sorts of things people don't like to remember and would rather tune out.
Meditation, or just quiet reflection, is a learned thing, and comes difficult for many people. I've been to meditation classes, and the beginners (of which I will include myself) tend to fidget, look around, check their watch, pretty much anything except sit in stillness.
I've known many many people (especially those with really short attention spans and lots of energy) who if you locked themselves in a room with nothing to do but sit quietly would probably opt for the same thing.
To those people, the idea of a period without some form of external stimulation is almost agony. Heck, ask a 3 year old to just sit quietly for 10 minutes -- very few of them can I'm betting. It's the kind of thing you have to build up over time.
I'm not entirely surprised that for many, they would rather give themselves a shock than sit quietly doing nothing. Either because they find it really distressing, utterly boring, or whatever.
Um.. but no energy could be released from such a star surely, since fusion of anything heavier than iron produces no energy
Right, iron Fe, atomic mass 26.
Lithium, for instance, has an atomic mass of 3. Lithium is a metal. I'm sure there are other metals below 26, Sodium comes to mind (atomic mass of 11).
So, based on the assumption that heavier than iron means fission, but less than iron fusion, there's still room for fusion, no?
I think this is fusion, but with a slightly different chemistry, but then the nucularly bits are way beyond me except that it's still fusion.
Wow, a Lithium powered sun, that's pretty cool.:-P
Soon will come the time when they will not need to convince anyone anymore.
Yes, because they'll have arrested anybody who disagrees with them, and all that is left will be people too scared to say anything or who agree.
The NSA is the enemy of freedom and liberty, they just act like they're defending it.
And, yeah, some desk weenie has probably flipped a switch that says I'm an extremist -- what they don't realize is the more they do this shit, the more they'll create extremists.
What's really pathetic is how many Americans are buying into this, when not 20 years there would have been outrage.
Really, and truly, on 9/11 the terrorists got exactly what they wanted -- the destruction of Western societies as we knew it, and the rise of Americans saying "we don't give a crap about the rest of the world, we're scared". Sadly, that will create a backlash of people saying "we don't give a crap about the US, now piss off".
Not all Republicans are racists, but the party is permeated with racists, it is saturated with racists. Its racist policies must be read in the context of that saturation.
Republican former governor and apparently perpetual Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's refusal to accept that the nation's first black president wasn't born in Africa.
Republican former senator and apparently perpetual Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's racist welfare rant.
Republican governor and apparently perpetual presidential candidate Rick Perry's refusal to criticize the racist rant that has other Republicans scurrying to jump ship on the deadbeat social welfare rancher they and Perry had been defending. But then Perry and racism and ranching are nothing new.
Republican senator and all-but-announced presidential candidate Rand Paul's curious habit of associating with white supremacists.
Republican former vice-presidential nominee, current Congressman and potential presidential candidate Paul Ryan's inner city problems.
Apparently perpetual Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. There's not much more that needs be said than Donald Trump. Forever Donald Trump. Perpetually Donald Trump. A real estate magnate in search of a hinge Donald Trump.
Republican former vice-presidential nominee andâ"as long as it keeps her in the general vicinity of a spotlight, any spotlightâ"apparently perpetual pretend potential presidential candidate Sarah Palin... Okay... Just ick.
Republican former Gov. George Allen's clumsy, casual racism that derailed what could have been his own perpetual presidential ambitions.
Republican former governor (and potential future resident of a different form of public housing) Bob McDonnell's fond memories of the Confederacy.
Republican former speaker of the House, former presidential candidate and current CNN TV pundit Newt Gingrich ever and always being Newt Gingrich.
The blithe and lunatic Islamophobia of Republican former Congressman and current Fox "News" contributor Allen West.
The Republican National Committee running a racist ad on behalf of soon-to-be Sen. Bob Corker.
Republican former governor and former Republican Governors Association Chair Haley Barbour's amnesia about the brutality of the Civil Rights era, and fond memories of extreme racists.
Republican Gov. Nikki Haley slowly coming to realize that it wasn't a good idea to have a white supremacist on her campaign steering committee.
Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, whose long history on the wrong side of history continues to defy history.
Republican Gov. Scott Walker's staff circulating a racist email.
Republican Rep. Steve King's special insights about immigrants from the south.
Republican Rep. Peter King's medievalist crusade against Arab and Muslim Americans.
Republican Rep. Devin Nunes rationalizing and excusing bigoted extremism.
Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland calling the nation's first African-American president "uppity."
It's frightening how close the US already got to the USSR of old.
I don't know.
I think the in days of the USSR, the citizens didn't believe the propaganda. Whereas a lot of Americans seem to think "why, we have to do this to stop the terrorists".
Convincing people to buy into it is quite a feat.
Basically the NSA has decreed anybody who disagrees with their methods and scope must be an extremist.
I predict in less than 10 years any form of dissent, or privacy will be completely gone in the West. And then we're all harmless sheep, which is exactly what they want.
One of my favorite examples is when Saline, Kansas County Commissioner Jim Gile (R) used the term "nigger-rigging" in a public meeting. His morbidly hilarious apology didn't involve taking responsibility for his racism but, instead, he added, "I have built Habitat homes for colored people."
And then they followed it up with:
Yesterday, Dallas Tea Party activist Ken Emanuelson said, "I'm going to be real honest with you. The Republican Party doesn't want black people to vote if they are going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats."
Or, how about the popular conservative commentator Ann Coulter refusing to fly with a black female pilot:
"Aw come on people, a black woman flying a plane? You know she got that job through affirmative action. Am I the only one worried about this? I mean hello? Our lives are at stake here..."
It probably isn't GOP policy, but there's no denying that people who wrap themselves up in that flag haven't done a very good job of distancing themselves from it. They certainly haven't said "we're going to kick any racist, bigoted bastards out of our party".
And, for a little variety, David Duke switched from being a Democrat to a Republican.
And this is what I turned up from Google in under 2 minutes.
And, don't forget, the provisions of the DMCA and the things like it were written in such a way as to safeguard the ISPs as long as they played ball with the authorities.
Under the guise of copyright reform, government have rigged the game, and built in a mechanism by which they can continue to illegally spy on everybody and pretend like it's all legit.
We are pretty much fucked. "State Security" has become the catch phrase (along with kiddie porn and copyright) which is being used to ensure we no longer live in free societies.
So is the gist of this that anything which prevents the government from spying on you is now illegal?
Have we come that far already?
Sad, the world used to be such a nice place, but governments have become so demanding in their surveillance that anything which they can't defeat is now illegal.
corporate users are staying away in droves, perceiving the systems as one more in-box they'd have to take care of
I've been around many of these, implemented by various companies.
The people who own it champion it, everybody else more or less gets told that all the useful stuff will be in there and you'll need to do it.
So, you get the company cheerleaders (some appointed, some voluntary) who say how wonderful it is, and you get a few curious people who may or may not keep up with it, and you get a slew of people who are actively saying "in what way does this actually help me do my job?".
And the reality is, they almost never do help you to do your job. It's just another thing you're supposed to act like is useful and say how honored you are to bask in the glow of the CEOs wise choices.
Increasingly companies don't give a shit about you, have no loyalty or investment in you... and expect you to to drink the Kool Aid and be on board with every stupid thing they do to a level of drooling zeal.
To me, at-work "social" networking is, and always has been, a pathetic joke. It doesn't improve my productivity (in fact, it's an impediment), and it's one more thing I'm expected to check regularly and act like it's cool.
But, like every other fad... everybody says "ZOMG, we have to have teh social networking". And cynical old coders like me go "blah blah blah" and don't use it.
So, just throwing this out there... I have never done it, and I don't know anything about the properties of this paint... I have NO idea if you subsequently changed your mind if you can strip the paint, or if you'd need to pull down the drywall.
Truthfully, I only know about the magnetic paint and the whiteboard paint from watching home improvement shows.
I'm saying the older you get the more scary shit about this you likely remember.
At just over 40 you sure as hell don't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but you knew it happened and that everybody was talking like they'd be setting them off.
But anybody 40 or over lived through at least a period in which the likelihood of a nuclear war seemed like a very real possibility, and the older you get the more you remember.
And NOBODY ever differentiated between types of radiation while they were telling everybody how terrible it was going to be to die from it if we didn't get burned up in the initial blast.
So if you want to know why there's so much fear around radiation, it's because for several decades people lived in fear of dying from it, because people kept threatening to use the damned things.
This should never have made it through the ethics board.
Ah, but Facebook isn't a university... they don't have one of those.
So, either they went to the scientists and said "hey, we want to find something out", or the scientists went to Facebook and said "hey, we could do an awesome experiment on your users".
Either way, Sandberg sounds like an unapolagetic smug idiot who more or less said "they're our users, we do this shit all the time".
The people who run Facebook are assholes, and don't give a crap about anything more than how they can maximize ad revenue. And Zuckerfuck is a complete hypocrite about privacy -- his users get none, and he jealously guards his own.
The only thing ignorant people fear more than science in general is "radiation". The reasons for the quotation marks would make for a very long rant about ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation and their complete ignorance of what is actually going on.
Are you aware of the fact there were several decades in which the threat of nuclear war hung over everybody's heads, and the information being given out didn't include these details?
Anybody over 40 probably remembers several years of bomb drills, or the Bay of Pigs, or all sorts of things which most scared the bejeezus out people?
Even when Reagan got elected there was still a lot of fear that some idiot was going to let loose some nukes, and the rhetoric was quite high.
People were given far more fear than scientific information.
In some cases, even religious people will trust science
In fairness, I know scientists who are religious and believe in evolution and all the rest of the science, and see God as being outside of all of that, and see the Bible as being allegorical on the points which conflict with science.
Religion isn't always tied with being irrational like the crazies we sometimes see.
Hell, when I went to university there was still a Jesuit teaching physics. He saw no conflict whatsoever between science and religion.
I'm certainly not saying there aren't those who are a little overzealous in their interpretations, but there are many many people who aren't.
Well, the EU has gone to far in the direction of personal rights, and the obligations that imposes on companies.
While the US has gone too far in the direction of corporate rights, and how they can screw us over at will. Because, you know, corporations now have religious freedom to be assholes.
But what about my right to tell my friends that that asshole just screwed me out of a ton of money and that he can't be trusted?
Oddly enough, as long as you can do it without actually committing libel or slander, you still have this right. You just have to phrase it correctly.
The EU 'right to be forgotten' only applies to search engines. It does not (AFAIK) restrict private individuals from actually remembering this stuff, telling others about, and providing links to it.
You just won't be able to find the links using a search engine.
And, half of them would immediately start checking their email, playing Angry Birds, or generally doing anything but paying attention to the meeting.
I had a manager several years ago who could not be separated from his BlackBerry.
One day, we had a meeting to bring him up to speed on a bunch of things. He had asked for this meeting. In fact, he insisted on it.
The problem was, every thing we told him, would be followed with him looking up from his BB and saying "what? sorry, I missed that." I eventually told him that if he would care to have a meeting with us, we'd be happy to schedule one, but if he's going to spend the entire meeting on his BlackBerry that I would be happy to answer any questions via email and not waste my damned time watching him pay no attention to a meeting he asked for.
And then I walked out of the meeting to demonstrate my point about how bloody rude it was when he wasn't paying any attention either.
The next time we had that meeting, he actually left his BB on his desk.
Digital devices do NOT make for good things in meetings, because all of a sudden people are focused on anything but the meeting. And then it just becomes unproductive and frustrating.
I'm not a fan of 'smart whiteboards' as I've heard nothing but bad things about them. I've probably been to more than a dozen conference rooms, and when I mention the one sitting against a wall, I'm told it's either broken, or a pain to use.
That has been almost universally what I've heard.
It's out of order, or nobody knows how to use it, or the people who know how to use it look at it with disdain and continue with the plain old whiteboard. (I'm not talking about a specific brand, just the digital whiteboards in general.)
I've been in numerous rooms which have these, and I have yet to see a single one in use. When I ask, people usually laugh and say "because it's useless".
For me, the old school whiteboard, and the easel with the giant post-it notes is still what works. Everything else is cumbersome to use, doesn't work as advertised, or is generally regarded as more trouble than it's worth.
Sometimes, low tech is a much better solution. It works, everybody knows how it works, and you don't spend half of your meeting messing around with it, and a bunch of time after your meeting getting your data out of it.
Sadly, for many many people, there is a pretty constant attempt to introduce more technology into everything, even if that technology doesn't come anywhere near living up to its claims.
Slashdot Mirror
He comes from a company which makes and sells watches. He knows about making and selling watches, and what people look for in a watch.
Apple is rumored to be getting into the business of making smart watches.
I don't think this is nearly as crazy as you seem to think it is.
And, just as important, how rugged is it?
A normal watch is going to get bashed around, bumped into things, and generally get itself some abuse. The crystal is going to take daily abuse, and the strap needs to be pretty solid.
And I'm suddenly imagining someone with a busted screen on their expensive toy. And I suspect tech companies making a watch will not really be focused on the things which makes a watch serviceable in the first place.
LOL, it's not meant to be used to tell you the time.
It's for ... well, apparently it's for app notifications and Google search.
Now you too can look dorky talking into your watch.
There will be early adopters, there will be people who subsequently think "WTF did I buy this for again?", and there will probably be people who will tell their friends just how awesome it is.
Me, I'm firmly in the "Meh, whatever" camp. But, apparently I'm not nearly as wedded to my phone as everybody else.
Because nobody actually keeps proper tabs on the baggage handlers. Which, considering they have access to all of the baggage, and are occasionally caught using their access to smuggle stuff is mind boggling.
I'm of the opinion the baggage handlers need to be monitored much more closely.
And, as you said, nothing valuable in checked bags -- because I trust them to neither refrain from abusing things, or stealing from them.
I was told once by someone doing their Masters in Psychology that the vast majority of research starts on university students, exactly as you initially described, and then moves onto a broader pool of people to eliminate that as a variable.
But undergraduate university students are probably the most studied group on the planet from a psychology perspective, precisely because for a little extra credit, or a small amount of cash, they're a readily available pool of subjects.
Which is odd, because you'd think by now someone would understand them. ;-)
Honestly, the first thing I thought of was people who cut themselves.
One assumes that the inner dialog/feelings are strong enough (and negative enough) that this is seen as an "anything but that".
The few people I've met who were (or had been) cutters were very unhappy people, for various different reasons. Abuse, addiction, loss, all sorts of things people don't like to remember and would rather tune out.
Meditation, or just quiet reflection, is a learned thing, and comes difficult for many people. I've been to meditation classes, and the beginners (of which I will include myself) tend to fidget, look around, check their watch, pretty much anything except sit in stillness.
I've known many many people (especially those with really short attention spans and lots of energy) who if you locked themselves in a room with nothing to do but sit quietly would probably opt for the same thing.
To those people, the idea of a period without some form of external stimulation is almost agony. Heck, ask a 3 year old to just sit quietly for 10 minutes -- very few of them can I'm betting. It's the kind of thing you have to build up over time.
I'm not entirely surprised that for many, they would rather give themselves a shock than sit quietly doing nothing. Either because they find it really distressing, utterly boring, or whatever.
Right, iron Fe, atomic mass 26.
Lithium, for instance, has an atomic mass of 3. Lithium is a metal. I'm sure there are other metals below 26, Sodium comes to mind (atomic mass of 11).
So, based on the assumption that heavier than iron means fission, but less than iron fusion, there's still room for fusion, no?
I think this is fusion, but with a slightly different chemistry, but then the nucularly bits are way beyond me except that it's still fusion.
Wow, a Lithium powered sun, that's pretty cool. :-P
Yes, because they'll have arrested anybody who disagrees with them, and all that is left will be people too scared to say anything or who agree.
The NSA is the enemy of freedom and liberty, they just act like they're defending it.
And, yeah, some desk weenie has probably flipped a switch that says I'm an extremist -- what they don't realize is the more they do this shit, the more they'll create extremists.
What's really pathetic is how many Americans are buying into this, when not 20 years there would have been outrage.
Really, and truly, on 9/11 the terrorists got exactly what they wanted -- the destruction of Western societies as we knew it, and the rise of Americans saying "we don't give a crap about the rest of the world, we're scared". Sadly, that will create a backlash of people saying "we don't give a crap about the US, now piss off".
There's no going back from this kind of thing.
No problem.
How about this If Republicans don't like being called racists, they can stop behaving like racists:
I don't know.
I think the in days of the USSR, the citizens didn't believe the propaganda. Whereas a lot of Americans seem to think "why, we have to do this to stop the terrorists".
Convincing people to buy into it is quite a feat.
Basically the NSA has decreed anybody who disagrees with their methods and scope must be an extremist.
I predict in less than 10 years any form of dissent, or privacy will be completely gone in the West. And then we're all harmless sheep, which is exactly what they want.
Maybe not exactly that, but:
And then they followed it up with:
Or, how about the popular conservative commentator Ann Coulter refusing to fly with a black female pilot:
It probably isn't GOP policy, but there's no denying that people who wrap themselves up in that flag haven't done a very good job of distancing themselves from it. They certainly haven't said "we're going to kick any racist, bigoted bastards out of our party".
And, for a little variety, David Duke switched from being a Democrat to a Republican.
And this is what I turned up from Google in under 2 minutes.
And, don't forget, the provisions of the DMCA and the things like it were written in such a way as to safeguard the ISPs as long as they played ball with the authorities.
Under the guise of copyright reform, government have rigged the game, and built in a mechanism by which they can continue to illegally spy on everybody and pretend like it's all legit.
We are pretty much fucked. "State Security" has become the catch phrase (along with kiddie porn and copyright) which is being used to ensure we no longer live in free societies.
Aint it grand? Welcome to the Brave New World.
So is the gist of this that anything which prevents the government from spying on you is now illegal?
Have we come that far already?
Sad, the world used to be such a nice place, but governments have become so demanding in their surveillance that anything which they can't defeat is now illegal.
I've been around many of these, implemented by various companies.
The people who own it champion it, everybody else more or less gets told that all the useful stuff will be in there and you'll need to do it.
So, you get the company cheerleaders (some appointed, some voluntary) who say how wonderful it is, and you get a few curious people who may or may not keep up with it, and you get a slew of people who are actively saying "in what way does this actually help me do my job?".
And the reality is, they almost never do help you to do your job. It's just another thing you're supposed to act like is useful and say how honored you are to bask in the glow of the CEOs wise choices.
Increasingly companies don't give a shit about you, have no loyalty or investment in you ... and expect you to to drink the Kool Aid and be on board with every stupid thing they do to a level of drooling zeal.
To me, at-work "social" networking is, and always has been, a pathetic joke. It doesn't improve my productivity (in fact, it's an impediment), and it's one more thing I'm expected to check regularly and act like it's cool.
But, like every other fad ... everybody says "ZOMG, we have to have teh social networking". And cynical old coders like me go "blah blah blah" and don't use it.
So, just throwing this out there ... I have never done it, and I don't know anything about the properties of this paint ... I have NO idea if you subsequently changed your mind if you can strip the paint, or if you'd need to pull down the drywall.
Truthfully, I only know about the magnetic paint and the whiteboard paint from watching home improvement shows.
But, yes, it's an awfully cool idea.
I'm saying the older you get the more scary shit about this you likely remember.
At just over 40 you sure as hell don't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but you knew it happened and that everybody was talking like they'd be setting them off.
But anybody 40 or over lived through at least a period in which the likelihood of a nuclear war seemed like a very real possibility, and the older you get the more you remember.
And NOBODY ever differentiated between types of radiation while they were telling everybody how terrible it was going to be to die from it if we didn't get burned up in the initial blast.
So if you want to know why there's so much fear around radiation, it's because for several decades people lived in fear of dying from it, because people kept threatening to use the damned things.
No, it's been true for a long time.
But if we keep reminding them of how incompetent they actually are, maybe someone will do something about it.
Who am I kidding, everybody is working on the steaming turd which is Beta. Slashdot has gone even further downhill since Dice took it over.
Ah, but Facebook isn't a university ... they don't have one of those.
So, either they went to the scientists and said "hey, we want to find something out", or the scientists went to Facebook and said "hey, we could do an awesome experiment on your users".
Either way, Sandberg sounds like an unapolagetic smug idiot who more or less said "they're our users, we do this shit all the time".
The people who run Facebook are assholes, and don't give a crap about anything more than how they can maximize ad revenue. And Zuckerfuck is a complete hypocrite about privacy -- his users get none, and he jealously guards his own.
Are you aware of the fact there were several decades in which the threat of nuclear war hung over everybody's heads, and the information being given out didn't include these details?
Anybody over 40 probably remembers several years of bomb drills, or the Bay of Pigs, or all sorts of things which most scared the bejeezus out people?
Even when Reagan got elected there was still a lot of fear that some idiot was going to let loose some nukes, and the rhetoric was quite high.
People were given far more fear than scientific information.
In fairness, I know scientists who are religious and believe in evolution and all the rest of the science, and see God as being outside of all of that, and see the Bible as being allegorical on the points which conflict with science.
Religion isn't always tied with being irrational like the crazies we sometimes see.
Hell, when I went to university there was still a Jesuit teaching physics. He saw no conflict whatsoever between science and religion.
I'm certainly not saying there aren't those who are a little overzealous in their interpretations, but there are many many people who aren't.
I think if you do it right, you can lay down a layer (or layers) of magnetic paint, and then a layer (or layers) of whiteboard paint.
And Google confirms, though that may not be the absolutely best DIY instructions (I have no idea).
So, run wild, do the whole living room. ;-)
Well, the EU has gone to far in the direction of personal rights, and the obligations that imposes on companies.
While the US has gone too far in the direction of corporate rights, and how they can screw us over at will. Because, you know, corporations now have religious freedom to be assholes.
Oddly enough, as long as you can do it without actually committing libel or slander, you still have this right. You just have to phrase it correctly.
The EU 'right to be forgotten' only applies to search engines. It does not (AFAIK) restrict private individuals from actually remembering this stuff, telling others about, and providing links to it.
You just won't be able to find the links using a search engine.
Christ guys, do the editors actually get paid? And if so, what, exactly, is the job description?
Because it clearly doesn't involve, you know, editing.
And, half of them would immediately start checking their email, playing Angry Birds, or generally doing anything but paying attention to the meeting.
I had a manager several years ago who could not be separated from his BlackBerry.
One day, we had a meeting to bring him up to speed on a bunch of things. He had asked for this meeting. In fact, he insisted on it.
The problem was, every thing we told him, would be followed with him looking up from his BB and saying "what? sorry, I missed that." I eventually told him that if he would care to have a meeting with us, we'd be happy to schedule one, but if he's going to spend the entire meeting on his BlackBerry that I would be happy to answer any questions via email and not waste my damned time watching him pay no attention to a meeting he asked for.
And then I walked out of the meeting to demonstrate my point about how bloody rude it was when he wasn't paying any attention either.
The next time we had that meeting, he actually left his BB on his desk.
Digital devices do NOT make for good things in meetings, because all of a sudden people are focused on anything but the meeting. And then it just becomes unproductive and frustrating.
That has been almost universally what I've heard.
It's out of order, or nobody knows how to use it, or the people who know how to use it look at it with disdain and continue with the plain old whiteboard. (I'm not talking about a specific brand, just the digital whiteboards in general.)
I've been in numerous rooms which have these, and I have yet to see a single one in use. When I ask, people usually laugh and say "because it's useless".
For me, the old school whiteboard, and the easel with the giant post-it notes is still what works. Everything else is cumbersome to use, doesn't work as advertised, or is generally regarded as more trouble than it's worth.
Sometimes, low tech is a much better solution. It works, everybody knows how it works, and you don't spend half of your meeting messing around with it, and a bunch of time after your meeting getting your data out of it.
Sadly, for many many people, there is a pretty constant attempt to introduce more technology into everything, even if that technology doesn't come anywhere near living up to its claims.