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Nice opinion piece.

nice indeed .... especially like: "They make such great stuff, but they're such assholes. Do I really want to support this company? Should Apple care what people like me think? What difference does it make if they alienate a small minority of their users? There are a couple reasons they should care. One is that these users are the people they want as employees. If your company seems evil, the best programmers won't work for you. That hurt Microsoft a lot starting in the 90s. Programmers started to feel sheepish about working there. It seemed like selling out. When people from Microsoft were talking to other programmers and they mentioned where they worked, there were a lot of self-deprecating jokes about having gone over to the dark side. But the real problem for Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people they hired. It was the people they never got. And you know who got them? Google and Apple. If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. And it's largely because they got more of the best people that Google and Apple are doing so much better than Microsoft today. Why are programmers so fussy about their employers' morals? Partly because they can afford to be. The best programmers can work wherever they want. They don't have to work for a company they have qualms about. But the other reason programmers are fussy, I think, is that evil begets stupidity. An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work. And it's not fun for a smart person to work in a place where the best ideas aren't the ones that win."

Poor programmers can complain, but they will keep developing applications for iPhone as long as their bosses will tell them to do so... From my experience in mobile software development I assure you it's not the pain of the programmer that dictates what is done, but the customer's demand. Even though like this the quality of applications is somewhat worse than it could be, clients won't complain as they have no reference point. And things will stay as they are: apple censoring the applications, clients paying for stuff that "sometimes just does not work" (it's normal, isn't it??), and programmers complaining, but obediently making iPhone apps...

which city or country is next? who is ripe?

NASA did it! In 5 years from now, ESA will release its first educational computer game.

Good, but where are the Xenomorphs attacking the astronauts?

You're right! And they even dare to call it serious!

Dissolving in sodium hydroxide vs freeze-drying... which one for you?

apparently warm things attract each other instead. a symbolic prize of a virtual launch vehicle based on a smeg fridge/freezer for the most amusing/shortest refutation. "A ~1068 gm hollow copper sphere hovers above a 1000 W heat element." "After power was applied to the heat element for 400 s, the means of the first and last ~6 force measures indicate that the sphere's gravitational mass increased by 1.9 % or 20 gm."

interesting...

this looks like absolute humbug to me .... reminds me of some rotating superconductors :-)

Could be fun actually... I liked most the part: "They were asked to (...) find food: meaning fishing, trapping animals, preparing food and cooking with primitive tools.". Roasted squirrel anyone?

How much remained in your head? Don't tell Tobias, but I scored only 5/10 :-(

There's one question missing: how many of these designs are claimed to be baised on biomimicry just because this sells?? Tobi, please!

so any ideas from us here?! :)

btw: have been discussing something similar with Roger ... a bit less ambitious but still ...

presentations from the related nanosatellite event http://www.nestra.jp/NS_sympo/information_e.html (DLR, SSTL and european unis were there but no ESA...)

I've seen those before! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWjj8EKTkWE

ah these french... they don't know what to do of their time ! Imagine the research proposal: we need 100 Champagne bottle...!

one more try to get you interested in this ... seems that it is slowly but surely moving into the domain of serious science ...

Why don't you try this out? 10 minutes group meditation before every ACT meeting... Should be fun!

Great, just great!! The conclusion seems to be "Thus IBMT could provide a means for improving self-regulation and perhaps reducing or preventing various mental disorders." Why all this neuro-bio-nonsense?? Wasn't this conclusion known before just using good old classic psychology and similar? Again one of these studies that thinks to provide new evidence just because they made a boring brain scan...

anybody here using Foursquare already? Location is supposed to be "the future" (this time)

this is worse than having a mobile ... !

you all probably prefer Juri's Night (http://yurisnight.net/) to the World Space Week .... but still: any suggestions what we could do during that week as an "event"?

interesting post on data and knowledge management ;)

Funny read, if nothing else!