I enjoyed the guide a lot :) My mind immediately went back to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car_%28fiction%29">flying cars</a>! We had a lot in the movies and the BBC <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3676694.stm">posted</a> an article about it.
<cite>a new generation of flying cars will be needed to ferry people along skyways. that is the verdict of engineers from the US space agency and aeronautical firms, who envision future commuters travelling by "skycar"</cite>
the FSF went even further, with its <a href="http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/the-car-analogy">car analogy</a>
my wish list would match your, but the existing technologies can also come in our help
Recently there has been a number of highly engaging online classes(1) runned by prestigious univeristies (MIT, Stanford) where teachers are the "real scientists" you mentioned and students (like me) appreciate their methods and even more their lessons.
Unfortunately we're limited by some technology boundaries but are also enjoying the benefits it provides.
(1) some links to the online classes I was referring to
CS 101 by Nick Parlante @ cs101-class.org
Natural Language Processing by Dan Jurafsky and Chris Manning @ nlp-class.org
Software Engineering for SAAS by Armando Fox and David Patterson @ saas-class.org
Human-Computer Interfaces by Scott Klemmer @ hci-class.org
Game Theory by Matthew Jackson and Yoav Shoham @ game-theory-class.org
Probabilistic Graphical Models by Daphne Koller @ pgm-class.org
Machine Learning by Andrew Ng @ jan2012.ml-class.org
I enjoyed the guide a lot :) My mind immediately went back to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car_%28fiction%29">flying cars</a>! We had a lot in the movies and the BBC <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3676694.stm">posted</a> an article about it.
<cite>a new generation of flying cars will be needed to ferry people along skyways. that is the verdict of engineers from the US space agency and aeronautical firms, who envision future commuters travelling by "skycar"</cite>
the FSF went even further, with its <a href="http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/the-car-analogy">car analogy</a>
but we have no flying cars yet, unfortunately.