I think all of these areas are making great progress. > An escape from configuration hell debconf. chef, puppet. git. augeas. gsettings. In the Windows world,

I think all of these areas are making great progress. > An escape from configuration hell debconf. chef, puppet. git. augeas. gsettings. In the Windows world, the registry. There's tons of work being done in this area. You may say that more can be done, or that it isn't good enough, but I think you're wrong to claim that nobody is working on it. > Understanding interactions in a large, production system How about the Google Prediction API? Send the data in, and look for changes when you have a problem that you're trying to fix, such as in your example. > Pushing the envelope on new computing platforms This is incredibly vague. I find it difficult to understand your definition of "new computing platforms". Based on my interpretation of what you mean, I think a modern smartphone might qualify: a new form factor, more ubiquitous than before, novel UX (capacitive touchscreen), and an array of interesting sensors (accelerometers, compasses, GPS). I think your post highlights the lamentation of AI researchers: we don't have a good, static measure of success. Once we've achieved something, our definition changes to exclude it.