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Even if they do prove distribution, the claims of damages per track should be fought.

Only since I haven't seen this mentioned here yet, Judge Davis did address the question of excessive damages:

"The statutory damages awarded against Thomas are not a deterrent against those who pirate music in order to profit... Thomas's conduct was motivated by her desire to obtain the copyrighted music for her own use. The Court does not condone Thomas's actions, but it would be a farce to say that a single mother's acts of using Kazaa are the equivalent, for example, to the acts of global financial firms illegally infringing on copyrights in order to profit in the securities market.

While the Court does not discount Plaintiffs' claim that, cumulatively, illegal downloading has farâreaching effects on their businesses, the damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs. Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs - the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000 - more than five hundred [emphasis his] times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than four thousand times the cost of three CDs...

Unfortunately, by using Kazaa, Thomas acted like countless other Internet users. Her alleged acts were illegal, but common. Her status as a consumer who was not seeking to harm her competitors or make a profit does not excuse her behavior. But it does make the award of hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages unprecedented and oppressive."

Taken from an Ars Technica article.

Choosing between a family vacation and a new iMac isn't going to go in Apple's favor. If they are going to remain relevant in a tough economy, they are going to have to seriously lower their prices

While I can't explain why, while we are in a tough economy now Apple's sales are actually good.

In case this Google news topic disappears:

• "Survey: Next 90 days look good for Apple"
• "Survey: Plans to buy a Mac hit an all-time high"
• "Survey: Apple riding high on news of economic woes"
• "Next 90 Days Look Good for Apple despite Consumer Electronics Spending Down"
• "Mac sales may hit record highs despite decline in consumer spending"
• "Consumer electronics spending down, but not for Apple"
• "ChangeWave: Apple Mac planned purchases for next 90 days hit new all-time high"
• "Demand for Macs remains high in spite of spending"
• "Report: Mac Spending Up Despite Poor Outlook for Consumer Electronics"

Falcon

Google has been deceiving you.

Sorry to rain on the conspiracy theorists parade, but google has deceived nobody but those who are unwilling to understand the terms under which Android is licensed, specifically the apache license. Go read it. There's nothing deceptive about it. It

...is a permissive license that is conducive to commercial development and proprietary redistribution. Code that is distributed under the ASL and other permissive licenses can be integrated into closed-source proprietary products and redistributed under a broad variety of other terms. Unlike permissive open-source licenses, "copyleft" licenses (such as the GPL) generally impose restrictions on redistribution of code in order to ensure that modifications and derivatives are kept open and distributed under similar terms.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071106-why-google-chose-the-apache-software-license-over-gplv2.html

So really, what it comes down to, is if you decide to subsidize the cost of the phone by buying it from your carrier along with a service contract, yes -- it is closed.

You can take off your tinfoil hat now.

A quick search on news.google.com yields: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080924-kentucky-tries-to-seize-gambling-site-domain-names.html

Not sure where you get your information, but as of Spring of 2008, iTunes is the largest retailer of music in the US. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-apple-passes-wal-mart-now-1-music-retailer-in-us.html The reason the platform needs to be iTunes compatible is because iTunes is the reason people buy ipods and even the iPhone. There have been many great mp3 players, but they always get crushed by Apple. Apple currently has 73% of the mp3 player market not because of the hardware,but because of the whole experience. The iTunes front end just makes it easy and easy sells. I'm interested in the Android phone, but if its like using most open source products, I'll stay with the iPhone and AT&T. I don't have the time to search for plug-ins and different software projects to make most open source projects work. And I'm sure the phone will be in "beta" for the next 10 years! You get what you pay for as they say.

apparently they are not worried

Didn't the Sony rootkit thing get cleared up primarily because of a series of class action lawsuits? Boycotts are a rather blunt instrument to use to try to express something like "This game is good, but the DRM sucks", by simply not buying the message is indistinguishable from "This game sucks." A lawsuit very specifically names the issue and is sure to be communicated precisely to the upper management.

I'm glad to see they did this for Mac as well as PC. Now if they could just support 64-bit processing on OSX, it would once again be fully up to par with Photoshop for Windows. Yes, I read the article I linked to, I know it's not all Adobe's fault. But it's going to be bad for Adobe, because they'll sell less CS4 upgrades for Mac because of this, and it'll be bad for Apple, because some platform-fence-sitting Photoshop pros who are considering a new computer to run CS4 are going to go PC over Mac.

3. Um I've run vista just fine on computers NOT marked as vista capable. And this is the same as #1 so you're just inflating your numbers.

The fraudulent "Vista Capable" is well documented. It wasn't just about beefy hardware, it was also about poorly supported device drivers:

• Buying a new PC? 'Windows Vista Capable' barely hits the mark
• 'Vista Capable' lawsuit against Microsoft now a class action
• Vista-capable lawsuit paints picture of buggy NVIDIA drivers
• The Vista Capable fiasco: to hell with system recs!

3. Um I've run vista just fine on computers NOT marked as vista capable. And this is the same as #1 so you're just inflating your numbers.

The fraudulent "Vista Capable" is well documented. It wasn't just about beefy hardware, it was also about poorly supported device drivers:

• Buying a new PC? 'Windows Vista Capable' barely hits the mark
• 'Vista Capable' lawsuit against Microsoft now a class action
• Vista-capable lawsuit paints picture of buggy NVIDIA drivers
• The Vista Capable fiasco: to hell with system recs!

And how about some scientific research?

If this is the dialog in question, then I think even I would have clicked 'Ok', and I'm paranoid as all get out. (Which is why I use Firefox so perhaps I'm not so familiar with IE look and feel).

I mean it's not like you have a lot of options is it? Crash out of IE? And just looking at the still image, other than the minimise/maximise controls, there's nothing that screams 'malware' to me. Even the presence of the maximise controls doesn't immediately grab me, because Microsoft changes GUI schemes and widget sets so often (Office 2007, ahem) that it's really hard to tell what a 'typical' dialog should or shouldn't look like.

Isn't the real question: if you're always only ever ONE 'OK' BUTTON CLICK from hosing your computer and giving up all control to an attacker - isn't something very wrong already?

There was no 'Yes' option either. There was only 1 button and it said 'Ok'.

http://arstechnica.com/news.media/FakeDialog.png

I know Slashdot has become another trash site filled with sensationalism, but get your facts right at least. This is essentially the same thing as iTunes.

Its even on the site you linked to:

"you have one download, one redownload, and that's it."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080921-playstation-3-video-drm-two-strikes-and-youre-out.html

Yes, I know the first sale doctrine is confused because the software companies say that software is 'licensed'. The day they turn round and say that they'll replace all media once it's broken, and allow perpetual updates, and not tie it to any particular machine, and vastly reduce the cost, then I may think twice (actually, I use Steam, as it lets me do most of that).

But that is just it as well. There are several MAJOR court cases in the USA that have upheld the rights of owners of these "licenses" to sell them.

Autodesk v Vernor

Another case in California state court ruled that you have the right to resell bundled software that was contained on a PC.

Yet another case has said that you can resell music CD's, even ones that are "not for resale" insider promo CD's.

As much as companies like EA want to make first sale go away, it has been upheld each and every time it has been tested. And as much as EA wants to make this a non-transferable license, law has said it is transferable. Other major cases have come from bankruptcy. Where it has been upheld that software "licenses" are property that has value and can be sold as assets to recoup costs to stakeholders. MS, Adobe, and Autodesk have been involved in those cases as well, and have all been overruled in their asserting that first sale doctrine does not apply to their software.

he "executive order" complaint sounds like total bullshit, but if I'm wrong I'd like to hear about

Well, this article is about an "executive agreement"," ACTA.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/18769prs20041220.html
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/08/25/military_cites_risk_of_abuse_by_cia/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051217-5791.html

Just google for:
"bush abuse of executive order"

I'm still mad at Bill for the last commercial, in which he said nothing except, "I have a lot of money and now I'm going to wiggle my ass in your face, nyah nyah". If Bill wants to be a celebrity then he can just "leak" a homemade sex tape like the others do.

And I'm really pissed at you there, Ethanol-fueled dude. Some of us are visual and were eating lunch.

*Throws 3/4s of a bowl of beans and rice into ethanol-fueled's face*

Asshole.

(Dear $deity: These ads are sooo bad, and yet the ad agency and Microsoft Marketing considers them a success due to the "buzz" they created. Please, please PLEASE don't let anyone from that agency read about this se*choke*, er, se*YAK*, AHEM, ethanol-fueleds "idea", lest there be wailing and gouging out of eyes.)

Soko

Since when is it 'hacking' to guess that her email password is her zip code? You can't hack stupidity and ignorance.

actually her password was 'popcorn' per Ars

As noted by others, its already been confirmed, but what they got into was not the juicy gov.sarah@yahoo.com address that's the potential subject of investigation, just her personal yahoo address. Since then though, both gov.palin and gov.sarah have been removed - pastebin.com/f652c44fb.

Quick quiz: What's the screen resolution of an iPhone?

480 x 320 pixels

720x576 plugged into my television or computer monitor. I guess you overlooked the part where I said:

An iPhone, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, a dock, and a TV could be the "Mac mini to go" but thanks to Apple's lame policies, it's just a bit player in the mobile space instead.

iPhone is a computer. BYOKDM. The iPhone could be the ultimate portable computer. Unfortunately, Apple's unreasonable demands on developers and intentional crippling of the iPhone are preventing it from becoming a real success.

One of the main problem with voting for the republican guy, is the combination of his age, his health and his VP candidate.

A crazy religious gun nut who believes that the US army is in Iraq on a mission from God sounds like she would feel more at home somewhere like Iran. Being against sex education also came back to bite her, but even then she didn't get the hint and support more education to avoid teen pregnancies. And a president who doesn't believe in science, but in creationism...

Whatever one might think of McCain, his VP candidate should make sure any sane people vote for the opponent.

It could also be justifiably considered harassment or stalking, and a restraining order would effectively curtail your first amendment right.

I'm fairly sure that to make something "harassment", it would have to be more than posting your wireless router's (and other devices') MAC, along with thousands of others' on some website.

Someone posting a MAC address with that device's home address is no more "stalking" than posting a street address with its GPS coordinates on the web (or posting a street address with the picture of the house as seen from public street, if you want to make it more personal---and this is way more personal than MAC addresses).

What I'm saying above is what anyone with a common sense would say (not to mention that there is a similar case where such things were allowed). If you still disagree and want to argue your point, I'd suggest that you come back with some supporting court cases; otherwise you are a simple fearmongerer.

Google's vision isn't truly understood by everyone, IMHO. Google knew that the Open Source community would fork and port Chrome anyway and that freed up time for developers to work out the system bugs and get the thing live. Releasing the source code is a redeemable action from the many gripes that flooded about Google not offering Linux or Mac support in Chrome on launch, among other things.

Now I personally would like to see a fork that would upgrade Chrome to remove any significant Windows reliance. I don't trust Microsoft to put my interests first and therefore I don't like the idea of a browser that relies so heavily on Microsoft for security.

To the person who modded me troll,you want links? Here you go. MSFT lied to the Justice Dept,MSFT lied to get a better deal on the DVR patents ,MSFT lied with a fake ad trying to fight the "Mac VS PC" ads,MSFT lied about Xbox 360 features,hell I could do this all day long. Hell just typing "Microsoft lied" into Yahoo brings up over 3 MILLION hits!

So answer me this if I am a supposed troll: Given the fact that we are talking about a company that has a proven history of lying and only fessing up when actually caught in a lie,why should we take their word now? I mean if Diebold says "Sure the voting boxes are safe,trust us they are hack proof!" would you believe them without proof? Considering how much information can be gleaned from the average persons searches and how much money that could potentially be worth to data miners,give me one good reason why now we can trust Microsoft simply because they say it is so? After being lied to by MSFT so much in the past I don't think it too much to ask to have an independent source at least look at what is going on there with that data,do you? But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

and only purchasing DRM-free games.

Unfortunately, those are few and far between. I can accept games like Supreme Commander, which are initially copy-protected, but which have the protection removed by the game developers themselves afterward (as the DRM is usually demanded by the publisher, not the developers).

You should try Sins of a Solar Empire. Stardock promised to release the game without any copy protection and they kept their promise. Actually, it turned out to become one of my alltime favourite games. I remember reading a great article about it in ars exactly when the whole **it with spore and amazon just happend :) http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/09/05/solar-empire-moves-500-000-units

This Ars Technicia article in which he claims the only books on the Amiga he could find where technical manuals?

After that he started to make up stuff based on biased PBS shows like "Triumph of the Nerds" that was basically Steve Jobs and Bill Gates bragging about how awesome they are and how they invented everything first except for Xerox, and the Amiga is just a footnote in that story. In fact Steve Jobs admits to stealing ideas to make the Macintosh "Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas ehm and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world."

He admits that Apple has always been shameless in stealing ideas. That proves my version of history about Commodore and the Amiga and Steve Jobs and Apple stealing ideas from them.

An analysis of the 1% statistic from Ars Technica forums (the entire rest of this post is a quote):

"But EA says that the three-computer limit was designed to address the needs of the largest portion of its user base while still limiting piracy. According to the company's stats, less than 25 percent of its customers across the board activate a PC title on more than one machine -- and the number of EA customers who ask to activate more than three accounts is smaller than one percent."

Now, let's think about this for a moment. What exactly does that 1% number actually mean? To begin with, I was shocked that the number was that low; not because not many people have reinstalled it three times in that time frame (less than 1% have done that in that brief time frame seems perfectly reasonable), but because you'd expect large numbers of installs to correlate with piracy (which is the entire assumption EA is making with this DRM system). Given this, 1% is an exceedingly low level of piracy (one that is cause for skepticism, I think), and if true would suggest that the EA execs and stockholders are the biggest sissies in this whole mess. Regardless, with large numbers of installs being so far into the distribution tail, this very strongly suggests that at least one of the following must be true:

1. Most of these 1% are legitimate customers, and not cases of piracy.
2. A significant portion of the cases where two computers were used are the majority of cases of piracy (specifically, cases where a person bought the game and gave a friend a copy).

Regardless of which of these (if not both) is the correct one, this tells us that this DRM scheme is having very little effect on piracy. If #2 is true, then EA is missing most of the cases of piracy with this limit, and would not be significantly harmed by the lack of this limit. If #2 is false, then pirates simply are almost exclusively getting cracked torrent versions of the game, and are so not affected by this DRM, leaving only legitimate paying customers with the hassle.

15 Petabytes of data? Gosh, that's almost as much as P2P traffic! We... we need to... er... throttle the LHC!

Monticello hatched an ambitious plan to wire up its entire town with fiber, build an interconnect station, and allow ISPs to link up to the site and offer Internet access over the city-maintained fiber links.

Since the fiber plant is going to be a monopoly, this is how internet access should be sold: have the part that is going to be a monopoly be regulated, and then allow competition where that is easy.

The only trick is not allowing the people in charge of just the fiber to interact with the data running over that fiber, as the Canadians are discovering with Bell.

Email senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

I oppose S. 3325, the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008. Not only does this bill create more financial responsibilities the country can't afford, but it turns a civil matter of copyright infringement into another expansion of government.

It also asks all levels of government to spend more time on intellectual property rights enforcement, which I believe is not something that deserves "high priority" status. Moreover, the seizure provisions of this bill will inevitably harm innocent people in technology, which are documented at http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080911-committee-amends-approves-enormous-gift-to-big-content.html.

Please vote against S. 3325, the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008 and keep the government from growing into another area of monitoring our freedoms.

1) When copyright law was created it was done so to keep corporations in check. This does not scale to corporations vs. individuals because the vast majority of individuals do not have the ability to defend themselves in court. Also, a good indication that the law is broken when ~1/3 of the population breaks it http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080708-breaking-the-law-one-third-of-us-residents-rip-dvds.html
2) There is little to no evidence that piracy hurts sales. Some have even pointed that the opposite to be true http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2347/125/
3) In the case of MPAA and RIAA, for the first time in history we don't need them anymore. In the past the only way to "perfectly" copy media was through an industrial process. Now individuals can do so by themselves. What we need is an organization that will insure that artists are still paid for their work. The RIAA and MPAA have both proved that they fail spectacularly at this because to date, little to no money from their legal actions were returned to artists. Not to mention that are numerous accounts of labels taking the artist to the cleaners. Just google Trent Reznor.
So to recap, the MPAA and RIAA are using a broken law to support a service we don't need

From TA:

• "The Cupertino, Calif.-based company apologized on its Web site for the problem, but also used the opportunity to jab at Microsoft, its operating system rival.

  "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it," Apple said on its site. "

Sure, Apple was scolded by non-Microsoft security experts, but I'm sure Apple fanboys ate the bullshit all up.

The systems they used in the Mojave advertisements were HP Pavilion DV 2000 machines with 2GB of RAM.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/07/31/windows-mojave-advertisements-start-to-appear-in-the-wild

Not really top of the line...

wealth and success are irrelevant

They are far from irrelevant if you listen to those arguing for extending copyright laws. They cite the need of creators to earn a living from their work. Here is EU Commissioner McCreevy arguing for term extension: "Copyright represents a moral right of the performer to control the use of his work and earn a living from his performance." Then it's perfectly reasonable to argue that this purpose of the law has already been fulfilled.

More importantly, the law is meant to serve us, not the other way around. We have every business talking about what the law should be, not only what it is. Laws are created and changed by our elected representatives. Limiting one's vision to the letter of the law is infantile and irresponsible for a citizen in a democracy.

Whether our representatives really represent us is a different matter. They certainly won't if we treat their actions - including legislation - as beyond criticism.

I guess you missed the second page in the article http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/mozilla-committed-to-gecko.ars/2 where they explain why Gecko is worth keeping and where they also explain that it isn't as outdated and bloated as it felt before FireFox 3 ;)

We can only hope that if the land-based providers remain stagnant, that we will see some wireless competition in the near future. While I know it's no small feat to implement large wireless networks, I sincerely hope we end up with more than 2 good contenders in areas.

You'd be wrong.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080627-more-than-a-year-too-late-microsoft-fixes-360-drm-with-license-tool.html [arstechnica.com]

Read carefully. If it's not connected to the Internet this is a problem. If connected to the Internet, it simply does as I stated and just auths the game against your XBL account.

Also as far as people who have a 360 goes, how many of them download games from the Internet then disconnect the console from the network? Nobody I know. That tool is to fix a problem with offline play of Arcade titles that only happens sometimes.

If we can't copy them until they expire and enter the public domain, that means to do things legally:
1) we have to preserve the originals and the technology to access them for a hundred years.
2) 100 years from now, not only are we coping with rare antiquated technology, deteriorated originals, but we have to break the DRM too.
3) And its not clear that even if we did all that would we be clear of a DMCA violation, because it doesn't actually require that the drm being circumvented apply to a work actually still protected by copyright. On the upside, since its out of copyright, no one should have standing to sue... unless violating the DMCA is criminal (or is criminal 100 years from now).

Again, I don't see any need to grand stand about copyrights on this. If I pay $5 for a copy of Galaga, I'm not going to whine about it not being around forever. If you don't like it, don't buy it, but really. Nobody really gives a shit. These are cheapass ports of classics and PC shareware. You can buy most titles on different platforms and if preservation is your goal, get the original arcade roms and PC versions. If just interested in sitting on the sofa with friends to hoot and hollar while playing some XBL title, then this is fine too.

Nice numbered list, though.

And "I'll bet your ass" (whatever that means) micropayment titles are easily moved from one Xbox to the next because it's tied to your XBox Live information. If you go over to a friend's house, you can simply log in your controller manually, download the game again (free), and everyone can enjoy that title.

You'd be wrong.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080627-more-than-a-year-too-late-microsoft-fixes-360-drm-with-license-tool.html

And apparently this is a pretty recent feature. Of course, its only good for as long as MS decides to make the online tool available, and you can only do this once every 12 months.

According to the article, the PS3 on the other hand apparently doesn't tie it to your console, just your profile... but in either case you still can't transfer them to someone elses account. So reselling them is pretty much off limits. As is lending them to your friends.

Also, if you xbox dies, just keep the hard drive and slap it into a new xbox. Everything should work.
If the drive itself dies, get a new one and log in with your account. Again, go download whatever you bought before and it'll work.

Not quite that simple. See above link.

Of course, the problems will crop up some day when the games are no longer available for download. But 99% of the general public isn't in this for a permanent investment to begin with, they are dropping 5-10 bucks for an indefinite amount of time being entertained.

Copyright is designed to encourage and reward creativity. Combined with DRM it results in the permanent destruction of works, and the removal of them from our culture.

If we can't copy them until they expire and enter the public domain, that means to do things legally:
1) we have to preserve the originals and the technology to access them for a hundred years.
2) 100 years from now, not only are we coping with rare antiquated technology, deteriorated originals, but we have to break the DRM too.
3) And its not clear that even if we did all that would we be clear of a DMCA violation, because it doesn't actually require that the drm being circumvented apply to a work actually still protected by copyright. On the upside, since its out of copyright, no one should have standing to sue... unless violating the DMCA is criminal (or is criminal 100 years from now).

That's ridiculous. If we had to wait 100 years before we're allowed to copy a c64 title, how many do you think will make it?

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/games/spore-review.ars

This game isn't from Sony. SecuROM comes in many, many flavours and has been used on many, many games over the years. Sony used a version that was a rootkit *once*, which is not at all the same DRM method that is used in Spore.

So, in order to play this game without a rootkit being installed:
1) purchase Spore.
2) install it.
3) play the game.

If you have problems with how the DRM in spore actually behaves, that's fine. I can't prove to you that there isn't a rootkit, but I also can't prove to you that it won't give you AIDS. At some point, you have to accept that the DRM works as advertised by EA, specifically a "one time online authentication":

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/06/20/spore-creature-creator-drm-explained-direct-from-ea

Let all wait and see.

What exaflood?

They will make no money from Chrome; it is just a means to an end. What they are trying to do is just make sure that the rapid pace of browser development over the past few years continues unabated, so Microsoft doesn't pull another IE6 on us.

I agree that it's a means to an end, but I disagree that their goal is just to foster browser innovation. I think arstechnica got it right: web apps are currently second-class citizens on a user's desktop, where all actions are confined to a window with far too many superfluous controls, and the app has too little control over what it shows to the user. Chrome is the first step making web apps first-class citizens on the desktop. Microsoft's worst fears are coming true.

1) Process-per-tab. It sucks when some JS in some tab gets hung up, bringing everything else in the browser to its knees! Chrome is the only game in town here.

FF 3.1 has something called Worker Threads that can run CPU hungry Javascript in the background. More details here.

My Atari-400 still works 25 years later

I want my next computer to have no disk drives and no fans, because my last computer like that is still working 25+ years later.

If the Atom platform is good enough (it currently performs like a 1.2GHz Pentium M), then we're almost there. Dell's new Inspiron Mini netbook is fanless, although Dell designed a large heatsink to cool the mobile 945GM graphics. The upcoming Poulsbo chipset, which is designed for Atom, should make it easier to go fanless (and adds full HD video acceleration).

The Atom CPU doesn't need a fan and dual-core versions are supposedly coming this month. Unfortunately, Poulsbo won't be ready.

As I understand it, Microsoft has deliberately restricted the systems that can be licensed with OEM WinXP by mandating that devices having screens smaller than something like 10" or 11", and no more than 1GB of RAM, a HDD no larger than 80GB, and a processor slower than 1.8GHz. (Someone feel free to correct me on the exact WinXP OEM Netbook licensing hardware restrictions, but I have read about there somewhere recently...)

I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook for my wife. It shipped with Windows XP Home and has many of the limits you mention: 1.6GHz Atom processor, 8.9-inch screen, and 1 GB of RAM. The hard drive, however, is 120 GB. I had read about the 80 GB limitation before, but either Acer got around it, or Microsoft has raised its ceiling.

Yup, Microsoft did "raise its celing". The new "limits" include 160GB hard drive and 14.1" screen (which seems large for a "netbook").

they've taken heat for their TOS

Some of that TOS stuff apparently turned out to be a mistake:

Google on Chrome EULA controversy: our bad, we'll change it

Damn. I guess it's just music then. Ok, phooey on them...

Can't we have a legal system that would just dismiss something so ridiculous and unreasonable???

This actually happened just the other day. A court in Washington state struck down the AT&T long distance Terms of Service. The court ruled that the TOS was "'unconscionable,' meaning that no reasonable individual would have agreed to them had he or she realized their full scope." (quoting from the Ars Technica story).

A PDF of the decision is here. The interesting bits seem to start around page 23 or so, though my eyes glazed over fairly quickly.

-- Laura

Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective. Carbon-14 is the canard to which people cling desperately who don't know anything about radioactive isotopes. You would of course be correct that C14 only tracks material 50,000 years old or younger. Unfortunately for your argument, C14's 5,715 year halflife is just the tip of the iceberg.

Isotope and its respective halflife in years:
Thorium-230: 75,400
Uranium-234: 248,000
Chlorine-36: 300,000
Beryllium-10: 1.52 million
Uranium-235: 700 million
Potassium-40: 1.26 billion
Uranium-238: 4.5 billion
Thorium-232: 14 billion
Lutetium-176: 38 billion
Rhenium-187: 42 billion
Rubidium-87: 48.8 billion
Samarium-147: 106 billion

Given that I have held hominid skulls from today's modern humans all the way back to our ancestor's when they first diverged from the other great apes, I have done the research, sir. I have held them with my own two hands and examined them with my own two eyes.

The rest of your rant against genetics, general biology, biochemistry, et al. clearly show that you have not taken a single course in any of these subjects at the college level. Even a casual look at the evidence in an introductory biology class should be enough. But you are so busy calling others dunces that you cannot see your own idiocy.

I failed to denounce Behe successfully? On what point? Please elucidate so I can make my denunciation more complete.

If evolution cannot happen, then how can it have been reproduced, creating a new species with abilities not available to its forebears? According to you, this can't happen. For while the nimrods at Conservapedia tried to wish it away and yell the evidence into non-existence, all they ended up doing was illustrating so clearly just how deluded they were.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. OpenCarry is an individual of ignorance.