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Unfortunately, this technology is very likely to be misused by uninformed people in the legal profession. The example of the school teacher accused of spreading porn come to mind. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070214-8850 .html

Some prosecutors are likely to take the evidence from Vista as proving a person did something very bad. The evidence only the computer did something very bad. A rogue third party could have hijacked the computer and planted the data there. With current spyware and adware, the attack may simply be an effort to drive traffic to certain websites. Having a school teacher's career destroyed is just a side-effect of a rogue third party trying to make money.

What good points? It has a resource intensive "shiny" interface. It has levels of DRM heretofore unseen in an operating system. It is claimed that it is secure, yet still has gaping security holes. It is claimed that it is safe, yet has to be made un-safe for users to be able to do anything with it. It is expensive, clunky, space consuming, privacy invading, insecure, unsafe, and is more interested in protecting the interests of major Hollywood distributors than its users.

Care to highlight why I'd want to use Vista?

I believe that is correct - AM & FM radio do not pay royalties, but digital radio does. However, according to http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070522-riaa -radio-needs-to-pay-up.html/ there is a move afoot by the RIAA to correct that 'revenue gap' - just as with Internet Radio.

I believe that there is also the assumption that objects are not receding at greater than the speed of light.

You're right, that's also an assumption being made.

The expanding universe seems to imply that the size of the universe that we can actually interact with is finite.

Not only finite, but shrinking. It was just a couple weeks ago I read this article on ars, which asserts that 100 billion years from now, universal expansion will have progressed to the point where we can't see anything that isn't part of our local cluster (which will a single, large galaxy at that point).

The GP complained about the lack of engineers and technical know-how in relation to the bill. I simply pointed out that the bill's author, Holt, has a Ph.D. in Physics, so he does have technical knowledge. It is semi-relevant in this discussion, since we're talking about reforms related to electronic voting machines. The bill doesn't tell anyone to use electronic voting machines (it leaves that issue aside entirely), but it says that if you are going to use them you have to meet certain minimum requirements (though states are free to do even more).

If you're not impressed by Holt's credentials, I might point out that this bill implements things suggested by a NIST study on the subject (that's a bunch of other technical people), and has been endorsed by many e-voting activists and computer security experts, like Prof. Ed Felten and Prof. Avi Rubin. So the idea that this bill is the result of lack of technical knowledge or forethought is baseless.

I am aware that getting SOMETHING done is often seen as necessary. However, I have a prejudice in favour of getting something done RIGHT. If more of our lawmakers worked on the assumption that a bad bill is worse than no bill, we'd all be better off.

Supporters of this bill believe that it will get something good done. At the risk of repeating myself: When you vote on a DRE today your vote is going into a black box. There is no way to know whether the vote that is recorded inside the machine is for the person you selected on the screen. There is no meaningful way to audit the machines, and certainly no attempt is made. This bill mandates that there is a voter-verified paper record of your vote, and it requires audits of the electronic tally in a certain percentage of randomly selected precincts to ensure (statistically) that the electronic tally actually matches the paper one. This clearly is a vital improvement, and it is one that should be made as soon as possible.

Perhaps you would like to see more? Passing this bill does not preclude further reform. Passing a good, but perhaps imperfect, bill now is better than passing nothing at all. If your prejudice is for waiting for a perfect bill, then it will result in nothing getting done at all, which leaves us all much worse off.

There are many examples in Congress of passing a bill simple for the sake of having passes something, but this is not one of them. This bill makes actual improvements.

Some of the objections given at the beginning of the article seem to be worth considering. The straw man debate that follows is just idiotic, however. It might be useful to look at what some actual supporters have to say, supporters like the EFF, Prof. Ed Felten, Ars Technica, the Brennan Center for Justice, People of the American Way, TrueVoteMD, and Prof. Avi Rubin to name a few.

The pic in the journal post over at http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/07 /11/ars-at-e3-new-first-party-peripherals-wii-zapp er-wheel looks quite different than the zapper shown at launch.. in fact, it looks far more intuitive and the demo whereby a reload action involved jerking the zapper downwards mimics some arcade shooters nicely :)

Overall, I'm am completely stoked about this product!

To transfer a whole disc worth of textures to an HDD would take *hours*

25,000MB / 9MB/sec = 2,777 sec = 46 minutes to read every byte on the disk.

The rest of your post is equally inane.

Yeah, maybe a shameless plug, but it is the best iPhone review I have seen so far.

Yeah, maybe a shameless plug, but it is the best iPhone review I have seen so far.

From Arstechnica: http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007 /07/10/firefox-and-internet-explorer-team-together -for-critical-vulnerability

Thor Larholm, the researcher who discovered the flaw, insists that the blame falls on the back of Internet Explorer. "Firefox is the current attack vector but Internet Explorer is to blame for not escaping quote characters when passing on the input to the command line." He also notes that Internet Explorer behaves similarly with other handlers. "Internet Explorer doesn't filter the input for the irc:// or aim:// URL protocol handlers either. The exploitability on those depend on what arguments each application accepts."

The director of Symantec's Security Response Center, Oliver Friedrichs, believes that both browsers should share the heat. "You have two very complex applications that are not playing well together and leading to a security issue. The components themselves are secure as stand-alone products but not together."

Huh.

Funny.

You know, here I was, thinking that Vista had a totally new API and GDI. How silly of me.

-Red

Huh.

Funny.

You know, here I was, thinking that Vista had a totally new API and GDI. How silly of me.

-Red

Back in May there were articles floating around that Microsoft expected the Xbox division to be profitable in 2008. However, they've recently decided to offer an extended warrenty to customers in order to deal with the high failure rate of the Xbox 360. An earlier Slashdot article has this estimated to cost Microsoft around one billion dollars.

The earliest reports pegged the Xbox as costing about five hundred through seven hundred dollars to manufacture, a loss of a few hundred dollars on each console sold. This article published around the time of the PS3 launch puts the cost of Xbox 360 components at around seventy dollars under the final unit cost (manufacturing and other costs were not calculated into this figure so it may be safe to assume that they were breaking even or close to it at that time).

With the costs of the new warrenty (in addition to any costs that can be associated with the honoring existing warrenties to cover the high failure rates of the console) and cutting the price which changes the profitability on each unit sold, when does Microsoft now expect their Xbox division to become profitable?

After reading this, I am somewhat speechless. All I see is a twist of irony here; the gestapo tactics of this industry is alarming. I dont know where they will draw the line and when?

So, lyrics are out, Tablature is out... I wonder when they will shake down middle and high schools? They are onto a path where their greed is going to short-circuit the creative process.

Apperently, you cant teach people how to play either

This just demonstrates their short-sightedness.

I don't know HOW many times I'm going to nned to say this, and I wish I'd hit this post earlier, but MS has been funding an open-source ODF blugin for months now (notice the date)... since Office 2007 was in beta, in fact (I know, because I tested it). I've had ODF support in MS Office since before Sun even appeared on the project's SourceForge page... in fact, I was quite surprised when I checked a few weeks ago (for a Slashdot post, incidentally) and found Sun there, as I do not believe they were initially a project contributor (but that's what I recall, no guarantees there). At best, though, news of a ODF converter for MS Office is old news.

Even if it turns out that this project is Sun's, exclusively (their license says so, but the liecnese on the SOurceForge project is extremely liberal) I'm not sure what all the hype is about. Supposedly the Sun plugin uses Java (or, according to the license, "may contain Java technology") whereas the MS/SourceForge one uses .NET (C# I believe) but otherwise they look about identical, right down to which versions of Office are supported and what file formats are supported.

It'd be interesting to see a comparison of the two plugins, but whoever thinks MS doesn't want Office to support ODF is, quite simply, wrong.

...Simple combinations of existing technologies are exactly what 90% of patents are. Even some legitimate.

You know... your post just made me realize why they don't play full videos on MTV anymore -- god forbid someone tape the audio off their TV. The RIAA was probably all over that one.

Yep, same with a radio edit...the idea and practice has been around for ages.

Here's another thing that snook into TV broadcasting. Yep, it's already here.

And for those of you thinking of recording off your tv better get, while the gettin's good...cuz, ya know, corporate America is going to put a stop to it using their puppets.

AK

(anti-karmawhore)

You know... your post just made me realize why they don't play full videos on MTV anymore -- god forbid someone tape the audio off their TV. The RIAA was probably all over that one.

Yep, same with a radio edit...the idea and practice has been around for ages.

Here's another thing that snook into TV broadcasting. Yep, it's already here.

And for those of you thinking of recording off your tv better get, while the gettin's good...cuz, ya know, corporate America is going to put a stop to it using their puppets.

AK

(anti-karmawhore)

Given the conflicts between Gate's public statements (these are $100K jobs) and the third party analysis of what he's paying H1B visa holders (these are $50K jobs), that sounds exactly correct.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070226-8924 .html

That said, there is no particular need for MS to code in the US, nor for MS to create US jobs in general. But those of us living here wish they would.

Over at ArsTechnica there is an article about the BSA offering a large reward for reporting software piracy.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070702-bsa- announces-1-million-award-for-piracy-snitches.html

How about OSS users and companies getting together a reward to encourage employees of proprietary software companies to snitch on patent infringement. Perhaps if proprietary software companies had to pay the full price for their use of software patents, then, they might thinks again about supporting such abominations.

Do you have any figures for Dell OEM pricing or incentives from trialware or crapware?

The cost per Vista Home Basic OEM is about $99 to end users.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070124-8696 .html

But volume discounts are not illegal as far as I know, so they probably still charge Dell less than the OEM price if they do thousands of installs. Googling around turns up quotes for Vista like "$50 for Home Basic rising to to $100 for Home Premium", but no hard figures and nothing on the record from an OEM.

Looking at the amount of junk installed on Dells by default I think there's probably a significant amount of cash involved. I had a friend in Taiwan who was seriously considering entering her credit card number when the anti virus trial ran out and it started to nag her until I told her it was a waste of time. So presumably the junk companies make a hefty amount of cash out of trialware, maybe fifty companies making a buck each is possible.

On the other hand the fact that Dell discount $50 for no Windows makes me think that the spyware kickback is less than this, and in fact close to zero, since this seems to be close to the rumoured Dell OEM Windows cost.

All this of course makes it very unlikely that Apple would OEM OSX by the way. They'd get $50-$100 off a Dell running OS X most likely at the low end of this, but they presumably make much more off genuine Apple hardware. Dells would also force them to spend more on supporting all commodity PC hardware rather than being able to cherry pick which components like they can do on Apple hardware.

The last sentence of point 7 is false. In the days before Napster, a variety of other means were used. One was to submit a list of files to a centralized search engine, which would allow users to find materials on the computers of others. Modern P2P programs provide substantial improvements around usability and performance; however, the functionality that they provide was available and in common use pre-P2P boom.

Item 8 states that the majority of the traffic on P2P is pirated material and also implies that the "vast majority" of content shared via P2P is pirated audio. Is there data to back this up? I suspect that video, photos, and programs (e.g., games) makes up a large amount of illegal P2P traffic. It feels like a rhetorical device used to paint the RIAA as a tragic victim.

Item 9 is incorrect. The ISP can not know who the infringers are. They can only know whose account is attached to that IP number. NAT routers are a possible workaround. Also, some services allow for multiple simultaneous IP addresses. For example, Telus requires that visible MAC addresses be registered.

By registering 2 MAC addresses, Telus will let users have two IPs at once. If Alan has a single NAT router connected, that leaves 1 free registration slot. If Bob, someone completely unknown to Alan, were to get the username and password for Alan's account, it would be possible for Bob to register his NAT router to Alan's account. If Alan only uses 1 device (i.e., 1 IP), there is a good chance that he'll never discover that Bob was piggybacking his account. If Alan needs the second IP, then he'll probably overwrite Bob's MAC without noticing there is a problem. Even if Alan notes that there is a problem, it's unlikely the MAC address could be traced to Bob because Bob could change the MAC address on his device and because of the difficulties of tracking the MAC address of a device from manufacturer to end user.

Item 9 also feels like a rhetorical device used to paint the RIAA as a tragic victim. The scope and value of piracy is hotly debated. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813 .html

Item 11 implies that searching is sufficient to tell if a file is a copyrighted song. This is not always the case; unless the file is downloaded, its contents can not be known. I think that "examines" needs to be rigorously defined. (This ties in with the parent's comments on item 15.)

Item 12 assumes that computers are single user. This is not the case with most modern OSes. It would be possible for someone to log into an unsecured computer and use it for sharing files over P2P. The IP of the computer used to share via P2P may be known but the user can not be. It also assumes that the computer has not been compromised via malware.

Item 14 states that files are downloaded. However, it does not provide any methodology for determining if the files contain copyrighted audio. Metadata can be falsified. How are logs created and handled? Are they screenshots? (This ties in with the parent's comments on item 15 again.)

Item 16 states that "...the infringer's ISP quickly and easily can identify the computer from which the infringement occured...". It may be able to provide an IP address but that's not a sure thing (there have been past incidents where the wrong person was identified). They definitely can't prove that a MAC address belongs to a computer that is owned and controlled by the identified account holder. The MAC address is configurable. It's not possible for an IP address alone to be capable of identifying a computer, even if the IP is static.

Adam decides to open his own business selling socks online and decides to house the server in his home. He upgrades his account to a server account with 1 static IP and sets up his business on that IP. After 3 months with no sales, Adam packs it in and downgrades his account after downloading the complete discography of NKOTB

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070628-cryp tography-company-develops-chip-to-lock-out-third-p arty-ink-jet-cartridges.html
Cryptography Research Inc are also working on blu-ray BD+, the security on new blu-ray discs that will have features like:

1: expiring discs. so the media you own will need continued licence renewals to enable you to use it.
2: the ability for studios to remote disable drives permanently if yours or a line is found to be hacked/venerable.
3. usage reports to the studios of your hardware, including your location and serial number used in the fight against piracy.

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/technology/content/m ay2006/tc20060526_680075.htm
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070620-blu- ray-content-protection-agency-certifies-bd.html

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070628-cryp tography-company-develops-chip-to-lock-out-third-p arty-ink-jet-cartridges.html
Cryptography Research Inc are also working on blu-ray BD+, the security on new blu-ray discs that will have features like:

1: expiring discs. so the media you own will need continued licence renewals to enable you to use it.
2: the ability for studios to remote disable drives permanently if yours or a line is found to be hacked/venerable.
3. usage reports to the studios of your hardware, including your location and serial number used in the fight against piracy.

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/technology/content/m ay2006/tc20060526_680075.htm
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070620-blu- ray-content-protection-agency-certifies-bd.html

The cleaning analogy is perfectly apt!

If 100 people cleaned your house, they "wouldn't get shit done".

If 100 people cleaned Prof. Vishkin's house, they would be finished in about 3 minutes.

How this is better than Intel's 80-core processor remains to be seen. This "technology" looks like it's an overhyped version of GPGPU or PhysX.

x86 afaik has never been implemented on a RISC architecture outside of anything other than a lab context. It's CISC that is the primary core for x86.

http://arstechnica.com/cpu/4q99/risc-cisc/rvc-1.ht ml

Here you go. I once spent two weeks straight doing little else aside from reading the articles in Ars's Technopaedia.

I thought these will be based on the new Cell architecture, which is simply awesome. http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-1. ars [Ars Technicia]

So, that should take care of Adobe Flash, though I'm not 100% certain on this.

No flash or java support. I guess Steve Jobs thinks flash is too great of a security risk too. By the way, how do you have the real internet without java or flash??

Okay, granted, that would be nice. Then again, you have a browser - Google Docs to the rescue? I'll grant this isn't as nice as it could be, but it is possible.

Do you really want to upload your Office docs to Google every time you open them? That would be pretty retarded, no? That's what you'll have to do with a "rich web 2.0 app." Not only that, I hope you're near a wi-fi hotspot. The iPhone doesn't support 3G. MS Office documents can be really bloated, like everything else MS... So launch "rich web 2.0 app" then spend 10 to 15 seconds to upload that doc over your 2.5G connection, then spend the same amount of time downloading it back to your phone as html, all the while paying data charges in both directions... this is starting to sound *very* cumbersome, no? It may be possible, but it hardly qualifies as a solution.

Uhh... how many people need this? This being Slashdot, I anticipate seeing about 15 replies here all saying, "Yeah, I need a barcode reader! How could you not?"

I'm not pointing it out because I need it. I'm pointing it out because I have it on my new phone, and the iPhone will never be able to do it, under any circumstances. It would not only require a native app, but it would probably also require better camera hardware.

You know what comes with OS X? A little application called "Preview". It opens PDFs.

But it doesn't open encrypted e-books. My phone has a native app to do that. The iPhone will be unable to due to the lack of an SDK.

Voice mail? I know, not the same thing. Yeah, that would be nice.

No, a voice recorder. As in record your phone conversation. Record a note to yourself. Record your professor's lecture... not on the iPhone. Not unless Apple decides to throw you a bone at some future date.

That said, even if the providers allowed it, Apple still wouldn't include VOIP support. Not directly. Why? Because it's complicated.

We're talking about Apple. They could make it less complicated. That's one of the things Apple does best. VoIP is important because not everyone gets great cell reception indoors and it's WAY cheaper than any other calling (worst case scenario for US to Hong Kong is 2 cents per minute). And it really doesn't matter what the carriers think. It doesn't touch their network at all... what possible legitimate complaint could they make? I have GizmoVoIP on my N95 right now. You'll never see it on an iPhone though. It's just another missing feature you'll never see because of the lack of an SDK.

And that's just apps that came with my phone. Do you think Apple will ever release gnutella file sharing software for the iPhone? Doubt it, but it's available now on my phone. How about an MMORPG? Available now on my phone. Maybe... um, an app to keep up with my girls menstruation cycles... Yeah, like you'll *ever* see that on an iPhone. Available now for the Symbian... [still waiting on that 3rd edition update for my phone though ;)]

Are you beginning to see why I chose something besides an iPhone? There's really no comparison. The iPhone is pretty, and the Nokia is better at everything else. The iPhone isn't even in the same league. It's totally outclassed.

What a spin clap clap, this even tops fox news.

Read the the full story

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070624-vist a-the-most-secure-os-according-to-researcher.html

Shame on you Zonk, you should apply for a position at the white house.

Nope. What we have been seeing for all these months is the perfect ad storm. Virtually no real information has been revealed. It has all been pure speculation and hype. I wonder how many will die in the stampede. The absurdity is overwhelming. Like watching chickens in the slaughterhouse fighting over a crumb of food.

"To repeat: to the best of my knowledge, every RIAA action has alleged illegal *distribution*, not illegal *copying.* So while this is amusing, it's not exactly exposing the RIAA as hypocrites, since the act of handing a single copied CD is clearly protected behavior..."

You're right. It probably isn't illegal. Of course, articles like this still make it amusing, because the RIAA and other media interests apparently wish otherwise, and therefore wish that Bush's daughter's gift to him was illegal (i.e. exchanging a "mix CD" with a family member).

The way this could become over-the-top funny would be if the RIAA finally does get their wishes pushed into law, and Bush is the one that signs the bill.

They've got 2 more years. It could happen.

I suppose Bush could sign a presidential pardon if his daughters do it again. :-)

"... I doubt they would take the idea seriously unless those two got the tracks off Kazaa or some such shady means."

And, of course, how would the RIAA know one way or the other? Maybe the twins already own the relevant tracks on plain old CD, or maybe they bought them from iTunes, right?

A) Of course, the same could be true for any of the people the RIAA has sued for downloading tracks from p2p sites (maybe they already own the relevant CDs). That did not stop them from suing anyway on the assumption all the tracks were illegally obtained;
B) by some interpretations of copyright, the kids were fine (fair use to make a mix CD from tracks they purchased for their own use), but some RIAA interpretations claim doing that is illegal;
C) Once they handed that CD to someone else (Bush), all pretenses of a legal activity are clearly gone. They have became distributors of illegally copied, copyrighted materials, and face potentially enormous fines unless they happened to have purchased all those tracks specifically for the gift to their Dad.

People get all uppity about warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, war under false pretenses, and torture, but this is a whole new level. Now Bush is facing COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT charges! He's receiving "stolen" goods from his own children. He may as well put a patch over one eye and start talking like a pirate.

The whole episode is especially bad given that we've all heard how serious copyright infringement is compared to other criminal activities, such as bank robbery. What kind of example are they setting?!

Face it. Neither Bush nor his children should be above the law.

Stealing an election with paper ballots is a royal PITA. Fortunately, with E-voting, it is much easier.

Kodak came out with a line of printers they were trying to sell by touting the cheap ink. For a lazy person like me (who has also managed to spill ink from a do-it-yourself refill onto my carpet), I'd prefer to go buy a cartridge and not think about it. If you're printing a heap of pages, the Kodak might be the cheapest than the competition due to their cheap ink strategy. Anybody used tried them yet?

Heck with the FCC. I heard that the Sheriff of Sparta, MI put out a warrant for their arrest!
dont check your email!

There were problems, but the original KHTML developer apparently regards those problems as solved.

Yeah, well, welcome to the US (figuratively, of course ;-) ).

The rule here, so far as I can tell, is one cable company, one phone company, and maybe satellite (if you like the type) in any given area...and speeds of 3Mbps down, 384-768kbps up. For at least $50/month.

To be sure, there are exceptions, but from all I've gathered from what I've seen and heard, that's the most prevalent situation throughout the country. That's why I'm praying that the "third pipe" really happens...though I know it's probably doomed to be swallowed up by the telecom conglomerates just like everything else :-P

Dan Aris

From a recent article:

Microsoft executive Ty Carlson spoke about the future of Windows recently during a panel discussion at the Future in Review 2007 conference held in San Diego, California. Carlson said that future versions of Windows would have to be "fundamentally different" in order to take full advantage of future CPUs that will contain many processing cores.

"You're going to see in excess of eight, 16, 64 and beyond processors on your client computer," said Carlson, whose job title is director of technical strategy at Microsoft. Windows Vista, he said, was "designed to run on one, two, maybe four processors."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070529-micr osoft-exec-next-version-of-windows-to-be-fundament ally-redesigned.html

So, if Windows is only designed for two or four processors, why even consider eight?

Of course, that's Microsoft... How does OSX and Linux handle eight processors?

Now can they make it not suck?

While I think this issue is important, I personally haven't had the time to devote to really look at all the angles. I do know that this bill is supported by the EFF, computer scientist and e-voting critic Prof. Ed Felten and Ars Technica among a vast number of others. While the bill is by many accounts imperfect, the provisions for auditing and verification are a vast improvement on the current state of affairs, where we use black box machines and can have no confidence that our votes are tallied as they were cast. So I support the bill.

I think there's a reasonable argument to be had about whether we aren't better off just using paper (for reasons of transparency), but the point is that that argument can be had completely independantly of this bill. This bill clearly improves the current situation with electronic voting machines (DREs), and has no effect on whether or not you have to use DREs. From the EFF pages in support of H.R. 811:

An outright ban on DREs may or may not be possible with this Congress, but it is irrelevant to whether or not this bill should pass. Rep. Holt's strategy -- to convince Congress of the need to improve transparency in U.S. elections, regardless of technology -- is a sound one, one that many volunteers have expended extraordinary efforts to bring to fruition and one that could be on the verge of succeeding. Nothing has prevented or currently prevents now-vocal critics who are calling for an outright DRE ban from going through the process of drafting the appropriate legislative proposal and then soliciting the necessary support for it. But attempting to derail or hijack HR 811 as a vehicle to ram through an unlikely-to-pass DRE ban unnecessarily risks the passage of other important substantive requirements. And once again, nothing in HR 811 prohibits states from limiting the use of DREs of any kind or banning them altogether.

Moving to defeat this bill because you oppose electronic voting is foolish. It is a situation the perfect being the enemy of the good. This is something activists on many issues fall prey to that keeps them from being effective.

You do recall the articles about politicians editing their Wikipedia entries to remove negative information, or in some cases to alter the reports on their voting records, right?

John Siracusa has already written a great article on Time Machine over at Ars Technica. ZFS would have allowed Time Machine to back up only changed blocks in files, but apparently the current implementation has to copy whole files around.

http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/8/15 /4995

Preliminary ZFS support showed up in a Leopard build in April of 2006. Now, there's nothing to say it was ever going to ship, or if they were laying the groundwork for OS X 10.6 or what, but the bits were there (and apparently still are).

I'm still not convinced Apple has dropped it because of Schwartz' comments, however.

Steve Jobs just hates people spoiling his surprises.

My first thought when Jonathan Schwartz announced that ZFS would be the file system in Leopard was that now there was a really danger that Jobs might cancel it, just out of spite... and the prove the leaker wrong.

Riiiiight.
Because the "WAP is open" defense works so well.

Ok, here is where I think a major problem occurs. Nowhere does evolution imply the Earth was Billions of years old. Evolution is a simple theory about how one species can evolve into another completely different species. Darwin didn't even know about GENETICS to understand HOW Evolution occurred. He just saw from various observations of the known world that a process called Evolution made sense to him, so he came up with the theory.

Nowhere does Evolution state the Earth is millions of years old. Nowhere does Evolution talk about a "primordial soup" from which amino acids formed. Evolution doesn't even talk about the Big Bang. Evolution DOES however, try to explain how a woolly mammoth changed into an Asian Elephant over time.

Heck, the creationist museum itself uses evolution right on a wall plaque in the museum, showing how animals are given the ability to adapt. The fifth picture on this page clearly shows animals evolving after the great flood.

Scientists have, for years, used radioactive dating to determine the age of fossils and the Earth itself. Creationists claim that we cannot use this, because that constant radioactive decay is only a theory, because no one can observe radioactive decay over millions of years. Well, that may be so, but from observation of radioactive elements over 100 years or so, no one has EVER seen any fluctuation in the rate of radioactive decay. This is observable and recorded. What proof is there that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago other than the Bible?

Let me list for you some theories taught in current science:

• The Theory of Relativity - So Complicated I can't even begin to explain it
• Global Warming - A theory that the temperature of the earth is going up due to "greenhouse gas" emissions
• Plate Tectonics - The belief that land masses move, causing things like the California Earthquakes and the formation of Hawaii
• Cell Theory - Believe it or not, most of the rules for how cells operate are only theories.
• Atomic Theory - The THEORY that compounds are made of atoms and those atoms together form molecules

How much of this stuff should not be taught in science class? By your definition, none of it. Can you imagine a Biology class where cells can't be discussed? Or a Chemistry class without a Periodic Table of Elements.

Theory has it's place in Science. Religion does not. You want creationism taught in school, write a paper, get it peer reviewed, get it published and THEN we can talk about in science. Heck, get the Bible peer reviewed. They are A LOT of religious scientists out there.

The one last thing to think about is this: the theory of evolution, as it is taught now with genetics, is very complex. It requires a lot of time. The THEORY of creationism is really quite simple. 6,000 years ago God made everything in 7 biblical days in a certain order. You discuss the order, you discuss why creationists feel the earth is 6,000 years old and you're pretty much done. This is no offense to the creationists belief. If it was taught in school, it would get about 15-20 minutes of time. Evolution would get about a week. And this, would again piss of creationists as not giving equal time to both theories. On top of that, if you want to teach creationism in school, you would need to teach every single religion's creation theory. not just the Jewish one.

Oh, and make no mistake, the current creationist theory was BORROWED from the Jews, and as far as I am concerned, the only one qualified to discuss it, or justify it, is a fully bona-fide rabbi. I say that as a proud Catholic