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PBS's Frontline did a very good piece called "Is WalMart Good for America?" If you're being earnest, then I highly recommend that you that the time to watch it online.

Interesting, but the majority of electricity in France (75% or more) is provided by nuclear power plants. And I don't really want to know how [ratical.org] much [bbc.co.uk] the decommissioning of those power plants (with all the recycling of radioactive waste) is going to cost.

As usual, nothing official is coming from Apple, or hasn't survived long enough before being crushed/sued.

For now Boot Camp is just a dual boot tool.

But rumors, and speculations (from I, Cringely) are that Apple may try to develop some virtualisation solution to have Vista run on top of MacOS X. (And so you'll be able to play your Win32/DirectX games sand boxed inside a MacOS X environment).

On the other hand, the opendarwin community is working on a WINE implementation called DarWine which aims at porting Wine to MacOS X for Intel and PowerPC (thanks to qemu).

PBS pundit Robert X. Cringely wrote about such devices years ago and presented a reasonable argument that they are a solution to the California energy crisis, but that it won't happen. Basically, he said that the cost to California to equip 10x more houses than the rolling blackouts consume would be less than the cost of building new powerplants. I haven't checked his math, but it seems reasonable that last-mile caching (this is effectively similiar to other caching-type solutions) would really help solve this problem.

I wonder if there are appropriate points in the traditional power grid system where power-storage systems could be used to buffer enough stuff over 24 hours to solve this problem. Gigantic flywheels near your block, poised to clobber through the neighborhood, anyone? I suppose this problem has already been studied.

Here is a link to a story regarding antiquated air traffic control systems. It is more than just a few years old. Eleven in fact. But nevertheless I doubt that things are much more advanced even eleven years later. Maybe the FAA in the /. story could have invested in some of the $150 Chinese peecees?

You know, I seem to recall a few riots in recent history when an election was quite obviously fixed. And yet Americans seem to do none of this. I know that if I was an American, I would be protesting those events every single day.

Here's some more info to counter the BS: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact /myths.html "8. Video game play is desensitizing. Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat. In some circumstances, they seem to take pleasure wrestling and tousling with each other. In others, they might rip each other apart in mortal combat. Game designer and play theorist Eric Zimmerman describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality as entering the "magic circle." The same action -- say, sweeping a floor -- may take on different meanings in play (as in playing house) than in reality (housework). Play allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their real-world interactions. Media reformers argue that playing violent video games can cause a lack of empathy for real-world victims. Yet, a child who responds to a video game the same way he or she responds to a real-world tragedy could be showing symptoms of being severely emotionally disturbed. Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic. The kid who is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the "magic circle" of play and understands her actions on those terms. Such research shows us only that violent play leads to more violent play. " Hmmmm.....

From : There will be the Internet, and then there will be the Google Internet, superimposed on top. We'll use it without even knowing. The Google Internet will be faster, safer, and cheaper. With the advent of widespread GoogleBase (again a bit-schlepping app that can be used in a thousand ways -- most of them not even envisioned by Google) there's suddenly a new kind of marketplace for data with everything a transaction in the most literal sense as Google takes over the role of trusted third-party info-escrow agent for all world business. That's the goal.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you -- Internet3: The Rise of Google

Some interesting speculation as to why Google's purchasing a bunch of dark fiber: The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.

the chinese internet excutives' point of view is that censorship isn't an issue sinse chinese aren't interested in the censored content anyway. Makes you wonder why there's so much effort put into censoring it in the first place.

The reason is simple - although there will always be people who are aware of censored content at the time it is censored, that cultural memory is fairly short. If the Chinese government can keep unwanted material out of sight long enough then people will stop looking for it.

"Frontline" had an interesting show last week called "The Tank Man", in which they revealed that even in the heart of Beijing today almost nobody under the age of 25 has ever heard of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In June of 1989 the government/military couldn't hide the fact that they were shooting people in the back as they tried to leave the square (although they did search all the known journalists and confiscated almost all film of the event). The local media put a government-friendly spin on the story and then dropped it completely. There is almost no record of the event available from inside China, and (needless to say) Google blocks all search results that would cover that incident. We in the west can Google for "Tienanmen Square" and get 70,000+ results, with 8 out of 10 on the first page referring to 1989. The Chinese Google returns about 60 results, all of which resemble THIS ONE.

Actually, there was a specific policy decision by the Chinese government after Tiananmen Square: to appease the masses via capitalism in order to stay in power. China was far closer to revolution than most people in the West realize. Though widely reported in the West to be a student protest, Tiananmen Square actually involved weeks of protests where an estimated 10% of Beijing's population was involved. The army was actually sent in to stop the protests weeks before June 3 with orders not to shoot, but were engulfed by the citizens, unable to reach the Square, and forced to turn back ( very humiliating for a police state ). The leadesrhip realized they were on the brink at this point, and the second time around, 300,000 troops were told to clear the square at all costs and were not deterred. Most of the deaths weren't of the mainly rich students of elite professors at Beijing University ( who were largely spared ), but of the rank-and-file citizens who tried to blockade the army the second time around. ( I didn't know much about June 4 until I saw PBS Frontline's excellent documentary called "Tank Man", you can view it online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/vi ew/ === Drawing on interviews with Chinese and Western eyewitnesses, Thomas recounts the amazing events of the spring of 1989, when a student protest that began in Tiananmen Square, the symbolic central space of the nation, spread throughout much of the rest of China. Several weeks later, when the government sent in the army to end the demonstrations, the citizens of Beijing poured into the streets in support of the students. "You had a million people on the street, minimum. ... That was unprecedented, definitely in modern Chinese post-revolutionary history," says John Pomfret, who was in Beijing at the time, reporting for the Associated Press. === The point is that Beijing appeared to be on the brink of mass revolution, hardly apathetic to the government. Why the change now? Shortly after June 4th, Deng Xiaoping enacted several economic reforms effectively moving China towards a free market economy. Today, the masses of farmers/peasants in the countryside are pissed at hell over the government / drawing the short end of globalization but have no voice, no way to organize. But the middle class in the cities have been appeased by capitalism, just as Deng had hoped. They've seen their standard of living---and most importantly, the perception of upward mobility---skyrocket beyond imagination. Why would they want to rock the boat now? It's hard to imagine a revolution happening without the support of the middle class in the cities. But, as time goes on, it may become increasingly difficult for the Party to maintain its identity while appeasing the voracious appetite of yuppiedom. In the early going, market reform could be largely separated from political reform, but as the standard of living rises, we get into areas that require political/legal reform in order to keep the foreign investment pouring in: in particular, clamping down on corruption, transparency of the law and trust in the legal system, removal of the fat-cat state industries that line the Party member's pockets. What I wonder is, if the Party manages to "stay in power" by ceding to these reforms, will it even look anything like the police state / bad-guy government we in the West love to hate? Perhaps Singapore provides a vision of what such a government may look like.

A recent PBS|Frontline documentary covered how the Chinese government has gone about censoring one major event from its past including on the internet, it's free to view online:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/

Read Cringley's last article about how the Mach kernel sucks and Apple will have no choice but to incorporate the NT kernel into OSX. Sure every Apple fanboy on this site is denying this, just like they foolishly denied that Apple will switch to Intel, but wound up eating crow crap. Not only will they be eating more crow droppings when this happens, they'll mindlessly continue to use Wintel machines just because they have the Apple brandname on them. Is there anyone dumber than an Apple fanboy?

Can we just mod the writer? Cringely is definitely a +5 idiot.

If Mach people are idiots, and Apple uses Mach - doesn't that make Apple (and in turn its users) a bunch of idiots too? But don't worry, Apple can redeem itself once it switches to the NT Kernel.

I watched a Frontline special on PBS online regarding media censorship on the internet in China. They made a point of fingering Yahoo/Google/Cisco/Microsoft and American companies in general for making this possible. Very interesting/insightful/informative. They selected four freshmen from Beijing University and not one of them recognized the "Tank Man" photo from Tiananmen Square in 1989 due to this censorship. The ironic part? After railing on Chinese online censorship for the better part of an hour, you get to part six of the video and a portion of the PBS online video is censored by American law. The screen goes black, and all you get is white text which you must read quickly. Censorship is being used in the United States to wipe out historical events while recorded evidence rots away in locked vaults. In China, we call the end result censorship. In the United States, we call it copyright law...

Five digits go back way, way before our ancestors could throw things. I think it's basically a leftover -- four or six would probably work just as well, but there's been no selection pressure in either direction. But some of our cousins, whose ancestors also started with five digits, have changed -- e.g., horses, who pared down to just one.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/04/2/l_0 42_01.html

Maybe its time we started boycotting Yahoo?

Thank you for that. If anyone is in doubt, please watch Frontline's "The Tank Man" documentary here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/vi ew/ (Especially part 6, but watching the entire thing is best)

I was so disgusted after watching it that I couldn't think of supporting Yahoo anymore.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/vi ew/

In the 6th video, university students in China are shown the picture of the Tank Man. They have no idea of who he is or what he is doing. They are unable to put the picture in any kind of social context or even guess what is going on in the photograph. China has a long way to go.

Amazingly, PBS-HD usually has the best/most real HD content

PBS has a strict requirement that all HD material sent to them originate at more than 700 lines, which means at least 720p. If it is not more than 700 vertical lines, the program is not labeled as "HD." All PBS HD programming has the same leader so you can recognize it. There is a page on the PBS site that describe their policy.

For whatever it's worth, back in January Cringely wrote that Burst does have something worthwhile:

The reason Apple changed its MacWorld announcements at the last minute was because the company sued little Burst.com a few days before, trying to invalidate the Burst patents. But since Apple sued Burst, Burst shares have gone UP by 30 percent. The market is rarely wrong. Suing Burst was an enormous mistake for Apple, casting a pall on their video strategy and potentially costing the company strategic alliances with networks and movie studios. Apple realizes this now and is struggling internally to find a way to change course and put a positive spin on the course correction. Apple will lose and Burst will win, and Apple won't be able to afford to wait for the courts to decide anything, since time is critical in staking out Internet video turf. I predict that Apple will eventually take a license from Burst, that is UNLESS SOME OTHER COMPANY (Google? Real? Yahoo?) doesn't snatch up Burst first.

Here's something I've noticed lately: Big companies believe in patents as long as they are talking about THEIR patents. Because Burst is three guys in an office in Santa Rosa, companies like Microsoft and Apple tend not to take them seriously. They forget that Burst spent 21 years and $66 million developing that IP, and the company has code that is still better than anything else on the market -- code not even Microsoft has seen. Unless someone buys the company first, Burst is going to win this and eventually license the world. They are in the right, for one thing, and in practical terms they now have as much money for legal bills as any of their opponents. Apple can't win this one.

Here's a good resource for Darpa's unmanned vehicle race: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/

The Grand Challenge, I thought, was designed with a detrimentally macho mindset, with a needlessly high ratio of financial risk to scientific output. It sent many expensive cars through long stretches of very uniform-looking but occasionally high-risk (cliffs!) terrain. The cars had a road to follow. It was ok to hire an army of undergraduates to hand-design a path through the terrain (see the funny scenes involving CMU from chapter 6 of this online NOVA episode about the Grand Challenge).

Maybe they've learned a few lessons, because the DARPA LAGR competition does everything in almost the opposite manner:

• Focus on software: The teams all use the exact same hardware. We each get a robot for testing, but for the competition we just hand off our software to the government organizers, who load it into their robot and let the robot run the course.
• Focus on the difficult problems: Current robotic localization and mapping is heavily reliant on laser range scanners, which have a limited range (~30 feet) compared to vision, and therefore is unsuitable for long-range path planning. Instead of letting scientists wait for laser scanners to get incrementally better, this competition forces its entrants to adopt a vision-based solution, like people. As one organizer put it, we didn't get to the moon by incrementally improving the airplane.
• A sane funding structure: A pool of 10 or so initial teams start out with funding, with each successive competition (with increasing demands) weeding out more and more teams. I've heard that other DARPA robot competitions happening in parallel have adopted similar funding systems. Contrast this with the grand challenge teams, who didn't get any money until the end (CMU notably sank $3 million into their efforts to win the $2 million prize).

"The Tank Man".

> I seem to recall that every other time we (meaning mankind) have tried to "fix" an
> ecological problem, we end up making it about a dozen times worse.

Then I humbly submit you haven't been paying attention.

One obvious example is the Dust Bowl in Depression-era USA. This was a massive ecological disaster---huge areas of farmland had their topsoil blow away in "Black Blizzards"---and it was another situation with both human and natural causes.

Instead of ignoring the problem (it's hard to deny that the sky has turned black) or throwing up their hands and going "oh noes!", though, people eventually figured that something had to be done to stop this, and figured out how. Roosevelt formed the Soil Conservation Service, basically implementing a bunch of government programs to fix the problem (such as planting trees as windbreaks). And fix it it did---Chicago, NYC, and DC are no longer getting Oklahoma topsoil falling out of the sky, and I believe the areas are suitable for farming again.

Quite simply, if you believe that humans can't diagnose and fix an ecological problem without making it worse, you're demonstrably wrong.

PBS | Nova is going to air an episode on a new finding. That of the "dimming sun". Pollution on earth is blocking sun light to an effect in reducing the overall temparature. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/dimming.html Watch out :)) "Global Cooling" media-industry will soon mushroom !!

From last night's News Hour...

I was recently at a conference where one of the senior executives of a major national oil company from Saudi Arabia, Aramco, came up to me and said, "Be careful." It was almost a warning. He said, "Be careful, because if biofuels are successful, we will drop the price of oil." from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/jan-june06/ biofuels_4-13.html

There was a really excellent episode of frontline that aired this week that covered that very topic. Anyone over the age of 20 or so surely remembers the guy who stopped the tank in Tienamen Square. Of course if you google for "Tienamen Square" in China you get no images of Tank Man. In the rest of the world you get multiple images.

If you watch the Frontline episode American Porn you'll see than Adam Glasser, aka Seymore Butts also has his mother working for him in his porn business, so maybe having family working for you isn't as unusual as you might think. After all, if anyone is going to support you in some wacky endeavour it will probably be a member of your family.

• 10. Mod +5 annoying
• 9. New features
• 8. Reasons to use Linux
• 7. Boycott RIAA
• 6. Slashdot dating handbook
• 5. Cowboy Neal vs Godzilla
• 4. Cringely
• 3. Dvorak
• 2. Portman and Hot Grits
• 1. Goatse.cxGoatse.cx

Most of them have long since lost that creative spark by the time they're thirty anyway.

This would make video game design almost unique in the annals of human creativity. I think the only field were the phenomenon of people doing their most creative work by 30 is actually well substantiated and documented is in mathematics, a very different field to game design and one much closer to programming, which you state is not subject to this effect anyway (and even in math, there are exceptions, c.f. Andrew Wiles.

As the article points out, how crazy would it be if movies or books were only made by twenty somethings with less than five years experience? Speilberg never would have made E.T., let alone Schindler's List. And I'm sorry, I just have difficultly believing that the creative spark required for video games is so much more intense that that which burned in Picasso when he painted Guernica at age 56, or in Bach when he wrote his Mass in B Minor in his sixties. Heck, the guy who created Tetris was 29 when he did it, around the time his mojo should had been well on the way out in your thesis.

I think we must be careful not to engage in circular reasoning: i.e. "There are no good game designers over thirty because there are no good game designers over thirty." Before positing a mysterious intrinsic evaporation in game design skills, would it not make more sense to examine the substantive causes discussed in the article: immature work practices contributing to early burnout? If a programmer gets sick of video games, there are many other applications areas they can get stuck into and still be programming, and even programming at the bleeding edge: the fundamental nature of their job has not changed. And they still have the option to return to games, perhaps seasoned with alternate approaches. But for a game designer, well, there's not much for it but to change careers, and it's very hard to return after developing an alternative career -- even if they're still in the game industry, the fundamental nature of their job will have changed considerably.

I would suggest that if video game developers adopted more mature work practices, we would start to see great designs by thirty somethings in a few years, as the current crop of designers don't burn out, but continue innovating, and probably in very surprising ways when they bring not just a wealth of design experience, but are in a better position to integrate life and cultural experience too because they haven't been chained to their keyboards the whole time.

There are currently over 400 empty Wal-Marts in the United States and due to their size, they are almost always unleasable/unsellable, becoming blights on the landscape that no-one will front the capital to tear down and/or replace.

An older article on the problem is here, but the numbers are higher four years on. See also this piece, and notice the sidebar at the top of the first page.

what used to be called 'data-mining' in 80 and 90s is now machine learning in 21st century.. and there are several instances where machine learning has shown tremendous success (probably this is the only by-product of AI that has shown promising real world applications)

I havent RTFA but I think "RDBMS-view" is too naive for given scale of problem. What one has to understand is that data-mining is not a "push-button" technology, one has to have a total understanding of data and 'interesting questions' that one wants to answer then choose right set of algorithms and tune them properly. In biomedicine, there has always been 'bio-statisticians' in the hospital who perform these tasks.

As is expected, this is a usual cut-and-paste from a press release with little to no analysis. As alarming as this may sound, I believe the parent poster is correct. I'm going to guess that a large majority of teens also "intend to" exercise more, watch their health, and do better in school.

Anyway, let's take a look at some past Piper Jaffray survey results:

Percent of surveyed student households that have at least one video game platform
Q1 2006: 81%
Q3 2005: 79%
Q1 2005: 76%
Q3 2004: 81%
Q1 2004: N/A

Percentage of students state who state they are occasional game players (playing at least monthly)
Q1 2006: 59%
Q3 2005: 58%
Q1 2005: 49%
Q3 2004: 54%
Q1 2004: N/A

Now, this is only over a two-year period, but correct me if I'm wrong, I'm seeing a (possible) slight increase in the number of occasional game players and a somewhat steady number of households with at least one video game platform.

I didn't look for their past surveys so I don't know what the mindset was in 2003 and earlier.

To me, it doesn't look like anything is moving. Also, bear in mind just because you spend less time playing games doesn't mean you're going to buy less games: it could just mean you're playing each game less.

Add all this to the fact that Piper Jaffray seems more interested in where teens are buying shoes that I am ready to write this off as non-news.

Commercial-free and uninterupted: Time to dust off the rabbit ears, and check out Public Television (available over the airwaves in every populated US region)

Please remember to support your local PBS station... the only TV actually worth paying for.

PBS also has podcasts freely available.

Commercial-free and uninterupted: Time to dust off the rabbit ears, and check out Public Television (available over the airwaves in every populated US region)

Please remember to support your local PBS station... the only TV actually worth paying for.

PBS also has podcasts freely available.

I'm just two years younger than you, but found myself asking the same question more than 10 years ago. While in high school, in order to fulfill the arts requirements, I found myself picking up the violin for the first time with classmates who all started much earlier than I did. My music teacher had a lot to do, more or less running the school's entire music program by himself, so I didn't really blame him for not giving me too much time or attention. It was for the most part "monkey see, monkey do" for two years. It was really hard trying to catch up and keep up by myself. To be honest, I never really learned to play properly. Though I didn't have the optimal learning or playing experience, I feel I still learned enough for those two years to have been worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, I would have killed for the opportunity to learn proper vibratos, tremolos, or pizzicato techniques with adaquate guidance and instructional feedback.

To bring the discussion back to the subject at hand, here is where I think software tools are best utilized. Lots of folks here are saying things like "you don't need software! the important thing is practice! practice! practice!" When you don't have access to proper instruction, sometimes the next best thing is the greater awareness some of the tools mentioned here can provide about your own playing abilities. Years ago, I remember listening to a recording I made of myself for the first time on a tape player and realizing that despite what I thought was accurate notes from proper fingerboarding, I sounded terrible due to lousy bowing techniques. It was as if in concentrating to get the physical motions right, my brain had tuned out my ears and was not evaluating the results of those motions. Idealy, an instructor would be around to catch those mistakes you're not aware of. Sadly, software tools lack the experience and artistic factor that a capable instructor brings. And I think that is the greatest challange for older folks trying to learn in an endeavor where most resources are geared toward young beginners.

The silver lining may be that more mature students are better able to appreciate the task of seriously learning to play. Some years ago, my local PBS station broadcasted a segment of "Great Performances" called "The Art of Violin" . It was a truly thrilling program that explored the art form from the perspectives of some of today's most illustrious violinists talking about historic luminaries, each other, and most importantly, the physical instrument itself and different techniques and styles of playing that made world famous virtuosos shine in unique ways. While watching the show, I reflected on my own understanding of what I was doing all those years ago and wondered whether the younger me could comprehended what the program was saying to me now about this dynamic nuanced-filled artform, steeped in a sophisticated ever-developing tradition.

I would encourage you to follow your heart and not be too discouraged if you don't immediately sound like Itzhak Perlman. One of the most memorable things I remember from the "Great Performances" program is Perlman himself saying how much harder it is to learn the violin compared to other instruments. Though I haven't the time to really play anymore, I take my old instrument out on rare occasions and it is still satisfying to draw out a tune.

Basically what he said was that venture capitalists raised a whole bunch of money that they didn't spend during the last boom. This money is raised from investors and is given to the VCs for a limited time. The VCs make money from the management fees they collect for dealing with this money, usually 1 or 2% of the total amount. But, if they don't invest, then the money AND the fees get sent back to the original investors.

The time limit on investment is usually about 10 years. So if we say that the boom started around '96, then some of these limits have already expired, and the rest of them will expire within the next 4 years.

Use it or lose it. And the VCs will definitely use it.

Maybe this dumb cunt should go google her subject material first. It doesn't seem to jive with reality, *or* my personal experience.

"The exodus of jobs from our shores and the race to the bottom for workers around the world is an obvious result of NAFTA "
    http://www.kucinich.us/issues/outsourcing.php?prin t=y

"AT&T Wireless outsourcing jobs overseas
Consultants from two Indian companies sent to Bothell"
    http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/149035_outs ource20.html

"Bush economic report praises 'outsourcing' jobs"
    http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04041/271362.stm

"Global Outsourcing and the Disappearing Middle Class"
    http://www.newwork.com/Pages/Opinion/Raynor/Middle %20Class.html

"JOBS MOVING OVERSEAS"
    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/jan-june04/ jobs_3-11.html

Umm, actually he does keep track of how accurate his predictions are - here's a column from January 2006. Past ones are in the archive.

mant

"I mean, do any of these 'industry pundits' ever have to keep track of the accuracy of their 'predictions'?"

No, they don't have to... but Bob Cringely is one of the few who does, albeit to a limited extent. Each January, his column starts by analysing all the predictions he made in last years' column, and seeing how accurate they turned out. He then goes on to predict what he thinks the coming year has in store.

You can find this year's column here, and previous columns are all linked from his archive

"I mean, do any of these 'industry pundits' ever have to keep track of the accuracy of their 'predictions'?"

No, they don't have to... but Bob Cringely is one of the few who does, albeit to a limited extent. Each January, his column starts by analysing all the predictions he made in last years' column, and seeing how accurate they turned out. He then goes on to predict what he thinks the coming year has in store.

You can find this year's column here, and previous columns are all linked from his archive

Actually, funnily enough he does: Each year. Although his definition of correct is a bit liberal, at least he tries.

"Here's how I believe it will work. Apple won't offer versions of OS X for generic Intel hardware because the drivers and the support obligation would be too huge. But just as you can buy a shrink-wrapped copy of 10.4 for your iMac, they'll gladly sell you a shrink-wrapped Intel version intended for an Intel Mac, but of course YOU CAN PUT IT ON ANY MACHINE YOU LIKE. The key here is to offer no guarantees and only limited support, patterned on the kind you get for most Open Source packages -- a web site, forums, download section. and a wiki. Apple will help users help themselves. With two to three engineers and some outreach to hackers and hardware makers, Apple could put together an unofficial program that could easily attract two to three million Windows users per year to migrate their old machines to the new OS. Imagine the profit margins of three engineers effectively generating $300-plus million per year in sales."

If humans in then stone-age were aware of how to handle toothdecay in such detail. (not just knocking out the affected teeth, but drilling) how come in the mideavil ages humans seemed to have reached a deep low? (I thought the French used anise to cover the smell of their rotting teeth and themselves)

The more scientists discover about humans in the stone-age, the more they appear to be very peaceful and more develloped as priorly portraited.

"it takes, on average, 10 years and 1 billion dollars to get a new drug approved in the U.S. ..."

This is simply incorrect. It is likely that this statistic is referring to the time it takes for a drug company to develop and gain approval for a new drug. According to Washington Monthly in May 2000, at that time the FDA approval process was taking about a year, and had decreased from about 2.5 years after so-called "fast track" procedures were implemented in the 90s: (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/00 05.pomper.html)

"If you are arguing that the FDA plays down risks in order to allow buisnesses to sell dangerous products, that is just not true."

I am, and I am by no means alone. For evidence and opinions on this side of the question, you might want to check out:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6520630/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pres cription/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A313 5-2004Dec15.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1126/p02s01-uspo.htm l

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2004/11/23/MNGSPA04NI1.DTL

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050205/bob10 .asp

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/15/60II/mai n674293.shtml

It's not legal to flood LA with crack to fund military coops in South America. Never stopped the CIA. What makes you think this is any different? What makes you think they actually follow the law?

Is your brain turned on today? ;-)

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19980402. html

There was a PBS show on this, I think the show name was bionic body http://www.pbs.org/saf/1107/index.html. Basically, the rig is a 16x16 grid of electrodes that when stimulated give the sensation of seeing a white dot. The idea is that some software / hardware mix basically estimates the edges of things and fires off a dot.

There are many limitations to this. 0 Depth perception (actually, I think anything farther than 5 feet was a wash). The interface is a direct connection to the brain, so the damage of an infection would be catastrophic. Also, there was some hand waving at the fact that they need to boost the voltage used to create the white points of light. Basically, too much voltage and you burn out the entire image processing area of the brain (IANA Nuero Surgeon).

Personally, I think that this was highly overrated, and I don't think the patients profiled had a very succesful outcome.

AAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

We do not have "loose gun laws with no equivalent in the rest of the civilized world." We actually have quite strict gun laws, but enforcing them isn't as sexy or newsworthy as the "war on drugs|porn|terror|bad-thinking", so busts rarely happen. The laws aren't the cause, and the guns aren't the cause. The media culture that shows blood and gore everywhere while refusing even to show breast feeding, well, make up your own mind.

Oh, and racial discrimination has been met with armed resistance, often effectively.

Meyer's a pompous ass. His shit is so over-engineered that it lectures the plumbers about the pipes it gets stuck in. Blech.