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Phoenix Lander Photographs Martian Whirlwinds
Toren Altair recommends a story up on the Space Fellowship site that begins "NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has photographed several dust devils dancing across the arctic plain this week and sensed a dip in air pressure as one passed near the lander. The Surface Stereo Imager ... caught a dust devil in action west of the lander in four frames shot about 50 seconds apart from each other. 'It was a surprise to have a dust devil so visible that it stood [out] with just the normal processing we do,' said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, lead scientist for the stereo camera. 'Once we saw a couple that way, we did some additional processing and found there are dust devils in 12 of the images.'"
several dust devils danced across the arctic plain this week and [NASA's martian lander] sensed a dip in air pressure as one passed near the lander.
-1 redundant. Anyone with any knowledge of meteorology could have told you that the center of hurricanes, tornadoes and of course dust devils have low pressure.
OMG NO. REDUNDANT STORY! GEEZ, DID YOU SEE THAT SENTENCE??? IT MENTIONED SOMETHING THAT SOME OF US ALREADY KNOW. THE OBVIOUSNESS IS KILLING ME. AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!!!!!!!
So far the issues of DRM have mostly been raised by privacy advocates and geeks, with most of the rest simply not caring. DRM, as with copyright in general, is confined to the digital world, and the common attitude is "unless you are a pirate, you shouldn't care, right?".
If Apple does pursue this through the courts, it can change public opinion. A lot of people would think, "Getting sued for fixing up your own shoes? WTF", and perceive the lawsuit as frivolous, or, best of all, finally seeing that the grave shackle effects of DRM spread far beyond the digital world. People will seriously question DRM laws if they realize that they are breaking them day after day with routine, normal, and perfectly acceptable life activities.