Conjunctions and prepositions are capitalized if they are 5 letters or more, usually, IIRC. For example, "under" (preposition) and "after" (conjunction) are usually capitalized in a title.
BTW, newspapers have printed things like headlines in larger print or with other obvious typesetting differences for hundreds of years. If we didn't get rid of title case in all that time, we probably won't do it now just because of the web.
Besides, the purpose of title case has nothing to do with setting it off from the rest of the document and everything to do with making it easier to skim. If the less important words are in lowercase letters, you can visually see what you can skip without losing much meaning. Thus, it's just as useful (if done correctly) today on Slashdot as it was in the 1800s.
If you just want to consider online use of the mark that predate Facebook and don't limit it to social networking, you'd have to add:
World Book (1995)
PowerBook.com (1995)
TextBook.com (1995)
BlueBook.com (1995)
YellowBook.com (1995)
ebook.com (1997, technically one day after facebook.com was registered, but since the term has been in general use in electronic commerce since the early 1970s, it effectively predates it)
And the eBook thing is what's going to get Facebook's claim on "Book" completely thrown out. Ultimately, Facebook and other social media sites are essentially an online book of faces, a yearbook with more interactivity. Facebook chose its name precisely because of that association. As the term eBook had been used in commerce to describe electronic books for decades prior to Facebook's formation, one can fairly trivially argue that the word "Book" in Facebook naturally rose out of the use of language and is descriptive rather than distinctive, and thus is not eligible for trademark protection.
Moreover, the preexistence of at least half a dozen online sites that use "Book" in the name, coupled with the fact that AFAIK there are no other sites maintained by Facebook, Inc. with "Book" in the name (they have not shown a pattern of use such that other companies with "Book" in the name would create confusion) and the fact that trademarks generally apply to an entire area of commerce, where the area of commerce is much broader than "social networking".
More to the point, social networking is a feature of a website that has evolved out of the basic functionality inherent to web sites. It is essentially the same sort of telecommunications service as any other website, just with different features, and thus should not be eligible for protected use of the word "Book" given the wide range of other websites that use the term. However, what would cinch it would be a social networking website that parodied Facebook prior to their 2006 registration of the trademark. Like, say MyYearBook.com (2000).
In short, I think Facebook is likely to lose this one. They're doing due diligence to protect what they think is protected by their trademark, but they're wrong. Hopelessly wrong, in fact.
The highest law in our country says that they can't spy on you without probable cause. That wasn't put in by accident. It was a deliberate check and balance against the government becoming too powerful. The reason that this is necessary is that the police have nearly unlimited resources compared with an individual, and thus, were the laws not written deliberately to counterbalance that, a police state would be the natural end result.
Voting isn't suposed to be able to quickly and easily change things, either. There's a reason it's very hard to change the Constitution, requiring not only a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress, but also ratification by a majority vote in three-fourths of the states (or, alternatively a constitutional convention called by the legislatures of two-thirds of the states, which is so difficult, in practice, that it has never happened).
Indeed, Our Bill of RIghts was deliberately designed to minimize the potential for tyranny of the majority. Go read a bit about James Madison and say what you just said again with a straight face.
Having one random person decide that protection shouldn't be that way because otherwise, the X have more power than he does isn't valid.
What you call protection, I call spying. If you could show that this were truly only used for actual protection---that is to say, only used to track bad guys for legitimate purposes---then I would have no argument against GPS tracking. Guess what? That's exactly what warrants are for. They provide a layer of accountability to the people that is absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of a free society.
There are rarely reasons for warrantless wiretaps, GPS tracking, or other such spying. In time-critical cases where you cannot wait for a warrant, the police have the right to conduct surveillance without a warrant. However, that was meant to be for exceptional cases. When you're talking about putting a tracker on somebody's car and getting a burst of data every night, clearly time is not a factor, and if it were, you have the option of old-fashioned tailing for those critical few hours.
If anybody tells you that warrantless GPS surveillance is for our protection, they're lying, pure and simple. The best that can possibly be said is that it lets police do less paperwork. Compromising our fundamental right to privacy so that police can do less paperwork is, IMHO, tantamount to wiping your ass with the Constitution.
That doesn't mean an individual citizen can decide something for the rest of the citizens. We can vote collectively and give/take power from the police, correct? But an individual cannot decide what the police should be allowed to do.
And with this attitude, we would still have segregation, maybe even slavery. Every major improvement in our government has come from a few individuals having the guts to say, "This is wrong," and then convince others to listen.
Besides, who is talking about an individual deciding for anyone here? I'm not deciding for anybody. I'm arguing my opinion. That's my right, unless I fell asleep and woke up in some non-free country when I wasn't paying attention.
I'm just saying that if a handful of justices' cars were tracked by GPS to a local brothel, it might make the point a little clearer than a bunch of theoretical examples of how warrantless tracking might be abused....
Police equipment is protected. So is fire dept. equipment (ever tried tampering with a fire hydrant? I don't suggest doing it... or parking in the red-curb section?... or...). But I'm pretty sure the people have bestowed that protection.
Yes, the people have bestowed protection against any action that could impede a police investigation. Translation: live tracking websites are out, or at least would probably be illegal. That doesn't mean that we don't have a fundamental right to
Look, the freedom in our country was founded on a single fundamental principle: that the government cannot be more powerful than the governed (at least when operating on American soil---the military doesn't count because they theoretically can't). As soon as you have police that have fundamentally more power than citizens, it's an easy downhill slide to 1984.
Which is insanely screwed up. The most liberal court is ruling in favor of less freedom while a fairly conservative court is ruling in favor of more freedom. What is this, bizarro world?
No need to destroy their data. All one would have to do is replace key Windows boot files with a script that tells them that their Windows installation is hopelessly infected by viruses and has been disabled, telling them to take it to somebody who actually knows how to properly configure a Windows machine. There's no need to destroy irreplaceable data, merely to wreck Windows so badly that they have to do a full reinstall. Since that is completely beyond any of the sorts of people who are part of the problem, they would be forced to take their computers to somebody for repair, and one would at least hope that a sizable percentage of those machines would come back properly protected from viruses.
Why is it worse if they're real? You can buy antibiotics at any vet supply house.... It's not like they're hard to get without a prescription. If they're real, the spam is pretty much noise. If they're not real, then it's bad---people buying something that they think will make them well, only to have it not help them, or worse, poison them....
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the author won't also be held liable in the case of a work published through a major publisher. At a minimum, it would be a breach of contract, and the publisher could take their legal costs out of the author's hide. The point was that the publisher would be liable in the case of a book because the publisher is in a position to exercise editorial control, whereas a web publisher that merely passes on content in large quantities would not be because it is not in such a position.
Although that might seem like a good analogy, it really isn't. There's a very major difference between someone hosting somebody else's content and a print publisher: editorial control. If my memory of communications law serves, that's a key factor in determining liability.
If you had said a self-publishing firm, your analogy would be on track, and the answer would be that they would go after the author because the self-publishing firm is nothing more than a company hired to provide a service. They would be no more liable for the violation than Kinko's or eBay would be if someone photocopied 10,000 copies of a copyrighted poem at Kinko's and then sold them on eBay. Neither party had an opportunity to exercise editorial control over the content, and as such, they generally are not liable for the content.
With a traditional publishing firm, the publishing company is paying the author instead of the other way around, and as such, the author is under contract to write a book for the firm. The author may or may not retain rights, but in any case, the publishing house has hired the author to do that, and has taken editorial responsibility for ensuring the book meets the standards set by the particular imprint. As soon as a book becomes an imprinted publication, that publisher is responsible for it. It is no longer the author publishing through someone, but rather the publisher choosing to publish a particular work by a particular author, and that is generally where the line is drawn.
As for what the RIAA wants, they'll never get it. If they did, then every Internet web server, bookstore, newsstand, record store, etc. would suddenly be required to exercise editorial control over everything they sell to avoid potential liability, and the market for copyrighted material would dry up completely, including stuff published through official RIAA channels. What they're asking for is basically suicide for the RIAA and those they represent. At some point, they'll probably pull their heads out of their backsides and realize that they're being morons, but I think it's safe to say that even the U.S. government isn't dumb enough to give them what they're asking for....
They're all over the place in California, too. By my estimation, there are probably 4-5,000 units in Sunnyvale alone (assuming those parks on the other side of Lawrence are on this side of the city limit... not sure. If I'm right about that, then if the average household is 4.3 people then that's something like 10-15% of the city living in mobile home parks....
The difference is that in California, the mobile homes are built much better than the ones you see in the South. Instead of 2x4 walls on the outside, they use 2x6 studs. Instead of 2x2 for interior walls, they use proper 2x4 studs. They often have raised ceilings, inset porches on the ends, etc. In short, they are pretty much regular stick-built house quality, except that they have a sturdier frame under them and are brought onto the property in two pieces instead of a thousand. That's the difference between a $25,000-$50,000 mobile home and a $125,000-$150,000 mobile home.
There is no real market for most this stuff except cardboard and metals. (Its already in the form it will be recycled into).
Not true. Glass is generally profitable to recycle, and is in significant demand.
Similarly, PETE (#1) plastic and HDPE (#2) plastic are also generally worth recycling. In some cases, #5, too. Most of the other stuff... not so much.
Either way, though, even if the city just dumps it in a landfill, that's still better than you dumping it in a landfill. When they dump it in a landfill, they're creating a huge pile of segregated plastic. If we get to the point that we're short on petroleum and it makes sense to find every shred of plastic we can for recycling, those piles will be a gold mine. Your random bottle in the middle of your trash will still be worthless.
Seriously? Ask students if they rather carry around a 6-7 pound laptop (we're talking 17") or a 2 pound netbook / tablet.
A fair number of students these days use a rolling bag anyway for carrying their books to class. At that point, the extra weight of a laptop becomes inconsequential. For students who don't do that, sure, they'd rather have the light weight. The question was not "would you rather carry 2 pounds or 5 pounds". The question was "what are you willing to give up to carry 2 pounds instead of 5 pounds". And from surveys, the answer is "not much". More students indicated intent to buy full-sized laptops than netbooks.
You prefer carrying around a cinder block because of the "sense of robustness"? Not actual robustness? Good grief.
There is clearly a range of weight that is acceptable for a portable device, and a cinder block is clearly not within that range. That argument is just silly.
SSDs for a laptop are expensive. A 500GB Hard drive is $60. A 128GB SSD is over $200.
Are you seriously trying to compare prices of SSDs with iPad storage prices? Bad idea. iPad capacity upgrades cost $100 or $200 for 16 or 48 GB, respectively. Sure, SSDs for laptops are expensive compared with hard drives, but not when compared with iPads. You're paying a premium for getting an SSD inside a small-form-factor device.
People shouldn't treat their electronics like crap, however the nature of portable electronics is that they will be subjected to rougher conditions than a permanent installation, and they must be able to survive. Look at cell phones. It's amazing they keep working at all with what they're subjected to.
Sure. Accidents happen. That's why we have backups. And cases. Solid state devices are more reliable in terms of breakage than hard drives, but they still fail, and the devices as a whole still break, too.
Just so you don't think I'm bashing it, I like the iPad. It would be an improvement for some categories of laptop users. For example, the touch panel provides a better user experience for web browsing (as long as the site has been designed to work well on iPad). The small size makes it less distracting at meetings. The small size, low weight, and robustness makes it great for watching movies on an airplane or in a car full of kids. And so on. Your arguments, however, are way too easy to shoot down.
Does it weigh less than two pounds?
Are your arms not strong enough to carry a laptop that weighs more than that? What, specifically, makes lighter better? In my mind, the 5-6 pound average laptop weight is light enough that it's not a problem, so being lighter than that is only a significant virtue if it doesn't bring any significant drawbacks along with it.
More importantly, in my mind, added weight conveys a sense of robustness---a sense that the device can survive whatever abuse you can throw at it. The lighter and thinner the device, the more worried I am that I'll look at it the wrong way and it will break in half. Granted, there are advantages to light weight in terms of resisting damage when you drop it, but I still prefer the solid feel of a laptop.
Can you just turn it off with a single button
No, and neither can you. You can put it to sleep. To turn it off, you have to hold down the button for a few seconds, then drag your finger across a slider. Similarly, I can put a laptop to sleep by shutting it. That's actually one fewer buttons, but who's counting?
and toss it on the couch or chair without worrying about hard disk damage?
<voice mode="Duke Nukem">SSDs, baby</voice>. If your idea of a good user experience requires being able to treat expensive electronics like crap, then you deserve to pay more (and pay more again when you accidentally hit the end table with that iPad instead of the couch). That's about the worst argument I've read to date in favor of an iPad. You shouldn't be throwing an iPad any more than you would throw a laptop, a desktop, or a Ming vase....
How well does it work with just touching the screen as an input device.
About as well as your iPad does for touch typing when it isn't docked to a keyboard, or, for that matter, about as well as your back and neck do when you're hunched over it typing on that onscreen keyboard.
"Yea, but you can't fly from Anchorage to Portland nonstop with 137 people, so it's not really an airplane..."
You're confusing "Device A can't do X without extra effort" with "Device A can't do X". A Cessna can carry 137 people from Anchorage to Portland. It has to stop for fuel several times and make several trips, but it is capable of doing the job. Despite the fact that it takes a lot longer, it meets the criteria for an airplane because it can do basically anything a typical airplane can do, albeit more slowly.
Now ask yourself if an automobile is an aircraft. (Note the obligatory automobile analogy.) Both can usually get you from place to place. However, an automobile simply is incapable of doing a number of other things that an airplane can do. It cannot cross bodies of water without the assistance of a bridge or ferry, cannot take aerial photos (unless dropped from an airplane), cannot support skydiving (unless dropped from an airplane), etc.
A netbook is a Cessna; it can do anything a full laptop can do, but slower. An iPad is a Ferrari. It's a very nice automobile, but it isn't an airplane. It can go many places an airplane cannot, and vice-versa. It can support multi-touch interfaces that a desktop computer cannot. However, it cannot run Flash. Similarly, it cannot run apps that haven't been written for it yet. This will work itself out over time, of course, in mu
I'm sure there are people running Photoshop on an 10 inch netbook, but I sure don't envy them.
If you are complaining about the 10" screen, then yeah, I agree that the resolution could be more than a little annoying. The newer 1024x600 netbooks are probably right at the bottom end of what would be usable for Photoshop unless Photoshop improves their palette management a *lot*. I've used 1024x768 machines, and they were pretty cramped. When netbook resolution is in the ballpark of 1280x720, it will be comfortable for Photoshop, if a bit hard to read in other applications....
If you meant the CPU, well, that's probably a red herring. I've never used a netbook, but they are several times as fast as the G3 Macs were, and they were just fine up through Photoshop 7, at least. For most typical tasks with typical file sizes (screen resolution-ish), Photoshop is instant enough to be usable on fairly modest hardware. As long as you aren't working with huge projects that won't fit in RAM, Photoshop really isn't a CPU hog unless you tell it to do certain very specific rendering-style tasks, at which point it is slow no matter what CPU you're using and it is just a matter of degree.
So if you want to walk around Detroit with an RFID reader and "track" people, good luck: the only thing you're tracking is the unique keys. You'd need access to whatever database in order to tie that unique key to a specific person.
Fundamental flaw in your logic: you assume that the person doing the tracking does not already know who they are tracking. Consider a private investigator finds the person that they are trying to follow. The investigator already knows who the person is, and merely needs to walk near that person to obtain the RFID token. At that point, the investigator can use that token to uniquely track that person all around Detroit.
For example, it mentions 'contacts'. Now, if you are a salesman AND the company introduced you to those contacts, then that would be company product. But if you are a computer programmer, copying your contacts is NOT stealing from the company. Furthermore, the courts have also ruled that even if you ARE a salesman, that taking contacts with you that you developed without aid from your company is again, NOT stealing (this is despite the stock brokerage firms repeatedly trying to ignore this law.)
Exactly. The moment they mentioned contacts, that invalidated their entire study because it defined as illegal something that quite often is not illegal.
As for "electronic files", again, a lot of employers allow employees to keep their own electronic files on work machines, so it's not necessarily stealing anything. Ditto for email messages, so the employee's attitude could easily be "take everything and delete the work-related stuff later". Which, of course, turns into "never", but that's not because they care about the work stuff, but rather because they realize they haven't looked for any personal email in that mailbox in ten years.
Small office supplies? Well, it's not like the employer is going to put those pens back in the stock room anyway, since they're half empty. And more to the point, they've used their own pens for work, so why not use work's pens for home, too. This may well fall into the category of justifiable, if not strictly legal. And if people are being honest, they have at least a few pens and paper clips from work at home anyway, just from having forgotten that the pens were clipped to their shirts, from having brought paperwork home to work on, etc. So my guess is that this number is low, not because they were raiding the supply closet one last time, but because it would take too much effort to sort out whose pens belong to whom.
So you're left with only one that matters: "product information". Given that the legality of most of the other questions depends on where you are and on how the question was worded, I have little faith in that one, either. Just saying.
Slashdot Mirror
Conjunctions and prepositions are capitalized if they are 5 letters or more, usually, IIRC. For example, "under" (preposition) and "after" (conjunction) are usually capitalized in a title.
BTW, newspapers have printed things like headlines in larger print or with other obvious typesetting differences for hundreds of years. If we didn't get rid of title case in all that time, we probably won't do it now just because of the web.
Besides, the purpose of title case has nothing to do with setting it off from the rest of the document and everything to do with making it easier to skim. If the less important words are in lowercase letters, you can visually see what you can skip without losing much meaning. Thus, it's just as useful (if done correctly) today on Slashdot as it was in the 1800s.
ROTFL.
If you just want to consider online use of the mark that predate Facebook and don't limit it to social networking, you'd have to add:
And the eBook thing is what's going to get Facebook's claim on "Book" completely thrown out. Ultimately, Facebook and other social media sites are essentially an online book of faces, a yearbook with more interactivity. Facebook chose its name precisely because of that association. As the term eBook had been used in commerce to describe electronic books for decades prior to Facebook's formation, one can fairly trivially argue that the word "Book" in Facebook naturally rose out of the use of language and is descriptive rather than distinctive, and thus is not eligible for trademark protection.
Moreover, the preexistence of at least half a dozen online sites that use "Book" in the name, coupled with the fact that AFAIK there are no other sites maintained by Facebook, Inc. with "Book" in the name (they have not shown a pattern of use such that other companies with "Book" in the name would create confusion) and the fact that trademarks generally apply to an entire area of commerce, where the area of commerce is much broader than "social networking".
More to the point, social networking is a feature of a website that has evolved out of the basic functionality inherent to web sites. It is essentially the same sort of telecommunications service as any other website, just with different features, and thus should not be eligible for protected use of the word "Book" given the wide range of other websites that use the term. However, what would cinch it would be a social networking website that parodied Facebook prior to their 2006 registration of the trademark. Like, say MyYearBook.com (2000).
In short, I think Facebook is likely to lose this one. They're doing due diligence to protect what they think is protected by their trademark, but they're wrong. Hopelessly wrong, in fact.
The highest law in our country says that they can't spy on you without probable cause. That wasn't put in by accident. It was a deliberate check and balance against the government becoming too powerful. The reason that this is necessary is that the police have nearly unlimited resources compared with an individual, and thus, were the laws not written deliberately to counterbalance that, a police state would be the natural end result.
Voting isn't suposed to be able to quickly and easily change things, either. There's a reason it's very hard to change the Constitution, requiring not only a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress, but also ratification by a majority vote in three-fourths of the states (or, alternatively a constitutional convention called by the legislatures of two-thirds of the states, which is so difficult, in practice, that it has never happened).
Indeed, Our Bill of RIghts was deliberately designed to minimize the potential for tyranny of the majority. Go read a bit about James Madison and say what you just said again with a straight face.
What you call protection, I call spying. If you could show that this were truly only used for actual protection---that is to say, only used to track bad guys for legitimate purposes---then I would have no argument against GPS tracking. Guess what? That's exactly what warrants are for. They provide a layer of accountability to the people that is absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of a free society.
There are rarely reasons for warrantless wiretaps, GPS tracking, or other such spying. In time-critical cases where you cannot wait for a warrant, the police have the right to conduct surveillance without a warrant. However, that was meant to be for exceptional cases. When you're talking about putting a tracker on somebody's car and getting a burst of data every night, clearly time is not a factor, and if it were, you have the option of old-fashioned tailing for those critical few hours.
If anybody tells you that warrantless GPS surveillance is for our protection, they're lying, pure and simple. The best that can possibly be said is that it lets police do less paperwork. Compromising our fundamental right to privacy so that police can do less paperwork is, IMHO, tantamount to wiping your ass with the Constitution.
And with this attitude, we would still have segregation, maybe even slavery. Every major improvement in our government has come from a few individuals having the guts to say, "This is wrong," and then convince others to listen.
Besides, who is talking about an individual deciding for anyone here? I'm not deciding for anybody. I'm arguing my opinion. That's my right, unless I fell asleep and woke up in some non-free country when I wasn't paying attention.
I'm just saying that if a handful of justices' cars were tracked by GPS to a local brothel, it might make the point a little clearer than a bunch of theoretical examples of how warrantless tracking might be abused....
Yes, the people have bestowed protection against any action that could impede a police investigation. Translation: live tracking websites are out, or at least would probably be illegal. That doesn't mean that we don't have a fundamental right to
Oh, so just over 10% of the 9th Circuit justices made this decision. *sigh*
Why can't it be both?
Look, the freedom in our country was founded on a single fundamental principle: that the government cannot be more powerful than the governed (at least when operating on American soil---the military doesn't count because they theoretically can't). As soon as you have police that have fundamentally more power than citizens, it's an easy downhill slide to 1984.
Which is insanely screwed up. The most liberal court is ruling in favor of less freedom while a fairly conservative court is ruling in favor of more freedom. What is this, bizarro world?
Because statistically speaking, if they have one virus, they probably have thirty.
No need to destroy their data. All one would have to do is replace key Windows boot files with a script that tells them that their Windows installation is hopelessly infected by viruses and has been disabled, telling them to take it to somebody who actually knows how to properly configure a Windows machine. There's no need to destroy irreplaceable data, merely to wreck Windows so badly that they have to do a full reinstall. Since that is completely beyond any of the sorts of people who are part of the problem, they would be forced to take their computers to somebody for repair, and one would at least hope that a sizable percentage of those machines would come back properly protected from viruses.
Why is it worse if they're real? You can buy antibiotics at any vet supply house.... It's not like they're hard to get without a prescription. If they're real, the spam is pretty much noise. If they're not real, then it's bad---people buying something that they think will make them well, only to have it not help them, or worse, poison them....
I'm pretty sure tablets have been around a lot longer than that, too.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the author won't also be held liable in the case of a work published through a major publisher. At a minimum, it would be a breach of contract, and the publisher could take their legal costs out of the author's hide. The point was that the publisher would be liable in the case of a book because the publisher is in a position to exercise editorial control, whereas a web publisher that merely passes on content in large quantities would not be because it is not in such a position.
Although that might seem like a good analogy, it really isn't. There's a very major difference between someone hosting somebody else's content and a print publisher: editorial control. If my memory of communications law serves, that's a key factor in determining liability.
If you had said a self-publishing firm, your analogy would be on track, and the answer would be that they would go after the author because the self-publishing firm is nothing more than a company hired to provide a service. They would be no more liable for the violation than Kinko's or eBay would be if someone photocopied 10,000 copies of a copyrighted poem at Kinko's and then sold them on eBay. Neither party had an opportunity to exercise editorial control over the content, and as such, they generally are not liable for the content.
With a traditional publishing firm, the publishing company is paying the author instead of the other way around, and as such, the author is under contract to write a book for the firm. The author may or may not retain rights, but in any case, the publishing house has hired the author to do that, and has taken editorial responsibility for ensuring the book meets the standards set by the particular imprint. As soon as a book becomes an imprinted publication, that publisher is responsible for it. It is no longer the author publishing through someone, but rather the publisher choosing to publish a particular work by a particular author, and that is generally where the line is drawn.
As for what the RIAA wants, they'll never get it. If they did, then every Internet web server, bookstore, newsstand, record store, etc. would suddenly be required to exercise editorial control over everything they sell to avoid potential liability, and the market for copyrighted material would dry up completely, including stuff published through official RIAA channels. What they're asking for is basically suicide for the RIAA and those they represent. At some point, they'll probably pull their heads out of their backsides and realize that they're being morons, but I think it's safe to say that even the U.S. government isn't dumb enough to give them what they're asking for....
They're all over the place in California, too. By my estimation, there are probably 4-5,000 units in Sunnyvale alone (assuming those parks on the other side of Lawrence are on this side of the city limit... not sure. If I'm right about that, then if the average household is 4.3 people then that's something like 10-15% of the city living in mobile home parks....
The difference is that in California, the mobile homes are built much better than the ones you see in the South. Instead of 2x4 walls on the outside, they use 2x6 studs. Instead of 2x2 for interior walls, they use proper 2x4 studs. They often have raised ceilings, inset porches on the ends, etc. In short, they are pretty much regular stick-built house quality, except that they have a sturdier frame under them and are brought onto the property in two pieces instead of a thousand. That's the difference between a $25,000-$50,000 mobile home and a $125,000-$150,000 mobile home.
I nearly spit orange juice on my keyboard.
Amish and wiretaps... that's a good one....
Not true. Glass is generally profitable to recycle, and is in significant demand.
Similarly, PETE (#1) plastic and HDPE (#2) plastic are also generally worth recycling. In some cases, #5, too. Most of the other stuff... not so much.
Either way, though, even if the city just dumps it in a landfill, that's still better than you dumping it in a landfill. When they dump it in a landfill, they're creating a huge pile of segregated plastic. If we get to the point that we're short on petroleum and it makes sense to find every shred of plastic we can for recycling, those piles will be a gold mine. Your random bottle in the middle of your trash will still be worthless.
A fair number of students these days use a rolling bag anyway for carrying their books to class. At that point, the extra weight of a laptop becomes inconsequential. For students who don't do that, sure, they'd rather have the light weight. The question was not "would you rather carry 2 pounds or 5 pounds". The question was "what are you willing to give up to carry 2 pounds instead of 5 pounds". And from surveys, the answer is "not much". More students indicated intent to buy full-sized laptops than netbooks.
There is clearly a range of weight that is acceptable for a portable device, and a cinder block is clearly not within that range. That argument is just silly.
Are you seriously trying to compare prices of SSDs with iPad storage prices? Bad idea. iPad capacity upgrades cost $100 or $200 for 16 or 48 GB, respectively. Sure, SSDs for laptops are expensive compared with hard drives, but not when compared with iPads. You're paying a premium for getting an SSD inside a small-form-factor device.
Sure. Accidents happen. That's why we have backups. And cases. Solid state devices are more reliable in terms of breakage than hard drives, but they still fail, and the devices as a whole still break, too.
Or, as I've often heard Java described, "Write once, debug everywhere."
Just so you don't think I'm bashing it, I like the iPad. It would be an improvement for some categories of laptop users. For example, the touch panel provides a better user experience for web browsing (as long as the site has been designed to work well on iPad). The small size makes it less distracting at meetings. The small size, low weight, and robustness makes it great for watching movies on an airplane or in a car full of kids. And so on. Your arguments, however, are way too easy to shoot down.
Are your arms not strong enough to carry a laptop that weighs more than that? What, specifically, makes lighter better? In my mind, the 5-6 pound average laptop weight is light enough that it's not a problem, so being lighter than that is only a significant virtue if it doesn't bring any significant drawbacks along with it.
More importantly, in my mind, added weight conveys a sense of robustness---a sense that the device can survive whatever abuse you can throw at it. The lighter and thinner the device, the more worried I am that I'll look at it the wrong way and it will break in half. Granted, there are advantages to light weight in terms of resisting damage when you drop it, but I still prefer the solid feel of a laptop.
No, and neither can you. You can put it to sleep. To turn it off, you have to hold down the button for a few seconds, then drag your finger across a slider. Similarly, I can put a laptop to sleep by shutting it. That's actually one fewer buttons, but who's counting?
<voice mode="Duke Nukem">SSDs, baby</voice>. If your idea of a good user experience requires being able to treat expensive electronics like crap, then you deserve to pay more (and pay more again when you accidentally hit the end table with that iPad instead of the couch). That's about the worst argument I've read to date in favor of an iPad. You shouldn't be throwing an iPad any more than you would throw a laptop, a desktop, or a Ming vase....
About as well as your iPad does for touch typing when it isn't docked to a keyboard, or, for that matter, about as well as your back and neck do when you're hunched over it typing on that onscreen keyboard.
You're confusing "Device A can't do X without extra effort" with "Device A can't do X". A Cessna can carry 137 people from Anchorage to Portland. It has to stop for fuel several times and make several trips, but it is capable of doing the job. Despite the fact that it takes a lot longer, it meets the criteria for an airplane because it can do basically anything a typical airplane can do, albeit more slowly.
Now ask yourself if an automobile is an aircraft. (Note the obligatory automobile analogy.) Both can usually get you from place to place. However, an automobile simply is incapable of doing a number of other things that an airplane can do. It cannot cross bodies of water without the assistance of a bridge or ferry, cannot take aerial photos (unless dropped from an airplane), cannot support skydiving (unless dropped from an airplane), etc.
A netbook is a Cessna; it can do anything a full laptop can do, but slower. An iPad is a Ferrari. It's a very nice automobile, but it isn't an airplane. It can go many places an airplane cannot, and vice-versa. It can support multi-touch interfaces that a desktop computer cannot. However, it cannot run Flash. Similarly, it cannot run apps that haven't been written for it yet. This will work itself out over time, of course, in mu
If you are complaining about the 10" screen, then yeah, I agree that the resolution could be more than a little annoying. The newer 1024x600 netbooks are probably right at the bottom end of what would be usable for Photoshop unless Photoshop improves their palette management a *lot*. I've used 1024x768 machines, and they were pretty cramped. When netbook resolution is in the ballpark of 1280x720, it will be comfortable for Photoshop, if a bit hard to read in other applications....
If you meant the CPU, well, that's probably a red herring. I've never used a netbook, but they are several times as fast as the G3 Macs were, and they were just fine up through Photoshop 7, at least. For most typical tasks with typical file sizes (screen resolution-ish), Photoshop is instant enough to be usable on fairly modest hardware. As long as you aren't working with huge projects that won't fit in RAM, Photoshop really isn't a CPU hog unless you tell it to do certain very specific rendering-style tasks, at which point it is slow no matter what CPU you're using and it is just a matter of degree.
Catholic. Thanks for asking.
Or if the girl sees you wearing it, even on your arm.
Fundamental flaw in your logic: you assume that the person doing the tracking does not already know who they are tracking. Consider a private investigator finds the person that they are trying to follow. The investigator already knows who the person is, and merely needs to walk near that person to obtain the RFID token. At that point, the investigator can use that token to uniquely track that person all around Detroit.
Not all identity theft is untargeted.
So basically, they reinvented the hard-sectored disk? *confused*
Exactly. The moment they mentioned contacts, that invalidated their entire study because it defined as illegal something that quite often is not illegal.
As for "electronic files", again, a lot of employers allow employees to keep their own electronic files on work machines, so it's not necessarily stealing anything. Ditto for email messages, so the employee's attitude could easily be "take everything and delete the work-related stuff later". Which, of course, turns into "never", but that's not because they care about the work stuff, but rather because they realize they haven't looked for any personal email in that mailbox in ten years.
Small office supplies? Well, it's not like the employer is going to put those pens back in the stock room anyway, since they're half empty. And more to the point, they've used their own pens for work, so why not use work's pens for home, too. This may well fall into the category of justifiable, if not strictly legal. And if people are being honest, they have at least a few pens and paper clips from work at home anyway, just from having forgotten that the pens were clipped to their shirts, from having brought paperwork home to work on, etc. So my guess is that this number is low, not because they were raiding the supply closet one last time, but because it would take too much effort to sort out whose pens belong to whom.
So you're left with only one that matters: "product information". Given that the legality of most of the other questions depends on where you are and on how the question was worded, I have little faith in that one, either. Just saying.