Will Google be berated for embracing a technology that limits the use of content being paid for?
Yes
Or will Google be praised
Yes
This is because there is more than one person on Slashdot.
If their DRM is "just right", with regular customers not caring, technically able customers content, and only the most hard-core upset, then we will see a sudden surge and wide-spread use of DRM. Content providing companies will flock to liscense Google's DRM, or at least have their product be distributed through it, and soon everything is locked into one thing or another.
This has already happened with Apple, because Apple's DRM is generally considered to be just fine and user-friendly.
Google has a problem in that they don't have a portable player, and unless it's very close to free, I don't think they have the cachet to successfully market one against the iPod, or even against Sony, Creative, iRiver, etc. Licensing their DRM system to one of those companies (except Apple, as long as the iPod is #1) is possible, although I don't know whether MS would allow that.
I don't think their plan is to dominate (at least, not just yet) the video download market, but just to be in it for whenever down the line it turns out to be really important.
Right now, I have to renew the DRM songs on my Zen Micro every month, I also have to make a call to the subscription service every once in a while to listen to what I've download and worst of all, I can't copy music I am suppose to be able to copy sometimes. If anyone gets this right
They have. It's called iTunes and iPod.
Google's founders cited iTunes when the topic of DRM came up at CES, as an example that DRM done right doesn't really bother the users.
Maybe not your "average user," I'm talking about people doing a linux install who have a clue.
But this thread is about your average user, because it was about "When windows is no longer the main concern in peoples minds as they switch to linux these tools will be hidden and streamline."
I'm talking about people not afraid of a text install and actively manage their systems. For such people, splitting off one or more of the above directories into their own partitions makes sense.
And I'm still telling you it doesn't. Doing so is a hassle, and adds complexity which makes problems more likely. Partitioning makes it harder to swap up to a new hard drive, it makes it certain you'll either run out of space on one partition, or waste space on another.
What does it buy you? You can completely erase your OS and re-install without erasing your home directory? You can already do this. Mac OS has done this for decades now, no partitioning required.
The only class of users who really should partition are the sysadmin types (whether professional or home enthusiasts). Because it's either their job to go through the hassle of fine-tuning the system to it's peak, and deal with all the drawbacks, or (in the case of the enthusiast) it's not a burden, it's the whole point, and they're probably doing something strange like booting a MythTV box via tftp, or setting up a rack of headless servers in the basement, or they just want to see how an OS runs when spread across various partitions. Your average standalone desktop system really should not be partitioned at all (although if you want to do it, go right ahead).
[Mac OS X doesn't split out the partitions on the drive] Because 1) less than 1% of their users have interest in the inner workings of their computer, 2) because they cry if they see a CLI. Still, it would make life easier if/home were on its own partition in the event the OS needs be reinstalled.
No, it doesn't do that by default because there's no need. If you want to do it, you're more than welcome to, but most users would never benefit from it, and would far more likely be troubled by it. OS X upgrades in place just fine (and the "Archive and Install" option completely replaces the installed OS, and doesn't just upgrade over it). Also, in OS X, you can just drag your home directory onto an external drive (or use Backup to burn it to discs) if you want to completely nuke a drive (what if you want to repartition it as well? your scheme doesn't help there). Even under Linux you can transfer a home directory to another drive, and it's not much more difficult to do than it is in OS X.
Why commit to a partitioning scheme ahead of time, especially when the system will work just fine on one big partition? Your average user (including your average "power user") will derive little or no benefit, while increasing the odds they'll have some problem. It makes no sense. None. The whole notion is a throwback to the days when such partitioning actually made things easier. Back before debs and dist-upgrades and OS X. These days, if your OS needs separate partitions to upgrade itself easily, it's a flaw in the OS. There's no technological reason to place the burden on the user.
You may be old-school. You might use your computer in such a way that fits nicely with partitioning. It might feel more elegant to you. Whatever your reason, cool, do it your way. But for most people, your way is the wrong way.
Boycot them! Hit them where it hurts! Vote with your dollars!
You have the power!
Yeah, but they have the TV shows. And the law.
Besides, you don't vote with your dollars. This is America, so voting effectively takes lots and lots of dollars.
Re:Where to get decent photo editing done [a bit O
on
Adobe Lightroom Review
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The solution to your problem: take better photos.
Not helpful at all.
The solution to just about everything is to do it better.
Some of my favourite photos make it to the printer absolutely untouched from when they came out the camera.
Impossible. Every photo is processed. Whether you do it yourself, or let the various attributes of the in-camera software, printer driver settings, and printer characteristics do it for you.
If your photos need endless work in Photoshop or similar to make them worth looking at, then you're probably doing something wrong...
You are exaggerating what the OP said. He just wants someone to post-process his images.
Why shouldn't someone post-process? Even you admit to doing it (although you didn't mention adjusting curves, which is common among pros, while "brightness and contrast" is basic and crude (by pro standards)). Take any photo. Any. Take Ansel Adams' top best most perfect photo ever. Odds are it can look even better if a skilled person were to process it, purposefully adjusting various attributes of the photo. Why accept a mediocre photo if it's capable of being a great photo? Why accept a great photo if it could be a superb photo?
But your advice, just take perfect photos and you won't want to post-process, is not helpful at all. It implies dada21 is so incredibly stupid that he never thought that maybe it would be desirable to take better photos to begin with. An implication which is wholly unwarranted.
Anyone installing a linux distro should be doing this [partitioning their drive].
I strongly disagree with this. Almost no one should be doing this. Even the swap partition isn't necessary anymore. In this day of fast disks and larger memory capacities, a swap file will work just fine.
But under no condition should your average user partition his or her/var,/home,/usr/local,/etc, etc. They'll never benefit from it, and will only ever notice the partitioning scheme by the hassles it creates.
In other words, partitioning adds unnecessary complexity. Your average user should not partition unless absolutely necessary (ie: they want to multi-boot).
Why do you think Mac OS X doesn't partition the OS in the old, anachronistic UNIX way (although you still can, if you really want to)?
Most of the funchtionality of it was already available on various web pages
The two most crucial functions of Dashboard most certainly are not available on various web pages. They are:
1. Out of your way until you need it. 2. When you need it, they're there instantly.
Loading a web page to check the weather is far more tedious than hitting F12.
With Dashboard, those widgets are consuming memory and other resources even when Dashboard isn't showing.
They only really consume memory. A poorly written widgets can consume CPU in the background, and any ol' widget could consume a tiny bit of CPU if it updates in the background, but it's not a big deal.
Maybe a Konfabulator user can weigh in on this.
Konfabulator is nice, but a bit of a hog on my (underpowered, but stocked with RAM) PC. It's not nearly as out-of-the-way but there-when-you-need-it as Dashboard, but if the new Yahoo dashboard has improved on this, I may start using it again.
I'm really confused by the mindset of those that disable all the features of their OS (like Dashboard and Spotlight), unless you have an old system. Is that it? Is it that you don't like your computer doing all these things? Or is it that you think that a whiz-bang feature has to be something you want to use all the time, or not at all?
I probably use Dashboard 5-10 times a day, and Spotlight a few times a week, so not all the time. But those times I do use them, I love the fact that they are there, BOOM!, when I want them.
For me it's not so much how many buttons, but whether they layout is useful.
That's like saying, "for me, it's not what color the car is, but whether it looks nice". In other words, the number of buttons is very intimately related to the usability (and therefore, usefulness) of the layout.
Each button you add adds complexity and clutter to the UI.
Gates was right to ask his team about the number of buttons. If he's even half as smart as his legend claims, he won't buy their lame response.
But in the end Apple is just as bad as MSFT when it comes to those ideas.
Nonsense. I was going to add something like, "unless you mean in that they both X" where X is something related to DRM, but I can't think of anything at all where they are equal, except the fact that they both support DRM, which they do in such different ways that it's hard to equate the two.
With a very few notable exceptions, Apple supports open standards like crazy (OGG, FLAC, and DivX come to mind as notable exceptions, but then, MS doesn't support them either). And when it comes to DRM, I tend to agree with the "DRM is bad" sentiment, but *if* there's going to be DRM, Apple's really seems to be the most reasonable and consumer friendly of the lot.
of course I still own a powerbook and have no working windows machines in my presence any more.
I tend to forget just how bad MS products are when I haven't used them for awhile too.
For those of us who are ignorant and don't see why someone would use Apple hardware over good commodity stuff, what's the advantage in going with Xserve stuff?
You plug it in and it works.
It's sort of like the underpants gnomes, except there is no step 3.
When a website contains a phrase like this: [snip] You know it is not worth reading. Yet more pseudoscience combined with conspiracy theories...... how boring.
Usually you can just stop at: "This guy has been on Coast to Coast AM"
You're doing the same thing the other poster did, and it's quite awful.
The environmental nazis seem to just cry about the falling sky or the depleting ozono or something that I just don't see evidence for.
You are conflating irrational idiots (who are very few in number) with rational environmentalists. Most Americans are rational environmentalists. They don't want the environment ruined, but they want oil and paper. So they are balanced. They don't set fires to SUV dealerships, in fact, many of them drive SUV's.
Those who want to use political force do it the wrong way.
Capitalism, the way it's run in the US, dictates that if you can save a few dollars by destroying an ecosystem, then you are pressured to do so. The government (ie: us, you still don't understand that we are the government, although we are giving away that status to the corporations all in the name of free market capitalism) can make it cost more (via taxes, fines, etc) to destroy an ecosystem than it costs to be more responsible.
What you keep advocating, which is for the people to give up all forms of political clout, just gives the wealthy more power. Your whole system destroys itself. It's unstable. Absolutely every society requires a government that tinkers in the economy. Whether that government is official (such as in the US) or unofficial (as in the mafia), or semi-official (as in worker's unions and corporations) it doesn't matter. There's *always* going to be someone forcing their will on someone else. Might as well be as rational as possible, and as equal as possible, when it comes to delegating that force, no?
We need oil, but what's wrong with mandating that oil tankers be made spill-resistant up to a certain point? We need wood and paper, but what's wrong with saying you must keep in mind the impact to streams and wetlands? We need power, but what's wrong with saying it's OK if the power costs a few cents more per month, but just make sure the salmon can get past the dams? Or that the nuclear plant is highly unlikely to melt-down? Or that the mercury in the coal exhaust is collected in the smokestacks instead of in children's brains?
It's irrational to be an environmental extremist, but it's just as irrational to trust the free market to look out for your best interests and not its own. The free market is quite wonderful when it works, but it does not always work, and sometimes needs to be directed or controlled by we, the people.
Either way, it's still natural selection, and still evolution. Nature doesn't really care whether the superior genes were randomly generated outside the lab, or designed inside the lab.
If you invent a new biological entity (say, a plant), evolution will catch up and fill any niches you leave around. It's the "Red Queen" effect in biology where you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. This pesticide/herbicide arms-race has been going on ever since the first plant secreted its first chemical weapon, and nature hasn't looked back since.
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" --The Red Queen, Through the Looking Glass
I'm really getting sick of the greenie environmentalists. A few decades ago they were crying about how we'd have no food to feed the overpopulated earth (Malthusians). Then they were crying about how the world will freeze from global cooling. Then they were concerned that Florida was be flooded by global warming. Then we would die from mega-viruses created out of medical research.
Feel free to ignore all the benefits we've derived from the "greenies", just because you can exaggerate some of their whackiest predictions. (hint: no one ever said, "we'd have no food" or that the "world will freeze", etc)
Now we're dying from genetically modified foods that are feeding millions of starving people (who happen to be starving because of the socialist government they live under, not because of lack of opportunities).
Socialism is not the issue, dictatorship is. Socialism (such as our socialized police force, socialized roads, socialized power-grid) is not inherently evil and is not the reason some African governments have either stolen money intended for their people, or refused food donations for either irrational fears of GM, or very rational fears of becoming beholden, by absurd IP laws, to the company that "donated" the seeds to begin with (think MS donating code to the Linux kernel, only to demand payment after enough time has passed that the MS code cannot be easily excised).
I fully support genetically modified foods
So do I. The "anti-Frankenfood" crowd are, generally, uninformed or irrationally superstitious.
My other half prefers organic food
So do I. As you point out, it's more expensive, but it's often higher quality. This isn't directly due to being organic (as though non-organic food is, well, not organic, lol), but due to what? It's not grown on factory farms? Caring about being organic makes farmers more likely to care about other quality-related factors? I don't know, and from a practical standpoint, it doesn't matter the cause, as long as the food is better.
But like most things of quality, it's a luxury. Banning modern farming practices would be a death-sentence for many millions (perhaps even billions) of people. It's not about being green, or being anti-socialist, it's about being rational. Just because GM food saves lives, doesn't mean you have to eat it if you can afford better (be it "organic" food, or just higher-quality GM produce, or whatever).
She's no greenie, though, she just prefers natural foods.
I hate to break this to you, but that's the general motivation behind most "greenies"--the desire for a higher quality environment. That doesn't mean you have to climb a tree to protest logging, but it does mean things like laws either forcing, or providing incentives, for logging companies to plant trees to replace those that they take from our public lands, setting aside some land to preserve it as a national park, and encouraging (either by force or economic incentive) more environmentally sound logging practices (ie: you don't destroy an entire ecosystem just to save a few dollars per tree), etc.
At least so much that X Delta Y is small enough that a terrorist would not be stopped let alone slowed down.
There are more potential terrorists than there will ever be actual terrorists. If you make being a terrorist easier, you increase the likelihood that a potential terrorist will become an actual terrorist. Google Earth makes some of the steps in becoming an actual terrorist easier.
That is the entirety of my argument, which is to counter the notion stated by a previous poster that Google Earth's existence does not help terrorists because of some illogical belief that "security through obscurity" is useless.
The other point to make is that these satilite images probably supply far less information about security than say the picture on a postcard sold at the shop down the street from the target.
What are you talking about? Google Earth has topographical data, roads, lat/long coordinates, can be used to make accurate measurements, shows the entire structure from above, and is easily and freely accessed from anywhere (even your average internet-connected cave). Not to mention the fact that Google Earth covers the entire planet, whereas postcards don't even come close.
You're making the exact same mistake I warned Guspaz about. Security isn't an "all or nothing" affair. It's absolutely absurd to think it is.
I'll make this really, really, simple. Data is absolutely critical to attacking some target. Google Earth makes acquiring, working with, and sharing that data significantly easier. Prior to Google Earth, the number of super-villains who will successfully acquire and work with data on a target is some number, X. After Google Earth, that number is Y, and it's absolutely guaranteed that Y > X in this case.
A simple comparison is the seat belt. You wear one, I assume. It does not prevent you from dying in an accident, but it does decrease the odds of you dying. It also decreases the likelihood of serious injury.
Personally, I'm not concerned. The benefits of Google Earth far, far outweigh the increased (which, IMO, is only a slight increase, but an increase nonetheless) risk to my safety. I'm not arguing in any way against Google Earth, I'm merely pointing out that it's false to believe that Google Earth does not make some forms of terrorism easier.
This is a flawed argument. It's, essentially, that if something isn't 100% secure, it's the same as being 100% insecure.
Google Earth makes it about a billion (well, some large amount) times easier to discover and access the data. It's also much harder to track down who is accessing the data (well, for India, I suppose it doesn't really apply, but if the satellite images are from an American company, at least in the US the government could subpoena who accessed them and maybe track down the fact that some known Bad Guy has been looking at some vulnerable Secret Place.
So the point being, the data is more readily available, which is not good for people who want to keep the data hidden. This sucks for those who want to keep the secrets, but I agree with the sentiment you are trying to defend, which is, "too bad for them".
1. Who did NASA feed the moondust to to determine it is toxic?
NASA has analyzed moondust. They would be the ones to know its characteristics.
2. If you are inside on the moon, one would presume the dust isn't
That is an illogical presumption, as things on the outside can (and will) become things on the inside.
Additionally, mooondust can be troublesome on the outside as well.
3. If you are outside on the moon and this happens, you just had 70kg of TNT dropped on you. Getting exploded is your primary concern, followed by death, with moondust toxicity being an also ran
1. The Moon lacks an appreciable atmosphere which makes explosions (among other things) act differently on the Moon compared to on the Earth. 2. If a nuclear bomb explodes, radiation is a concern, even after the time for worrying about "getting exploded" has passed.
Slashdot Mirror
Will Google be berated for embracing a technology that limits the use of content being paid for?
Yes
Or will Google be praised
Yes
This is because there is more than one person on Slashdot.
If their DRM is "just right", with regular customers not caring, technically able customers content, and only the most hard-core upset, then we will see a sudden surge and wide-spread use of DRM. Content providing companies will flock to liscense Google's DRM, or at least have their product be distributed through it, and soon everything is locked into one thing or another.
This has already happened with Apple, because Apple's DRM is generally considered to be just fine and user-friendly.
Google has a problem in that they don't have a portable player, and unless it's very close to free, I don't think they have the cachet to successfully market one against the iPod, or even against Sony, Creative, iRiver, etc. Licensing their DRM system to one of those companies (except Apple, as long as the iPod is #1) is possible, although I don't know whether MS would allow that.
I don't think their plan is to dominate (at least, not just yet) the video download market, but just to be in it for whenever down the line it turns out to be really important.
Right now, I have to renew the DRM songs on my Zen Micro every month, I also have to make a call to the subscription service every once in a while to listen to what I've download and worst of all, I can't copy music I am suppose to be able to copy sometimes. If anyone gets this right
They have. It's called iTunes and iPod.
Google's founders cited iTunes when the topic of DRM came up at CES, as an example that DRM done right doesn't really bother the users.
Maybe not your "average user," I'm talking about people doing a linux install who have a clue.
/home were on its own partition in the event the OS needs be reinstalled.
But this thread is about your average user, because it was about "When windows is no longer the main concern in peoples minds as they switch to linux these tools will be hidden and streamline."
I'm talking about people not afraid of a text install and actively manage their systems. For such people, splitting off one or more of the above directories into their own partitions makes sense.
And I'm still telling you it doesn't. Doing so is a hassle, and adds complexity which makes problems more likely. Partitioning makes it harder to swap up to a new hard drive, it makes it certain you'll either run out of space on one partition, or waste space on another.
What does it buy you? You can completely erase your OS and re-install without erasing your home directory? You can already do this. Mac OS has done this for decades now, no partitioning required.
The only class of users who really should partition are the sysadmin types (whether professional or home enthusiasts). Because it's either their job to go through the hassle of fine-tuning the system to it's peak, and deal with all the drawbacks, or (in the case of the enthusiast) it's not a burden, it's the whole point, and they're probably doing something strange like booting a MythTV box via tftp, or setting up a rack of headless servers in the basement, or they just want to see how an OS runs when spread across various partitions. Your average standalone desktop system really should not be partitioned at all (although if you want to do it, go right ahead).
[Mac OS X doesn't split out the partitions on the drive] Because 1) less than 1% of their users have interest in the inner workings of their computer, 2) because they cry if they see a CLI. Still, it would make life easier if
No, it doesn't do that by default because there's no need. If you want to do it, you're more than welcome to, but most users would never benefit from it, and would far more likely be troubled by it. OS X upgrades in place just fine (and the "Archive and Install" option completely replaces the installed OS, and doesn't just upgrade over it). Also, in OS X, you can just drag your home directory onto an external drive (or use Backup to burn it to discs) if you want to completely nuke a drive (what if you want to repartition it as well? your scheme doesn't help there). Even under Linux you can transfer a home directory to another drive, and it's not much more difficult to do than it is in OS X.
Why commit to a partitioning scheme ahead of time, especially when the system will work just fine on one big partition? Your average user (including your average "power user") will derive little or no benefit, while increasing the odds they'll have some problem. It makes no sense. None. The whole notion is a throwback to the days when such partitioning actually made things easier. Back before debs and dist-upgrades and OS X. These days, if your OS needs separate partitions to upgrade itself easily, it's a flaw in the OS. There's no technological reason to place the burden on the user.
You may be old-school. You might use your computer in such a way that fits nicely with partitioning. It might feel more elegant to you. Whatever your reason, cool, do it your way. But for most people, your way is the wrong way.
So how long till we see it cracked? I say no more than a week.
Probably take a day. So, like you said, less than a week, if someone does it during their 20% time.
Boycot them! Hit them where it hurts! Vote with your dollars!
You have the power!
Yeah, but they have the TV shows. And the law.
Besides, you don't vote with your dollars. This is America, so voting effectively takes lots and lots of dollars.
The solution to your problem: take better photos.
Not helpful at all.
The solution to just about everything is to do it better.
Some of my favourite photos make it to the printer absolutely untouched from when they came out the camera.
Impossible. Every photo is processed. Whether you do it yourself, or let the various attributes of the in-camera software, printer driver settings, and printer characteristics do it for you.
If your photos need endless work in Photoshop or similar to make them worth looking at, then you're probably doing something wrong...
You are exaggerating what the OP said. He just wants someone to post-process his images.
Why shouldn't someone post-process? Even you admit to doing it (although you didn't mention adjusting curves, which is common among pros, while "brightness and contrast" is basic and crude (by pro standards)). Take any photo. Any. Take Ansel Adams' top best most perfect photo ever. Odds are it can look even better if a skilled person were to process it, purposefully adjusting various attributes of the photo. Why accept a mediocre photo if it's capable of being a great photo? Why accept a great photo if it could be a superb photo?
But your advice, just take perfect photos and you won't want to post-process, is not helpful at all. It implies dada21 is so incredibly stupid that he never thought that maybe it would be desirable to take better photos to begin with. An implication which is wholly unwarranted.
Anyone installing a linux distro should be doing this [partitioning their drive].
/var, /home, /usr/local, /etc, etc. They'll never benefit from it, and will only ever notice the partitioning scheme by the hassles it creates.
I strongly disagree with this. Almost no one should be doing this. Even the swap partition isn't necessary anymore. In this day of fast disks and larger memory capacities, a swap file will work just fine.
But under no condition should your average user partition his or her
In other words, partitioning adds unnecessary complexity. Your average user should not partition unless absolutely necessary (ie: they want to multi-boot).
Why do you think Mac OS X doesn't partition the OS in the old, anachronistic UNIX way (although you still can, if you really want to)?
They've been poorly counterfeiting Mac OS for years now.
Sort of makes me think of Sir Mix-A-Lot's 'Swap Meet Louie'
"Your OS might have windows like a Mac, but in Redmond that ain't Jack."
Google Pack and now a Google Video Store?
Are they throwing away the "Don't Be Evil" slogan?
Yeah, because convenient software downloads and legal access to commercial video content is just so incredibly evil. <rollseyes>
Most of the funchtionality of it was already available on various web pages
The two most crucial functions of Dashboard most certainly are not available on various web pages. They are:
1. Out of your way until you need it.
2. When you need it, they're there instantly.
Loading a web page to check the weather is far more tedious than hitting F12.
With Dashboard, those widgets are consuming memory and other resources even when Dashboard isn't showing.
They only really consume memory. A poorly written widgets can consume CPU in the background, and any ol' widget could consume a tiny bit of CPU if it updates in the background, but it's not a big deal.
Maybe a Konfabulator user can weigh in on this.
Konfabulator is nice, but a bit of a hog on my (underpowered, but stocked with RAM) PC. It's not nearly as out-of-the-way but there-when-you-need-it as Dashboard, but if the new Yahoo dashboard has improved on this, I may start using it again.
I'm really confused by the mindset of those that disable all the features of their OS (like Dashboard and Spotlight), unless you have an old system. Is that it? Is it that you don't like your computer doing all these things? Or is it that you think that a whiz-bang feature has to be something you want to use all the time, or not at all?
I probably use Dashboard 5-10 times a day, and Spotlight a few times a week, so not all the time. But those times I do use them, I love the fact that they are there, BOOM!, when I want them.
I thought Apple's remote control would have only ONE button.
No. For the last time, THAT'S THE GARAGE DOOR OPENER.
Pointing it at your Mac will *not* run the TV, it will just open and close the garage door, so stop trying. It's annoying the neighbors.
For me it's not so much how many buttons, but whether they layout is useful.
That's like saying, "for me, it's not what color the car is, but whether it looks nice". In other words, the number of buttons is very intimately related to the usability (and therefore, usefulness) of the layout.
Each button you add adds complexity and clutter to the UI.
Gates was right to ask his team about the number of buttons. If he's even half as smart as his legend claims, he won't buy their lame response.
But in the end Apple is just as bad as MSFT when it comes to those ideas.
Nonsense. I was going to add something like, "unless you mean in that they both X" where X is something related to DRM, but I can't think of anything at all where they are equal, except the fact that they both support DRM, which they do in such different ways that it's hard to equate the two.
With a very few notable exceptions, Apple supports open standards like crazy (OGG, FLAC, and DivX come to mind as notable exceptions, but then, MS doesn't support them either). And when it comes to DRM, I tend to agree with the "DRM is bad" sentiment, but *if* there's going to be DRM, Apple's really seems to be the most reasonable and consumer friendly of the lot.
of course I still own a powerbook and have no working windows machines in my presence any more.
I tend to forget just how bad MS products are when I haven't used them for awhile too.
For those of us who are ignorant and don't see why someone would use Apple hardware over good commodity stuff, what's the advantage in going with Xserve stuff?
You plug it in and it works.
It's sort of like the underpants gnomes, except there is no step 3.
If such methods are better, why has no animal evolved them?
We have.
When a website contains a phrase like this:
[snip]
You know it is not worth reading. Yet more pseudoscience combined with conspiracy theories...... how boring.
Usually you can just stop at: "This guy has been on Coast to Coast AM"
You're doing the same thing the other poster did, and it's quite awful.
The environmental nazis seem to just cry about the falling sky or the depleting ozono or something that I just don't see evidence for.
You are conflating irrational idiots (who are very few in number) with rational environmentalists. Most Americans are rational environmentalists. They don't want the environment ruined, but they want oil and paper. So they are balanced. They don't set fires to SUV dealerships, in fact, many of them drive SUV's.
Those who want to use political force do it the wrong way.
Capitalism, the way it's run in the US, dictates that if you can save a few dollars by destroying an ecosystem, then you are pressured to do so. The government (ie: us, you still don't understand that we are the government, although we are giving away that status to the corporations all in the name of free market capitalism) can make it cost more (via taxes, fines, etc) to destroy an ecosystem than it costs to be more responsible.
What you keep advocating, which is for the people to give up all forms of political clout, just gives the wealthy more power. Your whole system destroys itself. It's unstable. Absolutely every society requires a government that tinkers in the economy. Whether that government is official (such as in the US) or unofficial (as in the mafia), or semi-official (as in worker's unions and corporations) it doesn't matter. There's *always* going to be someone forcing their will on someone else. Might as well be as rational as possible, and as equal as possible, when it comes to delegating that force, no?
We need oil, but what's wrong with mandating that oil tankers be made spill-resistant up to a certain point? We need wood and paper, but what's wrong with saying you must keep in mind the impact to streams and wetlands? We need power, but what's wrong with saying it's OK if the power costs a few cents more per month, but just make sure the salmon can get past the dams? Or that the nuclear plant is highly unlikely to melt-down? Or that the mercury in the coal exhaust is collected in the smokestacks instead of in children's brains?
It's irrational to be an environmental extremist, but it's just as irrational to trust the free market to look out for your best interests and not its own. The free market is quite wonderful when it works, but it does not always work, and sometimes needs to be directed or controlled by we, the people.
If you invent a new biological entity (say, a plant), evolution will catch up and fill any niches you leave around. It's the "Red Queen" effect in biology where you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. This pesticide/herbicide arms-race has been going on ever since the first plant secreted its first chemical weapon, and nature hasn't looked back since.
I'm really getting sick of the greenie environmentalists. A few decades ago they were crying about how we'd have no food to feed the overpopulated earth (Malthusians). Then they were crying about how the world will freeze from global cooling. Then they were concerned that Florida was be flooded by global warming. Then we would die from mega-viruses created out of medical research.
Feel free to ignore all the benefits we've derived from the "greenies", just because you can exaggerate some of their whackiest predictions. (hint: no one ever said, "we'd have no food" or that the "world will freeze", etc)
Now we're dying from genetically modified foods that are feeding millions of starving people (who happen to be starving because of the socialist government they live under, not because of lack of opportunities).
Socialism is not the issue, dictatorship is. Socialism (such as our socialized police force, socialized roads, socialized power-grid) is not inherently evil and is not the reason some African governments have either stolen money intended for their people, or refused food donations for either irrational fears of GM, or very rational fears of becoming beholden, by absurd IP laws, to the company that "donated" the seeds to begin with (think MS donating code to the Linux kernel, only to demand payment after enough time has passed that the MS code cannot be easily excised).
I fully support genetically modified foods
So do I. The "anti-Frankenfood" crowd are, generally, uninformed or irrationally superstitious.
My other half prefers organic food
So do I. As you point out, it's more expensive, but it's often higher quality. This isn't directly due to being organic (as though non-organic food is, well, not organic, lol), but due to what? It's not grown on factory farms? Caring about being organic makes farmers more likely to care about other quality-related factors? I don't know, and from a practical standpoint, it doesn't matter the cause, as long as the food is better.
But like most things of quality, it's a luxury. Banning modern farming practices would be a death-sentence for many millions (perhaps even billions) of people. It's not about being green, or being anti-socialist, it's about being rational. Just because GM food saves lives, doesn't mean you have to eat it if you can afford better (be it "organic" food, or just higher-quality GM produce, or whatever).
She's no greenie, though, she just prefers natural foods.
I hate to break this to you, but that's the general motivation behind most "greenies"--the desire for a higher quality environment. That doesn't mean you have to climb a tree to protest logging, but it does mean things like laws either forcing, or providing incentives, for logging companies to plant trees to replace those that they take from our public lands, setting aside some land to preserve it as a national park, and encouraging (either by force or economic incentive) more environmentally sound logging practices (ie: you don't destroy an entire ecosystem just to save a few dollars per tree), etc.
At least so much that X Delta Y is small enough that a terrorist would not be stopped let alone slowed down.
There are more potential terrorists than there will ever be actual terrorists. If you make being a terrorist easier, you increase the likelihood that a potential terrorist will become an actual terrorist. Google Earth makes some of the steps in becoming an actual terrorist easier.
That is the entirety of my argument, which is to counter the notion stated by a previous poster that Google Earth's existence does not help terrorists because of some illogical belief that "security through obscurity" is useless.
The other point to make is that these satilite images probably supply far less information about security than say the picture on a postcard sold at the shop down the street from the target.
What are you talking about? Google Earth has topographical data, roads, lat/long coordinates, can be used to make accurate measurements, shows the entire structure from above, and is easily and freely accessed from anywhere (even your average internet-connected cave). Not to mention the fact that Google Earth covers the entire planet, whereas postcards don't even come close.
You're making the exact same mistake I warned Guspaz about. Security isn't an "all or nothing" affair. It's absolutely absurd to think it is.
I'll make this really, really, simple. Data is absolutely critical to attacking some target. Google Earth makes acquiring, working with, and sharing that data significantly easier. Prior to Google Earth, the number of super-villains who will successfully acquire and work with data on a target is some number, X. After Google Earth, that number is Y, and it's absolutely guaranteed that Y > X in this case.
A simple comparison is the seat belt. You wear one, I assume. It does not prevent you from dying in an accident, but it does decrease the odds of you dying. It also decreases the likelihood of serious injury.
Personally, I'm not concerned. The benefits of Google Earth far, far outweigh the increased (which, IMO, is only a slight increase, but an increase nonetheless) risk to my safety. I'm not arguing in any way against Google Earth, I'm merely pointing out that it's false to believe that Google Earth does not make some forms of terrorism easier.
This is a flawed argument. It's, essentially, that if something isn't 100% secure, it's the same as being 100% insecure.
Google Earth makes it about a billion (well, some large amount) times easier to discover and access the data. It's also much harder to track down who is accessing the data (well, for India, I suppose it doesn't really apply, but if the satellite images are from an American company, at least in the US the government could subpoena who accessed them and maybe track down the fact that some known Bad Guy has been looking at some vulnerable Secret Place.
So the point being, the data is more readily available, which is not good for people who want to keep the data hidden. This sucks for those who want to keep the secrets, but I agree with the sentiment you are trying to defend, which is, "too bad for them".
1. Who did NASA feed the moondust to to determine it is toxic?
NASA has analyzed moondust. They would be the ones to know its characteristics.
2. If you are inside on the moon, one would presume the dust isn't
That is an illogical presumption, as things on the outside can (and will) become things on the inside.
Additionally, mooondust can be troublesome on the outside as well.
3. If you are outside on the moon and this happens, you just had 70kg of TNT dropped on you. Getting exploded is your primary concern, followed by death, with moondust toxicity being an also ran
1. The Moon lacks an appreciable atmosphere which makes explosions (among other things) act differently on the Moon compared to on the Earth.
2. If a nuclear bomb explodes, radiation is a concern, even after the time for worrying about "getting exploded" has passed.
And besides, running Windows, one assumes private data is at risk by default. :-)
Claims the rock features are the result of Intelligent Geology.