Why is it that any kind of new system must always be instantly usable and deployable anywhere?
People don't complain about igloos in Florida, because it's obviously a bad idea, but no one would go as far as to say that igloos are doomed, because they won't work in Florida.
I think you are (at least indirectly) speaking to something that scares the crap out of me: the growing influence of Christian Fundamentalists in the USA
And why are those people supporting Sarah Palin?
It can't be the solid family values, considering that her oldest daughter not only gave birth to a child out of wedlock, but also before she turned 18 (sure, AoC is 16 in Alaska, but OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!). And she decided not to marry the father of her child.
It can't be for her love of Jesus' teachings, because if Jesus taught one thing above all else it's forgiveness, and that's not in her nature. Jesus forgave his tormentors without them asking for it - she starts witch hunts against people who have slighted her in the least.
On a related note, why do Christian Fundamentalists consider themselves Christian, when most of what they believe in was essentially made obsolete by the New Testament?
Three were escalations from girlfriend "stolen" -> fist fight -> gunshot (and in all three, if was a person standing next to the intented victim who left in a ambulance).
Let that be a lesson to you: Always steal girlfriends from crappy shooters.
The driver has to perform a mystical brain computation in order to integrate everything they're learning about the car through their five senses.
Five? You only have five senses?
Okay, let's see Taste Sight Hearing Smell Touch
Which one handles balance/acceleration? Seems rather nifty while driving a car Spatial sense (ability to know where your body parts are with your eyes closed)? Knowing exactly where your feet and hands are without looking at them comes in handy when changing gears and breaking Temperature? Is the car overheating? Pain? Has the car just crashed Direction? You've just done 25 hair pin corners - are you still going in the right direction?
The classical idea of "five senses" is not only obsolete - it's factually incorrect in trivial circumstances.
Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Jason Lisle has proven that the earth doesn't have to be billions of years old for light to reach us from distant stars. His theory of Anisotropic Synchrony Convention proves that light traveled at an infinite velocity at the moment of creation. Thus, we can be comfortable with the fact that the earth turned 6,014 years old on Oct. 23. Thanks to the theory of Amyotrophic Lateral Convection, the truth of the Bible in verified.
Okay... so evolution is merely a theory, but Anisotropic Synchrony Convention is fact, because it can be verified by another souds - the Bible.
Interesting...
Here's my proposal: When you turn 12 you have to pick a side: * Religion/superstition (and here I include astrology and the like) * Science You're free to choose whichever you want, but once you've picked a side, you don't get to use the stuff from the other side.
That means if you pick religion you don't get to use the scientific progress that has happened since the Bible was written. On the other hand, if you pick science, you don't get to find comfort in the idea of eternal life after death.
Of course, that just means that as people of science we don't recognize Catholic priests as comforters of souls, but we do recognize them as charlatans and child molesters.
If that's poor scalability, I want to know what's good scalability.
Well, apparently it doesn't scale down in size to the desktop. If you don't believe me, just look at the usage statistics. Top500 servers: 91% linux. Desktop: 91% Windows.
Just like a jet-engine is a great way to power a huge aircraft, no so great for powering your lawn mower or chain saw.
And no it's not flame bait, when you're answering a non-rhetorical question.
Are you allowed to just walk naked through the metal detector?
Here's the scenario I'm picturing. Since I'm already being asked to take off my shoes, belt and other metallic items and put them into a bin that goes through the x-ray, why not just all my clothes?
It should then be fairly easy for security to tell if I'm hiding something. And since I'm 6'4", 450 lbs[1], haven't showered for a month (not to mention the areas I can't quite reach), it'd make one hell of a statement at the airport.
Go on - you lift up my slabs of flesh and fat and examine between them. I suspect you might find my long dead hamster, Dino, and some left over pizza from yesterday. Also, I'm gay[2] and a knismolagniac[3], I'll make sure I've taken plenty of Viagra before getting in line.
[1] Not 450 lbs [2] Not gay [3] I hate being tickled
I don't see a high plea rate as a bad thing on the face of it
It can be.
Think of it this way: You're in their spotlight for A. You haven't done A, but they are also piling on B through Z (which you also haven't done).
They now tell you that if you plead guilty to $A, you only have to spend 6 months in jail. But if you decided to go to court, not only will they go for A through Z, but they will also aim to get you to serve consecutively.
A quick check shows you that if you only get done for the lowest ranking infraction only, you will now do a minimum of 12 months in prison with good behaviour. The highest carries a maximum of 25 years.
Moreover your attorney informs you that such a trial will last a minimum of 9 months, during which the DA will insist that you remain in custody (you being a flight risk due to that 25 year thing). So now you're looking at spending 9 months behind bars anyway - a time during which you won't have an income, but your attorney's fees will easily hit 100,000 dollars (which you don't have). If you plead out, it'll only be 5,000 dollars (which you do have).
Now you're looking at a very skewed cost/benefit analysis. Even if you are 99% certain that you can be acquitted on each single indictment, you are now looking at a 23% likelihood that you will be convicted of a minimum of one of these counts, in which case you will have paid an extra 95,000 dollars and will spend more time in prison (even with time served).
77% chance for 95,000 dollars might be worth it, even if there's a 23% chance you'll spend a long time behind bars.
Suppose you're only 95% certain you can get each charge dropped/dismissed/found not guilty - now you're looking at 73% chance of being convicted of a minimum of one count. 90% chance to get each charge dropped/dismissed/found not guilty still gives the DA a whopping 93% chance of landing at least one conviction.
I'm not saying that this is how it works in every case, but the cost/benefit analysis can very easily be skewed in the 'I didn't do it, but I'll plead guilty anyway' direction.
Thankfully science and engineering moves forward at all times, in spite of how most of their work is beyond the understanding and comprehension of the average person.
If you don't believe me, try asking people how exactly a combustion engine works. Or for something a lot simpler - a flushing toilet.
Ballmer will be paying more $$ to the Federal goverment in Capital Gains taxes in this one transaction than all of the collective readers of this Slashdot story will pay in any form of taxes for their entire lives combined.
Really? Interesting claim. Let's examine it a bit.
It' not entirely unfair to assume that each member is a reader. In fact, we can safely assume that there are more readers than members, but there are also inactive members (i.e. people who used to read, but don't any more), but since you didn't exclude those (collective readers implies every single person who has ever read Slashdot), let's just go with the highest member number I can easily find - mine: 1,360,093.
Now, Ballmer is selling off about 2,000,000,000 dollars worth of stock. That's 1,471 dollars per Slashdot member. Assuming a low average life span of 60 years, most people will be paying some kind of tax for 40 of them. Now we're looking at paying an average of 37 dollars a year. In any kind of tax (your words). How about sales tax? I think it's a fair assumption that we will be averaging more than 37 dollars a year in sales taxes alone.
There is a fault in my maths though. 1) Average life span is higher than 60 years. 2) On average we will have paid taxes for more than 40 years when we die. 3) There are now more than 1.36 million Slashdot members. None of these facts makes your claim any less idiotic, even if you were being facetious.
That's weird, because on my now 3½ year old HP Pavilion laptop (2 GHz Turion 64 x2, 2 GB RAM, Windows 7, 4200 RPM harddrive) I have no issues with iTunes at all.
Doesn't matter if it's just in the background playing music while I'm playing some (admittedly old) game, watching a 720p movie in iTunes or the same movie in VLC while playing music in iTunes. But obviously my anecdote is useless because you know for a fact that it's iTunes that causes your computer to be crap and not something else you've done.
There's a difference between saying: "Some people believe in one god. Other's believe in many gods. and "There ARE one or more gods, and these are their chosen ones".
Now, in a show like Reaper, going with "God exists> is fine, because without God, the show doesn't exists (without a God there can be no damnation and no Devil for the reaper to work for). But saying "There IS a God" in what is supposedly a science fiction show is a bit too much.
Saying that there are religious people? Not a problem, especially as they are using this divide (mono- vs polytheistic religion) as a big contention point for the conflict.
Granted, we aren't told if there is ONE god or many (i.e. who, if anyone, is correct), but it's still making the claim that such beings exists, which in my anything but humble opinion is a crock when you're dealing with science fiction.
That doesn't apply to BSG (or Star Wars for that matter). We don't realise it until the end of BSG, but that show takes place when Homo Sapiens Sapiens is just getting on the scene I believe. Well before any established civilizations at least. Star Wars takes place in another galaxy.
Now, since neither of these shows/movies are related to the future prospects of Earth-based technologies, there is no reason that they should project their technical developments "in light of current scientific knowledge".
Now, that may make them science fantasy instead of science fiction, but that's just nitpicking.
If you feel strongly enough about fixing the broken system*
You mean like John McCain, who's been saying that the system is broken since at least 1989? You'd think that at some point he'd be able to either realise that he's fighting an un-winnable battle or just give up.
Anyway, long story short, the terrorism expert asks us that hypothetically, if we had $500 and a desire to cause as much damage and chaos as possible, with no regard for our own lives, how much damage we could cause.
I don't know how much C4 or semtex I could buy for about 450 dollars, but I'm pretty sure I could wreak terrible havoc in an airport with a large trolley suitcase, two solid steel plates, four steel plates with plenty of holes in them, a few thousand steel ball bearings and say 25 lbs of C4/semtex.
No need to get through security. Find a nice spot in the busiest part of the airport (like the arrival area), wait for a particularly busy time of day and kaboom.
There is no way to stop that kind of attack for two very simple reasons 1) You can't ban luggage at an airport 2) You can't move the secured area outwards in such a fashion, that there won't be an unsecured area with lots of people in it
You could use bomb sniffing dogs, but then you've only expanded the secured area, and my bomb can just be set off when I'm another unsecured location with lots of people. After all - dragging a heavy suitcase isn't exactly an uncommon sight at busy locations.
Okay, so I won at "Beat the Security Theatre" - what's my prize, Alex?
However, for any distance under (say) 600 miles or so, I'd agree: drive. It actually is quicker, and is substantially cheaper without the hassle. An hour to the airport, 1-3 hours waiting, an hour or so in transit, and another hour to get your bags, rental, etc. and then another 30 minutes to 2 hours to your actual destination. Anywhere on the seaboards, I'd say "just drive".
Must be an American thing.
I travelled from Stockholm to Copenhagen and back this last week. Takes 1 hour from here to the airport. Need to be there 45 minutes ahead of time. 1 hour 45 minutes to fly to Copenhagen and then 1 hour from touch down to my destination.
That's 4½ hours each way or 9 hours total. Total cost, including transit to/from airports: 230 dollars.
Distance by car is 678 km (421 miles). Assuming 5 liters/100 km (not unreasonable for the distance assuming a diesel car) that adds up to 68 litres of diesel, totalling 123 dollars in local prices.
Add 100 USD for the toll bridge (both ways) and we're now looking at 223 dollars for that trip.
So now I'm paying 7 dollars more than I would have by car. But the car journey would take about 14 hours total. So by driving in a car, I'm making 1.4 dollars an hour, and to be honest, I'd rather pay those 7 dollars, save five hours of travel, not have to deal with the hassle of driving.
Now - if I was going with a friend? Sure, car is cheaper, as the cost barely increases (ignoring that I don't have a car or a driver's license). But for the "puddle jumping" that I need to do, I find the plane much simpler, faster and more relaxing. Hell, I can catch a nap on the plane - not a good idea if you're in a car on your own.
So why is Carmack talking about 60 fps on a graphics engine designed for phones? Is he actually clueless about the issue, is it marketing speak, or does he simply want to advertise to developers who may not be as familiar with the issue as he himself is?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, he is happy about 60 fps on a phone, simply because it gives a 100% headroom for situations and games that require more than the RAGE demo?
I don't know about you, but personally I'd rather have 100% headroom than 0%.
Personally, I think deconstructing the human genome is somewhat more complex than designing an opamp, but hey, that's just me.
It may be more complex, but that does not make it an invention.
Show me where I can find a ratchet wrench, and I'll call it a discovery. On the other hand, I can tell you where to find pretty much all the genes that are patented - in organisms that nature derived on its own.
Now - if, on the other hand, some company designs a gene, that does something that has never existed in nature - that'd be an invention. But moving genes from a fish into a plant isn't an invention, any more than adding "on the internet" onto already existing technology makes that worthy of being patented. Very neat, and you should probably be allowed a patent on the technology used for it.
And why exactly is the new 11" Air *not* a netbook?
The same reason that a Lamborghini isn't a two seater commuter car? Or for the same reason that a Smart is not a two seater sports car?
I haven't yet seen a netbook that doesn't have an Atom or similar processor. And when it comes to graphics, the closest I've seen to the Geforce 320M (while not powerful in and of itself), is an ion chipset, and even that one is slower than the 320M.
Have I seen portable 11" computers with out of order processors with graphics cards somewhat comparable to a 320M? Yes, I have. Have I seen some that are cheaper than the 11" MacBook Air? Certainly.
Now, if you then up the ante, and say that to be comparable, it must have a dual core, out of order processor, an nVidia ion/ion2 chipset or newer, or a AMD/ATi Radeon 4xxx or newer. What are you then left with?
I managed to find... well, none so far. But that's probably because what I'm searching with doesn't include stuff like the Sony Vaio Z series. Granted, those are 13", and cost a lot more than the MBA, but they are also a lot better spec'ed. But even if they were, I wouldn't call them netbooks. They're notebooks - simply because they are in a completely different class, performance wise, than the 'crap' you find in netbooks.
The Mac platform suits my needs for now [...] I can re-evaluate my options at any time.
This seems to be overlooked by most people here.
It's as if once people get a Mac, they will never ever get anything else. Like it's heroin or cocaine.
Granted, after three months of professional use, I'm missing more and more stuff from the Mac on Windows, but even if I bought a Mac of some sort, it would probably end up being replaced in about two to three years, just like I have done with every other computer I've had thus far. And once I replace it, nothing is stopping me from getting a non-Mac computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that any kind of new system must always be instantly usable and deployable anywhere?
People don't complain about igloos in Florida, because it's obviously a bad idea, but no one would go as far as to say that igloos are doomed, because they won't work in Florida.
And why are those people supporting Sarah Palin?
It can't be the solid family values, considering that her oldest daughter not only gave birth to a child out of wedlock, but also before she turned 18 (sure, AoC is 16 in Alaska, but OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!). And she decided not to marry the father of her child.
It can't be for her love of Jesus' teachings, because if Jesus taught one thing above all else it's forgiveness, and that's not in her nature. Jesus forgave his tormentors without them asking for it - she starts witch hunts against people who have slighted her in the least.
On a related note, why do Christian Fundamentalists consider themselves Christian, when most of what they believe in was essentially made obsolete by the New Testament?
Let that be a lesson to you: Always steal girlfriends from crappy shooters.
And if at all possible, stand next to a jock.
Five? You only have five senses?
Okay, let's see
Taste
Sight
Hearing
Smell
Touch
Which one handles balance/acceleration? Seems rather nifty while driving a car
Spatial sense (ability to know where your body parts are with your eyes closed)? Knowing exactly where your feet and hands are without looking at them comes in handy when changing gears and breaking
Temperature? Is the car overheating?
Pain? Has the car just crashed
Direction? You've just done 25 hair pin corners - are you still going in the right direction?
The classical idea of "five senses" is not only obsolete - it's factually incorrect in trivial circumstances.
Which obviously explains why those of us who have never read the declaration of independence can read this text.
Okay ... so evolution is merely a theory, but Anisotropic Synchrony Convention is fact, because it can be verified by another souds - the Bible.
Interesting ...
Here's my proposal: When you turn 12 you have to pick a side:
* Religion/superstition (and here I include astrology and the like)
* Science
You're free to choose whichever you want, but once you've picked a side, you don't get to use the stuff from the other side.
That means if you pick religion you don't get to use the scientific progress that has happened since the Bible was written.
On the other hand, if you pick science, you don't get to find comfort in the idea of eternal life after death.
Of course, that just means that as people of science we don't recognize Catholic priests as comforters of souls, but we do recognize them as charlatans and child molesters.
Well, apparently it doesn't scale down in size to the desktop. If you don't believe me, just look at the usage statistics. Top500 servers: 91% linux. Desktop: 91% Windows.
Just like a jet-engine is a great way to power a huge aircraft, no so great for powering your lawn mower or chain saw.
And no it's not flame bait, when you're answering a non-rhetorical question.
Are you allowed to just walk naked through the metal detector?
Here's the scenario I'm picturing. Since I'm already being asked to take off my shoes, belt and other metallic items and put them into a bin that goes through the x-ray, why not just all my clothes?
It should then be fairly easy for security to tell if I'm hiding something. And since I'm 6'4", 450 lbs[1], haven't showered for a month (not to mention the areas I can't quite reach), it'd make one hell of a statement at the airport.
Go on - you lift up my slabs of flesh and fat and examine between them. I suspect you might find my long dead hamster, Dino, and some left over pizza from yesterday. Also, I'm gay[2] and a knismolagniac[3], I'll make sure I've taken plenty of Viagra before getting in line.
[1] Not 450 lbs
[2] Not gay
[3] I hate being tickled
It can be.
Think of it this way: You're in their spotlight for A. You haven't done A, but they are also piling on B through Z (which you also haven't done).
They now tell you that if you plead guilty to $A, you only have to spend 6 months in jail. But if you decided to go to court, not only will they go for A through Z, but they will also aim to get you to serve consecutively.
A quick check shows you that if you only get done for the lowest ranking infraction only, you will now do a minimum of 12 months in prison with good behaviour. The highest carries a maximum of 25 years.
Moreover your attorney informs you that such a trial will last a minimum of 9 months, during which the DA will insist that you remain in custody (you being a flight risk due to that 25 year thing). So now you're looking at spending 9 months behind bars anyway - a time during which you won't have an income, but your attorney's fees will easily hit 100,000 dollars (which you don't have). If you plead out, it'll only be 5,000 dollars (which you do have).
Now you're looking at a very skewed cost/benefit analysis. Even if you are 99% certain that you can be acquitted on each single indictment, you are now looking at a 23% likelihood that you will be convicted of a minimum of one of these counts, in which case you will have paid an extra 95,000 dollars and will spend more time in prison (even with time served).
77% chance for 95,000 dollars might be worth it, even if there's a 23% chance you'll spend a long time behind bars.
Suppose you're only 95% certain you can get each charge dropped/dismissed/found not guilty - now you're looking at 73% chance of being convicted of a minimum of one count. 90% chance to get each charge dropped/dismissed/found not guilty still gives the DA a whopping 93% chance of landing at least one conviction.
I'm not saying that this is how it works in every case, but the cost/benefit analysis can very easily be skewed in the 'I didn't do it, but I'll plead guilty anyway' direction.
Thankfully science and engineering moves forward at all times, in spite of how most of their work is beyond the understanding and comprehension of the average person.
If you don't believe me, try asking people how exactly a combustion engine works. Or for something a lot simpler - a flushing toilet.
Really? Interesting claim. Let's examine it a bit.
It' not entirely unfair to assume that each member is a reader. In fact, we can safely assume that there are more readers than members, but there are also inactive members (i.e. people who used to read, but don't any more), but since you didn't exclude those (collective readers implies every single person who has ever read Slashdot), let's just go with the highest member number I can easily find - mine: 1,360,093.
Now, Ballmer is selling off about 2,000,000,000 dollars worth of stock. That's 1,471 dollars per Slashdot member. Assuming a low average life span of 60 years, most people will be paying some kind of tax for 40 of them. Now we're looking at paying an average of 37 dollars a year. In any kind of tax (your words). How about sales tax? I think it's a fair assumption that we will be averaging more than 37 dollars a year in sales taxes alone.
There is a fault in my maths though. 1) Average life span is higher than 60 years. 2) On average we will have paid taxes for more than 40 years when we die. 3) There are now more than 1.36 million Slashdot members. None of these facts makes your claim any less idiotic, even if you were being facetious.
Uhm ... by your own account ("thwarted") Hawkman failed at crossing the Channel, making Rocketman the first to successfully cross the Channel.
That's weird, because on my now 3½ year old HP Pavilion laptop (2 GHz Turion 64 x2, 2 GB RAM, Windows 7, 4200 RPM harddrive) I have no issues with iTunes at all.
Doesn't matter if it's just in the background playing music while I'm playing some (admittedly old) game, watching a 720p movie in iTunes or the same movie in VLC while playing music in iTunes. But obviously my anecdote is useless because you know for a fact that it's iTunes that causes your computer to be crap and not something else you've done.
There's a difference between saying: "Some people believe in one god. Other's believe in many gods. and "There ARE one or more gods, and these are their chosen ones".
Now, in a show like Reaper, going with "God exists> is fine, because without God, the show doesn't exists (without a God there can be no damnation and no Devil for the reaper to work for).
But saying "There IS a God" in what is supposedly a science fiction show is a bit too much.
Saying that there are religious people? Not a problem, especially as they are using this divide (mono- vs polytheistic religion) as a big contention point for the conflict.
Granted, we aren't told if there is ONE god or many (i.e. who, if anyone, is correct), but it's still making the claim that such beings exists, which in my anything but humble opinion is a crock when you're dealing with science fiction.
That doesn't apply to BSG (or Star Wars for that matter). We don't realise it until the end of BSG, but that show takes place when Homo Sapiens Sapiens is just getting on the scene I believe. Well before any established civilizations at least. Star Wars takes place in another galaxy.
Now, since neither of these shows/movies are related to the future prospects of Earth-based technologies, there is no reason that they should project their technical developments "in light of current scientific knowledge".
Now, that may make them science fantasy instead of science fiction, but that's just nitpicking.
You mean like John McCain, who's been saying that the system is broken since at least 1989? You'd think that at some point he'd be able to either realise that he's fighting an un-winnable battle or just give up.
I don't know how much C4 or semtex I could buy for about 450 dollars, but I'm pretty sure I could wreak terrible havoc in an airport with a large trolley suitcase, two solid steel plates, four steel plates with plenty of holes in them, a few thousand steel ball bearings and say 25 lbs of C4/semtex.
No need to get through security. Find a nice spot in the busiest part of the airport (like the arrival area), wait for a particularly busy time of day and kaboom.
There is no way to stop that kind of attack for two very simple reasons
1) You can't ban luggage at an airport
2) You can't move the secured area outwards in such a fashion, that there won't be an unsecured area with lots of people in it
You could use bomb sniffing dogs, but then you've only expanded the secured area, and my bomb can just be set off when I'm another unsecured location with lots of people. After all - dragging a heavy suitcase isn't exactly an uncommon sight at busy locations.
Okay, so I won at "Beat the Security Theatre" - what's my prize, Alex?
Must be an American thing.
I travelled from Stockholm to Copenhagen and back this last week. Takes 1 hour from here to the airport. Need to be there 45 minutes ahead of time. 1 hour 45 minutes to fly to Copenhagen and then 1 hour from touch down to my destination.
That's 4½ hours each way or 9 hours total. Total cost, including transit to/from airports: 230 dollars.
Distance by car is 678 km (421 miles). Assuming 5 liters/100 km (not unreasonable for the distance assuming a diesel car) that adds up to 68 litres of diesel, totalling 123 dollars in local prices.
Add 100 USD for the toll bridge (both ways) and we're now looking at 223 dollars for that trip.
So now I'm paying 7 dollars more than I would have by car. But the car journey would take about 14 hours total. So by driving in a car, I'm making 1.4 dollars an hour, and to be honest, I'd rather pay those 7 dollars, save five hours of travel, not have to deal with the hassle of driving.
Now - if I was going with a friend? Sure, car is cheaper, as the cost barely increases (ignoring that I don't have a car or a driver's license). But for the "puddle jumping" that I need to do, I find the plane much simpler, faster and more relaxing. Hell, I can catch a nap on the plane - not a good idea if you're in a car on your own.
It's not his newest game, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn, that John Carmack has ported Commander Keen to the TI-82 ...
Or perhaps, just perhaps, he is happy about 60 fps on a phone, simply because it gives a 100% headroom for situations and games that require more than the RAGE demo?
I don't know about you, but personally I'd rather have 100% headroom than 0%.
It may be more complex, but that does not make it an invention.
Show me where I can find a ratchet wrench, and I'll call it a discovery.
On the other hand, I can tell you where to find pretty much all the genes that are patented - in organisms that nature derived on its own.
Now - if, on the other hand, some company designs a gene, that does something that has never existed in nature - that'd be an invention. But moving genes from a fish into a plant isn't an invention, any more than adding "on the internet" onto already existing technology makes that worthy of being patented. Very neat, and you should probably be allowed a patent on the technology used for it.
Yes ... apart from the fact that silicon IS a metal, and that a large collection of atoms that closely together is rightfully called a "lump".
Essentially they're proposing replacing one lump of metal with another. It may not be a cylinder, but it's still a lump of metal.
The same reason that a Lamborghini isn't a two seater commuter car? Or for the same reason that a Smart is not a two seater sports car?
I haven't yet seen a netbook that doesn't have an Atom or similar processor. And when it comes to graphics, the closest I've seen to the Geforce 320M (while not powerful in and of itself), is an ion chipset, and even that one is slower than the 320M.
Have I seen portable 11" computers with out of order processors with graphics cards somewhat comparable to a 320M? Yes, I have.
Have I seen some that are cheaper than the 11" MacBook Air? Certainly.
Now, if you then up the ante, and say that to be comparable, it must have a dual core, out of order processor, an nVidia ion/ion2 chipset or newer, or a AMD/ATi Radeon 4xxx or newer. What are you then left with?
I managed to find ... well, none so far. But that's probably because what I'm searching with doesn't include stuff like the Sony Vaio Z series. Granted, those are 13", and cost a lot more than the MBA, but they are also a lot better spec'ed. But even if they were, I wouldn't call them netbooks. They're notebooks - simply because they are in a completely different class, performance wise, than the 'crap' you find in netbooks.
that it related to US imagry, and not stuff in England?
This seems to be overlooked by most people here.
It's as if once people get a Mac, they will never ever get anything else. Like it's heroin or cocaine.
Granted, after three months of professional use, I'm missing more and more stuff from the Mac on Windows, but even if I bought a Mac of some sort, it would probably end up being replaced in about two to three years, just like I have done with every other computer I've had thus far. And once I replace it, nothing is stopping me from getting a non-Mac computer.