Not really from provider to provider, which was my point - it varies from state to state because they require providers in their state to provide such services. Other states don't, so the providers in that state don't.
Yeah, some places you can get blocking on incoming blocked calls, but it sure would be more convenient if it allowed you to unblock your number at the point where it is intercepted, rather than make you re-dial the call. "This number doesn't accept calls with Caller ID blocked - please press the * key to allow your number to be sent, or hang up now."
So there are people out there who want to talk to you so badly they pay hundreds of pounds a month to do so? Wow!
Look at it from the other side - if you're trying to get a hold of me, and all you get is my answering machine, don't expect me to call you back if I'm going to have to pay for it.
Sometimes, when I've been given the run-around by a company for a while, I'll call again in an attempt to get something done. When I know I'm angry, I let them know up front about it, that I realize it isn't THEIR personal fault, and that I hope they realize I'm not angry at them, just about the situation. Helps a lot in most cases. If they actually do solve the problem, I sometimes ask them if talking to their supervisor to commend them would be in any way helpful (as opposed to just causing them grief because the official party line is to not help the customer too much), and follow through if so.
On the other hand, if someone is so dense they can't figure out how to pro-rate a bill to fix a promotional rate that didn't get applied, then I'll argue it down to the last damned cent: "I'm not going to argue with you about half a cent, sir." (after taking the correct rate per day divided by 30, then rounding up, then adding it repeatedly by the number of days to get a subtotal, then doing the same for the other rate - a 1/2 cent error, multiplied by 30 days, multiplied by 100,000 customers, that's $15,000, is that coming out of your salary, then? The calculation on the bill was done correctly, just with the wrong rates) "Fine, I'm happy you're not going to argue it, so you'll accept my number, or do I need to speak to your supervisor?" (the supervisor was almost as clueless).
That same bill they screwed up the tax calculations as well (incorrect value, based on the incorrect rate, plus mislabeled as to what was being taxed) - as the "service" rep had no clue, I ended up calling the city franchise board to complain that they were charging incorrect tax rates; I got a call the very next day from someone who DID have a clue, figured out immediately what the correct value was supposed to be, and made it clear he knew who to talk to to get the other problem solved (and listened sympathetically to my rant about clueless service reps who couldn't pro-rate a bill properly). I was very nice to him.
It is both. Airline operators prohibit operating radio transmitting equipment on board an airplane in flight (FAA requires that any equipment that is going to be used be tested for safe operation on commercial flights), but even private pilots aren't allowed to use cell phones in the air due to FCC regulations.
Adjacent cell towers coordinate frequencies in use, and do handoffs to the next cell as you move from one to the other. In an airplane, you are "adjacent" to many towers at once, even those that are so far apart that they can't coordinate and hand off. Even though YOUR call may end up working, you're probably disconnecting other calls over a wide area as you step on their frequency (and since you're about 5 miles away from the cell you're actually talking to that's directly below you, your signal is still about 50% as strong over a 5 mile radius around that tower).
Usually, in such a case, it is a legitimate fax where they accidentally put in the wrong number. I've forwarded such calls to a fax machine in the past, then contacted the sender to ask them to please quit doing that! Since the fax contained confidential information, they were quick to comply.
Those services tend to be available on a state-by-state basis, and only if the state REQUIRES it to be available. For instance, in Illinois, it doesn't appear to be possible to have your phone default to blocking (you have to hit *67 to block for each call), in other states the phone company can charge you to have your line permanently blocked (and you hit *82 to allow it to go through). I haven't heard of a service which lets you persistently turn it on or off, nor to set your line to block incoming unidentified calls.
SBC has a "Privacy Manager" service (which you have to pay for) which prevents Caller ID blocked calls from going through, instead asking them to identify themselves before your phone rings (and doesn't let them know if you simply weren't home, or declined to pick up the call). But you have to pay for that.
Caller ID should have been implemented such that you can set it to be permanently blocked when you call, can set it to permanently block unidentified incoming calls, and intercept blocked calls with an option (for the caller) to allow their number to be transmitted. This should have been required by the FCC, and by now the extra charge for Caller ID should have been dropped (it's all built in to the switch anyway, doesn't save them any money to not transmit the info, all the equipment and such is already paid for). It also shouldn't be possible for the number to be spoofed in any way (or at least, in any deceptive or fraudulent way), or it should be illegal to do so for any reason.
Price is the most important concern for most people. Not utility, not best utility for price, just price. Oooh, I can get a PC with a printer and a monitor for $399.95, that's what I'm buying.
No, it isn't. Copyright law explicitly allows me to make a copy in order to run it. 17USC117. Yes, there was a case where the court ruled that a RAM copy was a copyright violation (MAI v Peak). 17USC117 (c) was added after that case was decided.
You don't need to explain an entire semester of copyright law. Just explain why I need a license to run it, or in the alternate, why 17USC117 does not apply.
If I need to be a lawyer to understand the plain language of the law, then the law is flawed, and expecting non-lawyers to obey the law is unrealistic. I'm not a lawyer, but I am a flight instructor, so I am well versed in reading and applying laws, sometimes very twisted ones with lots of inter-twingling. Take a look at 14CFR61 and 91 for an example of what every pilot is expected to know. Copyright law is not more difficult to read, parse or understand, though it has its own specialized terms. Legal language is similar to a declarative programming language. Sometimes it runs on faulty processors, leading to things like the definition of "obvious" in patent law, and court cases often are patches to the laws, sometimes leading to unintended side effects, but it is still logical in its own way. Usually, though, the problem is with the original programmers, i.e. the legislators (for USC) or the agencies (for CFR). 14CFR went through a major "refactoring" of some parts a few years ago, which fixed a bunch of bugs, and introduced a bunch more, and it can be a very slow process indeed to get them fixed.
With copyright, most of the bugs are with the design and specification, not the programming.
I don't need a license to install and run software if I own an "authorized copy". Copyright law already allows me that, so I don't need to agree to it. If the software refuses to properly run unless I click a button labeled "I agree", even when I don't agree, I don't see why I can't click that button and then ignore the purported license that I don't need in the first place. Alternatively, I could apply a patch that changes the license terms to be a bit more reasonable, then click "I agree". Why would my unilateral terms be any less valid than theirs?
Except I already had the right to install and use the software, when I bought a copy of the program. Copyright law gives me that right. So what is Microsoft's "consideration"?
If you "purchase" the physical item, and it comes with a copy of the software on it, then you OWN "an authorized copy". Doesn't matter what they try to say, if they sold it to you, you own it, and if you own it, you get to run the software on it, and you get to resell it, software and all. If it wasn't an actual sale, then what was it? A lease? A rental? A loan? Do you have to sit down and read through a contract, sign it, and have it approved before they'll sell it to you?
Which is why I was asking about what is recognized under law for, say, a car - could a car be "sold" and yet have restrictions on what you can do with that car? Obviously, if ownership didn't transfer, the owner can ask quite a bit of you - no driving on Sundays, you must hand wash it once a week, no passengers under the age of 21. If ownership DID transfer, however, what kind of covenants are legally recognized?
With copyright, there are a lot of things that the copyright owner doesn't get exclusive rights to. Why should a copyright owner be able to make up additional rights (such as "no resale") that copyright law doesn't give? If they want the advantages of a "sale" (instead of a lease, a rental, a loan), why shouldn't they then lose some of the exclusive rights that come with ownership (of a copy, not of the underlying copyright - obviously, selling a copy doesn't mean you lose the copyright, only some rights over that copy)?
Is it possible (as in, would the law enforce it) to sell a physical item with a contract that prohibits you from re-selling it? I don't see how copyright law, which does NOT give the copyright owner exclusive rights to re-sale, can be used to give additional rights. Without copyright law, there would be no basis for any requirement to "license" the right to run a copy anyway. Copyright law also gives the "owner" of an "authorized copy" the right to run software. Copyright law is also supposed to only protect creative aspects, not functional. So how can a click-through license (which forces you to agree to something, which in my mind is no agreement at all), that enables functionality (the ability to play the game in order to experience the creative aspects that ARE protected by copyright) be valid, especially if the equivalent for a non-software non-copyright item would not be a valid restriction on first-sale rights!
Even if it is legally valid to sell something under a contract with a restriction on re-sale, it seems to me such a contract would have to be up-front, before the sale, which would drive retailers mad. If you want to benefit from the simplicity of selling things at retail, you have to accept the limitations as well. If what you want to do is lease a game to someone, then you better be prepared to handle all the complexities that will add (along with the lost "sales" to people who want to BUY something, not lease it).
If an effective way to block the resale of games were to be implemented, it could well lead to a drop in total sales. If you look a the current market for a particular game, there will be people who buy it with no intent to re-sell, those who buy it intending to re-sell it when they're done with it (or decide the game sucks), and those who buy it used from the second group (directly or indirectly). Probably, most of the people in the third group are also going to re-sell it when they're done with it.
The ability to re-sell increases the value of buying the game for all but the 1st group. Without the ability to re-sell, fewer people will buy the game unless the price is reduced. The group they're trying to capture, the third group, is unlikely to buy unless the price is dropped significantly.
Let's say a new game goes for $50, you can re-sell it for $20, and buy a used one for $30. That means group 1 is willing to pay $50, group 2 is willing to pay $30, and group 3 is willing to pay $10. Group 3 ostensibly contributes nothing to the original distributor, but it is the existence of group 3 that allows sales to group 2. Eliminate the ability to re-sell, and don't drop the price, and they'll lose some of their sales to group 2, and will get very few sales to group 3. If they do drop the price, they may sell some more to groups 2 and 3 (and group 0, the group that didn't buy the game at all), but they'll lose money from group 1. They'd need to do a very careful study to determine the optimal price, and then determine if their total profit will go down or up if they implement it. Just declaring a mindless "we don't get a penny of the sales from used games" is about as short-sighted as the phone companies complaining that they aren't getting a cut of the profits from Google.
A pinhole "lens" isn't low resolution, it just doesn't gather very much light. An extremely sensitive terapixel sensor with a pinhole lens would do just fine. It also has an infinite depth of field (if you want to simulate depth of field effect of a lens, you'd need 2 or more pinhole lens/sensors).
There doesn't seem to be much use for monitor resolution better than 100DPI (at a typical 2-3 feet). Typical human visual acuity is about 1 minute of arc, at 2.5 feet that is about 114DPI. For print, at 1 foot, that's 285DPI, which matches pretty well with the typical 300DPI of print, or even 600DPI for viewing at 6 inches. At 300DPI, an 8x10 photo is about 7.2 mega-pixels, to go to 600DPI would require a jump to about 30Mp.
As someone else pointed out, 8Mp is pretty close to 35mm film resolution (at the speeds most people use), which has been adequate for everyday purposes for quite some time now. Sure, for 16x20 at 600DPI, you'll need about 120Mp, but only a really serious professional, or an extremely rich hobbyist, is going to want to deal with the storage and processing requirements of something that big, at least not any time soon.
I'd love something that gives a 360x360 degree image with, say, 10 times the visual acuity of the human eye, but that would be about 14 giga-pixels. I think you could safely say that 14 giga-pixels is "enough" for the foreseeable future. Can you imagine a full motion video filmed like that? Now there's some storage requirements!
And even if encrypted- so what? The hacker doesn't neccessarily need to understand the signal to record and mimic the signal- at a distance, over RF.
While a very naive encryption algorithm would allow that, any real system that would be used would be resistant to playback attempts. In addition, all of this wireless traffic is going to be transmitted in a very controlled environment INSIDE the skin of an airplane - which will almost certainly block any attempts to jam, intercept or spoof it.
In that case, I'd run fiber along with the power, use that as the primary control method, and include wireless and the distributed battery grid as a BACKUP system in case of major damage.
It is total nonsense that the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 will cost Sony $1000. It's more likely that it will cost less than $100, considering that most of the mechanism is exactly the same as what's in those DVD players that cost $30, and things like power supplies, connectors, and controlling electronics are already part of the console. The laser/optics are different, but $1000? That's ridiculous. Pre-release price for a complete Blu-Ray player, not just the drive mechanism, is $1000, and that's the RETAIL price, not the cost to manufacture.
According to the Thermal Depolymerization article, the US produced (as of 2001) about 12 billion tons of waste (industrial and municipal) per year. The turkey offal processing plant is supposed to turn 200 tons of turkey waste into 500 barrels of oil per day (actual apparently 270 tons into 400 barrels, or 23 million liters per year).
If that 12 billion tons of waste (40 tons per person per year, or 219 pounds per person per day) converted at the same rate, that would be 17 billion barrels of oil per year (at the more conservative 270 tons converting to 400 barrels), which is more than 2 times the US oil demand (2004). Granted, some of that waste is already being used, and some of it will convert at a lower rate, but that indicates that such a waste stream, converted to oil, could meet a significant chunk of our oil demands (whether for energy or chemical feedstock).
How is getting up at 5AM and waiting for several hours NOT an expense? Seems to me that would be MUCH more of an incentive to economize on gas than merely letting the price go up.
"5 gigabit downlinks already fairly common"??? Most computers don't even have 1gigabit ethernet ports, many don't even have 100megabit ethernet. What year did you come back from?
Windows vs. OSX isn't going to make search behavior slow. The search algorithm is implemented in iTunes, not in the OS, and it is undoubtedly the same between the Windows and Mac version. A 5-year-old G4 is also no speed demon compared to the $400 cheap Intel machines you can get today, so why would that be an issue, unless you have an 8-year-old Intel machine...? In which case, memory is STILL probably the issue. Reading before replying is good, thinking is even better.
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Not really from provider to provider, which was my point - it varies from state to state because they require providers in their state to provide such services. Other states don't, so the providers in that state don't.
Yeah, some places you can get blocking on incoming blocked calls, but it sure would be more convenient if it allowed you to unblock your number at the point where it is intercepted, rather than make you re-dial the call. "This number doesn't accept calls with Caller ID blocked - please press the * key to allow your number to be sent, or hang up now."
So there are people out there who want to talk to you so badly they pay hundreds of pounds a month to do so? Wow!
Look at it from the other side - if you're trying to get a hold of me, and all you get is my answering machine, don't expect me to call you back if I'm going to have to pay for it.
Sometimes, when I've been given the run-around by a company for a while, I'll call again in an attempt to get something done. When I know I'm angry, I let them know up front about it, that I realize it isn't THEIR personal fault, and that I hope they realize I'm not angry at them, just about the situation. Helps a lot in most cases. If they actually do solve the problem, I sometimes ask them if talking to their supervisor to commend them would be in any way helpful (as opposed to just causing them grief because the official party line is to not help the customer too much), and follow through if so.
On the other hand, if someone is so dense they can't figure out how to pro-rate a bill to fix a promotional rate that didn't get applied, then I'll argue it down to the last damned cent: "I'm not going to argue with you about half a cent, sir." (after taking the correct rate per day divided by 30, then rounding up, then adding it repeatedly by the number of days to get a subtotal, then doing the same for the other rate - a 1/2 cent error, multiplied by 30 days, multiplied by 100,000 customers, that's $15,000, is that coming out of your salary, then? The calculation on the bill was done correctly, just with the wrong rates) "Fine, I'm happy you're not going to argue it, so you'll accept my number, or do I need to speak to your supervisor?" (the supervisor was almost as clueless).
That same bill they screwed up the tax calculations as well (incorrect value, based on the incorrect rate, plus mislabeled as to what was being taxed) - as the "service" rep had no clue, I ended up calling the city franchise board to complain that they were charging incorrect tax rates; I got a call the very next day from someone who DID have a clue, figured out immediately what the correct value was supposed to be, and made it clear he knew who to talk to to get the other problem solved (and listened sympathetically to my rant about clueless service reps who couldn't pro-rate a bill properly). I was very nice to him.
It is both. Airline operators prohibit operating radio transmitting equipment on board an airplane in flight (FAA requires that any equipment that is going to be used be tested for safe operation on commercial flights), but even private pilots aren't allowed to use cell phones in the air due to FCC regulations.
Adjacent cell towers coordinate frequencies in use, and do handoffs to the next cell as you move from one to the other. In an airplane, you are "adjacent" to many towers at once, even those that are so far apart that they can't coordinate and hand off. Even though YOUR call may end up working, you're probably disconnecting other calls over a wide area as you step on their frequency (and since you're about 5 miles away from the cell you're actually talking to that's directly below you, your signal is still about 50% as strong over a 5 mile radius around that tower).
Usually, in such a case, it is a legitimate fax where they accidentally put in the wrong number. I've forwarded such calls to a fax machine in the past, then contacted the sender to ask them to please quit doing that! Since the fax contained confidential information, they were quick to comply.
Those services tend to be available on a state-by-state basis, and only if the state REQUIRES it to be available. For instance, in Illinois, it doesn't appear to be possible to have your phone default to blocking (you have to hit *67 to block for each call), in other states the phone company can charge you to have your line permanently blocked (and you hit *82 to allow it to go through). I haven't heard of a service which lets you persistently turn it on or off, nor to set your line to block incoming unidentified calls.
SBC has a "Privacy Manager" service (which you have to pay for) which prevents Caller ID blocked calls from going through, instead asking them to identify themselves before your phone rings (and doesn't let them know if you simply weren't home, or declined to pick up the call). But you have to pay for that.
Caller ID should have been implemented such that you can set it to be permanently blocked when you call, can set it to permanently block unidentified incoming calls, and intercept blocked calls with an option (for the caller) to allow their number to be transmitted. This should have been required by the FCC, and by now the extra charge for Caller ID should have been dropped (it's all built in to the switch anyway, doesn't save them any money to not transmit the info, all the equipment and such is already paid for). It also shouldn't be possible for the number to be spoofed in any way (or at least, in any deceptive or fraudulent way), or it should be illegal to do so for any reason.
Price is the most important concern for most people. Not utility, not best utility for price, just price. Oooh, I can get a PC with a printer and a monitor for $399.95, that's what I'm buying.
Undoubtedly something to do with Intel processors...you'd never see such issues if they'd only stayed with PPC!
No, it isn't. Copyright law explicitly allows me to make a copy in order to run it. 17USC117. Yes, there was a case where the court ruled that a RAM copy was a copyright violation (MAI v Peak). 17USC117 (c) was added after that case was decided.
You don't need to explain an entire semester of copyright law. Just explain why I need a license to run it, or in the alternate, why 17USC117 does not apply.
If I need to be a lawyer to understand the plain language of the law, then the law is flawed, and expecting non-lawyers to obey the law is unrealistic. I'm not a lawyer, but I am a flight instructor, so I am well versed in reading and applying laws, sometimes very twisted ones with lots of inter-twingling. Take a look at 14CFR61 and 91 for an example of what every pilot is expected to know. Copyright law is not more difficult to read, parse or understand, though it has its own specialized terms. Legal language is similar to a declarative programming language. Sometimes it runs on faulty processors, leading to things like the definition of "obvious" in patent law, and court cases often are patches to the laws, sometimes leading to unintended side effects, but it is still logical in its own way. Usually, though, the problem is with the original programmers, i.e. the legislators (for USC) or the agencies (for CFR). 14CFR went through a major "refactoring" of some parts a few years ago, which fixed a bunch of bugs, and introduced a bunch more, and it can be a very slow process indeed to get them fixed.
With copyright, most of the bugs are with the design and specification, not the programming.
I don't need a license to install and run software if I own an "authorized copy". Copyright law already allows me that, so I don't need to agree to it. If the software refuses to properly run unless I click a button labeled "I agree", even when I don't agree, I don't see why I can't click that button and then ignore the purported license that I don't need in the first place. Alternatively, I could apply a patch that changes the license terms to be a bit more reasonable, then click "I agree". Why would my unilateral terms be any less valid than theirs?
Except I already had the right to install and use the software, when I bought a copy of the program. Copyright law gives me that right. So what is Microsoft's "consideration"?
If you "purchase" the physical item, and it comes with a copy of the software on it, then you OWN "an authorized copy". Doesn't matter what they try to say, if they sold it to you, you own it, and if you own it, you get to run the software on it, and you get to resell it, software and all. If it wasn't an actual sale, then what was it? A lease? A rental? A loan? Do you have to sit down and read through a contract, sign it, and have it approved before they'll sell it to you?
Which is why I was asking about what is recognized under law for, say, a car - could a car be "sold" and yet have restrictions on what you can do with that car? Obviously, if ownership didn't transfer, the owner can ask quite a bit of you - no driving on Sundays, you must hand wash it once a week, no passengers under the age of 21. If ownership DID transfer, however, what kind of covenants are legally recognized?
With copyright, there are a lot of things that the copyright owner doesn't get exclusive rights to. Why should a copyright owner be able to make up additional rights (such as "no resale") that copyright law doesn't give? If they want the advantages of a "sale" (instead of a lease, a rental, a loan), why shouldn't they then lose some of the exclusive rights that come with ownership (of a copy, not of the underlying copyright - obviously, selling a copy doesn't mean you lose the copyright, only some rights over that copy)?
Is it possible (as in, would the law enforce it) to sell a physical item with a contract that prohibits you from re-selling it? I don't see how copyright law, which does NOT give the copyright owner exclusive rights to re-sale, can be used to give additional rights. Without copyright law, there would be no basis for any requirement to "license" the right to run a copy anyway. Copyright law also gives the "owner" of an "authorized copy" the right to run software. Copyright law is also supposed to only protect creative aspects, not functional. So how can a click-through license (which forces you to agree to something, which in my mind is no agreement at all), that enables functionality (the ability to play the game in order to experience the creative aspects that ARE protected by copyright) be valid, especially if the equivalent for a non-software non-copyright item would not be a valid restriction on first-sale rights!
Even if it is legally valid to sell something under a contract with a restriction on re-sale, it seems to me such a contract would have to be up-front, before the sale, which would drive retailers mad. If you want to benefit from the simplicity of selling things at retail, you have to accept the limitations as well. If what you want to do is lease a game to someone, then you better be prepared to handle all the complexities that will add (along with the lost "sales" to people who want to BUY something, not lease it).
If an effective way to block the resale of games were to be implemented, it could well lead to a drop in total sales. If you look a the current market for a particular game, there will be people who buy it with no intent to re-sell, those who buy it intending to re-sell it when they're done with it (or decide the game sucks), and those who buy it used from the second group (directly or indirectly). Probably, most of the people in the third group are also going to re-sell it when they're done with it.
The ability to re-sell increases the value of buying the game for all but the 1st group. Without the ability to re-sell, fewer people will buy the game unless the price is reduced. The group they're trying to capture, the third group, is unlikely to buy unless the price is dropped significantly.
Let's say a new game goes for $50, you can re-sell it for $20, and buy a used one for $30. That means group 1 is willing to pay $50, group 2 is willing to pay $30, and group 3 is willing to pay $10. Group 3 ostensibly contributes nothing to the original distributor, but it is the existence of group 3 that allows sales to group 2. Eliminate the ability to re-sell, and don't drop the price, and they'll lose some of their sales to group 2, and will get very few sales to group 3. If they do drop the price, they may sell some more to groups 2 and 3 (and group 0, the group that didn't buy the game at all), but they'll lose money from group 1. They'd need to do a very careful study to determine the optimal price, and then determine if their total profit will go down or up if they implement it. Just declaring a mindless "we don't get a penny of the sales from used games" is about as short-sighted as the phone companies complaining that they aren't getting a cut of the profits from Google.
A pinhole "lens" isn't low resolution, it just doesn't gather very much light. An extremely sensitive terapixel sensor with a pinhole lens would do just fine. It also has an infinite depth of field (if you want to simulate depth of field effect of a lens, you'd need 2 or more pinhole lens/sensors).
There doesn't seem to be much use for monitor resolution better than 100DPI (at a typical 2-3 feet). Typical human visual acuity is about 1 minute of arc, at 2.5 feet that is about 114DPI. For print, at 1 foot, that's 285DPI, which matches pretty well with the typical 300DPI of print, or even 600DPI for viewing at 6 inches. At 300DPI, an 8x10 photo is about 7.2 mega-pixels, to go to 600DPI would require a jump to about 30Mp.
As someone else pointed out, 8Mp is pretty close to 35mm film resolution (at the speeds most people use), which has been adequate for everyday purposes for quite some time now. Sure, for 16x20 at 600DPI, you'll need about 120Mp, but only a really serious professional, or an extremely rich hobbyist, is going to want to deal with the storage and processing requirements of something that big, at least not any time soon.
I'd love something that gives a 360x360 degree image with, say, 10 times the visual acuity of the human eye, but that would be about 14 giga-pixels. I think you could safely say that 14 giga-pixels is "enough" for the foreseeable future. Can you imagine a full motion video filmed like that? Now there's some storage requirements!
Or, the DVD+R didn't contain the entire movie.
While a very naive encryption algorithm would allow that, any real system that would be used would be resistant to playback attempts. In addition, all of this wireless traffic is going to be transmitted in a very controlled environment INSIDE the skin of an airplane - which will almost certainly block any attempts to jam, intercept or spoof it.
In that case, I'd run fiber along with the power, use that as the primary control method, and include wireless and the distributed battery grid as a BACKUP system in case of major damage.
It is total nonsense that the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 will cost Sony $1000. It's more likely that it will cost less than $100, considering that most of the mechanism is exactly the same as what's in those DVD players that cost $30, and things like power supplies, connectors, and controlling electronics are already part of the console. The laser/optics are different, but $1000? That's ridiculous. Pre-release price for a complete Blu-Ray player, not just the drive mechanism, is $1000, and that's the RETAIL price, not the cost to manufacture.
According to the Thermal Depolymerization article, the US produced (as of 2001) about 12 billion tons of waste (industrial and municipal) per year. The turkey offal processing plant is supposed to turn 200 tons of turkey waste into 500 barrels of oil per day (actual apparently 270 tons into 400 barrels, or 23 million liters per year).
If that 12 billion tons of waste (40 tons per person per year, or 219 pounds per person per day) converted at the same rate, that would be 17 billion barrels of oil per year (at the more conservative 270 tons converting to 400 barrels), which is more than 2 times the US oil demand (2004). Granted, some of that waste is already being used, and some of it will convert at a lower rate, but that indicates that such a waste stream, converted to oil, could meet a significant chunk of our oil demands (whether for energy or chemical feedstock).
How is getting up at 5AM and waiting for several hours NOT an expense? Seems to me that would be MUCH more of an incentive to economize on gas than merely letting the price go up.
"5 gigabit downlinks already fairly common"??? Most computers don't even have 1gigabit ethernet ports, many don't even have 100megabit ethernet. What year did you come back from?
Windows vs. OSX isn't going to make search behavior slow. The search algorithm is implemented in iTunes, not in the OS, and it is undoubtedly the same between the Windows and Mac version. A 5-year-old G4 is also no speed demon compared to the $400 cheap Intel machines you can get today, so why would that be an issue, unless you have an 8-year-old Intel machine...? In which case, memory is STILL probably the issue. Reading before replying is good, thinking is even better.