One wonders why the high-priced lawyers and accountants at MS and the BSA gestapo haven't figured this out.
Econ 101 - consumers purchase things because they perceive value > total cost. If the VALUE of MS Office lies in its perceived ubiquity (since the software functions of the two products are practially the same), the moment that this "value" the opportunity or real costs of BSA Audits, harrassment, and the fear of that 'disgruntled employee' narc'ing sometime in the future, well DUH people are going to move away from these 'excessive costs' whenever they can.
It's my conviction that the widespread piracy of Win95 (and thus its widespread adoption) KILLED an arguably better competitor, OS/2. If every single copy of Win95 had to be paid for (the theoretical goal) it would not be the dominant OS. The tighter they squeeze, the more systems will slip through their fingers, indeed.
Sure piracy costs Microsoft; if IBM had recognized this at the time, and been handing out FREE OS/2 versions MS probably wouldn't have to spend the $$ to buy the Justice Dept today.
It has recently come to our attention that you have been reported by an unidentified source to have been using a joke with the beginning, "Why did the chicken cross the road?".
We are obliged to point out to you that you are in violation under the terms of the DMCA. This text was originally printed in the technical manual for MS Windows 1.0 Executive in 1988. The use of this joke and all derivatives are therefore illegal.
A team of forensic specialists will be arriving at your location shortly with warrants allowing them to interview you and your coworkers, as well as all your relatives. They will determine the extent of your knowledge of this joke and how much you have disseminated it to the community at large. The potential fine is up to 3 years in prison and $20,000 per violation.
Have a Nice Day.
-The BSA
PS: Don't try to figure out the joke, or try to concoct your own version. That's illegal too.
Oh no, it's FAR more logical to prevent private property ownership by those who can get something done.
Yeah, let's protect space as a free zone, so GHANA doesn't get cheated out of their fair opportunity that they will exercise in what....500 years?
Or wait, let's not commercially exploit space because we're evil capitalists since God knows that the Chinese or Indians or WHOEVER else gets up there (other than us) will be oh-so-altruistic and less self interested than the USA would ever be. I'm sure if they got there first, they would 'reserve a place for America' because, well, they are just nice & good & right & kind & warm & fuzzy, unlike cruel cold-hearted greedy militarist American gov't/megacorps.
This attitude (USA = bad, everyone else = good) is just the flip side of the same "noble savage" bullshit that leftists have been spouting for a century. If the USA is the only one who can make it to the moon, let the USA exploit the moon (every state who has been to the moon please raise your hands...oh, nobody else eh?).
Better? I dunno. I haven't, and probably won't see the new Insomnia. I liked the original, and I am just sick & tired of Hollywood being so unabashedly derivative.
It's to the point of taking every decent foreign film, cramming Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, and Robin Williams into it and saying "look at our wonderful new treatment of this movie" as if the original was somehow lacking 'star power'. The fact that Nolan directed it is probably the only redeeming thing that MIGHT get me to rent it.
I know an actor or two (minor) that were in the production of TPM. According to them, GL's directing style is to look like he's thinking really really hard, then shout "We need to do it again. I need more energy, people! Energy!"
Every shot at least 4 times. Even quiet dialogue scenes.
First: $115 mill in 3 days = $38 mill per day. $117 mill in 4 days = $29 mill per day, WITH a hugely popular competitor in the theaters, and the previous movie in the series being suck-alicious.
To call this a coup d'etat is hyperbole on a par with, well, calling Spiderman a great movie. Or calling Star Wars (any) a great movie.
"I think Lucas and his movies have outgrown their audience, losing relevance to the young, the real avatars of culture, and are suffocating under their own enormous inertia and weight."
I think your lack of a point is suffocating beneath your style's ponderous inertia and weight. Relevance? Maybe Spiderman was written by a real writer, and directed by a real director, instead of some disproportionally successful mediocre director.
George Lucas' problem is not that he tremendously sucks (Phantom Menace notwithstanding). The problem is that he is SO wealthy and SO surrounded by ass-kissing lickspittles that nobody will tell him "George, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Nobody.
Film creation is never a production of an individual. It's a collaborative effort of hundreds, sometimes thousands, from the actor on the screen interpreting a role, to the gaffer making a judgment call on how to provide the best lighting for a reomantic shot. When one personality not only dominates but controls everything, well, the product is GOING to suck.
"Lucas created a brilliant film saga" Ha. Again, what are you smoking? Firstly, the original story was ripped almost verbatim from Hidden Fortress. And I don't care how much retro-remembered history anyone spouts, the "brilliant" film saga was first a simple movie, a hastily written plot outline (that was fleshed to it's fullest by Irvin Kirschner and Leigh Brackett), and then started swirling around the toilet bowl of re-interpretation, inconsistencies, and mistakes. To imply that there was some great genius behind it's conception as a story arc, well that complete nonsense. The Star Wars series was written the same way you drive a car if you look just in front of you - jerky, reactive, and unpleasant to ride in.
"The real lesson is, if you're trying to make great movies aimed primarily at the young, avoid pomposity, self-indulgence and too much self-reference. Keep the story simple, clear and touching."
I will agree wholeheartedly with Jon on this. One might even suggest it applies to web articles.
Not to simply replicate the 'skynet' post above, but I would see it as a very small step to say "OK, logically these are jammable. Therefore, we should equipment them with simple autonomous systems that allow them to, for example, loiter while the system is jammed."
2 years later: "If they loiter while jammed, they'll be easy targets. Let's give them some minimal AI to allow evasive maneuvers."
1 year later: "Well, if we have AI competent to continue the mission while jammed (i.e. attack) why not let that be the standard?"
There is no DOUBT these things should be called the X-45 "Saberhagen".
...granted, I agree that M$ would happily lose $100 million next year to monopolize the market (they probably paid at least that to own the Justice Dept after all...oops).
But it's not for a tax break: they certainly don't need it. YOU probably paid more in taxes than they did last year. "a Microsoft spokeswoman would not say whether that firm did or not [pay any taxes]. But its annual report for fiscal 2000, which ended June 30, shows stock option income tax benefits of $5.5 billion, exceeding its $4.85 billion provision for income taxes. (Its actual federal and state tax liability for 2000 was $4.74 billion.)"
Anyone in Germany who works with Americans will agree, and anyone in the USA who works with Germans will agree - despite teh fact that we seem superficially the same, we're very different cultures, with very different assumptions about life, the universe and everything.
People have already flamed Alex for his views and, as an American I totally understand and agree with what they are saying. But in a GERMAN context, what he is saying makes damn good sense. In the German cultural context (this is all IMO, but you knew that) the idea of 'seduction by ideas' is totally possible. Their expectations and societal roles (especially vis a vis authority) are totally different.
Of course, from an American view, one would have to point out the seriously-begged question of whether a society is entitled to define some sort of 'right way' that these people are being seduced away from...
It's the same with Yahoo - the German government is suing them to try to de-link railroad sabotage websites. I'll never forget the last line of the story I read, when the reporter asked why the German government was suing them in Europe and not the USA, the chief lawyer for the authorities said plaintively that in the USA such a suit would never succeed on 5th Amendment grounds "...because they let people put ANYTHING on the web over there...".
You can almost hear his confused frustration with a system that would be so uncontrolled.
The principles that we feel are so totally clear and obvious are not necessarily clear to others. Others contexts may be far different from our own. (Again, as an American while I may have some insight into the German view, that doesn't mean I agree it's the right one...I'm a product of my own culture too!)
The response of some/.'ers ticks me off. Granted, it's because I expect a rather more intelligent debate here than in the general public (foolish optimism), but still...
For every person who complains that a mission to Mars would 'cost too much' or 'be of little/no benefit' I say fooey.
1) Let's take the long view, for ONCE. It's hard enough to get corporations to look into NEXT year's returns. It's hard enough to get politicians to plan for any time after their next re-election campaign. But please, can't anyone see that interplanetary travel will significantly benefit the entire human race, FOREVER? To ever achieve it, someone, somewhere, somewhen HAS to make the first faltering, tentative steps. Someone has to spend the money to TRY. We're the wealthiest, (arguably) most technologically advanced state on the planet. We are basically at peace and have been for 50 years. To echo another poster - if not us, who? If not now, when?
2) for those who argue that there's too little return to a Martian mission I also say fooey. The gains in terms of working knowledge regarding long-term space travel, propulsion systems, long distance communication, life support systems etc are already a long list. But the subsequent gains - if you see the mission to Mars as a stepping stone in a vital and thriving space program - are truly stunning. Asteroid mining - they are a HECK of a lot further away than Mars (in general). Having the nuances of long term space travel well understood would allow the reasonable pursuit of asteroid exploitation in the nearer future. A billion tons of nickel-iron already in orbit anyone? Anyone care to calculate how our space opportunities would explode if we already had the raw materials in space to work with? Or further: what about longer-range missions? Ganymede? Titan? What if there's a reasonable chance of finding life on these worlds (or even still Mars)? How much is it worth to us to know that there is other life out there? If you are talking dollars and cents on the bottom line this year? Probably $0.00. How much is it worth to us philosophically and as a species? Those of us who are space-optimists would say it's of incalculable value. Those who aren't would still say $0 and I pity them. They're also the ones who said man wasn't meant to fly, either.
Great - so what we're saying now is that Bush's malapropisms and obvious discomfort oncamera are sure signs that he's actually a human? Vote for me, I sweat and stammer on camera!
I thought the synthetic woman's delivery was very Gorelike, i.e. too wooden and perfect to be human.
OK, I understand that the trailers are made with a movie audience and TV commercials in mind, where you have X seconds to fill... BUT: Could some kind/.er please explain to me why it seems that every 1 minute QT trailer on the net seems to have 10 seconds of title track at the front end and 15 seconds of static title crap at the back end? If you're pumping 24 megs of a 640x480 trailer over the net, wouldn't it be a commercially sound decision to chop 10 of those megs off and reduce the time it takes to d/l said trailer? Won't that mean more of them are distributed/seen? Maybe I just don't 'get it'.
While this conference sounds like it's a good thing and that it was handled quite well, does anyone ELSE notice that they're begging a HUGE question?
In the same sense that guns don't really kill people either, CHAT ROOMS ARE NOT INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. ONLINE CHATTING IS NOT INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. It's the SCUMBAG PREDATORS that are dangerous. That's it. No candy-coating, no translation, no study-group research required.
Once our society (and I'm talking about the USA mostly, but the 'enlightened' western democracies in general as well) figures out that evil predators cannot be 'treated', they cannot be 'rehabilitated' and they cannot be reasoned with - then & only then will we be able to come to a long-term solution.
All we can do is to treat them like the animals they are. You cannot expect to 'reason' a carnivore away from considering you his next meal. You can only do two things: 1) kill him, so he cannot threaten you, or 2) hurt him so badly that he will live in perpetual fear of coming near you.
Sex offenders likewise. Underage girls and boys are off limits. Predate upon them and you should suffer the harshest penalty a society is willing to dish out. I should point out - like the carnivore analogy above, this will NOT prevent children from being the victims of sexual predators. It won't. But it will deter some of them, and those it doesn't deter will (if the penalty is draconian enough) never repeat their crime.
All this fear about "chat rooms" is talking about the symptom, and ultimately NOT addressing the main thing that's wrong. If it's not on the playground, or at the mall, or in the chatroom, or by email, in 10 years it'll be via whatever new medium people are using at that time to communicate. The medium is not the point. The point is addressing the sick creeps USING the medium to prey upon the helpless & naive.
I'll second the opinion that 150W power is just too feeble. Also, what's up with the onboard sound/video/tv out? Ick. Why bother putting crud like that in a system (minimal cost but still...) when anyone who's going to buy it is going to replace it. Finally - ONE 5" bay? No wonder I build my own....I'd rate this one about a 4 on the 1-10 scale, and 2 of those points are on the nice-looking case.
Everyone else has been funny, so I'll bite on the question:
If I had $40 billion in CASH, an infallibility complex, and a slowly-dawning-realization that a) I'm not going to be able to take it with me and b) everyone doesn't love me as much as I think they do I'd sure use that money for something significant.
I don't mean "feeding the poor" significant. They'll forget it tomorrow. I mean like building the first moon base, or a space elevator, mine the first asteroid or some such thing. Be the person that really sparked civilian development in space, and you will be remembered forever (besides doing a good turn for humanity in the really-long-view).
My $0.02, so that leaves room for another 39,999,999,999.98 more good ideas.
It's not just compulsive overspending that caused the military to spend $100 million on developing their own proprietary techs, they DO have some legitimate needs that the civil market simply doesn't address.
One of many examples is EMP-hardening. I read the article fairly quickly, but it didn't seem to me that the chip in the F22 Raptor is EMP hardened. Sure, in our post-cold-war world it seems unlikely, but if someone pops even a small nuclear weapon in a high altitude burst, suddenly the control circuits on every F22 in a 600+ mile radius go on the fritz? In a fly-by-wire aircraft, that simply can't happen.
At that point, it's a little late to say "Whoops, I guess the saving of a few million$ wasn't ultimately worth it...."
Yes, there is no question that the ACS will be useful to image closer objects. It was the Hubble that recently imaged the first Kuiper-Belt object that has been detected with it's own moon (once again suggesting that Pluto's claim on 'planethood' is less logical than emotional).
I'd imagine that the ACS is going to make some stunning pics of bodies in our system, but don't expect them terribly soon - time on the ACS is the main restriction, and somehow those deep-field glamour shots get all the attention/resources.
Maybe they could use it to look for the debris from the Mars Impactors that we sent....
"Those who lose their copy to this will just chuckle and redownload it and remove the crapware that got installed with the product." ...and then post on/., ensuring millions of people will eventually know what a crappy product Radlight is. Nice job taking the long view, guys.
"If we're the brains of this operation, what's marketing - the boner?"
Slashdot Mirror
...make lemonade.
If your overclocked AMD processor is on the verge of nuclear fusion, you can at least use the heat for a good cuppa joe.
One wonders why the high-priced lawyers and accountants at MS and the BSA gestapo haven't figured this out.
Econ 101 - consumers purchase things because they perceive value > total cost. If the VALUE of MS Office lies in its perceived ubiquity (since the software functions of the two products are practially the same), the moment that this "value" the opportunity or real costs of BSA Audits, harrassment, and the fear of that 'disgruntled employee' narc'ing sometime in the future, well DUH people are going to move away from these 'excessive costs' whenever they can.
It's my conviction that the widespread piracy of Win95 (and thus its widespread adoption) KILLED an arguably better competitor, OS/2. If every single copy of Win95 had to be paid for (the theoretical goal) it would not be the dominant OS. The tighter they squeeze, the more systems will slip through their fingers, indeed.
Sure piracy costs Microsoft; if IBM had recognized this at the time, and been handing out FREE OS/2 versions MS probably wouldn't have to spend the $$ to buy the Justice Dept today.
Dear Sir/Madam,
It has recently come to our attention that you have been reported by an unidentified source to have been using a joke with the beginning, "Why did the chicken cross the road?".
We are obliged to point out to you that you are in violation under the terms of the DMCA. This text was originally printed in the technical manual for MS Windows 1.0 Executive in 1988. The use of this joke and all derivatives are therefore illegal.
A team of forensic specialists will be arriving at your location shortly with warrants allowing them to interview you and your coworkers, as well as all your relatives. They will determine the extent of your knowledge of this joke and how much you have disseminated it to the community at large. The potential fine is up to 3 years in prison and $20,000 per violation.
Have a Nice Day.
-The BSA
PS: Don't try to figure out the joke, or try to concoct your own version. That's illegal too.
Oh no, it's FAR more logical to prevent private property ownership by those who can get something done.
Yeah, let's protect space as a free zone, so GHANA doesn't get cheated out of their fair opportunity that they will exercise in what....500 years?
Or wait, let's not commercially exploit space because we're evil capitalists since God knows that the Chinese or Indians or WHOEVER else gets up there (other than us) will be oh-so-altruistic and less self interested than the USA would ever be. I'm sure if they got there first, they would 'reserve a place for America' because, well, they are just nice & good & right & kind & warm & fuzzy, unlike cruel cold-hearted greedy militarist American gov't/megacorps.
This attitude (USA = bad, everyone else = good) is just the flip side of the same "noble savage" bullshit that leftists have been spouting for a century. If the USA is the only one who can make it to the moon, let the USA exploit the moon (every state who has been to the moon please raise your hands...oh, nobody else eh?).
But:
"Sandscript" a dead language (Sanskrit)
"heatsync" on a hardware website (heatsink)
I have a good friend who is a high school teacher. I'm not sure whether to sympathize with him or punch him.
Better? I dunno. I haven't, and probably won't see the new Insomnia. I liked the original, and I am just sick & tired of Hollywood being so unabashedly derivative.
It's to the point of taking every decent foreign film, cramming Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, and Robin Williams into it and saying "look at our wonderful new treatment of this movie" as if the original was somehow lacking 'star power'.
The fact that Nolan directed it is probably the only redeeming thing that MIGHT get me to rent it.
I know an actor or two (minor) that were in the production of TPM. According to them, GL's directing style is to look like he's thinking really really hard, then shout "We need to do it again. I need more energy, people! Energy!"
Every shot at least 4 times. Even quiet dialogue scenes.
First: $115 mill in 3 days = $38 mill per day.
$117 mill in 4 days = $29 mill per day, WITH a hugely popular competitor in the theaters, and the previous movie in the series being suck-alicious.
To call this a coup d'etat is hyperbole on a par with, well, calling Spiderman a great movie. Or calling Star Wars (any) a great movie.
"I think Lucas and his movies have outgrown their audience, losing relevance to the young, the real avatars of culture, and are suffocating under their own enormous inertia and weight."
I think your lack of a point is suffocating beneath your style's ponderous inertia and weight.
Relevance? Maybe Spiderman was written by a real writer, and directed by a real director, instead of some disproportionally successful mediocre director.
George Lucas' problem is not that he tremendously sucks (Phantom Menace notwithstanding). The problem is that he is SO wealthy and SO surrounded by ass-kissing lickspittles that nobody will tell him "George, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Nobody.
Film creation is never a production of an individual. It's a collaborative effort of hundreds, sometimes thousands, from the actor on the screen interpreting a role, to the gaffer making a judgment call on how to provide the best lighting for a reomantic shot. When one personality not only dominates but controls everything, well, the product is GOING to suck.
"Lucas created a brilliant film saga"
Ha. Again, what are you smoking? Firstly, the original story was ripped almost verbatim from Hidden Fortress. And I don't care how much retro-remembered history anyone spouts, the "brilliant" film saga was first a simple movie, a hastily written plot outline (that was fleshed to it's fullest by Irvin Kirschner and Leigh Brackett), and then started swirling around the toilet bowl of re-interpretation, inconsistencies, and mistakes. To imply that there was some great genius behind it's conception as a story arc, well that complete nonsense. The Star Wars series was written the same way you drive a car if you look just in front of you - jerky, reactive, and unpleasant to ride in.
"The real lesson is, if you're trying to make great movies aimed primarily at the young, avoid pomposity, self-indulgence and too much self-reference. Keep the story simple, clear and touching."
I will agree wholeheartedly with Jon on this. One might even suggest it applies to web articles.
Doesn't this radically increase the liklihood of life being found on Mars?
I mean, that's a heck of a lot of ice, and we've got boatloads of bacteria that can/do survive in the Antarctic. Why not on Mars?
Yeah, put a bunch of recent ex-smokers in a tin can, and lock it shut for 3 years.
Evil martians won't stand a chance against psycho Terran nicotine addicts.
Not to simply replicate the 'skynet' post above, but I would see it as a very small step to say "OK, logically these are jammable. Therefore, we should equipment them with simple autonomous systems that allow them to, for example, loiter while the system is jammed."
2 years later:
"If they loiter while jammed, they'll be easy targets. Let's give them some minimal AI to allow evasive maneuvers."
1 year later:
"Well, if we have AI competent to continue the mission while jammed (i.e. attack) why not let that be the standard?"
There is no DOUBT these things should be called the X-45 "Saberhagen".
...granted, I agree that M$ would happily lose $100 million next year to monopolize the market (they probably paid at least that to own the Justice Dept after all...oops).
But it's not for a tax break: they certainly don't need it. YOU probably paid more in taxes than they did last year.
"a Microsoft spokeswoman would not say whether that firm did or not [pay any taxes]. But its annual report for fiscal 2000, which ended June 30, shows stock option income tax benefits of $5.5 billion, exceeding its $4.85 billion provision for income taxes. (Its actual federal and state tax liability for 2000 was $4.74 billion.)"
...and is expecting royalties. Oh wait, he's already got them.
Not that this should be misconstrued as the actions of an illegal monopoly.
...I'm still going to point this out.
Anyone in Germany who works with Americans will agree, and anyone in the USA who works with Germans will agree - despite teh fact that we seem superficially the same, we're very different cultures, with very different assumptions about life, the universe and everything.
People have already flamed Alex for his views and, as an American I totally understand and agree with what they are saying. But in a GERMAN context, what he is saying makes damn good sense. In the German cultural context (this is all IMO, but you knew that) the idea of 'seduction by ideas' is totally possible. Their expectations and societal roles (especially vis a vis authority) are totally different.
Of course, from an American view, one would have to point out the seriously-begged question of whether a society is entitled to define some sort of 'right way' that these people are being seduced away from...
It's the same with Yahoo - the German government is suing them to try to de-link railroad sabotage websites. I'll never forget the last line of the story I read, when the reporter asked why the German government was suing them in Europe and not the USA, the chief lawyer for the authorities said plaintively that in the USA such a suit would never succeed on 5th Amendment grounds "...because they let people put ANYTHING on the web over there...".
You can almost hear his confused frustration with a system that would be so uncontrolled.
The principles that we feel are so totally clear and obvious are not necessarily clear to others. Others contexts may be far different from our own.
(Again, as an American while I may have some insight into the German view, that doesn't mean I agree it's the right one...I'm a product of my own culture too!)
The response of some /.'ers ticks me off. Granted, it's because I expect a rather more intelligent debate here than in the general public (foolish optimism), but still...
For every person who complains that a mission to Mars would 'cost too much' or 'be of little/no benefit' I say fooey.
1) Let's take the long view, for ONCE. It's hard enough to get corporations to look into NEXT year's returns. It's hard enough to get politicians to plan for any time after their next re-election campaign. But please, can't anyone see that interplanetary travel will significantly benefit the entire human race, FOREVER? To ever achieve it, someone, somewhere, somewhen HAS to make the first faltering, tentative steps. Someone has to spend the money to TRY. We're the wealthiest, (arguably) most technologically advanced state on the planet. We are basically at peace and have been for 50 years. To echo another poster - if not us, who? If not now, when?
2) for those who argue that there's too little return to a Martian mission I also say fooey. The gains in terms of working knowledge regarding long-term space travel, propulsion systems, long distance communication, life support systems etc are already a long list. But the subsequent gains - if you see the mission to Mars as a stepping stone in a vital and thriving space program - are truly stunning. Asteroid mining - they are a HECK of a lot further away than Mars (in general). Having the nuances of long term space travel well understood would allow the reasonable pursuit of asteroid exploitation in the nearer future. A billion tons of nickel-iron already in orbit anyone? Anyone care to calculate how our space opportunities would explode if we already had the raw materials in space to work with?
Or further: what about longer-range missions? Ganymede? Titan? What if there's a reasonable chance of finding life on these worlds (or even still Mars)? How much is it worth to us to know that there is other life out there? If you are talking dollars and cents on the bottom line this year? Probably $0.00. How much is it worth to us philosophically and as a species? Those of us who are space-optimists would say it's of incalculable value. Those who aren't would still say $0 and I pity them. They're also the ones who said man wasn't meant to fly, either.
Great - so what we're saying now is that Bush's malapropisms and obvious discomfort oncamera are sure signs that he's actually a human? Vote for me, I sweat and stammer on camera!
I thought the synthetic woman's delivery was very Gorelike, i.e. too wooden and perfect to be human.
OK, I understand that the trailers are made with a movie audience and TV commercials in mind, where you have X seconds to fill... BUT: /.er please explain to me why it seems that every 1 minute QT trailer on the net seems to have 10 seconds of title track at the front end and 15 seconds of static title crap at the back end? If you're pumping 24 megs of a 640x480 trailer over the net, wouldn't it be a commercially sound decision to chop 10 of those megs off and reduce the time it takes to d/l said trailer? Won't that mean more of them are distributed/seen? Maybe I just don't 'get it'.
Could some kind
While this conference sounds like it's a good thing and that it was handled quite well, does anyone ELSE notice that they're begging a HUGE question?
In the same sense that guns don't really kill people either, CHAT ROOMS ARE NOT INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. ONLINE CHATTING IS NOT INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. It's the SCUMBAG PREDATORS that are dangerous. That's it. No candy-coating, no translation, no study-group research required.
Once our society (and I'm talking about the USA mostly, but the 'enlightened' western democracies in general as well) figures out that evil predators cannot be 'treated', they cannot be 'rehabilitated' and they cannot be reasoned with - then & only then will we be able to come to a long-term solution.
All we can do is to treat them like the animals they are. You cannot expect to 'reason' a carnivore away from considering you his next meal. You can only do two things:
1) kill him, so he cannot threaten you, or
2) hurt him so badly that he will live in perpetual fear of coming near you.
Sex offenders likewise. Underage girls and boys are off limits. Predate upon them and you should suffer the harshest penalty a society is willing to dish out. I should point out - like the carnivore analogy above, this will NOT prevent children from being the victims of sexual predators. It won't. But it will deter some of them, and those it doesn't deter will (if the penalty is draconian enough) never repeat their crime.
All this fear about "chat rooms" is talking about the symptom, and ultimately NOT addressing the main thing that's wrong. If it's not on the playground, or at the mall, or in the chatroom, or by email, in 10 years it'll be via whatever new medium people are using at that time to communicate. The medium is not the point. The point is addressing the sick creeps USING the medium to prey upon the helpless & naive.
I'll second the opinion that 150W power is just too feeble.
Also, what's up with the onboard sound/video/tv out? Ick. Why bother putting crud like that in a system (minimal cost but still...) when anyone who's going to buy it is going to replace it.
Finally - ONE 5" bay?
No wonder I build my own....I'd rate this one about a 4 on the 1-10 scale, and 2 of those points are on the nice-looking case.
"...I get email from dead people..."
Everyone else has been funny, so I'll bite on the question:
If I had $40 billion in CASH, an infallibility complex, and a slowly-dawning-realization that a) I'm not going to be able to take it with me and b) everyone doesn't love me as much as I think they do I'd sure use that money for something significant.
I don't mean "feeding the poor" significant. They'll forget it tomorrow. I mean like building the first moon base, or a space elevator, mine the first asteroid or some such thing. Be the person that really sparked civilian development in space, and you will be remembered forever (besides doing a good turn for humanity in the really-long-view).
My $0.02, so that leaves room for another 39,999,999,999.98 more good ideas.
It's not just compulsive overspending that caused the military to spend $100 million on developing their own proprietary techs, they DO have some legitimate needs that the civil market simply doesn't address.
One of many examples is EMP-hardening. I read the article fairly quickly, but it didn't seem to me that the chip in the F22 Raptor is EMP hardened. Sure, in our post-cold-war world it seems unlikely, but if someone pops even a small nuclear weapon in a high altitude burst, suddenly the control circuits on every F22 in a 600+ mile radius go on the fritz? In a fly-by-wire aircraft, that simply can't happen.
At that point, it's a little late to say "Whoops, I guess the saving of a few million$ wasn't ultimately worth it...."
Yes, there is no question that the ACS will be useful to image closer objects. It was the Hubble that recently imaged the first Kuiper-Belt object that has been detected with it's own moon (once again suggesting that Pluto's claim on 'planethood' is less logical than emotional).
I'd imagine that the ACS is going to make some stunning pics of bodies in our system, but don't expect them terribly soon - time on the ACS is the main restriction, and somehow those deep-field glamour shots get all the attention/resources.
Maybe they could use it to look for the debris from the Mars Impactors that we sent....
Giant Spam Attack: and we would notice it precisely how?
That's like threatening to pour a glass of water on someone's head, while they are taking a shower.
I already GET 15,000 different INCREASE YOUR MANHOOD and HELLO FUTURE MILLIONAIRE emails, like another 5000 from China are even going to make a dent.
"Those who lose their copy to this will just chuckle and redownload it and remove the crapware that got installed with the product." /., ensuring millions of people will eventually know what a crappy product Radlight is. Nice job taking the long view, guys.
...and then post on
"If we're the brains of this operation, what's marketing - the boner?"