Perhaps the submitter or nerds in general need to realize one thing. Your technical experience is recognized, that does not mean you get a pass on showing recognition to those who hold a higher rank. Too many times its a "us versus "the man" attitude that causes the grief. It is a wonderfully working system with little need to change, the real change is required of those entering it and realizing that their technical knowledge does not impart superiority over those who out rank them.
Yeah you will run into arseholes who will dismiss your opinion even if your right but that happens in the real world as well. I think Hollywood has really given geeks a bad idea of what to expect in both extremes.
it has nothing to do with that, if you even bring up God in a public school your toast.
The simple fact is, kids test higher at 4th grade than high school because the system isn't designed around students but instead designed around tax dollars.
This has nothing to do with God, it is all about money and power. Guess who has it, not the parents. Hell too many of them willfully forgo it and wonder why junior is dumber than a box of rocks.
sorry, but the stupid cheap "slashdot correct" response isn't even close to factual. If anything those attending religious schools are doing far better... how do you explain that?
It was a really distressing story to see that someone who went out of his way to avoid using oil for powering his car got fined for essentially evading fuel taxes by buying vegetable oil from costo
Sorry, but your not going to get anything other than the cultist want to play.
Or put it this way, you might get something on the order of the freespace community, nice and tight but in no way marketable let alone sustainable.
But a MMO? Who is going to make content? Don't say everyone, because to have a consistent world someone has to set the rules. Let alone policing it would be a nightmare. Who is going to step up and fix a bug? Where there be any guarantee of service? If so who backs it?
I can see it anywhere where the end result is not akin to a service. In other words it can be a side item to a popular series, something like a door program from bbs of days gone by, but not a mainline like EQ or such where content is presented in a cohesive and regular manner. The attention span isn't there for most developers and without the enforced system of manger/employee/etc it ain't going to get done let alone be pretty. Petty, but not pretty.
World of Warcraft underwent this with the new expansion. Nearly every class now duplicates each other with mostly flavor changes. Under their mantra of "bring the player not the class" they have excused themselves from having to balance unique class abilities by simply making them all have the same end result if not mechanics.
What should we expect? Schools are dumbing down education for lackluster students and teachers, why not extend it to games? Fairness is the new buzzword for "your playing with people who suck"
A good friend who past away a few years ago introduced me to some long time friends of his who own many chimps. One thing I was told flat out was, don't get near the cages. They are very good at trying to tempt people closer and never for any good. They will fondle themselves in front of you, throw stuff at you, and even be very violent should it be their wish. The problem is they are very very good at hiding the signs when it serves them. All of their chimps had their incisors (fang teeth) removed. For while they are very cute when young they would shame any unruly teenager when they are of age.
While I got a handshake and even a hug from one of the better behaved I was told that in no uncertain terms he was putting on a show to please them. Alone it would be a whole different story.
Potable water is mostly at its limits in many areas of the world because of politics, science has had the answer for along time and there has been ample money available, where it is allowed.
Plus politics is a great way of creating shortages where none existed. I live the perfect example of this, where it was decided years ago in some Federal Court that some mussels and some barges needed the water more than humans for who the damn was created form decades ago.
I won't even get into how much people waste in the states watering their lawns, I swear some of my neighbors could fill a pool a week.
that it showed up on pirate sites within five hours. Essentially it shows that the price of software is not a major reason behind piracy. Pirating a five dollar game? I wonder if there is a threshold for pirates? I suspect some do it for the fun of it, the "fame" of being first to do it. Still it blows my mind that people would pirate an iPhone app, let alone a cheap one.
The real problem I see is that he lost among the clutter. There is simply so much shit on the apple store that it is easy to get bored or worse, annoyed, looking through it all. As such if its new it comes up on the list first and that is about the only time outside of reviews like the author noted that an app will get noticed.
Throw in the fact that Apple over sells the game aspect of these units when most people don't associate costs with games on their phones let alone value for anything on the phone short of ring tones (riaa love child I think) or songs. I know on my touch I use a conversion utility, a calculator, a NYTimes reader, and the Apple email program the most; don't get me started on their shitty mail app.
Outside of an ad campaign I don't see how you can stay in the limelight unless you buy reviews on sites, let alone get stories posted to Slashdot. I am not begrudging the author of the game or the submitter, it was truly an interesting read into how it all goes down
simply tells smart immigrants to wait for a real change before coming back or planning to stay.
I work with 1 H1B and a few naturalized immigrants who all are very well educated (masters for two of them) and their drive is well beyond what the average "American" I see today. They still want it all. The difference is that they are willing to sacrifice and work for it.
When schools allow dummies to pass because it isn't fair to hold them back, when schools don't celebrate their brightest because it offends, when doing grunt work on your path through the job market is for losers, what can you expect? Fortunately there are still more of us than them. The problem is that very little is being done to encourage more of those yearning for success who will work for it instead we are now seeing more who expect everything to be done or handed to them.
Reverse brain drain? It will get worse as some of OUR brightest go overseas to excel.
because it isn't even remotely easy for the average user. It isn't fun for those of us who don't mind ripping them apart.
The iMac is not meant to be open, now replacing a drive in a notebook isn't that hard because even Apple has a hard time dictating what notebook layouts are like
Man are the fanbois belly aching on many of the bigger sites. What shocked most is that prices for the new machines went up and in some cases a lot. An example comparing old aussie prices to new http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7199753&postcount=164
What is missing is...
LED screens on the iMacs Blu-Ray (of course no one really expects it) Quad Cores
Mac Mini got its update but the price is absurd as well.
For those of us who are still upgrading (I have an older 2.13c2d white model) some selected upgrades push ship times out four to six weeks (like buying an ati 4850 chipset)
Amazing that what Apple considers affordable is getting more extreme. Consumer level goods are professional level pricing.
Integrated Language Environment, the basis of programming on the iSeries. I can easily combine RPGLE, CL (command language), COBOL, C, C++, and JAVA. I can invoke REXX and talk to the internet through other methods as well.
What IBM did for programming and developers in general with the iSeries really needs to get out. I would love to see this level of integration on the pc/mac platforms. IBM takes it so far as that the code is compiled down to a "p-code" level and invoked by whatever hardware layer is present.
Look, I know many look down on systems like this, let alone RPGLE as being old school like COBOL. However we run a billion dollar business with these as do many other big companies (you would be surprised to learn the companies that do) because not only is it robust, secure, and easy to manage, but it is so programmer friendly.
I am sure there are examples in the pc/mac world; well I am not sure; but the ease and level of integration is unparalleled. All I can suggest to geeks and such is look to what works on business platforms and see how those ideas can be extended into other environments. Don't dismiss them. These systems benefited from a lot of knowledge and time. Everytime I hear "rpg is dead" or "cobol is dead" I keep going only to read the same thing five years later.
Warning... offensive comment to some coming
on
Designer Babies
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The real key issues will be...
I don't want a gay baby. Now I haven't bought into the whole being gay is genetic. However should it be proven otherwise how long before the more radical groups affiliated with gays decide it is offensive or an affront to their rights to have this gene designed out of offspring? I have always been under the impression that if it could be determined to be genetic and then detected that it would turn the whole issue of abortion on its head. Look, we have already seen societies who have no qualms about aborting female babies so it is not a stretch that if being gay is offensive to some that these people could choose to abort simply because of that trait. Throw in other issues like known birth defects and it really becomes messy because we already have groups that protest that and I am not just pointing towards fundies. Look, during the last election we had people openly question the Palin's choice to have a child they knew had down's syndrome. Some of the reactions were downright hostile.
So now we have the idea of designer babies gaining more traction. Well the flipside is being able to determine when a baby already conceived has traits the parents don't want and in some societies society doesn't want. That is when the real moral issues come about.
Because your reading a physical copy you own. Apparently they seem to feel that a digital representation of a book requires a license for both display on a screen as well as audio presentation. I guess they envision the horror of people sitting around starbucks playing the books for all to hear.
Really what it comes down to is they have a quantifiable revenue stream with audio books and want a fee applied to devices which can do both functions, I would not doubt they would go as far as requiring both forms to be purchased to allow for it to be heard. Hopefully he gets his way. Why? Because it would force down the price on both representations as no business would agree to full price on both. In other words, he may be digging his own grave.
which obsoleted all warships before it when it appeared in 1906. If anything this older ship they should follows the same idea, lots of powerful guns all the same size. What is known as a uniform main battery. The article on wikipedia is pretty good when it comes to why such a feature is important.
What it comes down to is range. Having the bulk of your guns available at range is what used to win naval battles. The same could be said this day and age about your missiles. Who can shoot the furthest should win.
Because even while the economy sputters the Federal, State, and local, governments are expanding. Where is the sense in that? Why shouldn't people complain? Better yet, the pay of government jobs keeps going up faster than inflation in many areas and exceeding the private sector as well.
Now, explain how we can keep adding so many government jobs and not expect the burden to become too much? We are creating more non wealth producing jobs than wealth producing jobs.
We are simply running amok. The real problem with government paid jobs is that are nearly impossible to do away with them. We cannot keep expanding a segment of the work force which only consumes wealth. We will either have to tax everyone to the limit of sanity or accept the fact that government isn't here to wait on us for our every need.
People here decry government surveillance on one hand and cheer new government jobs because the later is giving them something. Hey, I got news for you, both are the same thing. They are imposing into your life by restricting your rights or restricting how much of your work you can take reward from, by that last I mean : How much they are willing to let you keep to spend as you see fit.
they self destructed. The problem is that the news media takes great joy in showing us the pot smoking side of the party and the anti-war wing looked straight out of the sixties.
That and much of what they propose is totally against the entitlement state we have now the press has to go find the kooks and make America believe that Libertarian stands for "white selfish racist pig"
Look, they made up their minds and damn it, facts are not going to get in the way.
Just be glad we have doubters and amateur scientists who call out crap for what it is. Maybe, just maybe, more people will come to realize just how bad of a model we are working with because all our facts aren't worth the paper their recorded on. Like any other bureaucracy stuff like this happens because no one wants to step forward to a) upset the status quo, b) take responsibility for a decision, c) work.
Just be glad it was caught. Just like people found temperature sensors in parking lots, readings duplicated across months, and other sorts of fun. The ineptness of some of so called scientific groups when it comes to climate science makes me wonder if we do proper vetting of who is getting the money.
3. The public has very little stomach for "yet another NASA accident"
4. There are far too many in Congress who see the NASA manned program as a waste of money (in other words that money could buy pools and libraries named after Congressmen!)
5. Comparing any item to Iraq expenditures does not bolster your argument, if anything a parrot would suffice.
Why not compare it to the fact we are willing to lose nearly FORTY THOUSAND people to vehicle deaths. The number of soldiers we lose in Iraq while deplorable by any count is minuscule compared to any other war of that scale let alone the deaths at home from stuff that should not happen in the first place.
but honestly what are we losing? While I won't purchase one on the simple grounds is that it is hilariously overpriced. I mean, people on Apple forums deride gamers who buy silly cases or pay extra for AW yet turn around and go all ga-ga over the new macbook cases. Hell they feel honored to pay $50 extra for a matte screen surface!
No, in this case there is no net loss for consumer or Apple. Face it, the majority of those who might take one on a long flight are going to be in the class that allows them to plug it in. Even then most who do fly usually are well prepared enough to not need to do extensive work in flight. Short hops on trains don't even raise an eye with a battery that can last as long as this one is. Let us also toss out the fact most travelers don't use 17" laptops in the first place, the size is annoying.
So, comparing it to the iPod issue. The iPod is something you could likely keep and not need or want to replace after killing the battery. Early ones had streaks of bad batteries but for the most part that isn't an issue now.
Last point, how could they or anyone have learned? Who else has made a laptop that the battery isn't easily removable? Let alone one as capable? Time will tell if the decision is bad. From what I read on the forums the biggest issues that come up is the obnoxious cost, not the battery.
Can you imagine the hell that would be raised if it didn't support fire wire? Now that would get the masses in an uproar:P
My Allegro (35QBA FWIW) motor home has both Satellite and HDTVs with OTA ability.
I get better reception with satellite in the rain than I do with HD over the air. Even tuning it in doesn't solve it. I get stutter/frame freezes about every ten to fifteen minutes. Its enough to ruin some shows, you just know its got to happen during the "gotcha" moments. Now not all stations are equal but for the most part the quality isn't there. Perhaps they aren't at full strength or perhaps tuners just aren't up to measure, for built ins. I haven't tried an external tuner yet.
Now all is not bad with HD OTA. I can get reception in some places that analog just doesn't come in. However satellite stomps it at all times. Even in some nicely wooded campgrounds I can find a satellite signal. Tuning satellite is as easy as looking up my initial setting based on my zip code of where I am and tuning it once.
I haven't tried it while underway, I guess I need to test which works while moving : YES WHILE I AM NOT DRIVING.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the submitter or nerds in general need to realize one thing. Your technical experience is recognized, that does not mean you get a pass on showing recognition to those who hold a higher rank. Too many times its a "us versus "the man" attitude that causes the grief. It is a wonderfully working system with little need to change, the real change is required of those entering it and realizing that their technical knowledge does not impart superiority over those who out rank them.
Yeah you will run into arseholes who will dismiss your opinion even if your right but that happens in the real world as well. I think Hollywood has really given geeks a bad idea of what to expect in both extremes.
it has nothing to do with that, if you even bring up God in a public school your toast.
The simple fact is, kids test higher at 4th grade than high school because the system isn't designed around students but instead designed around tax dollars.
This has nothing to do with God, it is all about money and power. Guess who has it, not the parents. Hell too many of them willfully forgo it and wonder why junior is dumber than a box of rocks.
sorry, but the stupid cheap "slashdot correct" response isn't even close to factual. If anything those attending religious schools are doing far better... how do you explain that?
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/599471.html
It was a really distressing story to see that someone who went out of his way to avoid using oil for powering his car got fined for essentially evading fuel taxes by buying vegetable oil from costo
Sorry, but your not going to get anything other than the cultist want to play.
Or put it this way, you might get something on the order of the freespace community, nice and tight but in no way marketable let alone sustainable.
But a MMO? Who is going to make content? Don't say everyone, because to have a consistent world someone has to set the rules. Let alone policing it would be a nightmare. Who is going to step up and fix a bug? Where there be any guarantee of service? If so who backs it?
I can see it anywhere where the end result is not akin to a service. In other words it can be a side item to a popular series, something like a door program from bbs of days gone by, but not a mainline like EQ or such where content is presented in a cohesive and regular manner. The attention span isn't there for most developers and without the enforced system of manger/employee/etc it ain't going to get done let alone be pretty. Petty, but not pretty.
World of Warcraft underwent this with the new expansion. Nearly every class now duplicates each other with mostly flavor changes. Under their mantra of "bring the player not the class" they have excused themselves from having to balance unique class abilities by simply making them all have the same end result if not mechanics.
What should we expect? Schools are dumbing down education for lackluster students and teachers, why not extend it to games? Fairness is the new buzzword for "your playing with people who suck"
want their citizens driving tanks which is something you can do in WOW now. Let alone tanks in a square running over other people.
That is to be reserved for the Loyal People's Soldier and Responsible Government Employees.
A good friend who past away a few years ago introduced me to some long time friends of his who own many chimps. One thing I was told flat out was, don't get near the cages. They are very good at trying to tempt people closer and never for any good. They will fondle themselves in front of you, throw stuff at you, and even be very violent should it be their wish. The problem is they are very very good at hiding the signs when it serves them. All of their chimps had their incisors (fang teeth) removed. For while they are very cute when young they would shame any unruly teenager when they are of age.
While I got a handshake and even a hug from one of the better behaved I was told that in no uncertain terms he was putting on a show to please them. Alone it would be a whole different story.
Enact laws which require all guns and knives to be replaced by walkie talkies
Of course being that we have advanced much since those times I suppose cell phones are more likely.
Potable water is mostly at its limits in many areas of the world because of politics, science has had the answer for along time and there has been ample money available, where it is allowed.
Plus politics is a great way of creating shortages where none existed. I live the perfect example of this, where it was decided years ago in some Federal Court that some mussels and some barges needed the water more than humans for who the damn was created form decades ago.
I won't even get into how much people waste in the states watering their lawns, I swear some of my neighbors could fill a pool a week.
that it showed up on pirate sites within five hours. Essentially it shows that the price of software is not a major reason behind piracy. Pirating a five dollar game? I wonder if there is a threshold for pirates? I suspect some do it for the fun of it, the "fame" of being first to do it. Still it blows my mind that people would pirate an iPhone app, let alone a cheap one.
The real problem I see is that he lost among the clutter. There is simply so much shit on the apple store that it is easy to get bored or worse, annoyed, looking through it all. As such if its new it comes up on the list first and that is about the only time outside of reviews like the author noted that an app will get noticed.
Throw in the fact that Apple over sells the game aspect of these units when most people don't associate costs with games on their phones let alone value for anything on the phone short of ring tones (riaa love child I think) or songs. I know on my touch I use a conversion utility, a calculator, a NYTimes reader, and the Apple email program the most; don't get me started on their shitty mail app.
Outside of an ad campaign I don't see how you can stay in the limelight unless you buy reviews on sites, let alone get stories posted to Slashdot. I am not begrudging the author of the game or the submitter, it was truly an interesting read into how it all goes down
The First Amendment protects your rights versus Government, not in contracts with others.
Get it right.
simply tells smart immigrants to wait for a real change before coming back or planning to stay.
I work with 1 H1B and a few naturalized immigrants who all are very well educated (masters for two of them) and their drive is well beyond what the average "American" I see today. They still want it all. The difference is that they are willing to sacrifice and work for it.
When schools allow dummies to pass because it isn't fair to hold them back, when schools don't celebrate their brightest because it offends, when doing grunt work on your path through the job market is for losers, what can you expect? Fortunately there are still more of us than them. The problem is that very little is being done to encourage more of those yearning for success who will work for it instead we are now seeing more who expect everything to be done or handed to them.
Reverse brain drain? It will get worse as some of OUR brightest go overseas to excel.
because it isn't even remotely easy for the average user. It isn't fun for those of us who don't mind ripping them apart.
The iMac is not meant to be open, now replacing a drive in a notebook isn't that hard because even Apple has a hard time dictating what notebook layouts are like
markets.
Man are the fanbois belly aching on many of the bigger sites. What shocked most is that prices for the new machines went up and in some cases a lot. An example comparing old aussie prices to new http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7199753&postcount=164
What is missing is...
LED screens on the iMacs
Blu-Ray (of course no one really expects it)
Quad Cores
Mac Mini got its update but the price is absurd as well.
For those of us who are still upgrading (I have an older 2.13c2d white model) some selected upgrades push ship times out four to six weeks (like buying an ati 4850 chipset)
Amazing that what Apple considers affordable is getting more extreme. Consumer level goods are professional level pricing.
Integrated Language Environment, the basis of programming on the iSeries. I can easily combine RPGLE, CL (command language), COBOL, C, C++, and JAVA. I can invoke REXX and talk to the internet through other methods as well.
What IBM did for programming and developers in general with the iSeries really needs to get out. I would love to see this level of integration on the pc/mac platforms. IBM takes it so far as that the code is compiled down to a "p-code" level and invoked by whatever hardware layer is present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG
Look, I know many look down on systems like this, let alone RPGLE as being old school like COBOL. However we run a billion dollar business with these as do many other big companies (you would be surprised to learn the companies that do) because not only is it robust, secure, and easy to manage, but it is so programmer friendly.
I am sure there are examples in the pc/mac world; well I am not sure; but the ease and level of integration is unparalleled. All I can suggest to geeks and such is look to what works on business platforms and see how those ideas can be extended into other environments. Don't dismiss them. These systems benefited from a lot of knowledge and time. Everytime I hear "rpg is dead" or "cobol is dead" I keep going only to read the same thing five years later.
The real key issues will be...
I don't want a gay baby. Now I haven't bought into the whole being gay is genetic. However should it be proven otherwise how long before the more radical groups affiliated with gays decide it is offensive or an affront to their rights to have this gene designed out of offspring? I have always been under the impression that if it could be determined to be genetic and then detected that it would turn the whole issue of abortion on its head. Look, we have already seen societies who have no qualms about aborting female babies so it is not a stretch that if being gay is offensive to some that these people could choose to abort simply because of that trait. Throw in other issues like known birth defects and it really becomes messy because we already have groups that protest that and I am not just pointing towards fundies. Look, during the last election we had people openly question the Palin's choice to have a child they knew had down's syndrome. Some of the reactions were downright hostile.
So now we have the idea of designer babies gaining more traction. Well the flipside is being able to determine when a baby already conceived has traits the parents don't want and in some societies society doesn't want. That is when the real moral issues come about.
Because your reading a physical copy you own. Apparently they seem to feel that a digital representation of a book requires a license for both display on a screen as well as audio presentation. I guess they envision the horror of people sitting around starbucks playing the books for all to hear.
Really what it comes down to is they have a quantifiable revenue stream with audio books and want a fee applied to devices which can do both functions, I would not doubt they would go as far as requiring both forms to be purchased to allow for it to be heard. Hopefully he gets his way. Why? Because it would force down the price on both representations as no business would agree to full price on both. In other words, he may be digging his own grave.
which obsoleted all warships before it when it appeared in 1906. If anything this older ship they should follows the same idea, lots of powerful guns all the same size. What is known as a uniform main battery. The article on wikipedia is pretty good when it comes to why such a feature is important.
What it comes down to is range. Having the bulk of your guns available at range is what used to win naval battles. The same could be said this day and age about your missiles. Who can shoot the furthest should win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906)
anything else of Digg you plan on copying so I can get a jump on what to ignore?
Because even while the economy sputters the Federal, State, and local, governments are expanding. Where is the sense in that? Why shouldn't people complain? Better yet, the pay of government jobs keeps going up faster than inflation in many areas and exceeding the private sector as well.
Take a look at this chart, http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/governmentemployment.html
Now, explain how we can keep adding so many government jobs and not expect the burden to become too much? We are creating more non wealth producing jobs than wealth producing jobs.
So we have this big slow down, with many private sector jobs lost, yet government keeps growing. http://www.cnsnews.com/public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=41780
We are simply running amok. The real problem with government paid jobs is that are nearly impossible to do away with them. We cannot keep expanding a segment of the work force which only consumes wealth. We will either have to tax everyone to the limit of sanity or accept the fact that government isn't here to wait on us for our every need.
People here decry government surveillance on one hand and cheer new government jobs because the later is giving them something. Hey, I got news for you, both are the same thing. They are imposing into your life by restricting your rights or restricting how much of your work you can take reward from, by that last I mean : How much they are willing to let you keep to spend as you see fit.
they self destructed. The problem is that the news media takes great joy in showing us the pot smoking side of the party and the anti-war wing looked straight out of the sixties.
That and much of what they propose is totally against the entitlement state we have now the press has to go find the kooks and make America believe that Libertarian stands for "white selfish racist pig"
they already made.
Look, they made up their minds and damn it, facts are not going to get in the way.
Just be glad we have doubters and amateur scientists who call out crap for what it is. Maybe, just maybe, more people will come to realize just how bad of a model we are working with because all our facts aren't worth the paper their recorded on. Like any other bureaucracy stuff like this happens because no one wants to step forward to a) upset the status quo, b) take responsibility for a decision, c) work.
Just be glad it was caught. Just like people found temperature sensors in parking lots, readings duplicated across months, and other sorts of fun. The ineptness of some of so called scientific groups when it comes to climate science makes me wonder if we do proper vetting of who is getting the money.
1. NASA has a limited number of astronauts.
2. NASA has a limited number of shuttles.
3. The public has very little stomach for "yet another NASA accident"
4. There are far too many in Congress who see the NASA manned program as a waste of money (in other words that money could buy pools and libraries named after Congressmen!)
5. Comparing any item to Iraq expenditures does not bolster your argument, if anything a parrot would suffice.
Why not compare it to the fact we are willing to lose nearly FORTY THOUSAND people to vehicle deaths. The number of soldiers we lose in Iraq while deplorable by any count is minuscule compared to any other war of that scale let alone the deaths at home from stuff that should not happen in the first place.
but honestly what are we losing? While I won't purchase one on the simple grounds is that it is hilariously overpriced. I mean, people on Apple forums deride gamers who buy silly cases or pay extra for AW yet turn around and go all ga-ga over the new macbook cases. Hell they feel honored to pay $50 extra for a matte screen surface!
No, in this case there is no net loss for consumer or Apple. Face it, the majority of those who might take one on a long flight are going to be in the class that allows them to plug it in. Even then most who do fly usually are well prepared enough to not need to do extensive work in flight. Short hops on trains don't even raise an eye with a battery that can last as long as this one is. Let us also toss out the fact most travelers don't use 17" laptops in the first place, the size is annoying.
So, comparing it to the iPod issue. The iPod is something you could likely keep and not need or want to replace after killing the battery. Early ones had streaks of bad batteries but for the most part that isn't an issue now.
Last point, how could they or anyone have learned? Who else has made a laptop that the battery isn't easily removable? Let alone one as capable? Time will tell if the decision is bad. From what I read on the forums the biggest issues that come up is the obnoxious cost, not the battery.
Can you imagine the hell that would be raised if it didn't support fire wire? Now that would get the masses in an uproar :P
My Allegro (35QBA FWIW) motor home has both Satellite and HDTVs with OTA ability.
I get better reception with satellite in the rain than I do with HD over the air. Even tuning it in doesn't solve it. I get stutter/frame freezes about every ten to fifteen minutes. Its enough to ruin some shows, you just know its got to happen during the "gotcha" moments. Now not all stations are equal but for the most part the quality isn't there. Perhaps they aren't at full strength or perhaps tuners just aren't up to measure, for built ins. I haven't tried an external tuner yet.
Now all is not bad with HD OTA. I can get reception in some places that analog just doesn't come in. However satellite stomps it at all times. Even in some nicely wooded campgrounds I can find a satellite signal. Tuning satellite is as easy as looking up my initial setting based on my zip code of where I am and tuning it once.
I haven't tried it while underway, I guess I need to test which works while moving : YES WHILE I AM NOT DRIVING.