But what percentage of the general population is that? Are they concentrated in particular areas, or are they spread out over the entire country fairly evenly. If they are localized, then VoIP is good to advertise to those people specifically.
I never suggested advertising it to anyone. I listed that on Slashdot as an example of a useful capability (for some) that consumers, in general, were ingnorant of. What part of that do you disagree with? You are aware of the capability. Does that make you apprehensive to have broadband?
You hear that? That is the sound of ultimate suffering. It's the sound your brain made when you realized that you *completely missed the joke*.
When I "miss" jokes, it's normally because they aren't funny. "Ultimate suffering" to me would be to cursed with the kind of crass a sense of humor that found that kind of thing funny.
You know, the finny thing about these online discussion forums is that you never really know who you're talking to. You might be talking to a college student. You might be talking to a high school student. You might be talking to a high school dropout, or a college dropout. And on some occasions, you might even be talking to a college professor.
I believe it to be very unlikely that a college student or professor would make insulting remarks (i.e., "princess") about about a person solely because she is an Ivy League student studying abroad. Normally, the kind of people who find higher education grounds for ridicule are those who have not had much of it themselves.
Would you have been happier if he'd said "*Effectively*, no one needs VoIP because their cell phone includes free long distance with the plans they already buy"?
No, because millions of people in the U.S. spend billions of dollars calling long distance to numbers outside the U.S.
Uhh, big deal. The general population is NOT MISSING ANYTHING - which was the previous poster's whole point. This is not going to be a big selling point of broadband.
It will be to those millions of people that spend large sums of money on overseas phone calls. The "killer app" of broadband for some people might be VOIP. For others, it might be streaming video. For others, it might be downloading video games or playing them online. Other people will find the ability to search web pages at high speed to be invaluable. Every example does not need to apply to every person.
Me: Freezers are great. You can put pizzas in them. You can have frozen dinners, vegetables, ice cubes, and ice cream in them.
You: Few people like pizza, so freezers are worthless.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0093779
So what's your point of providing a link to a movie review of The Princess Bride? If you are insinuating that one gets into Princeton by being spoiled and rich, I can assure you that you are wrong. You get accepted there by having an outstanding scholastic record and scoring in the top percentile on college admissions tests. Or, in your case, you might be accepted at Princeton in a janitorial or food services role.
Yes. Many businesses use Linux and *BSD, which refutes your contention that such OSs are only used by hobbyists and not by anyone trying to "get work done."
What business would not ALREADY have a broadband connection? You expect businesses to rely on the home connections of their employees now?
Did you miss your meds this morning? You said: "Most folks buy a computer to get work done or play video games, not to work on it as a hobby." I countered that "work" is done using Linux and *BSD and that such OSs are not just run by hobbyists. Somehow (don't ask me how) you interpreted that as a claim that businesses should use the home broadband connections of employees. Concluding that from what I said is completely irrational.
As for international long distance calls, very few people have to make them. It would not justify the expense in time, effort and money to setup and educate people about VoIP simply for the few who have to call another country.
What are you talking about? I did not propose a massive program to educate every man, woman, and child in the U.S. about the use of VOIP and install VOIP software on their computer. I just said that the average person was ignorant about the concept of VOIP. That said, long distance calls to overseas relatives constitute a multi-billion dollar business. Who are those "few" people that generate all of those calls?
Sounds like the previous poster thought, and YOU didn't.
NOT EVERYONE needs VoIP.
The other poster assumed that no one needed it because cell phones would provide for everyone's long distance needs. I never said that "everyone" needs VOIP. I gave it as an example of a useful application that the general population is unaware of.
Besides, Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So I can clearly not choose the broadband in front of me.
That wasn't even a good troll. At least try to make it believable. I live in the U.S. and the person that I know in Australia is an exchange student. She attends Princeton University in the states and is studying abroad in Australia. Boy, that sure fits the criminal profile, doesn't it? You're playing out of your league.
1. Perhaps they aren't ignorant. Perhaps they simply have better things to do with their time then sit on the computer all day.
One need not "sit on[sic] the computer all day" in order to benefit from the Internet. Even your hypothetical game player could benefit greatly from broadband. When the demo of Unreal Tournament 2003 is over 90 megabytes, it is not even remotely possible for most dial-up users to download it. Online play is rapidly becoming impossible for many players of action games that only have dial-up connections. Service pack updates for Windows can be tens of megabytes. More and more mass-market web sites are incorporating broadband-only features like streaming video.
2. VoIP is nice, unless you have a cellphone plan which already gives you free long distance.
So, what cell phone plan do I get that gives me free long distance from the U.S. to Australia (so that I can call my family member that's living there)? Think before you start typing next time.
3. Being able to download ISO images is wholly irrelevant to most people's lives as the OS's they use are not available in that form. Most folks buy a computer to get work done or play video games, not to work on it as a hobby.
So you believe that people using Linux or *BSD can't "get work done or play video games"? You think that it's just "a hobby" for them? Interesting notion. I was under the impression that Linux and *BSD were widely used in business.
Also, I said "ISO images", not "ISO images of operating systems."
Most people are devastatingly ignorant about what the net has to offer. Many believe that it is only for e-mail, instant messaging, spreading viruses, and viewing the occasional web page -- usually accessed from a "portal" site (like AOL, MSN, etc.). Most don't know how to download and install software. They don't recognize how much more useful the net is when web page loads take three seconds rather than a minute or more. The concept of voice over IP is something that has never even entered their heads. Getting ISO images of operating systems is about as likely for them as constructing a nuclear reactor is for the average family's dog or cat.
Unfortunately, the best and brightest chance of popularizing broadband was Napster and that's now gone.
Yet another example of the English language devolving into a pidgin lingua franca.
The split infinitive "rule" was invented in the 19th century by classically obsessed scholars who wanted English to be like Latin and Greek (whose one-word infinitives cannot be split). Here's what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage says: "The objection to the split infinitive has never had a rational basis."
In what way is splitting an infinitive more "useful" than putting the words in the correct order?
First, either construction is "correct." Second, splitting infinitives often allows one to construct sentences that flow much better. For example, let's take the famous Star Trek opening:
"...to boldly go where no man has gone before."
The linguist David Crystal correctly noted that the original Star Trek television series would have lost something if the mission of the Enterprise had been "boldly to go where no man has gone before." Crystal observed that to boldly go has an iambic, and therefore more natural, rhythm.
Following arbitrary rules concocted by 19th century scholars is not something for which you should take great pride.
It's not syntactically correct. "To not know" is a split infinitive. (Remember those?)
Actually, it is correct. In 1998, the influential New Oxford Dictionary of English admitted that "in standard English the principle of allowing split infinitives is broadly accepted as both normal and useful."
Yes, and a lot (notice how it is two words) of people (including yourself) at your highschool appear to not know correct English.
If you are going to criticize written English, you better be a whole lot more careful. I took the liberty of using boldface to highlight your errors. "It" refers to a single thing and, thus, cannot be "two words." You should have said "notice how 'a lot' is two words". Note that the word "yourself" is boldfaced. The proper word to use there is "you." Would you say "yourself appear to not know correct English"?
While perhaps syntactically correct, "to not know correct English" is clumsy -- to say the least. You should have ended the sentence with something like "to be incapable of writing English correctly."
Ignoring your poor sentence construction and grammatical mistakes, you reasoning is flawed. You claim that "a lot" of people from his high school write poorly, yet you have only read his writing. You have no way to know how the other students write.
Here is another example of well-meaning, yet relatively irrelevant laws being passed.
I disagree. This is a valuable, pro-active attempt to keep Californians from being forced to pay for spam sent to their cell phones and pagers.
Remember that, unlike the Internet, there are long-distance charges to call cell phones from out of area. Since spammers are bottom feeders that look for ways to pay nothing for their advertising, the vast majority of the spam would come from in-state. Thus, there would be no question of jurisdiction, extradition, etc. in most cases.
Weight wasn't that much of a concern in a bike designed for high top speed.
I referred to efficiency, not top speed. Weight affects acceleration. It takes much more energy to get an 800lb. touring bike from 0-60 than it takes to propel something like a lightweight GP250 bike to the same speed.
Cruising on the higway at 60, two bikes with the same coefficients of drag and frontal area will comparable mileage (give or take a bit for tire flex) even if one is twice as heavy. But in the real world, where there are stop lights, traffic jams, varying grades, and speed limits, the lighter bike will get far better effiiciency.
Since the purpose of this project bike is to get incredibly high fuel economy, it only stands to reason that they would not make it heavy.
I like how they talk about making a powertrain that's efficient at cruising speeds, when they've stuck the thing in a pure sportbike frame. They should have built a big honking Goldwing clone, or at least something like the BMW sport-touring bikes. Pocket rockets are not the place to worry about miles-per-gallon.
Did it ever occur to you that, in order to make this thing efficient, they had to be concerned with aerodynamics and weight? A Goldwing is neither light nor does it have a low aerodynamic drag (relative to sportbike designs).
You can't make a 40mpg semi by pulling an engine from a Geo Metro and slapping it into a Peterbilt.
But it's still not as convenient as Kazaa or some other spyware ridden software for mass public consumption.
But it will punch through corporate firewalls when Kazaa, Morpheus, etc. are blocked. Very handy when you work somewhere that has a seriously anal network security guy that sets up the firewall.
There are already programs that accept file requests via e-mail and reply with an attachment containing the file. They also e-mail back directories, accept files sent to them, etc. That I gave a manual example for simplicity is no reason to assume that it could not be automated.
Explain to me how you're going to share files with all your ports blocked?
Send him an e-mail. Tell him the files you want, and he'll FTP them back to you. Just one of many ways that someone could supply files without having an open port.
I think there was a huge plot hole left open in the episode -- the Valakians were never fully told (or shown) that the other species was approching a full intelligence. Had they done that and shown a poor reaction to it, it would have made much more sense.
The fact that they had not recognized and encouraged this on their own speaks worlds about their view of the other race. In a matter of a few hours or days, it was obvious to Phlox that the Menks were a developing race with great promise yet they were still being treated much as humans treated slaves in centuries past.
He doesn't consider the possibility that the two species (human/ neanderthal) could possibly live together happily. Imagine the difference in the world if that had happened.
And imagine the difference in the world if Neanderthal's shared with Homo Sapiens the unfortunate tendencies towards genocide and prejudice.
That's the danger with playing god: You end up being ethically responsible for the outcome.
The conclusion to not interfere seems valid if you consider "humanity" to be outside of nature. [snip] Humanity is a part of nature too...just as elephants are both destructive and constructive. We just use technology as our agent of change.
To extraterrestrial ecosystems (exoecosystems?), humanity is outside of nature. By your logic, we would be perfectly justified in travelling to a planet and destroying it because we are part of "nature" and we have the ability to destroy the planet.
Along with our technology, knowledge, and intellect come responsibilities. While you cannot hold an elephant responsible for destruction they cause, we can, and should, hold ourselves responsible for our actions. While we might be able to play god someday, I hope we have the wisdom not to.
I hardly think it's morally correct to deny a race the cure to their genetic disease in favor of what might happen thousands or even millions of years in the future. To me it's the same moral question as "Does the end justify the means?" --- should one do something that seems wrong in the present in order to promote a future good?
To some extent, it's like the nature shows one sees. While the cinematographers and crew could easily frighten off the wildebeasts, thus, saving them from the lions, they do not.
This is also not a matter of "doing." It is just the opposite: Dr. Phlox did not actively attempt to interfere with the natural evolution in action on the planet.
It would be fun to see the captain and the doctor at each other's throats!
I thought that it was more interesting to see Archer develop intellectually and emotionally as he started to understand Dr. Phlox's perspective. He realized that, through their technology, they had the ability to play god, saving species and dooming others throughout the galaxy.
Plus, the "Dear Doctor" episode really really pissed me off. Leave an entire race to die, get laid! What a great moral...
I thought that was one of the most thought-provoking pieces of sci-fi to hit television in a long time.
For those unfamiliar with the plot (spoilers ahead):
Enterprise encounters a small pre-warp vessel manned by a crew carrying a fatal disease. Phlox agrees to help their people (the Valakians). When Enterprise arrives at the alien planet, the doctor discovers that the Valakians have a genetic flaw causing them to fall prey to the disease. He concludes that it will eventually lead to their extinction. The Menk, a less advanced humanoid species, are subjugated by the Valakians but show promising signs of intellectual development. Doctor Phlox resists interfering with the natural evolution taking place on the planet, asking Archer what would have happened had ancient extraterestrials given Neanderthals an advantage over Homo Sapiens on Earth. Although it's one of the hardest decisions he has ever faced, Archer agrees with the doctor's reasoning. Even though the doctor has developed a cure for the disease, Enterprise gives the Valakians medicine that will only slow the symptoms and ease their suffering.
I found it to be a fascinating insight into the moral responsibilities that they faced: Cure the sick, leaving them to continue their subjugation of a developing species, or allow nature to take its course while doing what they could to ease suffering.
P.S. No, I did not have the whole thing memorized. I did a bit of web surfing to get the names of the species and some plot specifics.
As this may be the only place you can read about those things (before Ad-Aware catches up), if they're not obviously listed as installation options, you'd be better off going through it.
I do use Ad-Aware as well as ZoneAlarm. I normally find out about spyware pretty quickly. While some more reputable publishers list the information, many disreputable publishers do not. I also don't tend to install random, unknown software. By the time I install it on my main computer, it's thoroughly tested -- either by others or by me on a spare machine.
NJ gave itself the right to regulate rides after an accident where two were killed from a malfunction, not excessive Gs.
States have always had the right to regulate amusement park rides. Some do it much better than others. For instance, when I was growing up, shady carnivals would come to Maryland, be shut down, and then set up shop in neighboring Pennsylvania. Why? Because Pennsylvania was particularly lax at enforcing safety regulations for such rides. One such carnival had rides that were bolted together with no lockwashers, cotter pins, or other retaining devices -- despite the fact that the bolts were all cross-drilled for cotter pins. Maryland shut them down and off to Pennsylvania they headed.
Why don't we cut the government-is-the-enemy crap? A state saw a trend towards higher and higher coaster G-forces and put regulations into place to protect the citizens -- most of whom are neither doctors nor mechanical engineers and, thus, would be unable to accurately gauge the potential risk themselves.
It is a violation of the EULA for Mac OS to run it on any non-Apple-branded hardware.
I really don't care. I simply ignore EULAs. In fact, I make it a point to not even read them (and I note that Microsoft does not even require that you scroll to the end of the EULA before clicking "I Agree.") I don't violate copyright law by pirating software, but the EULAs are filled with unreasonable crap that just gets my blood boiling.
So, if Apple, Microsoft, or any other vendor wishes to sue me for violating their EULA, bring it on. I'm tired of the bullshit. You make a product and I buy it. It's not a "license to use" and I'm not playing that game any more.
Slashdot Mirror
I never suggested advertising it to anyone. I listed that on Slashdot as an example of a useful capability (for some) that consumers, in general, were ingnorant of. What part of that do you disagree with? You are aware of the capability. Does that make you apprehensive to have broadband?
When I "miss" jokes, it's normally because they aren't funny. "Ultimate suffering" to me would be to cursed with the kind of crass a sense of humor that found that kind of thing funny.
I believe it to be very unlikely that a college student or professor would make insulting remarks (i.e., "princess") about about a person solely because she is an Ivy League student studying abroad. Normally, the kind of people who find higher education grounds for ridicule are those who have not had much of it themselves.
No, because millions of people in the U.S. spend billions of dollars calling long distance to numbers outside the U.S.
It will be to those millions of people that spend large sums of money on overseas phone calls. The "killer app" of broadband for some people might be VOIP. For others, it might be streaming video. For others, it might be downloading video games or playing them online. Other people will find the ability to search web pages at high speed to be invaluable. Every example does not need to apply to every person.
Me: Freezers are great. You can put pizzas in them. You can have frozen dinners, vegetables, ice cubes, and ice cream in them.
You: Few people like pizza, so freezers are worthless.
So what's your point of providing a link to a movie review of The Princess Bride? If you are insinuating that one gets into Princeton by being spoiled and rich, I can assure you that you are wrong. You get accepted there by having an outstanding scholastic record and scoring in the top percentile on college admissions tests. Or, in your case, you might be accepted at Princeton in a janitorial or food services role.
Yes. Many businesses use Linux and *BSD, which refutes your contention that such OSs are only used by hobbyists and not by anyone trying to "get work done."
Did you miss your meds this morning? You said: "Most folks buy a computer to get work done or play video games, not to work on it as a hobby." I countered that "work" is done using Linux and *BSD and that such OSs are not just run by hobbyists. Somehow (don't ask me how) you interpreted that as a claim that businesses should use the home broadband connections of employees. Concluding that from what I said is completely irrational.
What are you talking about? I did not propose a massive program to educate every man, woman, and child in the U.S. about the use of VOIP and install VOIP software on their computer. I just said that the average person was ignorant about the concept of VOIP. That said, long distance calls to overseas relatives constitute a multi-billion dollar business. Who are those "few" people that generate all of those calls?
Sounds like the previous poster thought, and YOU didn't.
NOT EVERYONE needs VoIP.
The other poster assumed that no one needed it because cell phones would provide for everyone's long distance needs. I never said that "everyone" needs VOIP. I gave it as an example of a useful application that the general population is unaware of.
Besides, Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So I can clearly not choose the broadband in front of me.
That wasn't even a good troll. At least try to make it believable. I live in the U.S. and the person that I know in Australia is an exchange student. She attends Princeton University in the states and is studying abroad in Australia. Boy, that sure fits the criminal profile, doesn't it? You're playing out of your league.
1. Perhaps they aren't ignorant. Perhaps they simply have better things to do with their time then sit on the computer all day.
One need not "sit on[sic] the computer all day" in order to benefit from the Internet. Even your hypothetical game player could benefit greatly from broadband. When the demo of Unreal Tournament 2003 is over 90 megabytes, it is not even remotely possible for most dial-up users to download it. Online play is rapidly becoming impossible for many players of action games that only have dial-up connections. Service pack updates for Windows can be tens of megabytes. More and more mass-market web sites are incorporating broadband-only features like streaming video.
2. VoIP is nice, unless you have a cellphone plan which already gives you free long distance.
So, what cell phone plan do I get that gives me free long distance from the U.S. to Australia (so that I can call my family member that's living there)? Think before you start typing next time.
3. Being able to download ISO images is wholly irrelevant to most people's lives as the OS's they use are not available in that form. Most folks buy a computer to get work done or play video games, not to work on it as a hobby.
So you believe that people using Linux or *BSD can't "get work done or play video games"? You think that it's just "a hobby" for them? Interesting notion. I was under the impression that Linux and *BSD were widely used in business.
Also, I said "ISO images", not "ISO images of operating systems."
Most people are devastatingly ignorant about what the net has to offer. Many believe that it is only for e-mail, instant messaging, spreading viruses, and viewing the occasional web page -- usually accessed from a "portal" site (like AOL, MSN, etc.). Most don't know how to download and install software. They don't recognize how much more useful the net is when web page loads take three seconds rather than a minute or more. The concept of voice over IP is something that has never even entered their heads. Getting ISO images of operating systems is about as likely for them as constructing a nuclear reactor is for the average family's dog or cat.
Unfortunately, the best and brightest chance of popularizing broadband was Napster and that's now gone.
Yet another example of the English language devolving into a pidgin lingua franca.
The split infinitive "rule" was invented in the 19th century by classically obsessed scholars who wanted English to be like Latin and Greek (whose one-word infinitives cannot be split). Here's what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage says: "The objection to the split infinitive has never had a rational basis."
In what way is splitting an infinitive more "useful" than putting the words in the correct order?
First, either construction is "correct." Second, splitting infinitives often allows one to construct sentences that flow much better. For example, let's take the famous Star Trek opening:
"...to boldly go where no man has gone before."
The linguist David Crystal correctly noted that the original Star Trek television series would have lost something if the mission of the Enterprise had been "boldly to go where no man has gone before." Crystal observed that to boldly go has an iambic, and therefore more natural, rhythm.
Following arbitrary rules concocted by 19th century scholars is not something for which you should take great pride.
It's not syntactically correct. "To not know" is a split infinitive. (Remember those?)
Actually, it is correct. In 1998, the influential New Oxford Dictionary of English admitted that "in standard English the principle of allowing split infinitives is broadly accepted as both normal and useful."
Yes, and a lot (notice how it is two words) of people (including yourself) at your highschool appear to not know correct English.
If you are going to criticize written English, you better be a whole lot more careful. I took the liberty of using boldface to highlight your errors. "It" refers to a single thing and, thus, cannot be "two words." You should have said "notice how 'a lot' is two words". Note that the word "yourself" is boldfaced. The proper word to use there is "you." Would you say "yourself appear to not know correct English"?
While perhaps syntactically correct, "to not know correct English" is clumsy -- to say the least. You should have ended the sentence with something like "to be incapable of writing English correctly."
Ignoring your poor sentence construction and grammatical mistakes, you reasoning is flawed. You claim that "a lot" of people from his high school write poorly, yet you have only read his writing. You have no way to know how the other students write.
Still feeling cocky?
Here is another example of well-meaning, yet relatively irrelevant laws being passed.
I disagree. This is a valuable, pro-active attempt to keep Californians from being forced to pay for spam sent to their cell phones and pagers.
Remember that, unlike the Internet, there are long-distance charges to call cell phones from out of area. Since spammers are bottom feeders that look for ways to pay nothing for their advertising, the vast majority of the spam would come from in-state. Thus, there would be no question of jurisdiction, extradition, etc. in most cases.
Problem is, once you standardize this protocol and publish an email address that supports it, people like BayTSP can connect.
I never said that this was a way to defeat companies like BayTSP. I said that it was a way that files could be shared with no open ports.
Weight wasn't that much of a concern in a bike designed for high top speed.
I referred to efficiency, not top speed. Weight affects acceleration. It takes much more energy to get an 800lb. touring bike from 0-60 than it takes to propel something like a lightweight GP250 bike to the same speed.
Cruising on the higway at 60, two bikes with the same coefficients of drag and frontal area will comparable mileage (give or take a bit for tire flex) even if one is twice as heavy. But in the real world, where there are stop lights, traffic jams, varying grades, and speed limits, the lighter bike will get far better effiiciency.
Since the purpose of this project bike is to get incredibly high fuel economy, it only stands to reason that they would not make it heavy.
I like how they talk about making a powertrain that's efficient at cruising speeds, when they've stuck the thing in a pure sportbike frame. They should have built a big honking Goldwing clone, or at least something like the BMW sport-touring bikes. Pocket rockets are not the place to worry about miles-per-gallon.
Did it ever occur to you that, in order to make this thing efficient, they had to be concerned with aerodynamics and weight? A Goldwing is neither light nor does it have a low aerodynamic drag (relative to sportbike designs).
You can't make a 40mpg semi by pulling an engine from a Geo Metro and slapping it into a Peterbilt.
I never said that this was a way to defeat companies like BayTSP. I said that it was a way that files could be shared with no open ports.
But it's still not as convenient as Kazaa or some other spyware ridden software for mass public consumption.
But it will punch through corporate firewalls when Kazaa, Morpheus, etc. are blocked. Very handy when you work somewhere that has a seriously anal network security guy that sets up the firewall.
oh, yeah... that's convenient.
There are already programs that accept file requests via e-mail and reply with an attachment containing the file. They also e-mail back directories, accept files sent to them, etc. That I gave a manual example for simplicity is no reason to assume that it could not be automated.
Explain to me how you're going to share files with all your ports blocked?
Send him an e-mail. Tell him the files you want, and he'll FTP them back to you. Just one of many ways that someone could supply files without having an open port.
I think there was a huge plot hole left open in the episode -- the Valakians were never fully told (or shown) that the other species was approching a full intelligence. Had they done that and shown a poor reaction to it, it would have made much more sense.
The fact that they had not recognized and encouraged this on their own speaks worlds about their view of the other race. In a matter of a few hours or days, it was obvious to Phlox that the Menks were a developing race with great promise yet they were still being treated much as humans treated slaves in centuries past.
He doesn't consider the possibility that the two species (human/ neanderthal) could possibly live together happily. Imagine the difference in the world if that had happened.
And imagine the difference in the world if Neanderthal's shared with Homo Sapiens the unfortunate tendencies towards genocide and prejudice.
That's the danger with playing god: You end up being ethically responsible for the outcome.
The conclusion to not interfere seems valid if you consider "humanity" to be outside of nature.
[snip]
Humanity is a part of nature too...just as elephants are both destructive and constructive. We just use technology as our agent of change.
To extraterrestrial ecosystems (exoecosystems?), humanity is outside of nature. By your logic, we would be perfectly justified in travelling to a planet and destroying it because we are part of "nature" and we have the ability to destroy the planet.
Along with our technology, knowledge, and intellect come responsibilities. While you cannot hold an elephant responsible for destruction they cause, we can, and should, hold ourselves responsible for our actions. While we might be able to play god someday, I hope we have the wisdom not to.
I hardly think it's morally correct to deny a race the cure to their genetic disease in favor of what might happen thousands or even millions of years in the future. To me it's the same moral question as "Does the end justify the means?" --- should one do something that seems wrong in the present in order to promote a future good?
To some extent, it's like the nature shows one sees. While the cinematographers and crew could easily frighten off the wildebeasts, thus, saving them from the lions, they do not.
This is also not a matter of "doing." It is just the opposite: Dr. Phlox did not actively attempt to interfere with the natural evolution in action on the planet.
It would be fun to see the captain and the doctor at each other's throats!
I thought that it was more interesting to see Archer develop intellectually and emotionally as he started to understand Dr. Phlox's perspective. He realized that, through their technology, they had the ability to play god, saving species and dooming others throughout the galaxy.
I thought that was one of the most thought-provoking pieces of sci-fi to hit television in a long time.
For those unfamiliar with the plot (spoilers ahead):
I found it to be a fascinating insight into the moral responsibilities that they faced: Cure the sick, leaving them to continue their subjugation of a developing species, or allow nature to take its course while doing what they could to ease suffering.
P.S. No, I did not have the whole thing memorized. I did a bit of web surfing to get the names of the species and some plot specifics.
running OfficeXP and XP Home is a demanding job for most computers.
You can get an Athlon XP1600+ for under $60. How much faster will Office/Windows XP run on an XP2600+ that costs hundreds of dollars more?
As this may be the only place you can read about those things (before Ad-Aware catches up), if they're not obviously listed as installation options, you'd be better off going through it.
I do use Ad-Aware as well as ZoneAlarm. I normally find out about spyware pretty quickly. While some more reputable publishers list the information, many disreputable publishers do not. I also don't tend to install random, unknown software. By the time I install it on my main computer, it's thoroughly tested -- either by others or by me on a spare machine.
NJ gave itself the right to regulate rides after an accident where two were killed from a malfunction, not excessive Gs.
States have always had the right to regulate amusement park rides. Some do it much better than others. For instance, when I was growing up, shady carnivals would come to Maryland, be shut down, and then set up shop in neighboring Pennsylvania. Why? Because Pennsylvania was particularly lax at enforcing safety regulations for such rides. One such carnival had rides that were bolted together with no lockwashers, cotter pins, or other retaining devices -- despite the fact that the bolts were all cross-drilled for cotter pins. Maryland shut them down and off to Pennsylvania they headed.
Why don't we cut the government-is-the-enemy crap? A state saw a trend towards higher and higher coaster G-forces and put regulations into place to protect the citizens -- most of whom are neither doctors nor mechanical engineers and, thus, would be unable to accurately gauge the potential risk themselves.
It is a violation of the EULA for Mac OS to run it on any non-Apple-branded hardware.
I really don't care. I simply ignore EULAs. In fact, I make it a point to not even read them (and I note that Microsoft does not even require that you scroll to the end of the EULA before clicking "I Agree.") I don't violate copyright law by pirating software, but the EULAs are filled with unreasonable crap that just gets my blood boiling.
So, if Apple, Microsoft, or any other vendor wishes to sue me for violating their EULA, bring it on. I'm tired of the bullshit. You make a product and I buy it. It's not a "license to use" and I'm not playing that game any more.