You can use the HP graphing calculator instead, you just have to know how to use it. In fact, from what I have heard the HP calculators dominate in the actual engineering working world while the TI calculators are mostly limited to education. That ought to tell you something about the relative usefulness of HP calculators compared to TI.
Being skeptical doesn't mean ignore everything, it just means to keep everything in perspective. Yes, precisely...well said. Many other posters take any skepticism as a direct attack designed to undermine their entire idea or position (i.e. either you are with them or against them) without taking the time to appreciate a reasonable and legitimate critique.
I am not suggesting that the engine is entirely impractical merely because hydrogen gas is used. However, I am interested in how the engine from TFA has solved certain known problems in past engine designs with similar characteristics (i.e. hydrogen gas in a closed system under heat and pressure). Another interesting question is that given the complexity of this design is the extra efficiency over say a Stirling engine really worth the trouble for simple power generation?
Water is very easy is contain and provides gobs of hydrogen gas per unit of liquid water. Yes, but it takes a lot of energy to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen via electrolysis, so it isn't really clear how this is generating an energy "profit" if part of the energy being generated has to be diverted into making more hydrogen. Perhaps the hydrogen is used so many times in the engine that it overcomes this drawback, but like most other people I am skeptical, especially given the fuzzy details of TFA. Inventors are always trying to sell us some "new" efficient engine that will get 300 miles per gallon or some other amazing device that they were somehow clever enough to devise, but which all of the engineers working for the past century seemed to have missed. We are right to be skeptical.
The hydrogen in these prototype vehicles is either burned directly in internal combustion OR it is converted back to water in a fuel cell cycle, but either way the hydrogen does not stay free for long, it is used in relatively short order after refueling. The difference between the engines that you are talking about and the engines like the Stirling and the one discussed in TFA is that the former are open-cycle whereas the Stirling and TFA engine are closed cycle. (i.e. the working fluid or gas never leaves the confines of the engine...it is sealed inside). In such cases long term storage of the gas or working fluid becomes an issue whereas it is generally NOT an issue in most open cycle engines like the petroleum fueled engines that we use in most of our terrestrial vehicles (i.e. they burn fuel from the tank fast enough that evaporation is not an issue except when the vehicle sits fueled for an extended period AND they use air from the atmosphere to combust with the fuel which is then expelled back out into the environment - open cycle).
Another problem with hydrogen gas is that it tends to corrode and embrittle metals and other materials that are used to contain it (i.e. metal tanks, piping, etc) to the point where containment may eventually be compromised, particularly if high pressures and heat are involved.
The problem with hydrogen is that it is notoriously difficult to contain for extended periods of time (the reason why it is not generally used in Stirling engines despite the higher efficiency compared with other working gases). So the engine will require a steady stream of newly generated hydrogen to replace the hydrogen being lost to diffusion through the engine and hydrogen is expensive to generate so how much of the energy from the engine will be required merely to continually replenish the hydrogen supply? Probably enough to offset any additional efficiencies over other closed cycle heat engines (like the Stirling).
require people in strange wigs Is the strange wig actually required as part of formal dress or do the MPs wear them just because they are an interesting, if somewhat archaic, piece of optional costume? I notice that foreign dignitaries, when speaking in parliament, never wear the wig. Apparently they don't keep any loaners in the cloakroom for visiting dignitaries so I guess it is "bring your own wig" (BYOW) or else do without. Is the whole wig gig were they get the term "big wig" from?
Fortunately, the Matrix is more of an allegory on the philosophy of Idealism than a forum for discussing alternative energy. The original premise of the Matrix, according Wachowski brothers, was that the humans plugged into the matrix were being used as cogs in a massively parallel neural network mainframe computing cluster which ran the Matrix simulation and other non-physical agents and programs of the machines. The power came from fusion reactors. However, it was changed to the "humans as batteries" concept because the producers (or somebody higher up at Warner...the details are sketchy) thought that the former explanation (i.e. humans as part of a massively parallel mainframe computer) would go over most people's heads whereas the later (humans as batteries) was more easily understandable, if less satisfying and realistic to the less than 5% of the audience who would actually be able to appreciate the former.
TFA Talks about pressurized hydrogen gas being diffused across a membrane(s) but it does not mention where the hydrogen gas is coming from. Now, I am NOT a physicist, but unless he has found a new and low cost way to obtain free hydrogen H2 gas then I doubt that his engine will be a substantial improvement over existing technologies since hydrogen gas is generally very energy intensive to separate from water or other reactions. Another problem is that hydrogen gas, particularly hydrogen gas under pressure, is extremely corrosive. It tends to want to diffuse through or undermine the integrity of any material that you attempt to contain it with. This is the reason why hydrogen gas, even though it is the most efficient known working fluid for Stirling Engines is typically not used (Helium or Nitrogen is generally used instead or even just plain air). The difficulty and expense of separating and then containing the hydrogen gas within the engine is just not worth the trouble for the modest gain in efficiency over alternative working gases in Stirling engines. Perhaps someone with more background in physics can explain how the engine in TFA is different and solves these problems?
In the large truck category you are correct so I will concede that not ALL of the GM vehicles are of low quality (the Cadillac brand was already mentioned among the few exceptions). However, even if we are talking about trucks it is really only the large truck category where GM (Sierra) and Ford (F250 or bigger) still dominate. The small truck category has seen strong and successful competition from Toyota in the Tacoma and Tundra brands which are very popular although not as dominating as in the sedan category (i.e. some people still chose the Ford Ranger). The statement about GMs lack of competitiveness still holds up relatively well, even for trucks and especially in the consumer category, unless you want to talk about large work trucks or other professional duty commercial vehicles and even those categories have strong competition from the Japanese, Fuso for example.
I wonder how Lucene compares with FAST in terms of generic unstructured text searching, perhaps someone who knows more about FAST or Lucene can answer?
They would have to pass additional legislation limiting the ability of people to sue in cases of accidents caused by driverless vehicles (which the lawyer lobbyists will fight hard against tooth and nail just as they do with any other tort reform) to cases where the driverless system was either flawed or not maintained properly resulting in negligence liability for either the owner, the manufacturer, or possibly both.
The biggest problem with GM, and something which they have worked very hard to overcome with only limited success, is the general perception among the American public, not entirely undeserved I might add, that any GM vehicle, with the possible exception of the Cadillac brand, is by definition an inferior quality product with a discounted value proposition for the consumer (i.e. it costs less now because it is cheap and it will break and cost you more to fix and maintain over the long run). It may be the case that GM Research does good work, but GM is going to have a long and hard fight to get out of the hole they dug for themselves beginning in the early 1970s and continuing almost uninterrupted until recently (i.e. they say that they are focused on quality now going forward, but nobody believes them and it will take years of heavy discounts and quality vehicles to begin to change that). Another problem is that their competition, namely Toyota and Honda, have been much more proactive in production efficiency investments (i.e. robotics, just-in-time supply, and common sub-assemblies) AND they have managed to keep high cost unions from limiting their options while at the same time attracting good workers with better than average wages. So even if GM could suddenly compete equally with Toyota AND they were serious about quality they would still have thousands of dollars in extra costs per similar vehicle due to legacy pension liabilities and other dead weight from the previous thirty (30) years of inefficient and low quality vehicle production. The GM brands may eventually pull it off, but is going to be a long and hard road and they are really only just getting started.
Having once been a computer science student myself (graduated and working now) I can appreciate your point of view. However, it is my opinion that the problem has less to do with Java and more to do with the reservation of general programming language courses for the second year at the earliest and the third year of study in many universities. This means that any programming concepts which are NOT part of the language used in the introductory programming courses (i.e. Java) are likely to be poorly understood at best. This problem is inevitable to a certain degree because no ONE language includes all of the concepts and features which are taught in general course on programming languages and it would be difficult to appreciate them in any case without at least some concrete basis, however imperfect or incomplete that basis may be, for comparison.
IMHO, rather than simply throwing first year CS students straight into the meat grinder of their first programming class as their first freshman course (i.e. the find who sinks and who can swim approach) the CS programs should take the time to ensure that basic general knowledge of the subject and even basic computer usage skills are present. Most of these kids grew up in a Windows GUI world without knowledge of Unix, command line, or even basically how their computer works so it should not be assumed that they all begin their first year ready to dive straight into their first course on Java programming. Perhaps an increase from four (4) years to five (5) as in many other engineering disciplines would allow enough additional time to ensure the proper progression of CS students through their course of study...just my two cents worth.
BTW: If they don't know these things (i.e. pointers and memory management) now, they will have a chance to learn when the get their first real work assignments. The really good stuff that you need to work in the industry isn't taught in CS programs anyway, the CS program simply prepares you to go out and learn the necessary details on your own time.
updating missiles in the field or deploying new missiles is something very different Any effective defense, regardless of what it was originally developed for, will not fail to be considered by the military. This will in turn compel the designers of the weapons to update their counter counter measures against the new defense. The military is motivated by effectiveness first and cost secondarily. If funds are limited then they will try to get the most that they can for their budget, but missiles and missile defenses have been fairly high on the list of spending priorities in recent years.
Especially given that "flawed" design that would make the defense inapplicable to the military. If it is flawed then they shouldn't be wasting money putting this on the airlines because just about every guided missile is of military origin and will be able to overcome the defense as a matter of course. Now, there may be some old surplus junk missiles which are vulnerable to the defense floating around the black arms markets of the world, but really how many of those are going to be (a) available and (b) still effective after sitting in the box for 20+ years? It is far more likely, as others have pointed out, that the explosive device would be concealed on the aircraft before takeoff OR the "missile" will be an unguided rocket (ala RPG) fired during the takeoff or landing phase in which case there is no guidance to confuse.
Expanding rifle bullets is one example. The technology was outlawed by international convention Not everyone always agrees with the conventions. The North Koreans, for example, would almost certainly use expanding rifle bullets (if they don't already) if they thought that such ammunition would give them an advantage, international conventions be damned. International law is a polite legal fiction maintained between countries with mutual self interests, but it is not and cannot be binding in the strictest sense without resort to violence and even then there is no guarantee that one or all sides will not disregard the conventions as soon as another side finds it convenient to break them, particularly in a total war situation where nothing is off the table.
Alright, but name me one marketing company or division that wouldn't do exactly the same thing if they thought that it would make them money and it wasn't strictly speaking illegal? All marketers are shameless about buzzwords when it comes to making money, whether they are true or not is irrelevant to them.
So we use a radar guided missile defense system instead. Most commercial airliners are decidedly NON stealthy and would have an enormous radar cross section, it would be like hitting the broad side of a barn. The radar guided missiles, even older ones, could hardly miss a commercial airliner in a hijacking and shoot down situation.
The guidance package in IR missiles is taking direct heat inputs from the external environment, perhaps with processing and filtering of signals first or perhaps without (i.e proportional signals, converted directly to electrical current, are amplified to directly drive the electro-mechanical servos on the missile stabilizer fins), but regardless the laser is interpreted as a potential input signal from the target. There is no simple AND reliable way to detect that the laser input is part of a defense or countermeasure and not legitimate data from the target (say engine heat) or at least not without varying degrees of uncertainty. It might be possible to combine other systems in the missile, ultraviolet or optical for example, to do differential analysis and better separate out false signals but that probably wouldn't be very simple to do compared to basic IR tracking of the type that would be vulnerable to this countermeasure.
If this system is only for commercial airliners then weapon designers won't bother updated existing missile systems. Nope, bzzzt...wrong. The weapon designers will consider any potentially successful defense, regardless of purpose, as a credible threat to the success of their product (i.e. the weapon) and they will most likely take steps or at least research how much it would cost to neutralize the new defense. History has shown time and again, regardless of circumstances, that weapons and armor (or more recently other types of defenses) are in a continual arms race (pun intended) against one another which leaves no potential advantage unexplored or method unemployed in the service of either attack or defense.
No, if a law is damning to the rights of the victim I WILL ignore it as a juror. Again the purpose of the law is to remove, to the extent that such removal is possible, subjectivity, human emotion, and fallible personal judgment, whether the end result of such vagaries are favorable or unfavorable to either the accuser or the accused, from the dispensation of justice. Is it just to decide a case one way on a given day and another way on a different day merely because the Jury was composed of different people who had different personal opinions about a point of law which does not suffer alternative interpretations? You take a lot of responsibility upon yourself to hold your own untrained opinion in judgment over others, regardless of the circumstances, while sitting in the jury box. Personally, I would not want such a terrible responsibility upon my head in the absence of the law or instructions from the judge. It seems wildly arbitrary or at least highly presumptuous to decide solely or even partly based upon one's own proclivities with regard to how the law should be as a matter of untrained personal opinion rather than how it actually is.
If you were asked by a judge to disregard the evidence, due to a point of law, AND you disregarded the order then it would have to be emotional. How could that be logical? Unless the Judge is corrupt (unlikely) then he should be trusted to be acting in good faith when he gives instructions to a Jury based upon his solemn interpretation of the law (he has a duty to the law in the same way that the jury does, in fact his duty and responsibility are arguably even more grave and terrible than that placed upon the jury).
and that I would ignore orders to take a fact as hearsay simply because of a technicality with how it was collected So you are basing your decision upon your own subjective opinion about what is a technicality and what is not. Excuse me, but the role of the court is adjudicate the law, however stupid you may personally believe the law to be (i.e. laws concerning evidence collection). If you base your justice merely upon what you believe is right and wrong and not the law then who is to say that someone else's sense of justice, which you may disagree with, is not entitled to the same consideration (i.e. maybe they have no problem that your confession was coerced by the police or that you were beaten to obtain it...because hey, you confessed right?) Now, I am not saying that you personally would advocate these methods, but surely you can see the danger in ignoring the law or instructions from an expert in the law (i.e the Judge) when deciding a case?
You seem to argue that if the evidence is true (perhaps merely convincing?) or appears to be factual in nature then the ends (i.e finding the truth and convicting or acquitting) justify the means of collection and that is the point upon which I strongly disagree. It is fortunate for both you and I that we do not live in a country where "the ends justify the means" when it comes to collection a presentation of evidence in court. The founding fathers recognized the dangers of "the ends justify the means" and put language into the Constitution to provide protections against collection of evidence "by any and all means necessary", even when that evidence may be the deciding factor in securing a conviction.
Finally, some laws really are stupid and should be changed, but the appropriate venue for such agitation is the legislature and the ballot box, and not the generally courts (unless the law itself is argued to be unconstitutional).
How about getting into the concert support and staging business (i.e. setting up the venues, managing the production, selling the tickets, and all of the other stuff associated with that business) on a world wide scale? Perhaps, developing their own download service or at least cutting a deal with iTunes (some additional profit is better than no additional profit if you are in the business anyway). If none of these things are profitable enough to justify continuing a large scale global music label then I would recommend to the board that the company be liquidated and the value returned to the shareholders or the whoever the owners are. There is nothing wrong with getting out of an unprofitable business. Sometimes as an investor or an owner, you have to know when it is time to quit and move on to greener pastures instead of riding the sinking ship all the way to the bottom, destroying recoverable value at every step along the way.
but I seem to remember it was MS who made you pay for an MSDN subscription
You only have to pay if you want to use their Products in your development (i.e servers, office, etc...) which you would have to do anyway, with either Apple OR Microsoft, because they are both closed source products and they don't generally give away licenses for free. However, the developer documentation, articles, and many free tools have always been available free of charge on the MSDN website for the last ten (10) years at least. I have looked at the developer information available via the Apple site and I have to say that the MSDN website, newsgroups, and blogs have more information that is more freely available. I have never heard anyone, even those who profess to be anti-Microsoft, argue that Apple has better or more complete developer support on their site than what is available on MSDN for free.
the cheapest way to get the dev-tools
They used to be pay only (at least for the full IDE w/debugger), but there have been completely free versions of very capable IDEs available for years now (Visual Studio Express). I took my first programming course on MAC Performa 570s back in the late 1990s and they were running CodeWarrior as I recall (which was also pay and not cheap). There were probably free versions of command line c compilers for both MAC and Windows back in those days, but they were probably no frills (i.e. bring your own text editor and debugger).
and all the proprietary servers and drivers you needed to actually do something useful.
Not sure about this one, the C API calls for all that you might want to do, along with headers were available without paying (although you would have been limited to the command line compiler + text editor again if you didn't want to pay for an IDE). The Apple drivers are just as proprietary as the Microsoft drivers so I don't see how Apple scores any points here.
whereas Apple gave away their (full, professional) developer tools.
There are so few companies out there doing professional Apple development that I cannot profess to have ever meet a native Apple developer in the flesh (although I suppose they do exist). However, I wonder how their tool use stacked up with other third party tools that were available. I got the impression, working on macs in my college days (where there were a few professors who used them for other work), that many Mac developers used CodeWarrior instead of whatever tools were native. It is funny, I have heard of just about every third party IDE and programming tool there is, barring the really obscure stuff, but I have never heard the native Apple tools mentioned, even in the context of Mac development, by name. Perhaps there is a reason for this? I don't know.
Can you get a Zune development kit ? Maybe you can, but I've never heard of one. If you can, will it come with a hefty price tag ?
Don't know, but who cares? How many people actually bought Zune? Maybe Steve Ballmer and his immediate family?
Ok, let's look at attitude: Apple have an open-source kernel
for many years MacOS was as proprietary as can be (although Windows wasn't any better). They both release the source code under different licenses now with strings attached, but who really cares about the kernel other than kernel and maybe driver developers? The best kernel is the one that does its job, but is otherwise reliable and unobtrusive. I don't know about you, but I really couldn't care less about the kernel as long as the APIs provided by the OS give my programs the services I want.
As for attitude Apple and Microsoft are corporations, they don't have 'attitudes' (even though their marketing people might want you to believe otherwise). They exist to ultimately provide value for their shareholders, that is it and that is all.
What's MS done recently - can you imagine internet-
Slashdot Mirror
You can use the HP graphing calculator instead, you just have to know how to use it. In fact, from what I have heard the HP calculators dominate in the actual engineering working world while the TI calculators are mostly limited to education. That ought to tell you something about the relative usefulness of HP calculators compared to TI.
I am not suggesting that the engine is entirely impractical merely because hydrogen gas is used. However, I am interested in how the engine from TFA has solved certain known problems in past engine designs with similar characteristics (i.e. hydrogen gas in a closed system under heat and pressure). Another interesting question is that given the complexity of this design is the extra efficiency over say a Stirling engine really worth the trouble for simple power generation?
The hydrogen in these prototype vehicles is either burned directly in internal combustion OR it is converted back to water in a fuel cell cycle, but either way the hydrogen does not stay free for long, it is used in relatively short order after refueling. The difference between the engines that you are talking about and the engines like the Stirling and the one discussed in TFA is that the former are open-cycle whereas the Stirling and TFA engine are closed cycle. (i.e. the working fluid or gas never leaves the confines of the engine...it is sealed inside). In such cases long term storage of the gas or working fluid becomes an issue whereas it is generally NOT an issue in most open cycle engines like the petroleum fueled engines that we use in most of our terrestrial vehicles (i.e. they burn fuel from the tank fast enough that evaporation is not an issue except when the vehicle sits fueled for an extended period AND they use air from the atmosphere to combust with the fuel which is then expelled back out into the environment - open cycle).
Another problem with hydrogen gas is that it tends to corrode and embrittle metals and other materials that are used to contain it (i.e. metal tanks, piping, etc) to the point where containment may eventually be compromised, particularly if high pressures and heat are involved.
The problem with hydrogen is that it is notoriously difficult to contain for extended periods of time (the reason why it is not generally used in Stirling engines despite the higher efficiency compared with other working gases). So the engine will require a steady stream of newly generated hydrogen to replace the hydrogen being lost to diffusion through the engine and hydrogen is expensive to generate so how much of the energy from the engine will be required merely to continually replenish the hydrogen supply? Probably enough to offset any additional efficiencies over other closed cycle heat engines (like the Stirling).
TFA Talks about pressurized hydrogen gas being diffused across a membrane(s) but it does not mention where the hydrogen gas is coming from. Now, I am NOT a physicist, but unless he has found a new and low cost way to obtain free hydrogen H2 gas then I doubt that his engine will be a substantial improvement over existing technologies since hydrogen gas is generally very energy intensive to separate from water or other reactions. Another problem is that hydrogen gas, particularly hydrogen gas under pressure, is extremely corrosive. It tends to want to diffuse through or undermine the integrity of any material that you attempt to contain it with. This is the reason why hydrogen gas, even though it is the most efficient known working fluid for Stirling Engines is typically not used (Helium or Nitrogen is generally used instead or even just plain air). The difficulty and expense of separating and then containing the hydrogen gas within the engine is just not worth the trouble for the modest gain in efficiency over alternative working gases in Stirling engines. Perhaps someone with more background in physics can explain how the engine in TFA is different and solves these problems?
Perhaps not, but Antipatterns: Identification, Refactoring, and Management does. See Antipattern for a partial listing and watch out for the Cage Match Negotiator, sometimes it really is better just not to play that game.
In the large truck category you are correct so I will concede that not ALL of the GM vehicles are of low quality (the Cadillac brand was already mentioned among the few exceptions). However, even if we are talking about trucks it is really only the large truck category where GM (Sierra) and Ford (F250 or bigger) still dominate. The small truck category has seen strong and successful competition from Toyota in the Tacoma and Tundra brands which are very popular although not as dominating as in the sedan category (i.e. some people still chose the Ford Ranger). The statement about GMs lack of competitiveness still holds up relatively well, even for trucks and especially in the consumer category, unless you want to talk about large work trucks or other professional duty commercial vehicles and even those categories have strong competition from the Japanese, Fuso for example.
I wonder how Lucene compares with FAST in terms of generic unstructured text searching, perhaps someone who knows more about FAST or Lucene can answer?
Did you guys drive in the DARPA prize competitions for the off-road vehicle course(s)?
They would have to pass additional legislation limiting the ability of people to sue in cases of accidents caused by driverless vehicles (which the lawyer lobbyists will fight hard against tooth and nail just as they do with any other tort reform) to cases where the driverless system was either flawed or not maintained properly resulting in negligence liability for either the owner, the manufacturer, or possibly both.
The biggest problem with GM, and something which they have worked very hard to overcome with only limited success, is the general perception among the American public, not entirely undeserved I might add, that any GM vehicle, with the possible exception of the Cadillac brand, is by definition an inferior quality product with a discounted value proposition for the consumer (i.e. it costs less now because it is cheap and it will break and cost you more to fix and maintain over the long run). It may be the case that GM Research does good work, but GM is going to have a long and hard fight to get out of the hole they dug for themselves beginning in the early 1970s and continuing almost uninterrupted until recently (i.e. they say that they are focused on quality now going forward, but nobody believes them and it will take years of heavy discounts and quality vehicles to begin to change that). Another problem is that their competition, namely Toyota and Honda, have been much more proactive in production efficiency investments (i.e. robotics, just-in-time supply, and common sub-assemblies) AND they have managed to keep high cost unions from limiting their options while at the same time attracting good workers with better than average wages. So even if GM could suddenly compete equally with Toyota AND they were serious about quality they would still have thousands of dollars in extra costs per similar vehicle due to legacy pension liabilities and other dead weight from the previous thirty (30) years of inefficient and low quality vehicle production. The GM brands may eventually pull it off, but is going to be a long and hard road and they are really only just getting started.
Having once been a computer science student myself (graduated and working now) I can appreciate your point of view. However, it is my opinion that the problem has less to do with Java and more to do with the reservation of general programming language courses for the second year at the earliest and the third year of study in many universities. This means that any programming concepts which are NOT part of the language used in the introductory programming courses (i.e. Java) are likely to be poorly understood at best. This problem is inevitable to a certain degree because no ONE language includes all of the concepts and features which are taught in general course on programming languages and it would be difficult to appreciate them in any case without at least some concrete basis, however imperfect or incomplete that basis may be, for comparison.
IMHO, rather than simply throwing first year CS students straight into the meat grinder of their first programming class as their first freshman course (i.e. the find who sinks and who can swim approach) the CS programs should take the time to ensure that basic general knowledge of the subject and even basic computer usage skills are present. Most of these kids grew up in a Windows GUI world without knowledge of Unix, command line, or even basically how their computer works so it should not be assumed that they all begin their first year ready to dive straight into their first course on Java programming. Perhaps an increase from four (4) years to five (5) as in many other engineering disciplines would allow enough additional time to ensure the proper progression of CS students through their course of study...just my two cents worth.
BTW: If they don't know these things (i.e. pointers and memory management) now, they will have a chance to learn when the get their first real work assignments. The really good stuff that you need to work in the industry isn't taught in CS programs anyway, the CS program simply prepares you to go out and learn the necessary details on your own time.
Alright, but name me one marketing company or division that wouldn't do exactly the same thing if they thought that it would make them money and it wasn't strictly speaking illegal? All marketers are shameless about buzzwords when it comes to making money, whether they are true or not is irrelevant to them.
So we use a radar guided missile defense system instead. Most commercial airliners are decidedly NON stealthy and would have an enormous radar cross section, it would be like hitting the broad side of a barn. The radar guided missiles, even older ones, could hardly miss a commercial airliner in a hijacking and shoot down situation.
MOD THE PARENT UP
The guidance package in IR missiles is taking direct heat inputs from the external environment, perhaps with processing and filtering of signals first or perhaps without (i.e proportional signals, converted directly to electrical current, are amplified to directly drive the electro-mechanical servos on the missile stabilizer fins), but regardless the laser is interpreted as a potential input signal from the target. There is no simple AND reliable way to detect that the laser input is part of a defense or countermeasure and not legitimate data from the target (say engine heat) or at least not without varying degrees of uncertainty. It might be possible to combine other systems in the missile, ultraviolet or optical for example, to do differential analysis and better separate out false signals but that probably wouldn't be very simple to do compared to basic IR tracking of the type that would be vulnerable to this countermeasure.
You seem to argue that if the evidence is true (perhaps merely convincing?) or appears to be factual in nature then the ends (i.e finding the truth and convicting or acquitting) justify the means of collection and that is the point upon which I strongly disagree. It is fortunate for both you and I that we do not live in a country where "the ends justify the means" when it comes to collection a presentation of evidence in court. The founding fathers recognized the dangers of "the ends justify the means" and put language into the Constitution to provide protections against collection of evidence "by any and all means necessary", even when that evidence may be the deciding factor in securing a conviction.
Finally, some laws really are stupid and should be changed, but the appropriate venue for such agitation is the legislature and the ballot box, and not the generally courts (unless the law itself is argued to be unconstitutional).
How about getting into the concert support and staging business (i.e. setting up the venues, managing the production, selling the tickets, and all of the other stuff associated with that business) on a world wide scale? Perhaps, developing their own download service or at least cutting a deal with iTunes (some additional profit is better than no additional profit if you are in the business anyway). If none of these things are profitable enough to justify continuing a large scale global music label then I would recommend to the board that the company be liquidated and the value returned to the shareholders or the whoever the owners are. There is nothing wrong with getting out of an unprofitable business. Sometimes as an investor or an owner, you have to know when it is time to quit and move on to greener pastures instead of riding the sinking ship all the way to the bottom, destroying recoverable value at every step along the way.
but I seem to remember it was MS who made you pay for an MSDN subscription
You only have to pay if you want to use their Products in your development (i.e servers, office, etc...) which you would have to do anyway, with either Apple OR Microsoft, because they are both closed source products and they don't generally give away licenses for free. However, the developer documentation, articles, and many free tools have always been available free of charge on the MSDN website for the last ten (10) years at least. I have looked at the developer information available via the Apple site and I have to say that the MSDN website, newsgroups, and blogs have more information that is more freely available. I have never heard anyone, even those who profess to be anti-Microsoft, argue that Apple has better or more complete developer support on their site than what is available on MSDN for free .
the cheapest way to get the dev-tools
They used to be pay only (at least for the full IDE w/debugger), but there have been completely free versions of very capable IDEs available for years now (Visual Studio Express). I took my first programming course on MAC Performa 570s back in the late 1990s and they were running CodeWarrior as I recall (which was also pay and not cheap). There were probably free versions of command line c compilers for both MAC and Windows back in those days, but they were probably no frills (i.e. bring your own text editor and debugger).
and all the proprietary servers and drivers you needed to actually do something useful.
Not sure about this one, the C API calls for all that you might want to do, along with headers were available without paying (although you would have been limited to the command line compiler + text editor again if you didn't want to pay for an IDE). The Apple drivers are just as proprietary as the Microsoft drivers so I don't see how Apple scores any points here.
whereas Apple gave away their (full, professional) developer tools.
There are so few companies out there doing professional Apple development that I cannot profess to have ever meet a native Apple developer in the flesh (although I suppose they do exist). However, I wonder how their tool use stacked up with other third party tools that were available. I got the impression, working on macs in my college days (where there were a few professors who used them for other work), that many Mac developers used CodeWarrior instead of whatever tools were native. It is funny, I have heard of just about every third party IDE and programming tool there is, barring the really obscure stuff, but I have never heard the native Apple tools mentioned, even in the context of Mac development, by name. Perhaps there is a reason for this? I don't know.
Can you get a Zune development kit ? Maybe you can, but I've never heard of one. If you can, will it come with a hefty price tag ?
Don't know, but who cares? How many people actually bought Zune? Maybe Steve Ballmer and his immediate family?
Ok, let's look at attitude: Apple have an open-source kernel
for many years MacOS was as proprietary as can be (although Windows wasn't any better). They both release the source code under different licenses now with strings attached, but who really cares about the kernel other than kernel and maybe driver developers? The best kernel is the one that does its job, but is otherwise reliable and unobtrusive. I don't know about you, but I really couldn't care less about the kernel as long as the APIs provided by the OS give my programs the services I want.
As for attitude Apple and Microsoft are corporations, they don't have 'attitudes' (even though their marketing people might want you to believe otherwise). They exist to ultimately provide value for their shareholders, that is it and that is all.
What's MS done recently - can you imagine internet-