I don't understand the position of the equipment makers in this objection
If ISP's aren't allowed to mess with the traffic, then they won't need any new equipment that enables them to filter / shape / drop / eavesdrop / modify the data packets involved.
Okay, but the question is what does that mean? If it just means 128-bit operations or registers, then that's been around since the original SSE. If it means 128-bit addressing (like it usually does), then who the fuck is making those chips and why?
Perhaps MS would rather spend some resources making their OS ready NOW and be/stay on top of it, instead of accumulating another 10 years of additional cruft first and THEN try to shoehorn everything in there all at once? The more legacy dependencies they have to deal with, the harder it will be, after all.
Consider Apple -- they had Intel ports of OS X ready for years internally, which would be irrelevant to their (at the time) PPC offerings... But when the market outlook changed and they wanted to switch architectures, it meant that they were prepared and ready for it.
I'm sure Microsoft isn't planning on becoming obsolete any time soon...
Can anyone explain what is a C in the US in the percentile range? Is this synonymous with miserable failure? What about the reputation of Monroe College?
A 'c' encompasses a range of scores - the GPA (Grade Point Average) is more telling.
The highest GPA you can get (with 100% marks on everything) is 4.0.
The national average GPA for college graduates is 3.2 (according to a quick google search)
She got a 2.7, which while not horribly bad, definitely puts her below average.
What makes me wonder tho, is the IE removed after installing another browser?
They've said (when announcing the 'E' versions) that it would not come with the browser front-end, but that the back-end rendering engine would still be there since so many other applications depend on it. So I guess it's more hidden than actually removed.
But Windows 7? WHY THE FUCK do we need 32-bit versions of Windows 7?
At the launch of Vista, MS stated that it would be the last 32-bit OS and that the next one would be 64-bit only.
Now fast-forward a little, and observe the dismal marketing failure that Vista turned into - for a big part thanks to application incompatibilities and the lack of drivers for many hardware components out on the market. To the average Joe, Vista == problems, especially thanks to all the media attention it received over these issues.
Microsoft absolutely cannot afford another disaster from a PR point of view, so they need Windows 7 to be an overwhelming success. If Joe Public gets disenfranchised enough with windows to start looking at alternatives, then it's the beginning orf the end for MS, and they'll do everything in their power to keep that from happening.
Removing 32-bit altogether at this stage would be a major speedbump in that process (there's still a lot of hardware that only has 32-bit vista drivers available, and older programs that don't function properly under 64 bit)
More than likely Windows 7 will be last 32-bit release, though. The more time passes, the more peripherals without 64 bit drivers will be out of servers, and the more old software will have been replaced by new programs -- it will become less of an issue in a few years than it would be now.
To begin with, every NT-lineage Windows version ever produced supports software RAID out of the box.
Except that it doesn't, really -- Even under vista Business x64 you can't create a software RAID device, you'll either need the Ultimate/Enterprise edition, or Windows Server.
... would I want to buy something the size of a netbook, for more money than a netbook, that only does 1/100th the things a netbook will do?
e-ink.
Seriously, in direct sunlight it completely blows any laptop screen out of the water. It's not even close. Plus since there is no active lighting, it is extremely easy on the eyes. Looking at computer screens for any prolonged amount of time leads to eye strain, which is not the case with e-ink displays -- it really does feel the same as reading a normal book.
Aside from the readability, most e-Readers don't use any power unless you change the screen -- the Sony PRS-505 is rated for 7,500 *page changes* on a single battery charge (750Mah), but depending on how long you actually look at each page that can translate to weeks of runtime. Good luck trying that with a laptop or netbook.
Besides, the e-readers are significantly smaller than Netbooks. For example:
The ASUS eeePC 701 claims to be the smallest netbook available. It's 6.5 x 8.9 x 1.4 inches.
The Sony PRS-505 e-Reader is 6.9 x 4.8 x 0.3 inches. That's almost half the surface area, and less than a quarter of the thickness.
I bit the bullet some time last years and bought one myself. Best purchase I ever made...
Anyway: In my mind you really shouldn't be comparing the eReaders with a laptop replacement, but with a book replacement. Current laptops simply aren't a viable substitute: The big power requirements, and massive eyestrain induced by the current generation of displays don't even put it in the same ballpark. I wouldn't even consider reading an entire book on my laptop, but have no problem at all doing it on an eReader: it's smaller, extremely portable (easily fits in a pocket), can run a VERY long time on a single charge, and is very easy on the eyes.
At the same time, it beats old-fashioned paper books: You can carry hundreds of books on a single SD card, which makes it great when traveling on airplanes. It remembers exactly where you last left off in any number of books. You can adjust the fontsize up or down so you're not stuck with whatever size the publisher deemed best. To me, it's the best of both worlds.
That said: Should the industry ever manage to speed up e-ink display technology significantly from the current ~half-second refresh rate to >10FPS or more, I'd wager that it would make an absolutely killer laptop screen for people that need to work outside... Visually there really is no comparison between e-ink and LCD/TFT... I'd gladly settle for black-and-white as long as the readability and refreshrate is there...
- Most heating and cooking is done in natural gas and not electric in the Netherlands
- Holland has a more moderate climate, which means that pretty much no households own and operate airconditioners
- And for those houses that do use electricity for heating: Most dutch houses are rowhouses, which conserve a bunch of energy since on two sides your house is isolated by the neigboring house instead of open to the elements
In all that, you don't actually manage to say _what_ is wrong with the breadcrumb bar. Ie: *why* is it not "quick and efficient" ? The "breadcrumb bar" offers a superset of the functionality in earlier Windows versions (as is typical with Windows UI changes). What's the problem ?
Three problems that I keep running into with the breadcrumbs:
- The location to click on to to up a level is variable, rather than a single button that's always in the same place regardless of the length of your folder names.
- In older windows versions, the 'up' button is visually much more distinct, which is a plus for people with poor eyesight
- If you have a small window with a long folder name, there is no prior folder visible to click on. Instead you have to navigate to a pull-down menu and find it in there, rather than just a single click.
I understand some of the advantages, but I really, really wish that Microsoft had simply implemented both the breadcrumbs while leaving the up button in place as well, or at least gave you the option to add it back in.
There's a cheap 3rd party add-on called Mavis Upbutton that will restore the up button in windows explorer, but unfortunately I found it to be unstable. (when I was testing it it occasionally crashed my explorer window... too bad, really, because if it wasn't for those issues I'd been more than happy to pay a few bucks to restore that functionality again)
Except you're assuming that XP continues to be an option -- Do you honestly expect microsoft to continue to offer XP to those OEMs for any length of time once Windows 7 hits the streets?
I'm fully expecting for them to either discontinue the XP line altogether, or make it more expensive than the Windows 7 version.
Of course there's brand loyalty, but that only goes so far -- Apple's real problem is that they have no real middle-of-the-road models available. You can pick between 'cheap but underpowered' (imac) and the 'great but expensive' (Macbook, etc.) with not much middle-of-the-road.
The high-end macs have the design going for them, but really not that much from a technical point of view. It won't be hard for a generic PC manufacturer to put together a configuration that competes with the high-end models at a mid-range price. Once that happens, Apple will feel it, at least until they release something that's competitively price in the mid-segment themselves.
Sure, all things being equal most people probably would pick the Apple-branded one... But how many hundreds of dollars are you really to pay extra for a shiney apple logo? It won't take much for a knock-off to start looking appealing, especially in the middle of an economic recession.
What are Steam tech support going to do for me over the phone when I don't have an internet connection? Provide me with a way to force Steam into Offline mode when it doesn't want to, i.e. a way of avoiding the DRM? Unlikely
Even if you know that they won't be able to do anything about it -- each and every phonecall by a paying customer complaining that their program screwed up, is one more chance that they suits notice that things aren't working smoothly. Over time, this can lead to changes such as extending the grace periods if nothing else.
If you don't TELL that things didn't work and that you're annoyed, then things will never change.
How long until the first trojan comes along that password-protects your drive for you with a random password, irrevocably locking you out? 'Universal' interfaces can have drawbacks as well.
This sounds like one of those things that have a few potential nice features, but can also turn into a big can of worms. Good luck explaining to grandma why there's no way she can get any of her files back, even though technically they're still there.
Don't have any ISO's to test right now, anyone know if it lets you mount them, or a 3rd party solution that works?
Under Windows Vista 64-bit you can use the 64-bit version of Daemontools that lets you mount ISO's -- I'd assume that would still work under Windows 7 since there are few structural changes between it and Vista.
Personally I can't count the times I've accidentally typed.cmo instead of.com after a URL
I bet that with an everyone-can-create-their-own-TLD scheme it won't be long before less-than-reputable outfits register a.cmo (com) or.rog (org) TLD. If you own the entire TLD you just basically typo-squatted every major website on the planet.
Or worse than just being another adfarm, the owner could even serve custom content for ebay.cmo , amazon.cmo, bankofamerica.cmo , etc, and many visitors will be none the wiser until it's too late. Sounds like a pretty big can of worms.
More to consider in this area: if your physical media gets scratched up and becomes unplayable, I've never heard of a studio/distributor offering a way to replace the bad physical disc for a new one at a trivial cost -- you just lose the ability to play your 'licensed' media on the bad disc.
That by itself seems to point that the studios consider the disc itself to be the product, and instead of you purchasing a license to play its contents.
Frequently, we'd be asked to fix software woes, etc. We'd warn about the risks of software problems, possible loss of data, offer to backup their data first, and we'd even make them sign release forms that they did NOT want us to back up the data And then we'd back up the data anyway, routinely. We used a backpack drive that was big enough to keep a dozen or so drive images on it. (parallel port drive with a driver loaded by floppy or CD - this is before USB was common)
So, let me get this straight: After they explicitely told you not you, you copied their private data anyway and stored it for your own potential financial benefit later on?
And lying about it too by charging them extra for your expertise 'recovery' rather than the standard 'restore a backup' fee.
To make matters worse: by restoring the backup you may have made matters worse for your customer since you just overwrite potentially recoverable files with older versions of themselves, pretty much guaranteeing that they lost work.
This is wrong at so many levels. You may have thought you were protecting people from themselves, but you probably broke at least half a dozen laws in the process...
What about the hoop of "developer must be a company with office space, not an individual" and the hoop of "in order to get your app signed, you have to pay the platform owner four figures to test it thoroughly"?
Enforcing that would absolutely massacre the PC platform, since you also prohibit the hundreds of thousands of people who program useful utilities, tools, applications and games for fun and spread them for free. Just because someone writes a game in his bedroom at night and releases it for free doesn't make it malicious software. The whole point of having a general purpose PC is that you can basically install 'everything' you want/need/like.
If the world at large was truly waiting for closed, secure, trusted, authorized-payware-only platform, we've have locked down 'office appliances' everywhere a long time ago. The fact that you don't see any seems to indicate that there is no viable market for them. (Although in some small ways things to seem to inch this way: For example, under 64-bit Vista you can only install signed drivers, but I for one certainly hope that we a re a VERY long way of from enforcing the same restructions on actuall applications)
Anyway, just because some people try to scam others into loading malicious software doesn't means that everyone should have to suffer the 'fix' -- it just means that the scammers need to be dealt with, just like they would if they were standing on a streetcorner trying to scam others.
Analogy time: Hey, if you go outside, someone could harm you! Lets force everyone to stay in their own house at all times unless they are a properly registered and payed their "I can afford 4 figures"-tax. Equally ridiculous.
You can't lock out the primary user of a home computer from installing programs. No matter how many hoops you have to jump through (excplicitely authorize, enter password, etc.) there are still a ton of people that will jump through all the hoops and still end up with the garbage installed.
After all, keep in mind that there were a million people that were esentially tricked into pulling out their creditcard and paying money to these people. Removing admin rights and having to enter a sudo password before they can install the malware in question still doesn't change the fact that they honestly thought they 'needed' to install the program in question in the first place.
You can only do so much to protect people from themselves, and in cases like there there isn't much you can do other than prosecute / sue the snot out of the companies doing the malicious advertising and unfounded scaremongering.
...Durability.
Also, since the fabric ovviously stretches and such when opening the doors (looking at the video), I'd wonder how long it would keep its original shape, before it would stretch and start flapping & making noise when you're driving down the freeway.
Not to mention that someone could rip up the entire 'skin' when keying your car, and a dab of paint won't be enough to fix that.
I suppose this is true. I think it's partially because of becoming desensitized and not allowing it to affect onself too much because of the flood of these messages. Numbers also are meaningless to many; if one would report 3000 people being killed, noone would react. If one would give 1 person a face (documentary, reportage,...) people would feel affected and connected. (disgust, confusion, empathy,... depending on what's being brought across.)
"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." -- Joseph Stalin
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I don't understand the position of the equipment makers in this objection
If ISP's aren't allowed to mess with the traffic, then they won't need any new equipment that enables them to filter / shape / drop / eavesdrop / modify the data packets involved.
Okay, but the question is what does that mean? If it just means 128-bit operations or registers, then that's been around since the original SSE. If it means 128-bit addressing (like it usually does), then who the fuck is making those chips and why?
Perhaps MS would rather spend some resources making their OS ready NOW and be/stay on top of it, instead of accumulating another 10 years of additional cruft first and THEN try to shoehorn everything in there all at once? The more legacy dependencies they have to deal with, the harder it will be, after all.
Consider Apple -- they had Intel ports of OS X ready for years internally, which would be irrelevant to their (at the time) PPC offerings... But when the market outlook changed and they wanted to switch architectures, it meant that they were prepared and ready for it.
I'm sure Microsoft isn't planning on becoming obsolete any time soon...
Can anyone explain what is a C in the US in the percentile range? Is this synonymous with miserable failure? What about the reputation of Monroe College?
A 'c' encompasses a range of scores - the GPA (Grade Point Average) is more telling.
The highest GPA you can get (with 100% marks on everything) is 4.0.
The national average GPA for college graduates is 3.2 (according to a quick google search)
She got a 2.7, which while not horribly bad, definitely puts her below average.
Never heard of Monroe college.
What makes me wonder tho, is the IE removed after installing another browser?
They've said (when announcing the 'E' versions) that it would not come with the browser front-end, but that the back-end rendering engine would still be there since so many other applications depend on it. So I guess it's more hidden than actually removed.
But Windows 7? WHY THE FUCK do we need 32-bit versions of Windows 7?
At the launch of Vista, MS stated that it would be the last 32-bit OS and that the next one would be 64-bit only.
Now fast-forward a little, and observe the dismal marketing failure that Vista turned into - for a big part thanks to application incompatibilities and the lack of drivers for many hardware components out on the market. To the average Joe, Vista == problems, especially thanks to all the media attention it received over these issues.
Microsoft absolutely cannot afford another disaster from a PR point of view, so they need Windows 7 to be an overwhelming success. If Joe Public gets disenfranchised enough with windows to start looking at alternatives, then it's the beginning orf the end for MS, and they'll do everything in their power to keep that from happening.
Removing 32-bit altogether at this stage would be a major speedbump in that process (there's still a lot of hardware that only has 32-bit vista drivers available, and older programs that don't function properly under 64 bit)
More than likely Windows 7 will be last 32-bit release, though. The more time passes, the more peripherals without 64 bit drivers will be out of servers, and the more old software will have been replaced by new programs -- it will become less of an issue in a few years than it would be now.
To begin with, every NT-lineage Windows version ever produced supports software RAID out of the box.
Except that it doesn't, really -- Even under vista Business x64 you can't create a software RAID device, you'll either need the Ultimate/Enterprise edition, or Windows Server.
... would I want to buy something the size of a netbook, for more money than a netbook, that only does 1/100th the things a netbook will do?
e-ink.
Seriously, in direct sunlight it completely blows any laptop screen out of the water. It's not even close. Plus since there is no active lighting, it is extremely easy on the eyes. Looking at computer screens for any prolonged amount of time leads to eye strain, which is not the case with e-ink displays -- it really does feel the same as reading a normal book.
Aside from the readability, most e-Readers don't use any power unless you change the screen -- the Sony PRS-505 is rated for 7,500 *page changes* on a single battery charge (750Mah), but depending on how long you actually look at each page that can translate to weeks of runtime. Good luck trying that with a laptop or netbook.
Besides, the e-readers are significantly smaller than Netbooks. For example:
The ASUS eeePC 701 claims to be the smallest netbook available. It's 6.5 x 8.9 x 1.4 inches. The Sony PRS-505 e-Reader is 6.9 x 4.8 x 0.3 inches.
That's almost half the surface area, and less than a quarter of the thickness.
I bit the bullet some time last years and bought one myself. Best purchase I ever made...
Anyway: In my mind you really shouldn't be comparing the eReaders with a laptop replacement, but with a book replacement. Current laptops simply aren't a viable substitute: The big power requirements, and massive eyestrain induced by the current generation of displays don't even put it in the same ballpark. I wouldn't even consider reading an entire book on my laptop, but have no problem at all doing it on an eReader: it's smaller, extremely portable (easily fits in a pocket), can run a VERY long time on a single charge, and is very easy on the eyes.
At the same time, it beats old-fashioned paper books: You can carry hundreds of books on a single SD card, which makes it great when traveling on airplanes. It remembers exactly where you last left off in any number of books. You can adjust the fontsize up or down so you're not stuck with whatever size the publisher deemed best. To me, it's the best of both worlds.
That said: Should the industry ever manage to speed up e-ink display technology significantly from the current ~half-second refresh rate to >10FPS or more, I'd wager that it would make an absolutely killer laptop screen for people that need to work outside... Visually there really is no comparison between e-ink and LCD/TFT... I'd gladly settle for black-and-white as long as the readability and refreshrate is there...
When the navy puts windows on their ships.
...Windows for Warships, anyone?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/windows_boxes_at_sea
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/26/149209
Other reasons for this difference:
- Most heating and cooking is done in natural gas and not electric in the Netherlands
- Holland has a more moderate climate, which means that pretty much no households own and operate airconditioners
- And for those houses that do use electricity for heating: Most dutch houses are rowhouses, which conserve a bunch of energy since on two sides your house is isolated by the neigboring house instead of open to the elements
My favorite, from many years ago:
"How to attract men with large breasts"
(spamvertising breast augmentation pills)
In all that, you don't actually manage to say _what_ is wrong with the breadcrumb bar. Ie: *why* is it not "quick and efficient" ? The "breadcrumb bar" offers a superset of the functionality in earlier Windows versions (as is typical with Windows UI changes). What's the problem ?
Three problems that I keep running into with the breadcrumbs:
- The location to click on to to up a level is variable, rather than a single button that's always in the same place regardless of the length of your folder names.
- In older windows versions, the 'up' button is visually much more distinct, which is a plus for people with poor eyesight - If you have a small window with a long folder name, there is no prior folder visible to click on. Instead you have to navigate to a pull-down menu and find it in there, rather than just a single click.
I understand some of the advantages, but I really, really wish that Microsoft had simply implemented both the breadcrumbs while leaving the up button in place as well, or at least gave you the option to add it back in.
There's a cheap 3rd party add-on called Mavis Upbutton that will restore the up button in windows explorer, but unfortunately I found it to be unstable. (when I was testing it it occasionally crashed my explorer window... too bad, really, because if it wasn't for those issues I'd been more than happy to pay a few bucks to restore that functionality again)
Except you're assuming that XP continues to be an option -- Do you honestly expect microsoft to continue to offer XP to those OEMs for any length of time once Windows 7 hits the streets? I'm fully expecting for them to either discontinue the XP line altogether, or make it more expensive than the Windows 7 version.
Of course there's brand loyalty, but that only goes so far -- Apple's real problem is that they have no real middle-of-the-road models available. You can pick between 'cheap but underpowered' (imac) and the 'great but expensive' (Macbook, etc.) with not much middle-of-the-road.
The high-end macs have the design going for them, but really not that much from a technical point of view. It won't be hard for a generic PC manufacturer to put together a configuration that competes with the high-end models at a mid-range price. Once that happens, Apple will feel it, at least until they release something that's competitively price in the mid-segment themselves.
Sure, all things being equal most people probably would pick the Apple-branded one... But how many hundreds of dollars are you really to pay extra for a shiney apple logo? It won't take much for a knock-off to start looking appealing, especially in the middle of an economic recession.
You realize patents only last 20 years, right? Some of those "vital" x86 components must have expired or be pretty close.
The x64 stuff won't be for many years... Which is pretty much a neccesity to make a CPU commercially viable these days.
What are Steam tech support going to do for me over the phone when I don't have an internet connection? Provide me with a way to force Steam into Offline mode when it doesn't want to, i.e. a way of avoiding the DRM? Unlikely
Even if you know that they won't be able to do anything about it -- each and every phonecall by a paying customer complaining that their program screwed up, is one more chance that they suits notice that things aren't working smoothly. Over time, this can lead to changes such as extending the grace periods if nothing else.
If you don't TELL that things didn't work and that you're annoyed, then things will never change.
How long until the first trojan comes along that password-protects your drive for you with a random password, irrevocably locking you out? 'Universal' interfaces can have drawbacks as well.
This sounds like one of those things that have a few potential nice features, but can also turn into a big can of worms. Good luck explaining to grandma why there's no way she can get any of her files back, even though technically they're still there.
Don't have any ISO's to test right now, anyone know if it lets you mount them, or a 3rd party solution that works?
Under Windows Vista 64-bit you can use the 64-bit version of Daemontools that lets you mount ISO's -- I'd assume that would still work under Windows 7 since there are few structural changes between it and Vista.
Personally I can't count the times I've accidentally typed .cmo instead of .com after a URL
.cmo (com) or .rog (org) TLD. If you own the entire TLD you just basically typo-squatted every major website on the planet.
I bet that with an everyone-can-create-their-own-TLD scheme it won't be long before less-than-reputable outfits register a
Or worse than just being another adfarm, the owner could even serve custom content for ebay.cmo , amazon.cmo, bankofamerica.cmo , etc, and many visitors will be none the wiser until it's too late. Sounds like a pretty big can of worms.
More to consider in this area: if your physical media gets scratched up and becomes unplayable, I've never heard of a studio/distributor offering a way to replace the bad physical disc for a new one at a trivial cost -- you just lose the ability to play your 'licensed' media on the bad disc.
That by itself seems to point that the studios consider the disc itself to be the product, and instead of you purchasing a license to play its contents.
Frequently, we'd be asked to fix software woes, etc. We'd warn about the risks of software problems, possible loss of data, offer to backup their data first, and we'd even make them sign release forms that they did NOT want us to back up the data And then we'd back up the data anyway, routinely. We used a backpack drive that was big enough to keep a dozen or so drive images on it. (parallel port drive with a driver loaded by floppy or CD - this is before USB was common)
So, let me get this straight: After they explicitely told you not you, you copied their private data anyway and stored it for your own potential financial benefit later on?
And lying about it too by charging them extra for your expertise 'recovery' rather than the standard 'restore a backup' fee.
To make matters worse: by restoring the backup you may have made matters worse for your customer since you just overwrite potentially recoverable files with older versions of themselves, pretty much guaranteeing that they lost work.
This is wrong at so many levels. You may have thought you were protecting people from themselves, but you probably broke at least half a dozen laws in the process...
What about the hoop of "developer must be a company with office space, not an individual" and the hoop of "in order to get your app signed, you have to pay the platform owner four figures to test it thoroughly"?
Enforcing that would absolutely massacre the PC platform, since you also prohibit the hundreds of thousands of people who program useful utilities, tools, applications and games for fun and spread them for free. Just because someone writes a game in his bedroom at night and releases it for free doesn't make it malicious software. The whole point of having a general purpose PC is that you can basically install 'everything' you want/need/like.
If the world at large was truly waiting for closed, secure, trusted, authorized-payware-only platform, we've have locked down 'office appliances' everywhere a long time ago. The fact that you don't see any seems to indicate that there is no viable market for them. (Although in some small ways things to seem to inch this way: For example, under 64-bit Vista you can only install signed drivers, but I for one certainly hope that we a re a VERY long way of from enforcing the same restructions on actuall applications)
Anyway, just because some people try to scam others into loading malicious software doesn't means that everyone should have to suffer the 'fix' -- it just means that the scammers need to be dealt with, just like they would if they were standing on a streetcorner trying to scam others.
Analogy time: Hey, if you go outside, someone could harm you! Lets force everyone to stay in their own house at all times unless they are a properly registered and payed their "I can afford 4 figures"-tax. Equally ridiculous.
You can't lock out the primary user of a home computer from installing programs. No matter how many hoops you have to jump through (excplicitely authorize, enter password, etc.) there are still a ton of people that will jump through all the hoops and still end up with the garbage installed.
After all, keep in mind that there were a million people that were esentially tricked into pulling out their creditcard and paying money to these people. Removing admin rights and having to enter a sudo password before they can install the malware in question still doesn't change the fact that they honestly thought they 'needed' to install the program in question in the first place.
You can only do so much to protect people from themselves, and in cases like there there isn't much you can do other than prosecute / sue the snot out of the companies doing the malicious advertising and unfounded scaremongering.
...why doesn't she just change her phone number?!
<officespace>
Why should I change my name?! He's the one that sucks!
</officespace>
...Durability. Also, since the fabric ovviously stretches and such when opening the doors (looking at the video), I'd wonder how long it would keep its original shape, before it would stretch and start flapping & making noise when you're driving down the freeway. Not to mention that someone could rip up the entire 'skin' when keying your car, and a dab of paint won't be enough to fix that.
I suppose this is true. I think it's partially because of becoming desensitized and not allowing it to affect onself too much because of the flood of these messages. Numbers also are meaningless to many; if one would report 3000 people being killed, noone would react. If one would give 1 person a face (documentary, reportage, ...) people would feel affected and connected. (disgust, confusion, empathy, ... depending on what's being brought across.)
"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." -- Joseph Stalin