No, this is more proof that you just don't really understand what Tom was about. Tolkien originally wrote of him many years prior as a 'Green Man', i.e. man of the woods in a volume of poetry. In it, Bombadil exerted rather absurd amounts of power over the world, much as he does in LotR. Later, writing LotR, Tollkien included him for the simple reason that he doesn't clearly fit in the mythos of the world: he's not a living thing (since Treebeard is referred to as the Oldest Living thing), and he's not an maia, so much discussion was whether he was the Creator (although Tolkien specifically refuted this). The point is, he's unknown. He's there to remind you that we never have a full grasp of what's going on, and that's something that admittedly wouldn't translate easily to a movie but still has significant value.
Ugh, iPods are NOT glued shut! You can open them quite easily with a thin flat object (i.e. the plastic spatulas you'll get with any of the variety of replacement batteries on the market).
I haven't read the article yet, but my first thought when I read the blurb was whether or not this would have applications for prosthetics?
One of the most difficult parts of rehabilitation for amputees, even with the most expensive and advanced prosthesis, is that the most sensitivity available nowadays is a highly generalied "touching something/not touching something" or a translation of general amounts of pressure (and thats only on the most advanced: most models have no sensors at all). If we could provide amputees with limbs that felt, albeit in a much reduced fashion, many behaviors that require positive feedback (i.e. to be able to adjust your movements based on what you feel in that limb) could become accesible for the disabled.
Actually, you do receive software updates over the satellite connection. How do I know? Because my hacked DirecTivo which isn't plugged into a phone line at all (and has a hack running to prevent the 'call home' to give statistics and report what OS its using) just downloaded the latest update this weekend. It hasn't installed it - another hack, since that would wipe out all my extra software - but its there.
I'm pretty postive that there is no verified example of silicon based life. Rather, due to the chemical similarities between carbon and silicon it is speculated that life (as we know it) could have or could in the future evolve based on silicon rather than carbon.
This is not a limitation of the viewpoint, but rather an acknowledgement of our intrinsically limited conception of life: life which we will recognize as being life must have certain characteristics to differentiate from..."not life", and it those characteristics hinge on certain chemical processes.
I'm not sure if its worth mentioning, but the old line that "the theory 'eye for an eye' leaves us all blind" is still largely true. More disturbingly, it suggests that rehabilitation is completely impossible.
Yeah, I know about the 30-sec skip. If you hack your Tivo (either through killing the initrd or modifying your physical prom) you can install all sorts of stuff, including scripts: many people alter their startup script to include the 30 sec skip. I dont employ it however, since I find it so convenient to just use FF.
Here's the thing, I've got a Hughes DVR40 that I've hacked to allow both a larger HD (120 instead of the stock 40 gigs) and a variety of network stuff (like extraction). You can do all this, leaving your original drive untouched meaning if you have a problem you're free to reinstall the original before calling tech support. As such, and considering the low level of work [esp. for a/. reader] to do these hacks, the ReplayTV is barely advantageous.
As for the commercials...the stock fast-forward command on the Tivo has three speeds; if I click to the second speed, it takes about 1-2 seconds on average to get through a block of commercials. Moreover, when you hit play after noticing that your show began again, it understands that you react a split second after seeing the show, so it actually rewinds a bit (and it may be looking for a black screen, I'm not sure). As such, its had a rate of well of 99% correctly jumping RIGHT to after the commercial break. I have a hard time believing the ReplayTV option is much better...
Its worth noting that Minidisc is still an extremely popular success story in the UK and Japan. Basically, the only marketed area where they failed is the US.
I had one for the first three years of college, and loved it: I could toss MDs in my bag without worrying about scratching, and it was a quarter of the size of a CD player. That said, I now worship my ipod as a deity.
You're missing the even more subtle joke: the episode says "...this kentucky/missouri family..." referring to their quote-unquote real life status, not the characters they supposedly portray in the show.
Remember, the show essentially posited that its not animated, but rather enacted by a real family. As such, wherever the 'real' family is located/from, the show they act in may be in a different location.
You missed the reference. You thought the parent poster was referring to Atlantis, the animated movie which (as you mention) was a total rip of a decent anime. Rather, the parent was referring to Stargate: Atlantis. (at least, thats what I think, heh)
The answer to that question, frankly, is of extreme dispute. In fact, it points to [one of] the key problem[s] in relativity, since theory doesn't properly predict what happens there (in particular, when the singularity - not the black hole - decreases below the planck distance, it is impossible to discuss what occurs). Both quantum mechanics and string theory [in their various forms] have some description[s] of what occurs though. I'd recomend starting with the perenially recommended "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, followed by "The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos", both by Brian Greene for explanations in detail of these subjects.
Your information about black holes is certainly correct. However, my post was about singularities in response to the grandparent post about singularities. As such, what I posted was accurate.
It is standardly accepted math that a divide-by-zero is absurd but the following is true:
Given the numbers n,m, then for any value of n, as m approaches zero, n/m approaches infinity. As such, this is strictly speaking an asymptopic problem, but it is reasonable to say that a zero volume object with a non-zero mass has functionally infinite density.
Actually, you're mistaken. It has infinite density not mass: theoretically a simple singularity has zero volume, thus its density is whatever its mass M is, divided by zero. That results in an infinity (and is why, actually, its called a singularity, a math term).
Moreover, there are no simple singularities, even in theoretical GR. According to Kerr, it can be demonstrated that all black holes [if they exist] have a "ring singularity" at their core, not a point singularity. The reason is simple: black holes rotate. If you have a point singularity w/ zero volume, there is no means to differentiate a rotating body versus a non-rotating body. Mathematically and conceptually, Kerr demonstrated that this means that singularities actually distort into a zero-thickness torus called a ring singularity (with its plane lying on the plane of rotation of the black hole). Inside the ring, it seems, there would be a tear. This was even realized by Einstein, and is the birth of the concept of an Einstein-Rosen bridge (and the subsequent dialog about wormholes/white holes).
The casimir effect cannot exist, as I understand it, on large scales like that. Its a force that results from the interesting effects of bringing two conductive surfaces so close to one another that only certain wavelengths of virtual parties can exist between the plates, whereas all wavelengths exist on the other sides of the plates. As a result, there is vacuum pressure pushing the plates together.
Its worth mentioning that yes, this could be used to extract energy from the vacuum, although no one has figured out (a) how to do this on a large enough scale to be useful and (b) whether it would take more energy to position the plates than you could extract (see below).
Logically, the energy to seperate the plates from one another should equal the energy gained by their collapse together due to vacuum pressure, so that should mean this is no net-gain.
This is a quibble, but I understood CODEC as "COmpression/DECompression" method, since the issue here is not encoding (i.e. encryption) but rather compression of the data stream.
The ambiguity here is that while they fail to actually discuss the IPO, they go into quite a bit of detail about the history of the company, their goals, etc. In other words, its a peice that really does advertise Google. Personally, I'm not a lawyer but I think this was a poor choice on Google's part.
Incidentally, I didn't buy Playboy, but rather heard the facts as they were presented on NPR this afternoon. Not that there's anything wrong with porn - far from it - but Playboy is beyond a waste of money. If you're going to get porn, get real porn; same thing for tech magazines.
"Just out of curiousity. Which philophers argue that revenge is a valid reason for punishment? I would argue against those philosophers as I will argue now against you."
Offhand, I can name a few. Plato, Draco, Hamurabi and others. The pragmatists (incl. many utilitarians) such as Mill also discussed such a possibility [as vengeance being appropriate], and accepted if there could be a demonstrated increase in utility due to the vengeance. If the vengeance accomplishes deterrance, as I suggested, then it would be acceptable.
"Dismissing an argument by simply labeling it ad hominem then name-calling the arguer as being "simply contrarian" is an ad hominem argument itself, and far worse, it is ad personum."
You're completely wrong, and clearly don't understand the words you're using for several reasons: first, the phrase 'ad hominem' is an argumentative term and one of the most dangerous logical fallacies. It refers to when you attack the person without addressing the argument, which is meaningless since an argument stands on its own merits, not that of the person giving it. Second, 'ad personum' is not a phrase with similar meaning: ad personum means "on a personal basis" and refers to the method by which you determine whether someone violated a rule. Try looking up things you don't understand before using them in arguments. Third, when I called the poster "contrarian" I was not suggesting that was a flaw in the argument, but rather commenting on the apparent motivations of the person. My disagreement with their stance was based solely on my logical points.
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your points, since I don't feel any of them are anything but repetition of your claim that revenge is automatically bad. I will however mention that you again misuse a few terms: "prima facae" means "on first glance" or "without analysis", and refers to problems with a hypothesis (or claim) that are apparent without any discussion. In other words, they're points that can be made immediately, without argumentation, from the initial claim. In the way you use it, following two argumentative steps, its innapropriate. Further, you misuse the terms "cruel" and "sadistic": the former is an adjective/adverb which primarily refers to people/behaviors which are defined by a purely malicious character, while the latter is an adjective/adverb referring to people/behaviors which are defined by the character of enjoying the unrighteous suffering of others. You misuse them in the following way: a victim inflicting revenge is being neither cruel (since the revenge is not malicious, but rather extracting fair payment and punishment) nor sadistic (since, again, there is no malicious or unrighteous behavior).
What you're doing here is just being contrarian. Its always been agreed by philosophers that revenge was as potentially valid a reason for punishment as rehabilitation or protection. The reason for picking one over the other two (and of course, you needn't only pick one) is always going to be your larger overarching ethos.
You simply assume that revenge is an invalid reason, without providing any argument thereof. Worse, you call it 'absurd' to believe in vengeance, almost definately creating an ad hominem argument since you [again] haven't provided an argument.
You want a valid reason for vengeance? One is that it can be preventative, i.e. a deterrant. Obviously it cannot be in one-hundred-percent of the cases, but thats why most justice systems are hybrids [of two or three of the purposes for punishment]. Want another reason? Vengeance is capitalist: it suggests that there is a value to all things, i.e. goods and services including people and property, and that you are responsible for making retribution to the value you take from someone: if you take their hand, you deserve to pay the price you unfairly exacted from them. No one suggests that it makes everything 'even' or 'square', but rather helps appease the pain of loss for your victim[s]. Want still another? In some cases [such as literally plucking an eye out, removing a hand, or killing the criminal], the vengeance may accomplish one or both of the other goals [protection or rehabilitation] by preventing the criminal from even being capable of recommitting the crime.
Here's the thing: I'm not advocating vengeance as a purpose in justice, but rather suggesting that it is no where near as cut and dry as you want to believe.
First, TivoToGo seems to be a streaming application, akin to the current HMO features on Tivos. This means that there will [likely] never be a complete copy of the file on the computer. This of course doesn't prevent someone from developing an app to catch the stream. Good luck though.
Second, you didn't read the article: in order to play back one of the Tivo'd files, you'll need a physical dongle - a small USB tab - to provide the decryption key. That is how they limit you to nine people: only nine dongles can be tied into your Tivo's account.
Now, it should be noted that existing hacks (look for "Sleeper's ISO" for more info, to start) provide the ability to fully extract video off a Tivo (after it's been hacked somewhat), and that is what Tivo is trying to combat. In much the same way that iTunes' Music Store snagged the music-downloaders who were willing to pay a little for the convenience of (a) downloading the file quickly and (b) doing so legally, Tivo is hoping that TivoToGo will snag the people who want to view their shows in other places and do so without violating their warranty.
Do you understand that the iPod is not vendor locked? Its just that the iTMS is product-locked to the iPod. You can put MP3s, WAVs, AACs from any source on the ipod so long as they're not DRM'd in a way besides FairPlay. So all those stores have to do [to be compatible with the iPod] is not insist on some DRM (which is exactly what the whole slashdot community has been demanding of Apple anyway...).
I can guarantee you, without question, that they purchased at least one iPod over at Real, since they had to test write their software for it (requiring testing, etc.). Everyone using an iPod agreed to the software agreement involved in its use. Real is fucking screwed here, and I cannot believe they did something this dumb.
There are some companies you can piss off, and Apple isn't really one of them here.
"I believe constant use of implements to see better will continue to weaken your vision."
Two points, one anecdotal and one scientific: the first is that I personally have used contact lenses about 16 hours a day (i.e. except when I sleep) for about ten years with zero increase in my prescription; the second is that there are no studies [which I'm aware of] which indicate that your use of prescription lenses increases the rate of regression in your vision.
Its possible. Steve Jobs has repeatedly stated now that there is no 60 iPod in the release schedule (check the Newsweek article I think, but for sure its been mentioned on the news page over at ipodlounge.com).
That said though, this could simply be them saying "there is no 60 gig ipod in the release schedule any time soon", leaving it open that the Keynote in January (where they announced the minipod this year) would include the announcement of a wifi-enabled 60 gig ipod.
I have a 30 gig 3g, and while I wont be upgrading to either of the new 4gs, I'd certainly look at a wifi, 60 gig 4g.
Slashdot Mirror
No, this is more proof that you just don't really understand what Tom was about. Tolkien originally wrote of him many years prior as a 'Green Man', i.e. man of the woods in a volume of poetry. In it, Bombadil exerted rather absurd amounts of power over the world, much as he does in LotR. Later, writing LotR, Tollkien included him for the simple reason that he doesn't clearly fit in the mythos of the world: he's not a living thing (since Treebeard is referred to as the Oldest Living thing), and he's not an maia, so much discussion was whether he was the Creator (although Tolkien specifically refuted this). The point is, he's unknown. He's there to remind you that we never have a full grasp of what's going on, and that's something that admittedly wouldn't translate easily to a movie but still has significant value.
Ugh, iPods are NOT glued shut! You can open them quite easily with a thin flat object (i.e. the plastic spatulas you'll get with any of the variety of replacement batteries on the market).
I haven't read the article yet, but my first thought when I read the blurb was whether or not this would have applications for prosthetics?
One of the most difficult parts of rehabilitation for amputees, even with the most expensive and advanced prosthesis, is that the most sensitivity available nowadays is a highly generalied "touching something/not touching something" or a translation of general amounts of pressure (and thats only on the most advanced: most models have no sensors at all). If we could provide amputees with limbs that felt, albeit in a much reduced fashion, many behaviors that require positive feedback (i.e. to be able to adjust your movements based on what you feel in that limb) could become accesible for the disabled.
Actually, you do receive software updates over the satellite connection. How do I know? Because my hacked DirecTivo which isn't plugged into a phone line at all (and has a hack running to prevent the 'call home' to give statistics and report what OS its using) just downloaded the latest update this weekend. It hasn't installed it - another hack, since that would wipe out all my extra software - but its there.
I'm pretty postive that there is no verified example of silicon based life. Rather, due to the chemical similarities between carbon and silicon it is speculated that life (as we know it) could have or could in the future evolve based on silicon rather than carbon.
This is not a limitation of the viewpoint, but rather an acknowledgement of our intrinsically limited conception of life: life which we will recognize as being life must have certain characteristics to differentiate from..."not life", and it those characteristics hinge on certain chemical processes.
I'm not sure if its worth mentioning, but the old line that "the theory 'eye for an eye' leaves us all blind" is still largely true. More disturbingly, it suggests that rehabilitation is completely impossible.
Yeah, I know about the 30-sec skip. If you hack your Tivo (either through killing the initrd or modifying your physical prom) you can install all sorts of stuff, including scripts: many people alter their startup script to include the 30 sec skip. I dont employ it however, since I find it so convenient to just use FF.
Here's the thing, I've got a Hughes DVR40 that I've hacked to allow both a larger HD (120 instead of the stock 40 gigs) and a variety of network stuff (like extraction). You can do all this, leaving your original drive untouched meaning if you have a problem you're free to reinstall the original before calling tech support. As such, and considering the low level of work [esp. for a /. reader] to do these hacks, the ReplayTV is barely advantageous.
As for the commercials...the stock fast-forward command on the Tivo has three speeds; if I click to the second speed, it takes about 1-2 seconds on average to get through a block of commercials. Moreover, when you hit play after noticing that your show began again, it understands that you react a split second after seeing the show, so it actually rewinds a bit (and it may be looking for a black screen, I'm not sure). As such, its had a rate of well of 99% correctly jumping RIGHT to after the commercial break. I have a hard time believing the ReplayTV option is much better...
Its worth noting that Minidisc is still an extremely popular success story in the UK and Japan. Basically, the only marketed area where they failed is the US.
I had one for the first three years of college, and loved it: I could toss MDs in my bag without worrying about scratching, and it was a quarter of the size of a CD player. That said, I now worship my ipod as a deity.
You're missing the even more subtle joke: the episode says "...this kentucky/missouri family..." referring to their quote-unquote real life status, not the characters they supposedly portray in the show.
Remember, the show essentially posited that its not animated, but rather enacted by a real family. As such, wherever the 'real' family is located/from, the show they act in may be in a different location.
You missed the reference. You thought the parent poster was referring to Atlantis, the animated movie which (as you mention) was a total rip of a decent anime. Rather, the parent was referring to Stargate: Atlantis. (at least, thats what I think, heh)
The answer to that question, frankly, is of extreme dispute. In fact, it points to [one of] the key problem[s] in relativity, since theory doesn't properly predict what happens there (in particular, when the singularity - not the black hole - decreases below the planck distance, it is impossible to discuss what occurs). Both quantum mechanics and string theory [in their various forms] have some description[s] of what occurs though. I'd recomend starting with the perenially recommended "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, followed by "The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos", both by Brian Greene for explanations in detail of these subjects.
Your information about black holes is certainly correct. However, my post was about singularities in response to the grandparent post about singularities. As such, what I posted was accurate.
It is standardly accepted math that a divide-by-zero is absurd but the following is true:
Given the numbers n,m, then for any value of n, as m approaches zero, n/m approaches infinity. As such, this is strictly speaking an asymptopic problem, but it is reasonable to say that a zero volume object with a non-zero mass has functionally infinite density.
Actually, you're mistaken. It has infinite density not mass: theoretically a simple singularity has zero volume, thus its density is whatever its mass M is, divided by zero. That results in an infinity (and is why, actually, its called a singularity, a math term).
Moreover, there are no simple singularities, even in theoretical GR. According to Kerr, it can be demonstrated that all black holes [if they exist] have a "ring singularity" at their core, not a point singularity. The reason is simple: black holes rotate. If you have a point singularity w/ zero volume, there is no means to differentiate a rotating body versus a non-rotating body. Mathematically and conceptually, Kerr demonstrated that this means that singularities actually distort into a zero-thickness torus called a ring singularity (with its plane lying on the plane of rotation of the black hole). Inside the ring, it seems, there would be a tear. This was even realized by Einstein, and is the birth of the concept of an Einstein-Rosen bridge (and the subsequent dialog about wormholes/white holes).
The casimir effect cannot exist, as I understand it, on large scales like that. Its a force that results from the interesting effects of bringing two conductive surfaces so close to one another that only certain wavelengths of virtual parties can exist between the plates, whereas all wavelengths exist on the other sides of the plates. As a result, there is vacuum pressure pushing the plates together.
Its worth mentioning that yes, this could be used to extract energy from the vacuum, although no one has figured out (a) how to do this on a large enough scale to be useful and (b) whether it would take more energy to position the plates than you could extract (see below).
Logically, the energy to seperate the plates from one another should equal the energy gained by their collapse together due to vacuum pressure, so that should mean this is no net-gain.
This is a quibble, but I understood CODEC as "COmpression/DECompression" method, since the issue here is not encoding (i.e. encryption) but rather compression of the data stream.
Can anyone clarify which is correct?
The ambiguity here is that while they fail to actually discuss the IPO, they go into quite a bit of detail about the history of the company, their goals, etc. In other words, its a peice that really does advertise Google. Personally, I'm not a lawyer but I think this was a poor choice on Google's part.
Incidentally, I didn't buy Playboy, but rather heard the facts as they were presented on NPR this afternoon. Not that there's anything wrong with porn - far from it - but Playboy is beyond a waste of money. If you're going to get porn, get real porn; same thing for tech magazines.
"Just out of curiousity. Which philophers argue that revenge is a valid reason for punishment? I would argue against those philosophers as I will argue now against you."
Offhand, I can name a few. Plato, Draco, Hamurabi and others. The pragmatists (incl. many utilitarians) such as Mill also discussed such a possibility [as vengeance being appropriate], and accepted if there could be a demonstrated increase in utility due to the vengeance. If the vengeance accomplishes deterrance, as I suggested, then it would be acceptable.
"Dismissing an argument by simply labeling it ad hominem then name-calling the arguer as being "simply contrarian" is an ad hominem argument itself, and far worse, it is ad personum."
You're completely wrong, and clearly don't understand the words you're using for several reasons: first, the phrase 'ad hominem' is an argumentative term and one of the most dangerous logical fallacies. It refers to when you attack the person without addressing the argument, which is meaningless since an argument stands on its own merits, not that of the person giving it. Second, 'ad personum' is not a phrase with similar meaning: ad personum means "on a personal basis" and refers to the method by which you determine whether someone violated a rule. Try looking up things you don't understand before using them in arguments. Third, when I called the poster "contrarian" I was not suggesting that was a flaw in the argument, but rather commenting on the apparent motivations of the person. My disagreement with their stance was based solely on my logical points.
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your points, since I don't feel any of them are anything but repetition of your claim that revenge is automatically bad. I will however mention that you again misuse a few terms: "prima facae" means "on first glance" or "without analysis", and refers to problems with a hypothesis (or claim) that are apparent without any discussion. In other words, they're points that can be made immediately, without argumentation, from the initial claim. In the way you use it, following two argumentative steps, its innapropriate. Further, you misuse the terms "cruel" and "sadistic": the former is an adjective/adverb which primarily refers to people/behaviors which are defined by a purely malicious character, while the latter is an adjective/adverb referring to people/behaviors which are defined by the character of enjoying the unrighteous suffering of others. You misuse them in the following way: a victim inflicting revenge is being neither cruel (since the revenge is not malicious, but rather extracting fair payment and punishment) nor sadistic (since, again, there is no malicious or unrighteous behavior).
What you're doing here is just being contrarian. Its always been agreed by philosophers that revenge was as potentially valid a reason for punishment as rehabilitation or protection. The reason for picking one over the other two (and of course, you needn't only pick one) is always going to be your larger overarching ethos.
You simply assume that revenge is an invalid reason, without providing any argument thereof. Worse, you call it 'absurd' to believe in vengeance, almost definately creating an ad hominem argument since you [again] haven't provided an argument.
You want a valid reason for vengeance? One is that it can be preventative, i.e. a deterrant. Obviously it cannot be in one-hundred-percent of the cases, but thats why most justice systems are hybrids [of two or three of the purposes for punishment]. Want another reason? Vengeance is capitalist: it suggests that there is a value to all things, i.e. goods and services including people and property, and that you are responsible for making retribution to the value you take from someone: if you take their hand, you deserve to pay the price you unfairly exacted from them. No one suggests that it makes everything 'even' or 'square', but rather helps appease the pain of loss for your victim[s]. Want still another? In some cases [such as literally plucking an eye out, removing a hand, or killing the criminal], the vengeance may accomplish one or both of the other goals [protection or rehabilitation] by preventing the criminal from even being capable of recommitting the crime.
Here's the thing: I'm not advocating vengeance as a purpose in justice, but rather suggesting that it is no where near as cut and dry as you want to believe.
Well, there are a few places you're incorrect.
First, TivoToGo seems to be a streaming application, akin to the current HMO features on Tivos. This means that there will [likely] never be a complete copy of the file on the computer. This of course doesn't prevent someone from developing an app to catch the stream. Good luck though.
Second, you didn't read the article: in order to play back one of the Tivo'd files, you'll need a physical dongle - a small USB tab - to provide the decryption key. That is how they limit you to nine people: only nine dongles can be tied into your Tivo's account.
Now, it should be noted that existing hacks (look for "Sleeper's ISO" for more info, to start) provide the ability to fully extract video off a Tivo (after it's been hacked somewhat), and that is what Tivo is trying to combat. In much the same way that iTunes' Music Store snagged the music-downloaders who were willing to pay a little for the convenience of (a) downloading the file quickly and (b) doing so legally, Tivo is hoping that TivoToGo will snag the people who want to view their shows in other places and do so without violating their warranty.
Do you understand that the iPod is not vendor locked? Its just that the iTMS is product-locked to the iPod. You can put MP3s, WAVs, AACs from any source on the ipod so long as they're not DRM'd in a way besides FairPlay. So all those stores have to do [to be compatible with the iPod] is not insist on some DRM (which is exactly what the whole slashdot community has been demanding of Apple anyway...).
I can guarantee you, without question, that they purchased at least one iPod over at Real, since they had to test write their software for it (requiring testing, etc.). Everyone using an iPod agreed to the software agreement involved in its use. Real is fucking screwed here, and I cannot believe they did something this dumb.
There are some companies you can piss off, and Apple isn't really one of them here.
"I believe constant use of implements to see better will continue to weaken your vision."
Two points, one anecdotal and one scientific: the first is that I personally have used contact lenses about 16 hours a day (i.e. except when I sleep) for about ten years with zero increase in my prescription; the second is that there are no studies [which I'm aware of] which indicate that your use of prescription lenses increases the rate of regression in your vision.
Its possible. Steve Jobs has repeatedly stated now that there is no 60 iPod in the release schedule (check the Newsweek article I think, but for sure its been mentioned on the news page over at ipodlounge.com).
That said though, this could simply be them saying "there is no 60 gig ipod in the release schedule any time soon", leaving it open that the Keynote in January (where they announced the minipod this year) would include the announcement of a wifi-enabled 60 gig ipod.
I have a 30 gig 3g, and while I wont be upgrading to either of the new 4gs, I'd certainly look at a wifi, 60 gig 4g.