...every time I see how many slashdot users are humor-impaired.
A prophet is also, in common parliance, someone who foretells the future.
What he's saying is, if you say anything bad about government, you will eventually be proven right.
I would add, myself, that, like all other human endeavors, if you say something bad about government, you will eventually be proven right *AND* wrong... probably repeatedly.
Gee, if they followed all the standards, there'd be two terrible consequences...
First, their OS would look exactly like Windows, because, after all, that's the de facto standard.
Oh wait, you meant that they should follow all the UNIX standards? Well, then it would look exactly like Linux.
The idea here is to add some value to the OS. Netinfo is a coherant and easily configured alternative to Text File Hell. You may not think it adds value, but there are quite a few people who do. You can't just dismiss that unless you assume that you are superior to all of them, and that they're all misguided. (Of course, since this is slashdot, that's allowed, I guess.)
The other problem that would spring from Apple following the UNIX 'standards' slavishly? People like you wouldn't have anything to complain about.
> Because the energy investment in lifecycle support (mining, production, distribution, maintenance, > recycling) is greater than the lifetime energy output.
So many people have debunked this so many times. Why does anyone bother saying it?
> solar cell energy consumption might be environmentally friendly, but the energy > production will alter the landscape of an order of magnitude more land than oil.
I've heard this one before, but it never fails to amuse me. Why? Well, because a clearcut, and there are plenty of those, is just as big a change in the reflectivity of large portions of our planet. But nobody ever seems terribly concerned with that aspect of them.
> Wind: Has anybody even bothered to figure out the total energy cost of manufacturing and raw > materials on these monstrosities?
Can you seriously, honestly say that you think nobody has bothered to do this. Do you seriously, honestly think that you're *that* much smarter than everyone else out there?
Wait, this is Slashdot... of course you do.
> Oceanic water movement
The arguments here are just as silly as the 'but don't forget, wind-power will cause the wind to slow down'. Believe it or not, a forest of trees slows down the wind dramatically more. Perhaps we should be thinking about that before we cut down all the trees? (Oops, too late!)
> Nuclear
Yes, its waste products are more containable than other types, at least currently. But they're also impossible to neutralize. They are toxic forever, and in novel and entertaining ways. But, since you're rich, relatively speaking, you can pay someone else to play Russian roulette FOR you.
> Fusion
Someday, maybe. But no time soon.
And man, am I having trouble with the fact that you used the name Bush and the words 'wise counsel' in the same paragraph.
I love your claim that all of this silliness is based on science. It's based on your personal opinions, which clearly haven't even been fact-checked by the other three brain cells in there.
But it's a beautiful piece of evidence that humans in general will do almost anything rather than venture out of their own skulls.
> A jet can fly perfectly well with one or all of its windows shot out.
True enough, although people, especially the elderly, can certainly die from sudden depressurization.
> Of course, terrorists could knock a window out today, with a fire > extinguisher or sturdy metal briefcase, if they were so inclined.
Well, no, not actually. You'd have to be uninterrupted for a while, and then, with most of the windows onboard, it's basically impossible to get a good angle and a good backswing. And plexiglass is hard stuff. Basically, a bodybuilder might have a chance at it, if nobody was trying to stop him.
> As for shooting out fuel tanks or control wires, it is to laugh.
Sudden depressurization is one of the risks from bullets, but not the only one. There is a fair amount of pure O2 carried on planes. There are a number of places that planes are vulnerable, though you're right that someone shooting randomly would be unlikely to hit one, with one exception... the cockpit crew.
> Obviously the government and aeronautical industry know better > than you, or we wouldn't have armed sky marshals and pilots.
Funny how many of them actually lobbied NOT to allow this.
Nice. You do realize that what you're actually asking for is a state run solely by a power elite that control big corporations, and are answerable to nobody.
No, no, you don't. But boy, do I wish you could live in a place like that.
And let the rest of us rational people try to find a proper balance between too much government control and too little.
Not that it's not too late. You're getting your wish in the US. I hope you're proud of what you see in 50 years. But of course, that's part of what makes it so much fun to be a zealot like you: you can always claim that things would be worse any other way.
> If some genius comes up with an alternative fuel > that is cheaper than oil to produce it will be > instantly successful.
This is the funny part about arguing with a libertarian when you're a liberal. You're both saying things to each other and the other just isn't understanding what you say. Or, at least, can't believe you mean it.
What you're saying here is, 'if you come up with a fuel that is more efficient than gasoline, in terms of dollars vs. energy output, then everyone would use it'.
What we, the 'liberals', are saying is, 'making the entire Earth into a Turkish steam bath is part of the cost of using fossil fuels.' So maybe the fact that people would flock to a new fuel if it were cleaner, safer, and more efficient than gasoline is only of limited usefulness if nobody comes up with one, and therefore gasoline continues to be used.
Perhaps the least expensive thing in terms of money isn't always the best thing to do. If I bought my car for $100, and I die because the brakes go out in a week, perhaps the $200 car was the better bargain after all. But then, nobody can say 'I told you so' because you're dead.
> Solar/photovoltaic consumes almost as much energy > to make solar cells as they produce over their > entire lifetime...
Depends on the process they're made by. There are a couple of pretty good ways to make solar cells out there that are wholly owned by by oil companies, patent-wise. Expect these never to see the light of day.
But the new polymer solar cells are a dramatic reversal of this equation. (And it was never true universally either... it was only true in low-sunlight areas of the country). Even the ceramic ones would have been a lot cheaper to make if they'd been made in any reasonable quantity, just as LCD prices have plummeted as the number of people buying them has gone up.
> What fool thinks they can have a modern economy > without supplies from around the world?
Actually, nobody said that. You are setting up a straw man so you can knock it down. Sadly, since this particular rhetorical device is novel to nobody but you, it's not a terribly effective one.
What they said was, wow, here's a good way to reduce dependance on foreign energy sources. And how awful that must be, to make you so desparate to find any reason to argue against it.
>
That's got to be one of the funniest arguments I've ever heard from an anti-environmentalist head-in-the-sand libertarian. (Well, or he could be a Republican, too, but they're pretty thin on the ground around here.) As for nuclear, well, it's a puzzle, isn't it? I mean, those people who are delighted to use the power from a nuclear station don't seem to want to sit on the waste. As long as it's someone ELSE near the storage dumps, though, that's fine. After all, they don't have as much money, so they aren't as important as he is.
> I like how they predicted a 6 C increase in temperature for this centruy
I love how, when we get to the issue of global warming, every libertarian becomes a scientist. In fact, pretty much every credible (as in 'actually endowed with a doctorate and some sort of research or teaching position') scientist now agrees that global warming is a serious, if not THE serious, threat to civilization for the next century, but the head-in-the-sand lobby keeps using data from 20 years ago, when not everyone was so sure. Want new data? Take the old data from 20 years ago, issue a press release by someone without any knowledge of science but with a good name, and bingo... nothing to worry about!
As for comparing today's pollution with that of 75 years ago, it is to laugh. If you assume that carbon dioxide has no effect on the atmosphere, then you can almost sort of pretend to believe that. In the US, that's the blinders we have on our government... CO2 isn't regulated as a pollutant, and so people can point to the pollution figures and prattle on about how they're not really actually getting much worse.
> Now, three years into this century, someone got > out a pen and drew the curve out 97 years, HA!
Mmhmm. After all, there's really only ONE scientist who actually thinks this way, huh? And obviously you know, far more than any lousy scientist, that anything that messes with your worldview must just be wrong.
> Some reputable scientists might tell you that > missing neutrinos from the sun indicate a solar > minimum and that temperatures will drop.
Now, that's about the first rational thing you've said. Of course, this is a hypothesis, supported by only the most tenuous of real evidence. And even then, I don't think I ever heard anything about temperatures on Earth actually dropping... because one of the statements I heard on this was, 'Well, I don't think we really have to worry about this, because the current rate of global greenhouse gas emissions will more than compensate for this effect.' And Bush wants to limit the GROWTH of the amount of CO2 put out per year... so if 100k metric tons were put out this year, he only wants 110k metric tons to be put out next year. But, of course, it's a voluntary program...
> What to do? Nothing at all say the Greens...
Look, another straw man.
But here, I'll try to set up one for you:
Use all you can, destroy what you will. Always be unwilling to admit the possibility that someone else might be right, that you might be doing irreparable damage to the planet, and that, in a few decades, you could actually feasibly wipe mankind completely from the earth. After all, even if they're right, you'll have had a hell of a good time, and you probably won't live long enough to be forced to believe them when they say 'I told you so'.
Oh, wait, that's not a straw man... that's exactly what you said.
You don't understand... if we pass a law requiring that they raise the price of all fuels, then we're pumping more money into the economy! See, all the money goes to the gas companies, and then it trickles down to the consumer. Right? Same effect as with the Reagan trickle-down economic theory. Of course, if we were talking about taxing fuel, I agree that it would be evil and terrible to actually tax fuel to the extent that it would actually pay for all of the infastructure that it requires, let alone the horrible environmental costs to it. But no, we're talking about giving more money to the oil companies, and how can that be bad?
But there's a better way. If you require all new cars to have a gas milage no better than 10 mpg, then you just consume lots more gas instead! That would mean that shipping wouldn't be affected, so prices would stay the same, but everyone of middle-class income and below would be forced to pay dramatically more money for gas, thus transferring yet more money to the rich. (And, of course, all the money given to the rich immediately trickles down again, right?) You could probably even do this without an actual LAW... just make sure that all the car companies and the fuel companies conspire together, and with enough advertising you could sell the American public all the 10-mile-per-gallon cars you want!
Oh, wait... silly me. Seems I haven't been paying attention.
Sorry, I'll try to come up with an idea that hasn't already been implemented next time.
And you know, Microsoft Word doesn't let me do anything more than the most rudimentary of typesetting! I mean, I'm a newspaper editor and I want to be able to produce my newspaper, but I can't, because I can't lay things out the way I want them. And don't even talk to me about the graphics editing capabilities, for editing ads and pictures and such.
Then there was something wrong with your computer's clock. In the FIRST version that had the nag screens, they were every time you ran the software. (And it put a 'Buy QuickTime Pro' video clip on the desktop.) After that, though, including 4, 5, and 6, and possibly some of 3 (I can't remember) the screen puts the time of nag screen use into the QuickTime preferences file (if you know how to parse QT atoms you can find it there) and then waits a week before showing it again.
The only things that can affect this in my experience are a computer whose clock is extremely wonky or a computer with a no-write-permission QTPrefs file. (Or one where someone has advanced the date by a year and run the software, and then set it back again.)
On my Windows box, I got Word bundled with my computer. I paid for the OS upgrade, but it didn't come with a new version of Word, I had to pay separately for that.
Or is it okay with you as long as it's not the same company doing the bundling as sells the products? Interesting sort of moral relativism.
See, now, this little statement here makes me mad: > Actually, as a Linux user, I am being given > everything -- for free. Yes, kino is a still a > long, long way away from getting close to that > i-whatever tool for video the Apples are using, > but we know how those things go, don't we: In > two, three years, I'll have 90% of the functions > for no cost at all. And you guys will still be > paying.
Well, now, first of all, I hate to say it, but the UI/usability/convenience on Linux STILL isn't what the Mac was ten years ago, let alone three.
BUT. Even if I give you that in three years, the Linux version of iMovie will be 90% of the functionality of my version... what do you mean that I'll still be paying? I use the program once a month or so... I have no reason to ever upgrade. I'll never spend another cent on iMovie, and it will always work for me just as well as it does now. (Assuming that an OS update doesn't break it... but given that most of my 10-year-old Apple software still works fine in Classic, I'd say my odds are pretty good. AND, I'd like to point out, when I reported a bug in the Classic-to-X interface that made one of my sprockets-based games not run, Apple fixed it in the next update to the OS.)
So I will have paid say $50 to have a tool three years before you got it, and even when you get it, three years later, it's only 90% as functional. Maybe in another three it will be 100% as functional (because as everyone knows, development is a logorithmic scale), but by then I'll have had six years of use on you. And it STILL won't be as convenient and user-friendly, unless some pretty impressive (and unprecidented) stuff happens with Linux in those few years.
If you don't mind waiting for six years, then I suppose saving yourself $50 makes sense... right?
Even after all the anti-government rhetoric, most Americans still know that there are other things out there that they need to be protected from besides the government, and that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is much more likely to give them the 'invisible finger' than to be of any help.
God, man, I worked for Apple for two years. I didn't even know about new products that were being made by the group I was a MEMBER of, let alone stuff that was made by other groups.
Buying the right tool for the job, especially when you have $2000 of software for that tool, is ALWAYS the right thing to do, if you can do it. If the correct tool is $1500, and the wrong tool is $200 plus several hundred hours of hassle and learning curve and failures and configuration problems and so forth... well, opportunity cost here is high.
Clearly he was irresponsible for buying a good-quality used car, too... I mean, why spend $5000 on a car when you can get something that will probably at least make it home for $500?
> I always thought they protected specifics, not > generalities
And so it does. If you actually bother to look at the patent, it describes in exacting detail the way this device works. It's a piece of translucent or transparent plastic with a specific sort of light source behind it which projects images onto the plastic.
This is not a patent that protects the idea of 'devices that change color'. That would be like a patent that protects the idea of 'devices that move people around'. This is a patent that protects one very specific way of changing the appearance and color of a device. Which is like a patent that protects, for example, the Segway.
God, people. Kneejerk reactions are a slashdot tradition, but ostensibly intelligent people who don't even bother to read the entire SUMMARY before posting about it...?
Slashdot Mirror
...every time I see how many slashdot users are humor-impaired.
A prophet is also, in common parliance, someone who foretells the future.
What he's saying is, if you say anything bad about government, you will eventually be proven right.
I would add, myself, that, like all other human endeavors, if you say something bad about government, you will eventually be proven right *AND* wrong... probably repeatedly.
-fred
Gee, if they followed all the standards, there'd be two terrible consequences...
First, their OS would look exactly like Windows, because, after all, that's the de facto standard.
Oh wait, you meant that they should follow all the UNIX standards? Well, then it would look exactly like Linux.
The idea here is to add some value to the OS. Netinfo is a coherant and easily configured alternative to Text File Hell. You may not think it adds value, but there are quite a few people who do. You can't just dismiss that unless you assume that you are superior to all of them, and that they're all misguided. (Of course, since this is slashdot, that's allowed, I guess.)
The other problem that would spring from Apple following the UNIX 'standards' slavishly? People like you wouldn't have anything to complain about.
Sheesh.
-fred
> Because the energy investment in lifecycle support (mining, production, distribution, maintenance,
> recycling) is greater than the lifetime energy output.
So many people have debunked this so many times. Why does anyone bother saying it?
> solar cell energy consumption might be environmentally friendly, but the energy
> production will alter the landscape of an order of magnitude more land than oil.
I've heard this one before, but it never fails to amuse me. Why? Well, because a clearcut, and there are plenty of those, is just as big a change in the reflectivity of large portions of our planet. But nobody ever seems terribly concerned with that aspect of them.
> Wind: Has anybody even bothered to figure out the total energy cost of manufacturing and raw
> materials on these monstrosities?
Can you seriously, honestly say that you think nobody has bothered to do this. Do you seriously, honestly think that you're *that* much smarter than everyone else out there?
Wait, this is Slashdot... of course you do.
> Oceanic water movement
The arguments here are just as silly as the 'but don't forget, wind-power will cause the wind to slow down'. Believe it or not, a forest of trees slows down the wind dramatically more. Perhaps we should be thinking about that before we cut down all the trees? (Oops, too late!)
> Nuclear
Yes, its waste products are more containable than other types, at least currently. But they're also impossible to neutralize. They are toxic forever, and in novel and entertaining ways. But, since you're rich, relatively speaking, you can pay someone else to play Russian roulette FOR you.
> Fusion
Someday, maybe. But no time soon.
And man, am I having trouble with the fact that you used the name Bush and the words 'wise counsel' in the same paragraph.
I love your claim that all of this silliness is based on science. It's based on your personal opinions, which clearly haven't even been fact-checked by the other three brain cells in there.
But it's a beautiful piece of evidence that humans in general will do almost anything rather than venture out of their own skulls.
-fred
> A jet can fly perfectly well with one or all of its windows shot out.
True enough, although people, especially the elderly, can certainly die from sudden depressurization.
> Of course, terrorists could knock a window out today, with a fire
> extinguisher or sturdy metal briefcase, if they were so inclined.
Well, no, not actually. You'd have to be uninterrupted for a while, and then, with most of the windows onboard, it's basically impossible to get a good angle and a good backswing. And plexiglass is hard stuff. Basically, a bodybuilder might have a chance at it, if nobody was trying to stop him.
> As for shooting out fuel tanks or control wires, it is to laugh.
Sudden depressurization is one of the risks from bullets, but not the only one. There is a fair amount of pure O2 carried on planes. There are a number of places that planes are vulnerable, though you're right that someone shooting randomly would be unlikely to hit one, with one exception... the cockpit crew.
> Obviously the government and aeronautical industry know better
> than you, or we wouldn't have armed sky marshals and pilots.
Funny how many of them actually lobbied NOT to allow this.
-fred
Nice. You do realize that what you're actually asking for is a state run solely by a power elite that control big corporations, and are answerable to nobody.
No, no, you don't. But boy, do I wish you could live in a place like that.
And let the rest of us rational people try to find a proper balance between too much government control and too little.
Not that it's not too late. You're getting your wish in the US. I hope you're proud of what you see in 50 years. But of course, that's part of what makes it so much fun to be a zealot like you: you can always claim that things would be worse any other way.
-fred
> If some genius comes up with an alternative fuel
> that is cheaper than oil to produce it will be
> instantly successful.
This is the funny part about arguing with a libertarian when you're a liberal. You're both saying things to each other and the other just isn't understanding what you say. Or, at least, can't believe you mean it.
What you're saying here is, 'if you come up with a fuel that is more efficient than gasoline, in terms of dollars vs. energy output, then everyone would use it'.
What we, the 'liberals', are saying is, 'making the entire Earth into a Turkish steam bath is part of the cost of using fossil fuels.' So maybe the fact that people would flock to a new fuel if it were cleaner, safer, and more efficient than gasoline is only of limited usefulness if nobody comes up with one, and therefore gasoline continues to be used.
Perhaps the least expensive thing in terms of money isn't always the best thing to do. If I bought my car for $100, and I die because the brakes go out in a week, perhaps the $200 car was the better bargain after all. But then, nobody can say 'I told you so' because you're dead.
-Fred
I suspect that any self-respecting forest of decent size sucks that much energy out of the air anyway.
-fred
> Solar/photovoltaic consumes almost as much energy
> to make solar cells as they produce over their
> entire lifetime...
Depends on the process they're made by. There are a couple of pretty good ways to make solar cells out there that are wholly owned by by oil companies, patent-wise. Expect these never to see the light of day.
But the new polymer solar cells are a dramatic reversal of this equation. (And it was never true universally either... it was only true in low-sunlight areas of the country). Even the ceramic ones would have been a lot cheaper to make if they'd been made in any reasonable quantity, just as LCD prices have plummeted as the number of people buying them has gone up.
-fred
> What fool thinks they can have a modern economy
> without supplies from around the world?
Actually, nobody said that. You are setting up a straw man so you can knock it down. Sadly, since this particular rhetorical device is novel to nobody but you, it's not a terribly effective one.
What they said was, wow, here's a good way to reduce dependance on foreign energy sources. And how awful that must be, to make you so desparate to find any reason to argue against it.
>
That's got to be one of the funniest arguments I've ever heard from an anti-environmentalist head-in-the-sand libertarian. (Well, or he could be a Republican, too, but they're pretty thin on the ground around here.) As for nuclear, well, it's a puzzle, isn't it? I mean, those people who are delighted to use the power from a nuclear station don't seem to want to sit on the waste. As long as it's someone ELSE near the storage dumps, though, that's fine. After all, they don't have as much money, so they aren't as important as he is.
> I like how they predicted a 6 C increase in temperature for this centruy
I love how, when we get to the issue of global warming, every libertarian becomes a scientist. In fact, pretty much every credible (as in 'actually endowed with a doctorate and some sort of research or teaching position') scientist now agrees that global warming is a serious, if not THE serious, threat to civilization for the next century, but the head-in-the-sand lobby keeps using data from 20 years ago, when not everyone was so sure. Want new data? Take the old data from 20 years ago, issue a press release by someone without any knowledge of science but with a good name, and bingo... nothing to worry about!
As for comparing today's pollution with that of 75 years ago, it is to laugh. If you assume that carbon dioxide has no effect on the atmosphere, then you can almost sort of pretend to believe that. In the US, that's the blinders we have on our government... CO2 isn't regulated as a pollutant, and so people can point to the pollution figures and prattle on about how they're not really actually getting much worse.
> Now, three years into this century, someone got
> out a pen and drew the curve out 97 years, HA!
Mmhmm. After all, there's really only ONE scientist who actually thinks this way, huh? And obviously you know, far more than any lousy scientist, that anything that messes with your worldview must just be wrong.
> Some reputable scientists might tell you that
> missing neutrinos from the sun indicate a solar
> minimum and that temperatures will drop.
Now, that's about the first rational thing you've said. Of course, this is a hypothesis, supported by only the most tenuous of real evidence. And even then, I don't think I ever heard anything about temperatures on Earth actually dropping... because one of the statements I heard on this was, 'Well, I don't think we really have to worry about this, because the current rate of global greenhouse gas emissions will more than compensate for this effect.' And Bush wants to limit the GROWTH of the amount of CO2 put out per year... so if 100k metric tons were put out this year, he only wants 110k metric tons to be put out next year. But, of course, it's a voluntary program...
> What to do? Nothing at all say the Greens...
Look, another straw man.
But here, I'll try to set up one for you:
Use all you can, destroy what you will. Always be unwilling to admit the possibility that someone else might be right, that you might be doing irreparable damage to the planet, and that, in a few decades, you could actually feasibly wipe mankind completely from the earth. After all, even if they're right, you'll have had a hell of a good time, and you probably won't live long enough to be forced to believe them when they say 'I told you so'.
Oh, wait, that's not a straw man... that's exactly what you said.
-Fred
You are a very strange person.
-Fred
You don't understand... if we pass a law requiring that they raise the price of all fuels, then we're pumping more money into the economy! See, all the money goes to the gas companies, and then it trickles down to the consumer. Right? Same effect as with the Reagan trickle-down economic theory. Of course, if we were talking about taxing fuel, I agree that it would be evil and terrible to actually tax fuel to the extent that it would actually pay for all of the infastructure that it requires, let alone the horrible environmental costs to it. But no, we're talking about giving more money to the oil companies, and how can that be bad?
But there's a better way. If you require all new cars to have a gas milage no better than 10 mpg, then you just consume lots more gas instead! That would mean that shipping wouldn't be affected, so prices would stay the same, but everyone of middle-class income and below would be forced to pay dramatically more money for gas, thus transferring yet more money to the rich. (And, of course, all the money given to the rich immediately trickles down again, right?) You could probably even do this without an actual LAW... just make sure that all the car companies and the fuel companies conspire together, and with enough advertising you could sell the American public all the 10-mile-per-gallon cars you want!
Oh, wait... silly me. Seems I haven't been paying attention.
Sorry, I'll try to come up with an idea that hasn't already been implemented next time.
-Fred
I'm trying hard to figure out what you expect for FREE.
--Fred
Okaaaaaay.
And you know, Microsoft Word doesn't let me do anything more than the most rudimentary of typesetting! I mean, I'm a newspaper editor and I want to be able to produce my newspaper, but I can't, because I can't lay things out the way I want them. And don't even talk to me about the graphics editing capabilities, for editing ads and pictures and such.
Sheesh.
-Fred
Then there was something wrong with your computer's clock. In the FIRST version that had the nag screens, they were every time you ran the software. (And it put a 'Buy QuickTime Pro' video clip on the desktop.) After that, though, including 4, 5, and 6, and possibly some of 3 (I can't remember) the screen puts the time of nag screen use into the QuickTime preferences file (if you know how to parse QT atoms you can find it there) and then waits a week before showing it again.
The only things that can affect this in my experience are a computer whose clock is extremely wonky or a computer with a no-write-permission QTPrefs file. (Or one where someone has advanced the date by a year and run the software, and then set it back again.)
--Fred
On my Windows box, I got Word bundled with my computer. I paid for the OS upgrade, but it didn't come with a new version of Word, I had to pay separately for that.
Or is it okay with you as long as it's not the same company doing the bundling as sells the products? Interesting sort of moral relativism.
--Fred
See, now, this little statement here makes me mad:
> Actually, as a Linux user, I am being given
> everything -- for free. Yes, kino is a still a
> long, long way away from getting close to that
> i-whatever tool for video the Apples are using,
> but we know how those things go, don't we: In
> two, three years, I'll have 90% of the functions
> for no cost at all. And you guys will still be
> paying.
Well, now, first of all, I hate to say it, but the UI/usability/convenience on Linux STILL isn't what the Mac was ten years ago, let alone three.
BUT. Even if I give you that in three years, the Linux version of iMovie will be 90% of the functionality of my version... what do you mean that I'll still be paying? I use the program once a month or so... I have no reason to ever upgrade. I'll never spend another cent on iMovie, and it will always work for me just as well as it does now. (Assuming that an OS update doesn't break it... but given that most of my 10-year-old Apple software still works fine in Classic, I'd say my odds are pretty good. AND, I'd like to point out, when I reported a bug in the Classic-to-X interface that made one of my sprockets-based games not run, Apple fixed it in the next update to the OS.)
So I will have paid say $50 to have a tool three years before you got it, and even when you get it, three years later, it's only 90% as functional. Maybe in another three it will be 100% as functional (because as everyone knows, development is a logorithmic scale), but by then I'll have had six years of use on you. And it STILL won't be as convenient and user-friendly, unless some pretty impressive (and unprecidented) stuff happens with Linux in those few years.
If you don't mind waiting for six years, then I suppose saving yourself $50 makes sense... right?
--Fred
Ah, the sweet sound of an AC troll.
--Fred
The nerve of these people... I hear there were even BUGS in the first release of MacOS X.
I mean, if these people can't get it right the first time, what business have they writing software in the first place?
Sheesh.
--Fred
> ...they suggest that you regularly back up the
> Pictures directory.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry here, when someone sees a recommendation of making regular backups as a sign of poor software.
Okay, I do know. But I'll have to wait on laughing until goldenfield posts that he's lost all of the data on his drive.
--Fred
The nag screen is only once a week anyway.
--Fred
Even after all the anti-government rhetoric, most Americans still know that there are other things out there that they need to be protected from besides the government, and that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is much more likely to give them the 'invisible finger' than to be of any help.
--Fred
Heck, I haven't used it since I got rid of my old Apple IIe clone, a Franklin Ace 1000.
(FUD = Franklin Utilities for the Disk)
--Fred
God, man, I worked for Apple for two years. I didn't even know about new products that were being made by the group I was a MEMBER of, let alone stuff that was made by other groups.
--Fred
Buying the right tool for the job, especially when you have $2000 of software for that tool, is ALWAYS the right thing to do, if you can do it. If the correct tool is $1500, and the wrong tool is $200 plus several hundred hours of hassle and learning curve and failures and configuration problems and so forth... well, opportunity cost here is high.
Clearly he was irresponsible for buying a good-quality used car, too... I mean, why spend $5000 on a car when you can get something that will probably at least make it home for $500?
Sheesh.
--Fred
> I always thought they protected specifics, not
> generalities
And so it does. If you actually bother to look at the patent, it describes in exacting detail the way this device works. It's a piece of translucent or transparent plastic with a specific sort of light source behind it which projects images onto the plastic.
This is not a patent that protects the idea of 'devices that change color'. That would be like a patent that protects the idea of 'devices that move people around'. This is a patent that protects one very specific way of changing the appearance and color of a device. Which is like a patent that protects, for example, the Segway.
God, people. Kneejerk reactions are a slashdot tradition, but ostensibly intelligent people who don't even bother to read the entire SUMMARY before posting about it...?
Sheesh.
--Fred