Interestingly (or maybe not), that episode is about the doll's original creator working with Lisa to try and compete with what the heartless organization has turned the doll into.
No, I guess that isn't interesting, or strictly relevant, but maybe snpp.com is.
Finally, a SCO reference...
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 1
-- All of us older coders who are suddenly useless can all sign SCO's NDA because we know we'll never work in IT again anyway.
Wow! You're right! I intended my reply ONLY for you!
In other words, I was trying to offer a counter-point, and indicate that certain groups may want to check exactly what the bible does say about certain things. It's easy to make assumptions on the overall tone based on whatever ministers/priests/whatever choose to read from week to week (like I used to), but once you research and read the thing itself you* might come away with a new perspective.
Frankly, having watched Fellowship again this week, "sabshire" sounds like a Hobbit surname.
*- Again, the universal you, for anyone who happens to read this and hasn't completely made up their mind one way or another.
Further reading for the really curious: Pagan & Christian Creeds, a 'free' book from the Gutenburg Project that discusses such interesting points as the history of creation mythology, and why Christmas is timed around the Winter Solstice. I'd assumed it was to compete with the pagans, but apparently it may have been part of the merging of pagan beliefs and jewish prophecy.
For those interested in seeing how uninsightful, superstitious, and self-contradicting the works of one of the dozens of ancient civilizations can be, feel free to check The Skeptic's Annotated Bible
was "Plus Steve Jobs reminded us they have $41 billion in the bank and are not in debt. They're not desparate(sic) for cash."
I knew they had money, but sheesh. Though I'm leaning towards it being a typo, and it should read "4.1 billion", as that would be more in line with what I last heard.
Still, they are clearly on solid ground for a computer maker these days. Or for any product manufacturer, for that matter.
While annoying, this could have far greater impact on our lives than the OJ Simpson trial could have ever had. If SCO goes through court and wins, it could not only effect current and future Linux implementations but cast a black cloud over any Open Source project. If they go through and lose Open Source projects may still suffer, or may not depending on the public spin, but the length of the case may still kill promising projects. If IBM decides to just pay them off then it still would vindicate the claims and have the same negative results.
I'd agree that daily updates and the press conferences are getting tedious, but the eventual result is a lot more important to me than whether O.J. is locked away on the taxpayers dime or hanging out on the dime of those buying his book, or however he's getting his money now.
For my two cents, the fact that comments are the same doesn't really mean much here. If the code around the comments was the same, or even similar, why wasn't that mentioned? Comments I've seen generally have two functions. One, serve as an outline of the flow that is going on, used by people who like to comment or wrote them in first from an outline/plan. Or two, a detailed explanation of a single line, when it's a clever way of doing something quickly that isn't immediately intuitive. Comments in the first category can easily look alike between implementations of standard processes.
The third type of comment are the 'Why is this code here?'/'This code is never executed' lines, which I'm guessing wouldn't make it through an actual review process.
a) The streaming feature was never meant to be used other than locally.
b) Their testing missed the hole.
Ignoring that, one reason they don't do copy protection is that they trust people who can pay for products they use will pay for products they use. Streaming music to unknown people not only isn't fair use(*), but may qualify individuals as internet radio stations. Remember the licensing fees that were approved? Would you want Apple to have to collect those?
Personally, I don't think copyright/patent laws are incompatible with the internet directly, but that endless extensions undermine fair use, free expression, and human progress in general, regardless of the medium they are applied to.
* A counter example would be 'If I play my CDs loud at the beach, am I broadcasting?' My best guess is since only people in the vicinity can hear it then no, though in the courts it's anyone's guess. An ancillary thought would be if having a radio tuned to a game at a beach counts as a rebroadcast, but I'm probably thinking too much.
Which would absolve them of the DMCA. The mere fact that the business is over the web doesn't invoke the DMCA. Their business is selling physical things; the web merely is a store front. If there were no web (or even computers), and they produced their own global catalog, their product would be the same.
The DMCA is essentially a red herring, possibly intended to be a shortcut through federal courts, or to scare the public. The legal issues at stake is whether or not taking the patterns from dumpsters is theft, and if not whether what is taken can be sold. And no, while trespassing charges may be something to worry about, it is really irrelevant. What matters is whether whatever dump the trash goes to allows for scrounging. If so, then they merely short-cutted a legal action (searching a public dump) with a possibly illegal one (trespassing). If they were trespassing, this would be between the store, local police, and the trespassers.
Given all of that, it is clear that if McCall's has a beef with anyone, it's with the stores for not actually destroying the patterns or marking them 'destroyed and unsell-able'. As has been pointed out, publishers and bookstores have a policy of removing front covers. Interesting possible precedents to McCall's case would include if book publishers ever sued over selling 'destroyed' books, and if there is any precedent that if the store didn't bother removing the covers then the publishers can't sue.
It may be that the upshot of all of this is that they will devise a way to mark patterns as destroyed to prevent resell. It could be as simple as a large hole-puncher that will put a square through ten at a time, before they are thrown out.
I'm tired of this complaint. First, return renames any file. Second, CMD-N now opens a new window consistently across applications. I won't second guess Apple, but this was probably a factor in the change. After all, they could have gone with CMD-B for 'Browser', but that would have made the Finder operate differently from other apps. Remember, with OS X they hope to increase their user base with new Mac users, and legacy was weighed against consistency in all areas. Sometimes legacy complaints won (e.g. the menu bar clock), sometimes they didn't.
Yes, it's annoying to have a learned keystroke changed - I won't argue that as I keep get getting caught, though likely not as often as you. And the different view behavior is annoying. BUT JUST HIT RETURN.
I don't know how to rename in any Linux GUI, but all Windows seem to require a right click or a key simulating a right click. And there are two choices - right click and find Rename in the Moving Menu*, or click once, wait a beat, click again.
*What I mean by Moving Menu: If you're near a screen edge, it comes up differently. If you're on different files (e.g..zip w/ Winzip installed), it comes up differently. While I know power users don't think twice about it (on any system), it's this kind of mostly unavoidable behavior that drives Apple to have a menu bar across the top where options don't move, but enable/disable as appropriate.
Ironically for our discussion, rename isn't a menu option, but return is one of those things that's obvious when you know it.
Before that, well, was World War 2 and the Baby Boomers, and the number of young with disposable income was low, and therefore if they weren't well-off already they were working (boys) or pregnant (girls) and both married before 20ish. (Yes, this is semi U.S. centric. If anyone has information about youth having disposable income AND free time before that elsewhere it would be good to know.)
I chose what I listed the most likely to be recognized as a pattern, but the list is longer. All activities that don't directly support the power structure are blamed for their problems: casual sex, drug use, alternative lifestyles, indifference to their god, compassion - even interest - in other cultures, etc.
Of course, we can go further back, if you want. Prohibition was a reaction to the new freedom of the times after the first World War, but the crash of 1929 was much more effective at ending the party, until the above pattern. And those were mainly adults with free time; children weren't yet given money or free time.
For what it's worth, history does repeat itself:
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
Socrates (470-399 B.C)
From Terminal, you can open any folder (even supposedly hidden ones) with simply:
open/Volumes
My question is, is the CD in question listed in in the Volumes directory? If so, does
open/Volumes/cdname work, and open a Finder window? If so, can you right/ctrl-click and choose Eject? I know you can do all of that using a standard CD, but haven't had any problem CDs I can try it on. I have a feeling it won't, but you didn't specify what path you use to view the files, if it is through Volumes or through a unix alias. Of course, if there is a path to a folder open may still work, though it might not be recognized as a CD for eject to appear.
Don't be so proud of this intellectual property fud you've constructed. The ability to distort the truth is insignificant next to the power of open source.
I'm going to be devil's advocate, and say that maybe the sales person was the problem. Used to work at CompUSA or something. From previous comments, it seems that this isn't necessarily the way they worked. Who knows; maybe he had a review that morning and got 'you haven't had an add-on sale all month' or something.
As long as you have one nearby, I'd say just give it another try. It's a couple of bucks in gas vs. shipping and whatever else comes with online orders. Yes, sometimes there is free shipping/add-ons/whatever. My point isn't simply the money, it's to not judge a store by one employee. "One data point does not a line make."
Um... maybe Trinity thought that it was just an exclamation, and wondered what it was in reference to? Replace "Jesus!" with "Wow!" or "Damn!" and it really doesn't change her reaction much. I'll bet if you go back, you might even find her responding to "Shit!". She doesn't thing she's a pile of excrement, does she?
In fact, you probably do the same thing. If you're somewhere with a person who says "Jesus!", do you think
a) Hey! They mean me!
b) The second coming? Already?
or
c) What would cause them to say that now?
Moby Dick is available at Project Gutenberg. Herman Melville died in 1891; it was release in 1991.
As far as 28 years for computer texts go, if you're talking about something like Using Java 1.2, then yes most of the information within it would be dated. However, if you're talking about books along the line of 'Solving Real World Problems with Logical Representations', then the concepts would still be useful, even if the examples require modernization. (And there's no such exact book that I know of, though there are probably similar ones that approximate it.)
The ads were probably written and produced some time ago. In fact, it is unlikely that the ad producers would have had access to a 'play list', so to speak. They made their best guesses on what would get peoples attention, and probably secured the broadcast rights independently of the Music Store deals.
That being said, it is also possible that the song is on the list to be provided. However, once a record company agrees to allow a list of songs, it takes time and resources to encode them, have them checked, and add them to a database. I'm betting every weeks 'new' releases will contain more technically 'old' works than new, as companies get their catalogs encoded.
Personally, I think the older/rarer music is where the real 'killer app' is. For example, the 4th album on Hip Hop/Rap is Run D.M.C.'s Raising Hell. Rock has Elvis at 3, Fleetwood Mac at 4, and The Who at 7. The top two country albums are Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. It's the older works that aren't worth buying CD's for at $16 each, though there is still some balance they need. (The pricing on Pink Floyd is as bad as, if not worse than, 'brick' music stores, though this may be yet another label issue.)
I doubt many here are feeding jukeboxes much more than "non at all"
As true as that may be, the point is that people do pay ~$1 per song on a jukebox. The implication is that they might think that that is a fair price to "own" a song, not that it is something everyone already does.
For the record, my average at this point is probably lower than yours, especially since I remember when a quarter bought 10 songs. We had to use two push buttons, the single speaker was tinny, the 45's skipped, and we liked it!
You can make unlimited burns from the 128-bit AAC to CD. Once it's there, you can do anything with it you want. I'm not an expert, but it doesn't appear to be signifcantly worse than MP3, so once you burn it you can do any of your list. Is it an extra step? Yes, but it's about as few steps as your going to get from a scheme blessed by record executives.
They seem to have struck a fair balance between allowing fair use and not providing for major abuses. Obviously, anyone who wants to turn around and distribute the music still could, but Apple has no liability for what is done once the song is burnt. In fact, providing an option to legally obtain music may introduce a sense of personal responsibility. Personally, I'm surprised that they will have unlimited burns - it is possible that the burns will have watermarks, though that would blow up in Apple's face if they don't disclose it now.
True, in this case just the password does nothing. But if they have cased a specific business and tracked a person to a subway, there's a decent shot it will work.
An example is the movie Sneakers. Now ignoring the technical aspects of the movie for this discussion, it did show a complicated but valid social method of obtaining a password. If they hadn't known the phrase beforehand, it's not unlikely that she could have seduced him to the point of telling her.
A less obvious example is Ocean's Eleven, where they used the dancer to get the ID card from a guard.
Actually, the first two are more the results of avoidance of technology, for different reasons. The first is easily preventable if a) people had other things to do, b) they were allowed to use protection/correction without fear of a deity or without feeling guilty about feeling good, and c) people stopped fighting genetic engineering for food. People have been genetically engineering on a macroscopic level for eons with selective breeding, but millions are starving because governments are refusing grain that would grow in their harsh environments.*
The second is preventable with proper measures, but the costs are prohibitive in a capitalist environment. The mere fact that pollution isn't increasing at the rate it used to, while the rate of technology use hasn't slowed, goes to show that air pollution is controllable.
* I forget which one; Penn & Teller's Bullshit did this topic a couple of weeks back. If you don't have Showtime, get it.
Slashdot Mirror
You're thinking of [1F12] Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy
Interestingly (or maybe not), that episode is about the doll's original creator working with Lisa to try and compete with what the heartless organization has turned the doll into.
No, I guess that isn't interesting, or strictly relevant, but maybe snpp.com is.
-- All of us older coders who are suddenly useless can all sign SCO's NDA because we know we'll never work in IT again anyway.
I've been jonesing all day.
Wow! You're right! I intended my reply ONLY for you!
In other words, I was trying to offer a counter-point, and indicate that certain groups may want to check exactly what the bible does say about certain things. It's easy to make assumptions on the overall tone based on whatever ministers/priests/whatever choose to read from week to week (like I used to), but once you research and read the thing itself you* might come away with a new perspective.
Frankly, having watched Fellowship again this week, "sabshire" sounds like a Hobbit surname.
*- Again, the universal you, for anyone who happens to read this and hasn't completely made up their mind one way or another.
Further reading for the really curious: Pagan & Christian Creeds, a 'free' book from the Gutenburg Project that discusses such interesting points as the history of creation mythology, and why Christmas is timed around the Winter Solstice. I'd assumed it was to compete with the pagans, but apparently it may have been part of the merging of pagan beliefs and jewish prophecy.
For those interested in seeing how uninsightful, superstitious, and self-contradicting the works of one of the dozens of ancient civilizations can be, feel free to check The Skeptic's Annotated Bible
Especially if you are a woman, just, or tolerant.
Not to mention a) it was harmful to other earth species, and b) it was bought out by some corporation that later tried making deals with the visitors.
was "Plus Steve Jobs reminded us they have $41 billion in the bank and are not in debt. They're not desparate(sic) for cash."
I knew they had money, but sheesh. Though I'm leaning towards it being a typo, and it should read "4.1 billion", as that would be more in line with what I last heard.
Still, they are clearly on solid ground for a computer maker these days. Or for any product manufacturer, for that matter.
I wonder if that's enough to buy SCO....
Were the comments in French?
While annoying, this could have far greater impact on our lives than the OJ Simpson trial could have ever had. If SCO goes through court and wins, it could not only effect current and future Linux implementations but cast a black cloud over any Open Source project. If they go through and lose Open Source projects may still suffer, or may not depending on the public spin, but the length of the case may still kill promising projects. If IBM decides to just pay them off then it still would vindicate the claims and have the same negative results.
I'd agree that daily updates and the press conferences are getting tedious, but the eventual result is a lot more important to me than whether O.J. is locked away on the taxpayers dime or hanging out on the dime of those buying his book, or however he's getting his money now.
For my two cents, the fact that comments are the same doesn't really mean much here. If the code around the comments was the same, or even similar, why wasn't that mentioned? Comments I've seen generally have two functions. One, serve as an outline of the flow that is going on, used by people who like to comment or wrote them in first from an outline/plan. Or two, a detailed explanation of a single line, when it's a clever way of doing something quickly that isn't immediately intuitive. Comments in the first category can easily look alike between implementations of standard processes.
The third type of comment are the 'Why is this code here?'/'This code is never executed' lines, which I'm guessing wouldn't make it through an actual review process.
a) The streaming feature was never meant to be used other than locally.
b) Their testing missed the hole.
Ignoring that, one reason they don't do copy protection is that they trust people who can pay for products they use will pay for products they use. Streaming music to unknown people not only isn't fair use(*), but may qualify individuals as internet radio stations. Remember the licensing fees that were approved? Would you want Apple to have to collect those?
Personally, I don't think copyright/patent laws are incompatible with the internet directly, but that endless extensions undermine fair use, free expression, and human progress in general, regardless of the medium they are applied to.
* A counter example would be 'If I play my CDs loud at the beach, am I broadcasting?' My best guess is since only people in the vicinity can hear it then no, though in the courts it's anyone's guess. An ancillary thought would be if having a radio tuned to a game at a beach counts as a rebroadcast, but I'm probably thinking too much.
Which would absolve them of the DMCA. The mere fact that the business is over the web doesn't invoke the DMCA. Their business is selling physical things; the web merely is a store front. If there were no web (or even computers), and they produced their own global catalog, their product would be the same.
The DMCA is essentially a red herring, possibly intended to be a shortcut through federal courts, or to scare the public. The legal issues at stake is whether or not taking the patterns from dumpsters is theft, and if not whether what is taken can be sold. And no, while trespassing charges may be something to worry about, it is really irrelevant. What matters is whether whatever dump the trash goes to allows for scrounging. If so, then they merely short-cutted a legal action (searching a public dump) with a possibly illegal one (trespassing). If they were trespassing, this would be between the store, local police, and the trespassers.
Given all of that, it is clear that if McCall's has a beef with anyone, it's with the stores for not actually destroying the patterns or marking them 'destroyed and unsell-able'. As has been pointed out, publishers and bookstores have a policy of removing front covers. Interesting possible precedents to McCall's case would include if book publishers ever sued over selling 'destroyed' books, and if there is any precedent that if the store didn't bother removing the covers then the publishers can't sue.
It may be that the upshot of all of this is that they will devise a way to mark patterns as destroyed to prevent resell. It could be as simple as a large hole-puncher that will put a square through ten at a time, before they are thrown out.
I'm tired of this complaint. First, return renames any file. Second, CMD-N now opens a new window consistently across applications. I won't second guess Apple, but this was probably a factor in the change. After all, they could have gone with CMD-B for 'Browser', but that would have made the Finder operate differently from other apps. Remember, with OS X they hope to increase their user base with new Mac users, and legacy was weighed against consistency in all areas. Sometimes legacy complaints won (e.g. the menu bar clock), sometimes they didn't.
.zip w/ Winzip installed), it comes up differently. While I know power users don't think twice about it (on any system), it's this kind of mostly unavoidable behavior that drives Apple to have a menu bar across the top where options don't move, but enable/disable as appropriate.
Yes, it's annoying to have a learned keystroke changed - I won't argue that as I keep get getting caught, though likely not as often as you. And the different view behavior is annoying. BUT JUST HIT RETURN.
I don't know how to rename in any Linux GUI, but all Windows seem to require a right click or a key simulating a right click. And there are two choices - right click and find Rename in the Moving Menu*, or click once, wait a beat, click again.
*What I mean by Moving Menu: If you're near a screen edge, it comes up differently. If you're on different files (e.g.
Ironically for our discussion, rename isn't a menu option, but return is one of those things that's obvious when you know it.
Before rock music, it was comic books.
Before comic books, it was the Beatles.
Before the Beatles, it was Chuck Berry.
Before that, well, was World War 2 and the Baby Boomers, and the number of young with disposable income was low, and therefore if they weren't well-off already they were working (boys) or pregnant (girls) and both married before 20ish. (Yes, this is semi U.S. centric. If anyone has information about youth having disposable income AND free time before that elsewhere it would be good to know.)
I chose what I listed the most likely to be recognized as a pattern, but the list is longer. All activities that don't directly support the power structure are blamed for their problems: casual sex, drug use, alternative lifestyles, indifference to their god, compassion - even interest - in other cultures, etc.
Of course, we can go further back, if you want. Prohibition was a reaction to the new freedom of the times after the first World War, but the crash of 1929 was much more effective at ending the party, until the above pattern. And those were mainly adults with free time; children weren't yet given money or free time.
For what it's worth, history does repeat itself:
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
Socrates (470-399 B.C)
From Terminal, you can open any folder (even supposedly hidden ones) with simply: /Volumes
/Volumes/cdname
open
My question is, is the CD in question listed in in the Volumes directory? If so, does open
work, and open a Finder window? If so, can you right/ctrl-click and choose Eject? I know you can do all of that using a standard CD, but haven't had any problem CDs I can try it on. I have a feeling it won't, but you didn't specify what path you use to view the files, if it is through Volumes or through a unix alias. Of course, if there is a path to a folder open may still work, though it might not be recognized as a CD for eject to appear.
Anyway, it's just a thought.
Don't be so proud of this intellectual property fud you've constructed. The ability to distort the truth is insignificant next to the power of open source.
I'm going to be devil's advocate, and say that maybe the sales person was the problem. Used to work at CompUSA or something. From previous comments, it seems that this isn't necessarily the way they worked. Who knows; maybe he had a review that morning and got 'you haven't had an add-on sale all month' or something.
As long as you have one nearby, I'd say just give it another try. It's a couple of bucks in gas vs. shipping and whatever else comes with online orders. Yes, sometimes there is free shipping/add-ons/whatever. My point isn't simply the money, it's to not judge a store by one employee. "One data point does not a line make."
Umm... is having a cold, dead harddrive fucker holding onto your Linux some form of Geek necrophilia that I really don't want to know anything about?
Sooooooo....
How long until the others have to worry about the Inquisition? Or are we skipping that since we've already seen the Second Coming of Steve?
(How many thought I was going to go with that math that showed B.G. = The Beast from Revelations?)
Um... maybe Trinity thought that it was just an exclamation, and wondered what it was in reference to? Replace "Jesus!" with "Wow!" or "Damn!" and it really doesn't change her reaction much. I'll bet if you go back, you might even find her responding to "Shit!". She doesn't thing she's a pile of excrement, does she?
In fact, you probably do the same thing. If you're somewhere with a person who says "Jesus!", do you think
a) Hey! They mean me!
b) The second coming? Already?
or
c) What would cause them to say that now?
hSIL?
Another symbol for Allah?
The number of angels that can dance on a pin?
Moby Dick is available at Project Gutenberg. Herman Melville died in 1891; it was release in 1991.
As far as 28 years for computer texts go, if you're talking about something like Using Java 1.2, then yes most of the information within it would be dated. However, if you're talking about books along the line of 'Solving Real World Problems with Logical Representations', then the concepts would still be useful, even if the examples require modernization. (And there's no such exact book that I know of, though there are probably similar ones that approximate it.)
The ads were probably written and produced some time ago. In fact, it is unlikely that the ad producers would have had access to a 'play list', so to speak. They made their best guesses on what would get peoples attention, and probably secured the broadcast rights independently of the Music Store deals.
That being said, it is also possible that the song is on the list to be provided. However, once a record company agrees to allow a list of songs, it takes time and resources to encode them, have them checked, and add them to a database. I'm betting every weeks 'new' releases will contain more technically 'old' works than new, as companies get their catalogs encoded.
Personally, I think the older/rarer music is where the real 'killer app' is. For example, the 4th album on Hip Hop/Rap is Run D.M.C.'s Raising Hell. Rock has Elvis at 3, Fleetwood Mac at 4, and The Who at 7. The top two country albums are Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. It's the older works that aren't worth buying CD's for at $16 each, though there is still some balance they need. (The pricing on Pink Floyd is as bad as, if not worse than, 'brick' music stores, though this may be yet another label issue.)
I doubt many here are feeding jukeboxes much more than "non at all"
As true as that may be, the point is that people do pay ~$1 per song on a jukebox. The implication is that they might think that that is a fair price to "own" a song, not that it is something everyone already does.
For the record, my average at this point is probably lower than yours, especially since I remember when a quarter bought 10 songs. We had to use two push buttons, the single speaker was tinny, the 45's skipped, and we liked it!
</OLD_MAN_RANT>
You can make unlimited burns from the 128-bit AAC to CD. Once it's there, you can do anything with it you want. I'm not an expert, but it doesn't appear to be signifcantly worse than MP3, so once you burn it you can do any of your list. Is it an extra step? Yes, but it's about as few steps as your going to get from a scheme blessed by record executives.
They seem to have struck a fair balance between allowing fair use and not providing for major abuses. Obviously, anyone who wants to turn around and distribute the music still could, but Apple has no liability for what is done once the song is burnt. In fact, providing an option to legally obtain music may introduce a sense of personal responsibility. Personally, I'm surprised that they will have unlimited burns - it is possible that the burns will have watermarks, though that would blow up in Apple's face if they don't disclose it now.
True, in this case just the password does nothing. But if they have cased a specific business and tracked a person to a subway, there's a decent shot it will work.
An example is the movie Sneakers. Now ignoring the technical aspects of the movie for this discussion, it did show a complicated but valid social method of obtaining a password. If they hadn't known the phrase beforehand, it's not unlikely that she could have seduced him to the point of telling her.
A less obvious example is Ocean's Eleven, where they used the dancer to get the ID card from a guard.
Actually, the first two are more the results of avoidance of technology, for different reasons. The first is easily preventable if a) people had other things to do, b) they were allowed to use protection/correction without fear of a deity or without feeling guilty about feeling good, and c) people stopped fighting genetic engineering for food. People have been genetically engineering on a macroscopic level for eons with selective breeding, but millions are starving because governments are refusing grain that would grow in their harsh environments.*
The second is preventable with proper measures, but the costs are prohibitive in a capitalist environment. The mere fact that pollution isn't increasing at the rate it used to, while the rate of technology use hasn't slowed, goes to show that air pollution is controllable.
* I forget which one; Penn & Teller's Bullshit did this topic a couple of weeks back. If you don't have Showtime, get it.