You posted my thoughts fairly well other than saying "pendant". Hearing doesn't -necessarily- imply cognition. Some lower classes of animals may have organs with neuronal structures that communicate with vibration sensors to provide feedback that the animal reacts to and I'd probably include that as hearing. But however you define human like hearing, plants don't do it. They react to light. To temperature. To soil types and without any amazement, they react to a vibration pattern that is followed by pollination. Evolution occurs in the plant kingdom too, eh? No huge surprise this is possible but interesting research to be sure.
that's only in an ideal world. in the real world the police arrest people all too often even when there is no crime, witness the many arrests for photography and videography when it is perfectly legal but unwanted by the police. the white house staff photographer was even arrested (and acquitted) for videotaping (photographing?) police. and courts often follow through with prosecutions of people that are, to any neutral observer, clearly innocent. our legal system is broken and demonstrably so when prosecutors fight tooth and nail to prevent exculpatory dna evidence from being used to save innocent people after they have spent years in prison. sad.
I got my gmail address when it was in beta if I recall correctly. It is therefore a simple one like name@gmail.com. On top of that it is a very common name in a European country. I thought it was great to have that gmail address till I started getting all sorts of email meant for another person..then another...I just mark as spam and filter. No problem. Not my worry. Simple solutions for simple problems.
I'm an apple fan boy in the sense that I'm a fan of the OS. I use a Mac (and do support for both mac and win machines) but not because I am in love with Apple's policies. I won't buy an iPhone or iPad, and I'll never buy a song from iTunes for myself. My next machine will be a real debate in terms of the OS. I've watched Windows get better and better in many ways but the feel of the OS is still, for me, nasty. But so is Apple's "my way or the highway" position which this issue demonstrates.
Unless I'm mistaken, Canon dslr's won't allow you to leave them on 24/7 and would not work for a continuous-on camera, which is a typical requirement of a web cam.
This was fantastic. Not sure it belonged in Slashdot but it made my day and month. I dunno who has the time to do all this but it busted the irony meter and made me laugh aloud. Good 'nuff for me.
From what I gather it is NOT easy or possible to duplicate the functionality that existed previously. I have tens of thousands of images. One huge nicety of Mac OS has always been my ability to allow a family member open a jpg in something like Adobe PhotoDeluxe and work on it with that program and save it, then double click on it and have it open in that program, while I do similarly with Photoshop and it will open properly in Photoshop. I now have thousands of images that open in this program or that program...even some that are only used in Final Cut Pro that I can double click on and FCP will then open. I don't think there is any way to transition so my old ability to double click and have the correct application open for all these thousands of files. If I had never taken a picture or written a.txt file with BBEdit it would be less of an issue. But this change would have a huge impact on my workflow and over time would cost me a lot of wasted time. This is one update I will pass on and for me a it's a huge loss of functionality that just drives one more wedge between me and OSX.
it depends mostly on how much data you have. I have a couple of terabytes. I also have a daughter living 5 miles away so I backup at my house to external drives and swap those backups with another set kept at her house. If you have 50megs of data (many people have very small requirements) then an online backup strategy might be very handy. You can even get 32gig and larger(?) USB flash drives that are more than adequate for most people who just want to backup their email and pictures/data. Tape drives are fine for geeks but access is slow and rebuilding a drive becomes more of a chore. Definitely not for mom and dad if they aren't geeks. External drives give total bootability (or the potential for it) and for most people are the easiest way to do a complete mirror of your HD. For data, most people can fit all their data (if they can even find it) on a USB Thumb Drive.
One hears about such vulnerabilities often, but I rarely get any sense of just how dangerous this is. How often do these vulnerabilities translate into compromised web pages that the average user who isn't going to download porn....how often do these exploits translate into people actually having their computers compromised and turned into bots? I know many, many computers are compromised...just not sure of the manner in which they are actually pwnd...
I played WoW and that was it for MMO's. Now I'm a recovering WoW player. I know it will always be a struggle. I take it day by day. Living life without WoW. wow.
You could spend an entire semester teaching dissenting views from all the religions of the world and they would be equally valid...but none of them would be science. It's a cold hard fact that all the scientific data to date tells us evolution happens. The THEORY part is now all about the process itself. Just like gravity. It's a theory. Newton didn't understand relativity and that new knowledge has modified our theory of gravity just as genetics greatly modified our theory of evolution, but nobody with a full set of neurons firing wonders if gravity or evolution are true except those with religious requirements that force them to believe in their holy book and treat it like it contains "the truth". Your idea that "it's a cold, hard fact that evolution is basically just a theory" is ignorant because your use of the term "just a theory" implies it is almost whimsically true or untrue and it's really no more than an idea that needs to be checked out. If there is any fact floating around, it is that the basic concept of evolution has been shown to be true by prediction after prediction and data after data after data. Religious fanboys that want evolution to be "just a theory" are simply ignorant. Mod this "offensive to the uneducated".
"why have we now decided to ignore the historical social, economic, and scientific influences in public schools if they refer to God"
We haven't. There are history classes, sociology classes, and even comparative religion classes. This argument is about teaching religion as if it was science in a science class. How is it that people don't "get" that problem?
Science, unlike religion, is happy to revise theories and refine theories and introduce new theories as new data comes along. Darwin knew nothing about genetics and since the introduction of evolutionary theory, we have learned a great deal about how traits are passed on and how evolution works. We now have much more detail regarding evolution just as we have many more details concerning gravity, but the fundamental idea that evolution occurs (as opposed to "all the animals and mankind were plopped down on earth at once) has been proven to be correct within the context of our knowledge today. The specifics of the process of evolution will continue to be studied for many years to come but it's clear that evolution is "real" and the only questions are the specifics of the processes involved. Evolution itself is a fact in the sense of we know it to be generally true. There is no meaningful debate within the scientific community on that count. It's the specific mechanisms and processes (it is more complex than a single, simple explanation) of how plants and animals evolve that is of interest today. Religious mythology does not rise to the scientific level of Theory. Period.
If by free speech and open debate you mean wasting time in a science class (that has no time to spare) by presenting christian stories of creation as if it was actual science...and using cherry picked facts to fit the story and then giving it a scientific sounding name and calling the religious training in school an "open debate" or "exploring all the various theories". No. There's no value to that in a science classroom. Maybe in a Science and Religion class in college,or a Contemporary Issues class, or even a Religion class.
Nobody wants to prevent people from critiquing religious theory. Or ban religious theory. Get a grip. The underlying desire here is to slip in the teaching of creationism and to the degree the very careful wording that was used helps, it's a loss for science classes... it is time wasted in a science class... because IT'S NOT SCIENCE.
The reason it's not such great news is that phrasing, however subtle, is still meant to appease the fundies. The perception, I believe, is that it still allows for a principal or school board to put pressure on the teaching of evolution by pushing teachers to "examine all sides". The desire is to get ID and/or young earth creationism in here one way or the other.
There is nothing wrong with teaching a theory and the evidence to support it - as long as that theory is a valid scientific theory with evidence that is widely accepted by the scientific community as such. ID isn't science (read the Dover transcripts if you are STILL confused on that point) but "examining all sides" is all about trying to get ID snuck into a science curriculum.
Scientists are not against teaching weaknesses in any theory. Examining weaknesses is what science is all about. What scientists do NOT want done to "examine" those weaknesses by contrasting observations and facts that led to a theory (evolution) with observations that fit a pre-set fairy tale (creationism in whatever form you want to call it) and then pretend that both are valid science.
The language used (above) is vague enough that it will provide the grist for many subsequent arguments between teachers and parents and schools and districts and I'm sure, many others. Nice job. Not.
Idiot. There is no such thing as Creation Science. Creationists wanting to provide a degree in science is an oxymoronical concept. (if they can make up fake degree ideas I can make up a word). Read the Dover transcripts if you don't understand why creationism is NOT science. Discovering the theological underpinnings to a theological theory belongs in a theology class. If you clear away the religious baggage of creationism you have....nada...zip...Creationism IS religious baggage. The theory of a divine clockmaker cannot be measured, tested and replicated. The clockmaker by definition is beyond the scope of science. There can be no theory within science the starts with the premise of a deity that is responsible for creating the world and then which forces all observable data to fall under the scope of a book that is taken on faith to be true. Creationism is a purely religious position and always will be. Allowing the awarding of fictional degrees would be just plain stupid, but anyone who believes creation science is real reflects a poor education to start with so it's no surprise the same poorly educated people are in favor of spreading their lack of education. But I forgive them because they know not what they do. god that was funny...
It's always irritating to hear people say things like "his science has become his religion". That's absurd on the face of it. Dawkins is a scientist. Period. If one could find a scientific (measurable and reproducible) experiment that would conclusively demonstrate the existence of god, I'm sure he would be happy to study the results of it. Because of the overwhelming (total) lack of scientific lack of evidence for the existence of god and because of utter stupidity of the claimed evidence (talking snakes, virgin births, raising from the dead, divine intervention) Dawkins (and other clear thinking people) refuse to accept the basic tenets of monotheistic religions. THAT is a far cry from him turning his science into a religion. The fundamental tenets of science are diametrically opposed to the inherent belief systems of the religions in question and no reputable scientist (which Dawkins clearly is) makes science into a religion, if by that you mean his beliefs are based on faith and a total lack of evidence or scientific inquiry and are seen to be infallible as is the case with religious belief. Dawkins certainly does NOT do that so lets lay to rest the tired old criticism that scientists turn their understanding of scientific discoveries into religious beliefs. Whatever I may believe today as a scientist, based on the most recent experimental data, may be overturned tomorrow by new and better data and I (as well as Dawkins) will be happy to throw my old beliefs out the window when science finds new information that better conforms with newly documented data.
The second part, "people who's religion has become their science" doesn't even make any sense. That's like saying "for people who's backward, ignorant belief in fairly tales becomes a highly disciplined belief system based on published, reproducible data and conclusions". Huh?
Scientists can't explore faith. Faith is faith. By definition it's belief without evidence. Scientists can choose to not act scientifically and adopt and irrational belief system of they wish to (and some do), but the should indeed be afraid of doing it because it can lead to confusion as to what is real and whether one's perception and belief system concerning reality should be based on fact or fantasy. Some scientists can keep the two concepts separated reasonably well but many others fail to do so and lose all credibility as scientists as do all (and I mean ALL) young-earth believers who continue to pretend they are scientists instead of admitting they are people of religious faith with scientific training who choose to ignore the science and instead base their belief system on religious underpinnings. At least you got it right when you said "theologians shouldn't be afraid of science.". I think that is true because they should not be afraid the people of the world coming to grips with the understanding that most of today's religions are based on false superstitions. They should not fear the truth.
Anyone wanting something to last for 10 years should include the player. Don't bother putting away a CD, DVD, tape OR hard drive. Put the entire computer into storage. It would be foolish not to take it out once a year and fire it up just to keep the oils and lubricants working. If it's important enough to store for 10 years then it's important enough to check once a year. If you put anything like a CD, DVD, or other item in storage for 10 years without a player you take a huge gamble but if you include the device it runs on you have a chance to view it. You may have a hard time retrieving it because there may be no USB or Firewire connectors (there will most certainly NOT be any such connectors).
What that ultimately means is you CAN'T easily store electronic documents that long. You must convert them from device to device, from tape to floppy to zip drive to hard drive to holographic drive to biometric drive (I come from the future). A storage medium from one generation can't be read by the next generation so the question is about storage AND being able to access and convert the data - otherwise storage itself is meaningless.
Any mac user could have written this years ago. I am a staunch Mac person, and like many others I buy Apple because of the OS and the generally decent hardware but I do so in spite of the rip-off pricing of upgrade components and the near complete lack of support in some areas like high-end video and audio cards. This is NOT news.
It won't be long before XP will not be able to be activated. I don't know when that will be but at some point you and everyone else that chooses not to use a good copy (er...I mean pirated copy) of XP will have to go go Vista. It's inevitable and resistance is...well...you know.
They may -think- they are going to transition to the net, but it's also possible they simply WANT to and users may not follow them. Adobe is a control-freak company whose activation software is all about making MORE and MORE billions. I can afford PS and have a legit copy of CS3 Design Suite, but still I consider their pricing to be absurd. Time will tell as to whether users will follow, but dominant software manufactures making products like Photoshop and Word have a great deal of power so they may indeed be able to get people to make the transition even if many don't wish to do so, much as people have bought into activation software in spite of their dislike of it.
how long before M$ extends and innovates to the point that we find using the net requires using M$ OS? think it's impossible? there was a day when I thought the net was inherently cross platform and didn't worry about things like banking, viewing videos and other technologies that are now increasingly only accessible by IE or some Windows component like WMP. Slowly but surely M$ continues to put a stranglehold on browsing the net. Whatever proprietary technology they incorporate into Longhorn that is not available on other platforms will further this hegemonic, monopolistic behavior. the trend is for more and more web sites to be accessible only by IE and when Longhorn comes out you will see innovations that will further "enhance" the user experience (read "require the latest M$ OS). cross platform support for the net is at great risk.
Slashdot Mirror
You posted my thoughts fairly well other than saying "pendant". Hearing doesn't -necessarily- imply cognition. Some lower classes of animals may have organs with neuronal structures that communicate with vibration sensors to provide feedback that the animal reacts to and I'd probably include that as hearing. But however you define human like hearing, plants don't do it. They react to light. To temperature. To soil types and without any amazement, they react to a vibration pattern that is followed by pollination. Evolution occurs in the plant kingdom too, eh? No huge surprise this is possible but interesting research to be sure.
that's only in an ideal world. in the real world the police arrest people all too often even when there is no crime, witness the many arrests for photography and videography when it is perfectly legal but unwanted by the police. the white house staff photographer was even arrested (and acquitted) for videotaping (photographing?) police. and courts often follow through with prosecutions of people that are, to any neutral observer, clearly innocent. our legal system is broken and demonstrably so when prosecutors fight tooth and nail to prevent exculpatory dna evidence from being used to save innocent people after they have spent years in prison. sad.
I got my gmail address when it was in beta if I recall correctly. It is therefore a simple one like name@gmail.com. On top of that it is a very common name in a European country. I thought it was great to have that gmail address till I started getting all sorts of email meant for another person..then another...I just mark as spam and filter. No problem. Not my worry. Simple solutions for simple problems.
I'm an apple fan boy in the sense that I'm a fan of the OS. I use a Mac (and do support for both mac and win machines) but not because I am in love with Apple's policies. I won't buy an iPhone or iPad, and I'll never buy a song from iTunes for myself. My next machine will be a real debate in terms of the OS. I've watched Windows get better and better in many ways but the feel of the OS is still, for me, nasty. But so is Apple's "my way or the highway" position which this issue demonstrates.
Unless I'm mistaken, Canon dslr's won't allow you to leave them on 24/7 and would not work for a continuous-on camera, which is a typical requirement of a web cam.
This was fantastic. Not sure it belonged in Slashdot but it made my day and month. I dunno who has the time to do all this but it busted the irony meter and made me laugh aloud. Good 'nuff for me.
From what I gather it is NOT easy or possible to duplicate the functionality that existed previously. I have tens of thousands of images. One huge nicety of Mac OS has always been my ability to allow a family member open a jpg in something like Adobe PhotoDeluxe and work on it with that program and save it, then double click on it and have it open in that program, while I do similarly with Photoshop and it will open properly in Photoshop. I now have thousands of images that open in this program or that program...even some that are only used in Final Cut Pro that I can double click on and FCP will then open. I don't think there is any way to transition so my old ability to double click and have the correct application open for all these thousands of files. If I had never taken a picture or written a .txt file with BBEdit it would be less of an issue. But this change would have a huge impact on my workflow and over time would cost me a lot of wasted time. This is one update I will pass on and for me a it's a huge loss of functionality that just drives one more wedge between me and OSX.
it depends mostly on how much data you have. I have a couple of terabytes. I also have a daughter living 5 miles away so I backup at my house to external drives and swap those backups with another set kept at her house. If you have 50megs of data (many people have very small requirements) then an online backup strategy might be very handy. You can even get 32gig and larger(?) USB flash drives that are more than adequate for most people who just want to backup their email and pictures/data. Tape drives are fine for geeks but access is slow and rebuilding a drive becomes more of a chore. Definitely not for mom and dad if they aren't geeks. External drives give total bootability (or the potential for it) and for most people are the easiest way to do a complete mirror of your HD. For data, most people can fit all their data (if they can even find it) on a USB Thumb Drive.
One hears about such vulnerabilities often, but I rarely get any sense of just how dangerous this is. How often do these vulnerabilities translate into compromised web pages that the average user who isn't going to download porn....how often do these exploits translate into people actually having their computers compromised and turned into bots? I know many, many computers are compromised...just not sure of the manner in which they are actually pwnd...
I played WoW and that was it for MMO's. Now I'm a recovering WoW player. I know it will always be a struggle. I take it day by day. Living life without WoW. wow.
You could spend an entire semester teaching dissenting views from all the religions of the world and they would be equally valid...but none of them would be science. It's a cold hard fact that all the scientific data to date tells us evolution happens. The THEORY part is now all about the process itself. Just like gravity. It's a theory. Newton didn't understand relativity and that new knowledge has modified our theory of gravity just as genetics greatly modified our theory of evolution, but nobody with a full set of neurons firing wonders if gravity or evolution are true except those with religious requirements that force them to believe in their holy book and treat it like it contains "the truth". Your idea that "it's a cold, hard fact that evolution is basically just a theory" is ignorant because your use of the term "just a theory" implies it is almost whimsically true or untrue and it's really no more than an idea that needs to be checked out. If there is any fact floating around, it is that the basic concept of evolution has been shown to be true by prediction after prediction and data after data after data. Religious fanboys that want evolution to be "just a theory" are simply ignorant. Mod this "offensive to the uneducated".
"why have we now decided to ignore the historical social, economic, and scientific influences in public schools if they refer to God" We haven't. There are history classes, sociology classes, and even comparative religion classes. This argument is about teaching religion as if it was science in a science class. How is it that people don't "get" that problem?
Science, unlike religion, is happy to revise theories and refine theories and introduce new theories as new data comes along. Darwin knew nothing about genetics and since the introduction of evolutionary theory, we have learned a great deal about how traits are passed on and how evolution works. We now have much more detail regarding evolution just as we have many more details concerning gravity, but the fundamental idea that evolution occurs (as opposed to "all the animals and mankind were plopped down on earth at once) has been proven to be correct within the context of our knowledge today. The specifics of the process of evolution will continue to be studied for many years to come but it's clear that evolution is "real" and the only questions are the specifics of the processes involved. Evolution itself is a fact in the sense of we know it to be generally true. There is no meaningful debate within the scientific community on that count. It's the specific mechanisms and processes (it is more complex than a single, simple explanation) of how plants and animals evolve that is of interest today. Religious mythology does not rise to the scientific level of Theory. Period.
If by free speech and open debate you mean wasting time in a science class (that has no time to spare) by presenting christian stories of creation as if it was actual science...and using cherry picked facts to fit the story and then giving it a scientific sounding name and calling the religious training in school an "open debate" or "exploring all the various theories". No. There's no value to that in a science classroom. Maybe in a Science and Religion class in college,or a Contemporary Issues class, or even a Religion class. Nobody wants to prevent people from critiquing religious theory. Or ban religious theory. Get a grip. The underlying desire here is to slip in the teaching of creationism and to the degree the very careful wording that was used helps, it's a loss for science classes ... it is time wasted in a science class... because IT'S NOT SCIENCE.
The reason it's not such great news is that phrasing, however subtle, is still meant to appease the fundies. The perception, I believe, is that it still allows for a principal or school board to put pressure on the teaching of evolution by pushing teachers to "examine all sides". The desire is to get ID and/or young earth creationism in here one way or the other. There is nothing wrong with teaching a theory and the evidence to support it - as long as that theory is a valid scientific theory with evidence that is widely accepted by the scientific community as such. ID isn't science (read the Dover transcripts if you are STILL confused on that point) but "examining all sides" is all about trying to get ID snuck into a science curriculum. Scientists are not against teaching weaknesses in any theory. Examining weaknesses is what science is all about. What scientists do NOT want done to "examine" those weaknesses by contrasting observations and facts that led to a theory (evolution) with observations that fit a pre-set fairy tale (creationism in whatever form you want to call it) and then pretend that both are valid science. The language used (above) is vague enough that it will provide the grist for many subsequent arguments between teachers and parents and schools and districts and I'm sure, many others. Nice job. Not.
Idiot. There is no such thing as Creation Science. Creationists wanting to provide a degree in science is an oxymoronical concept. (if they can make up fake degree ideas I can make up a word). Read the Dover transcripts if you don't understand why creationism is NOT science. Discovering the theological underpinnings to a theological theory belongs in a theology class. If you clear away the religious baggage of creationism you have....nada...zip...Creationism IS religious baggage. The theory of a divine clockmaker cannot be measured, tested and replicated. The clockmaker by definition is beyond the scope of science. There can be no theory within science the starts with the premise of a deity that is responsible for creating the world and then which forces all observable data to fall under the scope of a book that is taken on faith to be true. Creationism is a purely religious position and always will be. Allowing the awarding of fictional degrees would be just plain stupid, but anyone who believes creation science is real reflects a poor education to start with so it's no surprise the same poorly educated people are in favor of spreading their lack of education. But I forgive them because they know not what they do. god that was funny...
It's always irritating to hear people say things like "his science has become his religion". That's absurd on the face of it. Dawkins is a scientist. Period. If one could find a scientific (measurable and reproducible) experiment that would conclusively demonstrate the existence of god, I'm sure he would be happy to study the results of it. Because of the overwhelming (total) lack of scientific lack of evidence for the existence of god and because of utter stupidity of the claimed evidence (talking snakes, virgin births, raising from the dead, divine intervention) Dawkins (and other clear thinking people) refuse to accept the basic tenets of monotheistic religions. THAT is a far cry from him turning his science into a religion. The fundamental tenets of science are diametrically opposed to the inherent belief systems of the religions in question and no reputable scientist (which Dawkins clearly is) makes science into a religion, if by that you mean his beliefs are based on faith and a total lack of evidence or scientific inquiry and are seen to be infallible as is the case with religious belief. Dawkins certainly does NOT do that so lets lay to rest the tired old criticism that scientists turn their understanding of scientific discoveries into religious beliefs. Whatever I may believe today as a scientist, based on the most recent experimental data, may be overturned tomorrow by new and better data and I (as well as Dawkins) will be happy to throw my old beliefs out the window when science finds new information that better conforms with newly documented data. The second part, "people who's religion has become their science" doesn't even make any sense. That's like saying "for people who's backward, ignorant belief in fairly tales becomes a highly disciplined belief system based on published, reproducible data and conclusions". Huh? Scientists can't explore faith. Faith is faith. By definition it's belief without evidence. Scientists can choose to not act scientifically and adopt and irrational belief system of they wish to (and some do), but the should indeed be afraid of doing it because it can lead to confusion as to what is real and whether one's perception and belief system concerning reality should be based on fact or fantasy. Some scientists can keep the two concepts separated reasonably well but many others fail to do so and lose all credibility as scientists as do all (and I mean ALL) young-earth believers who continue to pretend they are scientists instead of admitting they are people of religious faith with scientific training who choose to ignore the science and instead base their belief system on religious underpinnings. At least you got it right when you said "theologians shouldn't be afraid of science.". I think that is true because they should not be afraid the people of the world coming to grips with the understanding that most of today's religions are based on false superstitions. They should not fear the truth.
Anyone wanting something to last for 10 years should include the player. Don't bother putting away a CD, DVD, tape OR hard drive. Put the entire computer into storage. It would be foolish not to take it out once a year and fire it up just to keep the oils and lubricants working. If it's important enough to store for 10 years then it's important enough to check once a year. If you put anything like a CD, DVD, or other item in storage for 10 years without a player you take a huge gamble but if you include the device it runs on you have a chance to view it. You may have a hard time retrieving it because there may be no USB or Firewire connectors (there will most certainly NOT be any such connectors). What that ultimately means is you CAN'T easily store electronic documents that long. You must convert them from device to device, from tape to floppy to zip drive to hard drive to holographic drive to biometric drive (I come from the future). A storage medium from one generation can't be read by the next generation so the question is about storage AND being able to access and convert the data - otherwise storage itself is meaningless.
Any mac user could have written this years ago. I am a staunch Mac person, and like many others I buy Apple because of the OS and the generally decent hardware but I do so in spite of the rip-off pricing of upgrade components and the near complete lack of support in some areas like high-end video and audio cards. This is NOT news.
It won't be long before XP will not be able to be activated. I don't know when that will be but at some point you and everyone else that chooses not to use a good copy (er...I mean pirated copy) of XP will have to go go Vista. It's inevitable and resistance is...well...you know.
They may -think- they are going to transition to the net, but it's also possible they simply WANT to and users may not follow them. Adobe is a control-freak company whose activation software is all about making MORE and MORE billions. I can afford PS and have a legit copy of CS3 Design Suite, but still I consider their pricing to be absurd. Time will tell as to whether users will follow, but dominant software manufactures making products like Photoshop and Word have a great deal of power so they may indeed be able to get people to make the transition even if many don't wish to do so, much as people have bought into activation software in spite of their dislike of it.
how long before M$ extends and innovates to the point that we find using the net requires using M$ OS? think it's impossible? there was a day when I thought the net was inherently cross platform and didn't worry about things like banking, viewing videos and other technologies that are now increasingly only accessible by IE or some Windows component like WMP. Slowly but surely M$ continues to put a stranglehold on browsing the net. Whatever proprietary technology they incorporate into Longhorn that is not available on other platforms will further this hegemonic, monopolistic behavior. the trend is for more and more web sites to be accessible only by IE and when Longhorn comes out you will see innovations that will further "enhance" the user experience (read "require the latest M$ OS). cross platform support for the net is at great risk.