Heh, interesting point. But citizens of a country are still bound by that country's laws, even if part of those activities are taking place elsewhere. Like wire fraud, for example. And international laws can bind the citizens of all states party to the respective treaties everywhere -- including, for example, international waters.
The key problem, I think, is merely a matter of semantics -- the traditional wording in almost all cases simply never takes into account extra-planetary travel. But the principles should (and, I imagine, will) still apply.
Mod parent up! (I already responded in this topic.) Ownership is only actual when it is enforced. No one who's buying these so-called "deeds" have the ability to travel to the moon and claim their so-called "property". Therefore, these claims will be entirely moot when someone else actually manages to get there. That qualifies this whole endeavor as a scam in fact, if not according to law.
Ownership comes from power, and nothing else. The various prehistoric tribes "claimed" the American continents by settling on the land (so to speak). Then the the Spanish, English, French, et cetera showed up and erected a few towns with tall fences, brought some guns, and "claimed" the surrounding area.
Heck, in the 1880's, the various European governments carved up Africa like a roast, arbitrarily defining colonies everywhere. They only followed up with the settlers and guns years later.
The point is that people can make claims any time they want. But they're completely pointless until the soldiers and workers arrive to exploit and occupy the area. And the workers and soldiers are representatives of the government.
However, in the United States, according to Article VI of the Constitution, "...all Treaties made [...] shall be the supreme Law of the Land". This means that the treaty is not only binding upon the government, but also upon the citizens. That means that if the government can't claim it, neither can its citizens.... I think, anyway. Naturally, IANAL.
Actually, here's another angle to approach it from: claiming something as property requires that you occupy it, or at least control it in some respect. Obviously that's not possible, unless Neil Armstrong left a Century 21 sign in the Sea of Tranquility or something. Which means that any such property claims can reasonably be argued to have been abandoned, if not unenforceable in the first place.
Regardless, any moron who tries to hold up a government that wants to build a research lab or a helium-3 refinery on "their" lunar property will be the cause of a great many guffaws in the halls of power shortly thereafter.
Sorry, this weird bald guy in a sparkly silver suit with a bizarre midget clone and a giant "frikkin' 'laser'" got there first. But I hear he's willing to sell it for one hundred billion dollars...
I think it's probably referring instead to IP tracking or some such, to make sure that the same person or group doesn't download the package umpteen million times.
Yeah, I checked the page with OmniWeb, and I got the same thing. Not that I'd ever, ever use the product, but I still want to know what they're doing... Even more amusing to me is the fact that they went to the trouble of adding an XHTML DOCTYPE, but it fails validation miserably.
Somehow, I have a feeling that Office Live might turn out to be more useful (and practical) than Windows Live. I mean, isn't the whole point of the World Wide Web that your computer's operating system doesn't matter? What features of Windows (other than the crashing, the viruses, the spyware, the buffer overflows...) would be useful via a Web browser instead of the actual operating system? And if there are useful features, wouldn't it make more sense to make these new "Live" services completely platform-independent, in order to lure back those who've been using alternative platforms?
Office Live, on the other hand, could definitely be useful, assuming it's done right. It would make it easier (and possibly cheaper, though that would really depend on caveats below) for people on non-Microsoft systems to have access to Office's features and file formats, making cross-platform document sharing easier for all platforms, not just Windows and Macintosh. (Seeing how Office for Mac OS X is one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows right now...)
However, I see a couple of problems with this whole "Live" concept, as Microsoft is approaching it:
(1) Based on my attempted preview of the pages, the services seem to be Windows-only, at least for now. Why the hell should anyone already using Windows pay for an additional "Windows Live" service? Likewise for Office. Additionally, unless they intend to change the purpose and capabilities of Windows, I'm starting to realize that a Web-based operating system seems like a complete oxymoron, and probably a solution in search of a problem.
(2) Unlike Google, which would use their rumored OO.o-based service as a means towards getting advertising revenue, Microsoft is almost certainly approaching these products from the perspective of simply edging out competitors and maintaining their stranglehold on the OS and productivity suite markets, and also to boost their revenues by suckering people into subscription-based services. This means that once again, they're probably going to be working on pushing out a product that's "just good enough" (c.f. Internet Explorer) in order to rake in the cash and lock people into their own proprietary system.
(3) Ownership of data. With the hypothetical Google service and OO.o's use of the OpenDocument standard, the very nature of open source and open standards makes it crystal clear that the user owns the documents that would be created/edited/shared/published via the service. Naturally, by contrast, Microsoft will be seeking to limit the exporting functions, ensuring that once you create a document with their service, you'll have to send them perpetual payments in order to maintain access to that document -- i.e. they own your document.
"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny!"
Hmm... I'm not saying you're wrong, but can't the government effectively decide/dictate its own "fair" price when invoking eminent domain? I've read a few stories in the past about people whose houses have been condemned for some highway project, complaining that they weren't paid enough for their property. So they can provide some compensation, but not the "market" price (which, let's face it, is decided by the pharmaceutical cartels -- er, I mean, companies -- anyway?). Most medicines are so ridiculously overpriced it's not even funny. (Like my one month's prescription that would cost $480 without insurance...)
At any rate, at the very least, the government can just take what it wants in the name of national security. It's what the US government did many times with new technologies that were needed for the war effort during World War II...
It seems to me that in a case such as this, it would be perfectly acceptable to invoke the principle of Eminent Domain. If this isn't a situation that involved the public's interest, I don't know what is!
I agree the cassette adapter is not the greatest option (I've used it myself in the past), especially when listening to classical music, but it's still a far cry better than using a radio transmitter in a metropolitan area... and either way, if you're still using the factory-installed speakers of your car, a cassette adapter is not going to cause that much of a degradation, regardless.
Okay, I finally went back and read the whole CNet article. I now revert to my original opinion: CNet was not doing anything out of line by publishing the information they did. And why do I think that now?
Because the subject of CNet's article was an analysis of potential privacy issues with Google's search, e-mail, and storage services.
Within that context, using Google's own services to obtain information that's used to illustrate the potential privacy concerns was entirely appropriate and completely relevant to the topic....how did actually publishing the information advance the reporting of the news, though? Was there any reason to rattle off specific bits of personal information instead of simply saying "We were able to find his SSN, address and personal cell number"?
Why yes, there was. In journalism, just as in creative writing, the mantra is "show, don't tell". If the information is publicly available, then there's really no reason to expect that it remain "hidden" in those circumstances.
My sole caveat, but this is simply from a personal opinion now, is that it might have been better to check with Google (either the corporation, or with the executive's staff) to let them know they wanted to include that information in the article ahead of time, and offer an opportunity for feedback, perhaps to find alternative subjects for linked search subjects. However, the information searched and linked to in the article was hardly "private", and absolutely nothing like the invasions of privacy committed by the tabloids (like I suggested might be similar in my previous response).
To sum up, I think that CNet might've been pushing the limit with the part about the executive's residential data, but there was nothing at all wrong with publishing any of that information in an article about people's concerns about privacy with regards to Google's services.
Okay, I can agree with you about the "proper" part of the argument, mainly because I, being a moron, didn't read the entire original article and didn't realize the full extent of the information published by CNet.
Previously, I've understood the nature of the complaint to be that Google was simply mad that the journalists published information; assuming it was more information than was relevant to the article (I'd thought it was just some personally-specific financial information about volumes of stock options or some such), then yeah, Google would have the right to refuse to talk to reporters for what they believe is inappropriate reporting.
After all, from that perspective, it'd be no different from the Hollywood actors refusing to talk to the tabloids and trying to avoid the paparazzi (just on a bit of a smaller scale -- for now, at least). I guess it's time to go back and read all the articles in question, in their entirety, to make sure I don't have any egg on my face here.;-)
Why shouldn't they be allowed to decide some reporters piss off their chief executive, and they are going to ignore them? Does the press have some right to get all their questions answered by whoever they like?
Certainly, the press has a right to try to get their questions answered. And companies (and individuals) have the right to respond with a "no comment". But when information is publicly available -- especially when it's made publicly available by the very company that's being researched and reported on -- it's incredibly childish to expect journalists to ignore available information that's relevant to a subject.
And we're also talking about degrees here -- it's not like CNet posted the guy's private home address and phone number, or even something as personal (but still publicly available) as his (hypothetical) record of speeding and parking tickets (which would be totally irrelevant to the story).
The point is, if you put the information on the Web, and you offer a search engine to make it easy to find that information, it's incredibly stupid to blame the journalists for using that little principle called "freedom of the press" to report on that information. And it's even sillier to make such a big stink about it and say you're going to ignore said journalists for a full year because you didn't like what they published.
In short, CNet has no need to offer an apology; in fact, it's now Google that needs to offer an apology.
Because it's not "free", when you stop to think about it. You can't receive the patches and updates until you buy the original product. Since software companies have been releasing free patches (as is only reasonable considering that many of them are bug fixes and security patches), the "cost" of such updates are effectively included in the cost of the original purchase of the software.
What you're missing is the difference between a free upgrade and a paid upgrade; the former improves functionality and removes problems, while the latter introduces new features. (Generally speaking, anyway.)
You could of course argue that the company has a moral obligation to provide updates, and in fact it makes good Public Relations sense to provide free fixes for broken software, but they are really not obligated to.
Or would you rather that Microsoft charged people $10 a pop to download the security updates to fix their crappy operating system that shouldn't have had so many gaping holes in the first place? Based on your comment there, anyone could sell any product and not take any responsibility for ensuring that it works properly afterwards. That would be like ordering soup at a restaurant, finding a fly in said dish, and being told that you have to buy another bowl to get one that doesn't have an insect floating in it! (And who's to say it stops there? What's going to guarantee that the second bowl won't have a bug in it too?)
Okay, some things like the USB key to function as a verifier (to avoid needing to plug a disc in for games) are a good idea, but I really think that he's asking a bit too much, too fast. I'm not fully versed in the development of today's hardware, but I do know for a fact that miniaturization costs money. That's the big reason why laptops still cost much more than desktops. Additionally, the wireless data transfer standards are still not sufficiently fast to support purely wireless connections. Sure, there are certain examples, but these are specific (like building 802.11b/g cards into printers?), but in general, stuff like Bluetooth can't handle the kind of speeds that consumers demand these days. And wireless monitors for near-consumer prices? Forget it!
I don't fault this guy for dreaming -- that's the stuff innovation is made of -- but I do fault him for thinking that companies seem to owe him this technology for some reason...
Also, to further our analogy (sorry for double-posting; I hate it when I hit the "Submit" button too quickly!), I think that fusion would be more equivalent to a caveman trying to push/pull a cart with octagons as the wheels. Yeah, it'd work okay, but the technology wouldn't be ready for general use yet. So the tried-and-true pack animal would still be more helpful (despite the high levels of methane they give off).
Oh, that's just brilliant. You seem to think that "necessity being the mother of invention" is exactly equivalent to the ability to turn on scientific results like water from a faucet. Certainly need helps drive invention (and I have no doubt that things could progress a bit faster with more urgency), but why do you think that the scientists (note: not the politicians) are deliberately stalling on a project like this?
I'm not contesting that there are some solutions that could/should be pursued right now. But you (and Greenpeace, apparently) seem to be under the mistaken assumption that pursuing a fusion power plant automatically precludes the possibility of constructing new "conventional" (i.e. using existing technology) power plants today at the same time.
Oh, I agree that it's still a relatively far-off technology, but the point is, it's such an advanced technology that it's going to be expensive to develop, regardless of how long it takes. But if we put it all into one big project, it's more likely that we can develop a successful method sooner.
Besides, it's not like the money going into this project is going to be taking money away from other power plant construction, is it?
Yeah, it's not as if whaling, logging, deforestation, land mines, corporate misconduct, pseudo-Orwellian police states, and international warfare aren't enough to protest about already! Oh, wait...
but also because they demand a solution that would work now, not 50 years in the future.
Gee, that's a great idea! By that line of thinking, our ancestors would never have bothered to develop the wheel, because carrying stuff on our back was "just good enough". Besides, think of all those poor stones back in prehistoric times that were sacrificed in the name of "progress" to create the wheels of the future -- it's a crime against nature, I tell you!
The whole point of this endeavor is that it's an experiment to develop a method that will work in the future, and a method that offers greater potential. I'm quite sure that, once fusion power becomes economical and practical on a widespread basis (and no major disasters turn public opinion against it), the cutbacks in emissions that could be made by shutting down all the older power plants will more than make up for the problems. That's a bit of an assumption, I know, but suffice to say that current methods of "alternative" power generation are not truly practical on a widespread basis.
No no, the name is actually correct, it's just that most people don't realize there's an apostrophe left out -- the real name is Windows' Genuine Advantage.
You might as well argue that you have to go the extra length to say "Mozilla but not MSIE" because IE started the whole "compatible" thing. Just say "Opera". No one spoofs that.
Opera vesrion 8 and beyond does allow for spoofing of the UA strings on a site by site basis. But it shouldn't have to.
I see, and so that's why Opera (the company) decided that it had to make its browser look like MSIE all the time. There are some legitimate instances of browser detection (for example, on my website, I provide the vast majority of the layout with just a couple of CSS files, but then I use a server-side script to detect the UA and (try to) serve the appropriate page of CSS tweaks (which in Opera's case is very small and merely cosmetic, and also the only browser that currently supports CSS 2.1). This way, I've been able to create a design that is valid and works properly for the modern browsers, and then add a bunch of non-valid and ugly workaround hacks for MSIE (using browser detection). Unfortunately, because Opera likes to include the string "MSIE" in its UA identifier, I have to go the extra length to say "MSIE but not Opera". It's no huge effort, but it's a pain that I shouldn't have to worry about, if everyone would just follow the standards.
There's also a legitimate reason to use the appropriate UA strings even when it's not to the browser's immediate advantage. Take Google Maps, for example -- officially, it doesn't support OmniWeb, but because OmniWeb uses pretty much the same rendering engine as Safari (which Google Maps does support), there's not really any problem with Google Maps. Now, the easy way out would be to change the UA string to bypass the browser-detect warning (since Google, being non-evil, lets you click past the warning), but then they wouldn't know how many people are using OmniWeb and trying to check out their maps. Hopefully, Google will soon fix their block to let OmniWeb past (maybe).
Yes, I am an avid Opera supporter.
Yes, I see you're so avid about Opera that you chose to post anonymously...
Why don't you just make a site that works in all browsers?
If you've ever tried to do anything remotely more complex than plain HTML -- even something like adding CSS, or JavaScript, or PNGs, or using XML -- then you wouldn't have to ask that question. The only thing pretty much "guaranteed" to work in "any" browser these days without differences in the rendering would be HTML 3.2, or maybe HTML 4.0 Transitional (if you want to be generous). Everything else is variable.
Y'know, it might've been a good idea to avoid the UA spoofing in the default settings, and offer the ability to set a custom UA string on a site-by-site basis, like another browser I could mention... It seems to me that if a user is savvy enough to be using Opera, they're savvy enough to grasp the concept of UA strings.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, interesting point. But citizens of a country are still bound by that country's laws, even if part of those activities are taking place elsewhere. Like wire fraud, for example. And international laws can bind the citizens of all states party to the respective treaties everywhere -- including, for example, international waters.
The key problem, I think, is merely a matter of semantics -- the traditional wording in almost all cases simply never takes into account extra-planetary travel. But the principles should (and, I imagine, will) still apply.
Mod parent up! (I already responded in this topic.) Ownership is only actual when it is enforced. No one who's buying these so-called "deeds" have the ability to travel to the moon and claim their so-called "property". Therefore, these claims will be entirely moot when someone else actually manages to get there. That qualifies this whole endeavor as a scam in fact, if not according to law.
Ownership comes from power, and nothing else. The various prehistoric tribes "claimed" the American continents by settling on the land (so to speak). Then the the Spanish, English, French, et cetera showed up and erected a few towns with tall fences, brought some guns, and "claimed" the surrounding area.
Heck, in the 1880's, the various European governments carved up Africa like a roast, arbitrarily defining colonies everywhere. They only followed up with the settlers and guns years later.
The point is that people can make claims any time they want. But they're completely pointless until the soldiers and workers arrive to exploit and occupy the area. And the workers and soldiers are representatives of the government.
However, in the United States, according to Article VI of the Constitution, "...all Treaties made [...] shall be the supreme Law of the Land". This means that the treaty is not only binding upon the government, but also upon the citizens. That means that if the government can't claim it, neither can its citizens. ... I think, anyway. Naturally, IANAL.
Actually, here's another angle to approach it from: claiming something as property requires that you occupy it, or at least control it in some respect. Obviously that's not possible, unless Neil Armstrong left a Century 21 sign in the Sea of Tranquility or something. Which means that any such property claims can reasonably be argued to have been abandoned, if not unenforceable in the first place.
Regardless, any moron who tries to hold up a government that wants to build a research lab or a helium-3 refinery on "their" lunar property will be the cause of a great many guffaws in the halls of power shortly thereafter.
Sorry, this weird bald guy in a sparkly silver suit with a bizarre midget clone and a giant "frikkin' 'laser'" got there first. But I hear he's willing to sell it for one hundred billion dollars...
I think it's probably referring instead to IP tracking or some such, to make sure that the same person or group doesn't download the package umpteen million times.
Yeah, I checked the page with OmniWeb, and I got the same thing. Not that I'd ever, ever use the product, but I still want to know what they're doing... Even more amusing to me is the fact that they went to the trouble of adding an XHTML DOCTYPE, but it fails validation miserably.
Somehow, I have a feeling that Office Live might turn out to be more useful (and practical) than Windows Live. I mean, isn't the whole point of the World Wide Web that your computer's operating system doesn't matter? What features of Windows (other than the crashing, the viruses, the spyware, the buffer overflows...) would be useful via a Web browser instead of the actual operating system? And if there are useful features, wouldn't it make more sense to make these new "Live" services completely platform-independent, in order to lure back those who've been using alternative platforms?
Office Live, on the other hand, could definitely be useful, assuming it's done right. It would make it easier (and possibly cheaper, though that would really depend on caveats below) for people on non-Microsoft systems to have access to Office's features and file formats, making cross-platform document sharing easier for all platforms, not just Windows and Macintosh. (Seeing how Office for Mac OS X is one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows right now...)
However, I see a couple of problems with this whole "Live" concept, as Microsoft is approaching it:
(1) Based on my attempted preview of the pages, the services seem to be Windows-only, at least for now. Why the hell should anyone already using Windows pay for an additional "Windows Live" service? Likewise for Office. Additionally, unless they intend to change the purpose and capabilities of Windows, I'm starting to realize that a Web-based operating system seems like a complete oxymoron, and probably a solution in search of a problem.
(2) Unlike Google, which would use their rumored OO.o-based service as a means towards getting advertising revenue, Microsoft is almost certainly approaching these products from the perspective of simply edging out competitors and maintaining their stranglehold on the OS and productivity suite markets, and also to boost their revenues by suckering people into subscription-based services. This means that once again, they're probably going to be working on pushing out a product that's "just good enough" (c.f. Internet Explorer) in order to rake in the cash and lock people into their own proprietary system.
(3) Ownership of data. With the hypothetical Google service and OO.o's use of the OpenDocument standard, the very nature of open source and open standards makes it crystal clear that the user owns the documents that would be created/edited/shared/published via the service. Naturally, by contrast, Microsoft will be seeking to limit the exporting functions, ensuring that once you create a document with their service, you'll have to send them perpetual payments in order to maintain access to that document -- i.e. they own your document.
"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny!"
Hmm... I'm not saying you're wrong, but can't the government effectively decide/dictate its own "fair" price when invoking eminent domain? I've read a few stories in the past about people whose houses have been condemned for some highway project, complaining that they weren't paid enough for their property. So they can provide some compensation, but not the "market" price (which, let's face it, is decided by the pharmaceutical cartels -- er, I mean, companies -- anyway?). Most medicines are so ridiculously overpriced it's not even funny. (Like my one month's prescription that would cost $480 without insurance...)
At any rate, at the very least, the government can just take what it wants in the name of national security. It's what the US government did many times with new technologies that were needed for the war effort during World War II...
It seems to me that in a case such as this, it would be perfectly acceptable to invoke the principle of Eminent Domain. If this isn't a situation that involved the public's interest, I don't know what is!
I agree the cassette adapter is not the greatest option (I've used it myself in the past), especially when listening to classical music, but it's still a far cry better than using a radio transmitter in a metropolitan area... and either way, if you're still using the factory-installed speakers of your car, a cassette adapter is not going to cause that much of a degradation, regardless.
Okay, I finally went back and read the whole CNet article. I now revert to my original opinion: CNet was not doing anything out of line by publishing the information they did. And why do I think that now?
...how did actually publishing the information advance the reporting of the news, though? Was there any reason to rattle off specific bits of personal information instead of simply saying "We were able to find his SSN, address and personal cell number"?
Because the subject of CNet's article was an analysis of potential privacy issues with Google's search, e-mail, and storage services.
Within that context, using Google's own services to obtain information that's used to illustrate the potential privacy concerns was entirely appropriate and completely relevant to the topic.
Why yes, there was. In journalism, just as in creative writing, the mantra is "show, don't tell". If the information is publicly available, then there's really no reason to expect that it remain "hidden" in those circumstances.
My sole caveat, but this is simply from a personal opinion now, is that it might have been better to check with Google (either the corporation, or with the executive's staff) to let them know they wanted to include that information in the article ahead of time, and offer an opportunity for feedback, perhaps to find alternative subjects for linked search subjects. However, the information searched and linked to in the article was hardly "private", and absolutely nothing like the invasions of privacy committed by the tabloids (like I suggested might be similar in my previous response).
To sum up, I think that CNet might've been pushing the limit with the part about the executive's residential data, but there was nothing at all wrong with publishing any of that information in an article about people's concerns about privacy with regards to Google's services.
Okay, I can agree with you about the "proper" part of the argument, mainly because I, being a moron, didn't read the entire original article and didn't realize the full extent of the information published by CNet.
;-)
Previously, I've understood the nature of the complaint to be that Google was simply mad that the journalists published information; assuming it was more information than was relevant to the article (I'd thought it was just some personally-specific financial information about volumes of stock options or some such), then yeah, Google would have the right to refuse to talk to reporters for what they believe is inappropriate reporting.
After all, from that perspective, it'd be no different from the Hollywood actors refusing to talk to the tabloids and trying to avoid the paparazzi (just on a bit of a smaller scale -- for now, at least). I guess it's time to go back and read all the articles in question, in their entirety, to make sure I don't have any egg on my face here.
Why shouldn't they be allowed to decide some reporters piss off their chief executive, and they are going to ignore them? Does the press have some right to get all their questions answered by whoever they like?
Certainly, the press has a right to try to get their questions answered. And companies (and individuals) have the right to respond with a "no comment". But when information is publicly available -- especially when it's made publicly available by the very company that's being researched and reported on -- it's incredibly childish to expect journalists to ignore available information that's relevant to a subject.
And we're also talking about degrees here -- it's not like CNet posted the guy's private home address and phone number, or even something as personal (but still publicly available) as his (hypothetical) record of speeding and parking tickets (which would be totally irrelevant to the story).
The point is, if you put the information on the Web, and you offer a search engine to make it easy to find that information, it's incredibly stupid to blame the journalists for using that little principle called "freedom of the press" to report on that information. And it's even sillier to make such a big stink about it and say you're going to ignore said journalists for a full year because you didn't like what they published.
In short, CNet has no need to offer an apology; in fact, it's now Google that needs to offer an apology.
So why should you get free continued support?
Because it's not "free", when you stop to think about it. You can't receive the patches and updates until you buy the original product. Since software companies have been releasing free patches (as is only reasonable considering that many of them are bug fixes and security patches), the "cost" of such updates are effectively included in the cost of the original purchase of the software.
What you're missing is the difference between a free upgrade and a paid upgrade; the former improves functionality and removes problems, while the latter introduces new features. (Generally speaking, anyway.)
You could of course argue that the company has a moral obligation to provide updates, and in fact it makes good Public Relations sense to provide free fixes for broken software, but they are really not obligated to.
Or would you rather that Microsoft charged people $10 a pop to download the security updates to fix their crappy operating system that shouldn't have had so many gaping holes in the first place? Based on your comment there, anyone could sell any product and not take any responsibility for ensuring that it works properly afterwards. That would be like ordering soup at a restaurant, finding a fly in said dish, and being told that you have to buy another bowl to get one that doesn't have an insect floating in it! (And who's to say it stops there? What's going to guarantee that the second bowl won't have a bug in it too?)
Okay, some things like the USB key to function as a verifier (to avoid needing to plug a disc in for games) are a good idea, but I really think that he's asking a bit too much, too fast. I'm not fully versed in the development of today's hardware, but I do know for a fact that miniaturization costs money. That's the big reason why laptops still cost much more than desktops. Additionally, the wireless data transfer standards are still not sufficiently fast to support purely wireless connections. Sure, there are certain examples, but these are specific (like building 802.11b/g cards into printers?), but in general, stuff like Bluetooth can't handle the kind of speeds that consumers demand these days. And wireless monitors for near-consumer prices? Forget it!
I don't fault this guy for dreaming -- that's the stuff innovation is made of -- but I do fault him for thinking that companies seem to owe him this technology for some reason...
(Note: Slashdotted already?)
Also, to further our analogy (sorry for double-posting; I hate it when I hit the "Submit" button too quickly!), I think that fusion would be more equivalent to a caveman trying to push/pull a cart with octagons as the wheels. Yeah, it'd work okay, but the technology wouldn't be ready for general use yet. So the tried-and-true pack animal would still be more helpful (despite the high levels of methane they give off).
Oh, that's just brilliant. You seem to think that "necessity being the mother of invention" is exactly equivalent to the ability to turn on scientific results like water from a faucet. Certainly need helps drive invention (and I have no doubt that things could progress a bit faster with more urgency), but why do you think that the scientists (note: not the politicians) are deliberately stalling on a project like this?
I'm not contesting that there are some solutions that could/should be pursued right now. But you (and Greenpeace, apparently) seem to be under the mistaken assumption that pursuing a fusion power plant automatically precludes the possibility of constructing new "conventional" (i.e. using existing technology) power plants today at the same time.
Oh, I agree that it's still a relatively far-off technology, but the point is, it's such an advanced technology that it's going to be expensive to develop, regardless of how long it takes. But if we put it all into one big project, it's more likely that we can develop a successful method sooner.
Besides, it's not like the money going into this project is going to be taking money away from other power plant construction, is it?
Yeah, it's not as if whaling, logging, deforestation, land mines, corporate misconduct, pseudo-Orwellian police states, and international warfare aren't enough to protest about already! Oh, wait...
The whole point of this endeavor is that it's an experiment to develop a method that will work in the future, and a method that offers greater potential. I'm quite sure that, once fusion power becomes economical and practical on a widespread basis (and no major disasters turn public opinion against it), the cutbacks in emissions that could be made by shutting down all the older power plants will more than make up for the problems. That's a bit of an assumption, I know, but suffice to say that current methods of "alternative" power generation are not truly practical on a widespread basis.
Even worse, what happens if someone accidentally dials a wrong number?
No no, the name is actually correct, it's just that most people don't realize there's an apostrophe left out -- the real name is Windows' Genuine Advantage.
There's also a legitimate reason to use the appropriate UA strings even when it's not to the browser's immediate advantage. Take Google Maps, for example -- officially, it doesn't support OmniWeb, but because OmniWeb uses pretty much the same rendering engine as Safari (which Google Maps does support), there's not really any problem with Google Maps. Now, the easy way out would be to change the UA string to bypass the browser-detect warning (since Google, being non-evil, lets you click past the warning), but then they wouldn't know how many people are using OmniWeb and trying to check out their maps. Hopefully, Google will soon fix their block to let OmniWeb past (maybe). Yes, I see you're so avid about Opera that you chose to post anonymously...
Y'know, it might've been a good idea to avoid the UA spoofing in the default settings, and offer the ability to set a custom UA string on a site-by-site basis, like another browser I could mention... It seems to me that if a user is savvy enough to be using Opera, they're savvy enough to grasp the concept of UA strings.