See, here's the main problem. You come to us screaming "we have a problem with the internet, we have a problem with the internet! zomgz!" We look at you blankly for a few moments, wondering where this is all going. You mumble something about "it doesn't work quite like we want it to! spam! cyber security! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MAN, THE ROBOTRONS ARE AT STAKE!" We blink a few times and cock our head to an angle. One eyebrow raises in an eloquent manner - or at least as eloquent as can be, considered we have a man in the white house with no patience for subtlety. You continue babbling, working yourself into a tizzy; "TEH INTERNETZ ARE DOOMED!!!! We've got spam! We've got viruses! We've got cyber terrorists everywhere! And titties! Titties galore! Immoral acts! Hate speech! And the propaganda spread by the... " (you begin to spasm uncontrollably as multiple personas surface) "... capitalistic... " "... fascist..." "... godless infidels..." "... (insert trite generalization here)... [people]! We demand a means to prot... hrm. Well. No. We don't want to do anything about that sort of speech" (you start winking and nudging us). We start shaking our head and begin forming the words "...uhm...I don't...think so." You begin hyperventilating and running around the room, screaming uncontrollably after every few gasps of air, "No! No! We must have it! We must! You must give it to us! Give it to us now or we'll make our own!" We shrug a little and try to calm you down. Perhaps a few questions will help defuse the situation, "Well... what do you want to do, if we were to give you control?" You begin spasming and biting your lip until it bleeds before you scream "We don't know! We don't know what we're going to do! But we're going to stop... everything! Yes! That's it! We'll all decide what is best!" We begin shaking our head again, "No...no. You're going to have to do a little better than plan to decide what is best. Maybe you should settle down, take a few deep breaths, and really think of how this is all going to work out. If you can prove to us that you're going to behave responsibly, well... we'll still probably say no, but then again, we may actually say yes. So. We want you to sit there for a little bit and enumerate everything you wish to be done. Perhaps set yourself up with a very specific mandate on how you would like to govern the Internet, for starters. Then focus on some way for parties affected to be able to seek 'dispute resolution' of these new laws you're going to create. Then, after you have a full system of internet governance planned out, we'll talk about it, and who knows! Maybe in a few years, you might just get your way!" Your eyes begin to fill with defeat. "You mean I have to do all that before you just give me the intarwebs?!" You think for a few moments, then shrug. "Nevermind. I'm going to go pontificate endlessly on whether the slaughter in Darfur is actually genocide. You coming?" We smile. Of course we're coming. We may have a shred of responsibility concerning the internet, but when it comes to pontification - especially on civil liberties in third world countries - we love a good bullshit session or two. After all, we stand for freedom and justice for all - unless you live somewhere else. And if that isn't bullshit, I'm not sure what is.
-------
Anyway, my story was, obviously, a bit tongue in cheek. The US just flat out said "no", not, "come up with something and we'll talk about it". Regardless, though, if the aggrieved parties in question were to spend more time really thinking of a way to govern the workings of the internet wisely and responsibly, I'm sure we could be swayed. Perhaps not this administration - but, remember, every 4 years, there are others. Sure, it's a long time for you to wait. I feel your pain. It'll be 8 years for me before I can stop getting thoroughly reamed. I know exa
I donno about that, Europeans seem to like Sweden and Norway nowadays. Then again, that was quite some time ago. And it raping and pillaging definitely seemed to be pretty trendy at the time. So maybe that's why they've been forgiven, just like everyone who once liked New Kids on the Block or Pogo balls.
I was thinking more along the lines of another country. North Korea and Japan don't have the best of relations (or China and Japan, to a lesser extent). I'm not sure they would actually attempt to do this officially, but "accidentally" leaving a loophole in their own systems to allow "hackers" to do it could do the job just as well, leaving the country in question (pick one of the three) a plausible excuse. While it certainly wouldn't help their relations which each other, it may also provide the degree of deniability of wrongdoing necessary to "get off scot free", as it were. I'm not saying this would happen as a matter of course, but nationalistic pride often has a way of interfering with logic, common sense, and decency. And, frankly, there aren't too many space programs who will be keen to chance throwing away a multi-million dollar probe/satellite launch just to get some free software analysis by a bunch of hobbyists. Again, it'd be nice, but the more I think about it, the less likely I think it would be. Sadly.:(
I wonder how, exactly, the software being used had the capability to allow this to happen. Even if the problem were procedural, I would think that, on transfer of control, you would lock down all non-essential functions - like "flinging" payloads into space - until control has been successfully handed off.
Of course, this is all pointless conjecture on my part - it may have been a hardware malfunction, for all I know. It would be interesting to analyze things like these. Having only a few years real-world experience, I doubt my programming skills would be worth a damn, but I would be thrilled just to have the opportunity to read the code they use before hand. Generally I don't volunteer my time to OSS-like programs, but this is one situation where I could easily see myself helping. Or trying to help, more like it.
Then again, by releasing it beforehand open source, someone else may very well be able to analyze the code and "steal" control of the probe/satellite/whatever-is-using-the-software, possibly using it for nefarious gain, or possibly just being a bunch of dicks. So this probably wouldn't pan out. Still, a nerd can dream.
Some. And in your case, it makes sense that you drive - or ride the bus, rather. In my case, even a bike ride would have taken around 45 minutes - and that's assuming the weather would have been hospitable, which is a pretty rare event in and of itself.
But not every community is like yours and mine. In some cases, you can easily walk your children to school. In some cases, you can even walk, or take public transportation, to work. Yet people choose not to, for whatever reason. Obviously there are times when it makes more sense to drive - say, in a gigantic rain storm, or snow storm, or even "I have to go get groceries after work". But, other times, there are no good reasons other than "I'm really fucking lazy." And people wonder why we're known as "fat, stupid, lazy Americans."
" [...] removing the world's Web servers and replacing them with half the number of UltraSparc T1-based systems would have the same effect on carbon dioxide emissions as planting 1 million trees."
I'm sure it would. But then, after replacing all these servers with the UltraSparc T1-based systems, we'd have to cut down 1 million trees just to print the money Sun would be making back in profit. Weeee!
(To be fair, it doesn't logically follow that it is useless - I never defined what usefulness or uselessness entailed. Useful: stop the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works. Useless: unable to stop the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works. Since one copy is made, and copies can be made of that copy, DRM fails to be "useful".)
Note that I said "stop" and not "slow" or "make difficult". DRM isn't there just to be a pain in the ass. DRM is a pain in the ass BECAUSE it is there to stop all unauthorized copying of copyrighted works. If DRM fails to stop this, in entirety, then it fails utterly. All it takes is one copy.
So, the purpose of DRM is to make sure I, and most others, can't copy music, so, instead, we get our copies from the people who can?
If the DRM is broken once, and people get access to the DRM-less copy, the purpose of DRM becomes moot. And since it is true that anything listened to can be copied, and it is true that once copied, that copy can be copied by anyone, without restriction, it then logically follows that DRM is, in practice, useless.
Are you kidding me? My iPod is on the verge of a: being replaced by apple or b: thrown in the garbage for being a shoddy piece of shit. As soon as I (hopefully) get it replaced, I'm giving it to my 13 year old brother and going with the Cowon iAudio X5.
Did I like the iPod interface? Yeah. The hardware quality (in particular longevity) leaves much to be desired.
I would think it would be more along the lines of political considerations. I'm not so sure the US would take kindly to the EU taking high resolution imagery of Area 51/OtherSecretBase and putting them in the public domain. Or China. Or India. Or Pakistan. Or Russia.
It's not that you couldn't technically do it (technically as in "technically legally"). But it would certainly put a crimp on your international dealings.
But, hell, if you want to go for it, do it. The U.S. has decided it doesn't give a fuck what the rest of the world thinks, either, so you can be just like us! Tell the other countries in the world to go fuck themselves and do whatever you want! Once you do it once and find out how easy it is, you won't be able to stop! Weeee!
Misery isn't the only thing that loves company. Idiocy does too.
I don't necessarily think you're wrong, but I do think your comment is misplaced, with regard to childsplay.
This was a spur of the moment thing they started before Christmas a few years ago. I remember reading the newspost - they were pissed that gamers were always shown as a bunch of demented teenagers running around with trench coats and black-tape pentagrams on their social studies book covers. They wanted to show these condescending media pricks what the gaming demographic actually is like.
And then they made $110,000 in, what, 2 months? Just for donations for the Seattle Children's Hospital (I'm not sure if that's the name, but it's the children's hospital in the seattle area, I believe). Games - not just video games, but board games and coloring books and crayons and whatever-it-is that kids play with. The response was staggering.
It was after this year that the letters started rolling in. Parents of children in these children's hospitals. Now-grown-up children who visited these hospitals. I highly, highly recommend you read the letters yourself. If you're not choked up at the end of it, then I posit the notion that you're a cylon. Or a heartless monkey. Your call.
Yeah, 'cos, I tell ya, there's nothing more important than being able to undo the delete on those viagra emails.
Guess what? Sometimes (and, in my case, most times), I really, really do want to delete. Honest. I'm a big boy now. I'm pretty sure I can decide for myself what I do and do not want to do. If I fuck up, guess what? My bad. I'm pretty sure I can live with that.
So, as an open message to "most human interface specialists" out there, who think they know better than I when it comes to this little matter: Go Fuck Yourself.
Well, when you have the consumers using free software, they're also keeping the money they would have spent on software. They can use this on other things - like, say, research and development, or maybe another office building, or employ a few more workers, etc, etc.
I'm not sure which one would net the government more in the way of taxes (I'm nowhere near being an economist), but it's not as if this money is just going to go away.
If it wasn't for those silly computer labs back in highschool - even if they only taught me Basic and Visual Basic, I never would have gotten involved in computers, much less received a bachelor's degree in computer science.
I know BASIC isn't the greatest language to begin on, but it did teach basic concepts of programming logic (at least, with regards to iteration and control), and, apparently, was enough to hook me into something deeper.
I was just one student, though. In the giant scheme of things, was it worth it? Who knows. But I'm sure as hell glad my school did have those silly computer labs (though, at this point, it was the late 90's;D)
Harmless, but something you would reasonably want to keep secret. Transvestite midget porn, for instance. It's not illegal, but it's not something you'd want to keep laying around. Then you would have a valid excuse for encrypting it in the first place. You look like a freak, but if you were really trying to not get caught with something illegal, it'd end up being worthwhile.
I wasn't under the impression the entire content (ie: the book) would be available for free. All this would do, for me, is know where to look, or, possibly, what to buy. A book on astronomy, for example, may have a fantastic explanation of plate tectonics, but, if you were to be doing a research paper, would you look there? No. Instead you'd look for books explicitely pertaining to the topic of geology. And thus you would forever be left in the dark concerning the former. Does this not strike you as remarkably silly?
I can understanding not wanting someone to steal a complete copy of your book, but not allowing the contents of your book to be searchable goes against the spirit (if not the letter) of copyright law. The whole point of copyright is to promote public benefit. What is more beneficial - a library whose contents you know nothing of without reading it all yourself or judging by the title - or an indexed and searchable repository of knowledge?
This isn't to say what Google is doing is right in its entirety, but I've yet to hear a compelling argument that says the idea of it is wrong. Remember: intellectual "property", in this case, copyright, was not conferred upon creators just to make them rich. It was also to promote the growth of ideas for the public good. If a searchable library of all our information is not in the public's best interest, then I don't know what is.
Summary: Google may well be breaking the letter of the law, but they're following the spirit of the law more closely than almost any before it. Google may well be implementing things incorrectly, but the general concept; a searchable library, is absolutely wonderful.
How does the moon's distinct lack of heavier elements fall in line with the moon being created at the same time? The mars-sized-object striking a young, hot Earth and ejecting the materials one would find in our crust (rather than the iron and nickel and what-have-you in the center) explains the composition part extremely well. I'm not so sure both the Moon and the Earth forming at the same time would result in the same composition we have here (and I was under the impression quite a few computer models "proved" (take with a grain of salt) that this could not be the case).
Granted, I only had a pair of Astronomy courses, but the man with the Doctorate was pretty firmly convinced of the impact-ejection model. That's not to say he's definitely right, but from what he said, and what I've read in the mean time, this seems to be _the_ prevailing theory.
Maybe I'm just not reading the newest material, though. It's very possible. I do love astronomy, but I don't keep up with it nearly well enough to even be considered a novice.
Shh! You're not supposed to ask questions like this. Console proponents hate when you point out that an RTS or FPS completely sucks ass on these "gaming systems".
The moment you bring it up, the moment they go into a tizzy about how those game types suck anyway and you should just be happy with other types of games, 'cos, hey, they are, and they don't feel like they're missing out on anything.
Slashdot Mirror
"Another reason is that the MUD that I play at least is about Role Playing, which is not something that can be truely done on a MMORPG"
Not true! You often stumble upon real role players in MMO's, as can be seen here!
medic!
...except for all the korean gamers, who would probably explode.
See, here's the main problem. You come to us screaming "we have a problem with the internet, we have a problem with the internet! zomgz!" We look at you blankly for a few moments, wondering where this is all going. You mumble something about "it doesn't work quite like we want it to! spam! cyber security! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MAN, THE ROBOTRONS ARE AT STAKE!" We blink a few times and cock our head to an angle. One eyebrow raises in an eloquent manner - or at least as eloquent as can be, considered we have a man in the white house with no patience for subtlety. You continue babbling, working yourself into a tizzy; "TEH INTERNETZ ARE DOOMED!!!! We've got spam! We've got viruses! We've got cyber terrorists everywhere! And titties! Titties galore! Immoral acts! Hate speech! And the propaganda spread by the ... " (you begin to spasm uncontrollably as multiple personas surface) "... capitalistic ... " "... fascist ..." "... godless infidels ..." "... (insert trite generalization here) ... [people]! We demand a means to prot... hrm. Well. No. We don't want to do anything about that sort of speech" (you start winking and nudging us). We start shaking our head and begin forming the words "...uhm...I don't...think so." You begin hyperventilating and running around the room, screaming uncontrollably after every few gasps of air, "No! No! We must have it! We must! You must give it to us! Give it to us now or we'll make our own!" We shrug a little and try to calm you down. Perhaps a few questions will help defuse the situation, "Well... what do you want to do, if we were to give you control?" You begin spasming and biting your lip until it bleeds before you scream "We don't know! We don't know what we're going to do! But we're going to stop... everything! Yes! That's it! We'll all decide what is best!" We begin shaking our head again, "No...no. You're going to have to do a little better than plan to decide what is best. Maybe you should settle down, take a few deep breaths, and really think of how this is all going to work out. If you can prove to us that you're going to behave responsibly, well... we'll still probably say no, but then again, we may actually say yes. So. We want you to sit there for a little bit and enumerate everything you wish to be done. Perhaps set yourself up with a very specific mandate on how you would like to govern the Internet, for starters. Then focus on some way for parties affected to be able to seek 'dispute resolution' of these new laws you're going to create. Then, after you have a full system of internet governance planned out, we'll talk about it, and who knows! Maybe in a few years, you might just get your way!" Your eyes begin to fill with defeat. "You mean I have to do all that before you just give me the intarwebs?!" You think for a few moments, then shrug. "Nevermind. I'm going to go pontificate endlessly on whether the slaughter in Darfur is actually genocide. You coming?" We smile. Of course we're coming. We may have a shred of responsibility concerning the internet, but when it comes to pontification - especially on civil liberties in third world countries - we love a good bullshit session or two. After all, we stand for freedom and justice for all - unless you live somewhere else. And if that isn't bullshit, I'm not sure what is.
-------
Anyway, my story was, obviously, a bit tongue in cheek. The US just flat out said "no", not, "come up with something and we'll talk about it". Regardless, though, if the aggrieved parties in question were to spend more time really thinking of a way to govern the workings of the internet wisely and responsibly, I'm sure we could be swayed. Perhaps not this administration - but, remember, every 4 years, there are others. Sure, it's a long time for you to wait. I feel your pain. It'll be 8 years for me before I can stop getting thoroughly reamed. I know exa
I donno about that, Europeans seem to like Sweden and Norway nowadays. Then again, that was quite some time ago. And it raping and pillaging definitely seemed to be pretty trendy at the time. So maybe that's why they've been forgiven, just like everyone who once liked New Kids on the Block or Pogo balls.
I was thinking more along the lines of another country. North Korea and Japan don't have the best of relations (or China and Japan, to a lesser extent). I'm not sure they would actually attempt to do this officially, but "accidentally" leaving a loophole in their own systems to allow "hackers" to do it could do the job just as well, leaving the country in question (pick one of the three) a plausible excuse. While it certainly wouldn't help their relations which each other, it may also provide the degree of deniability of wrongdoing necessary to "get off scot free", as it were. I'm not saying this would happen as a matter of course, but nationalistic pride often has a way of interfering with logic, common sense, and decency. And, frankly, there aren't too many space programs who will be keen to chance throwing away a multi-million dollar probe/satellite launch just to get some free software analysis by a bunch of hobbyists. Again, it'd be nice, but the more I think about it, the less likely I think it would be. Sadly. :(
I wonder how, exactly, the software being used had the capability to allow this to happen. Even if the problem were procedural, I would think that, on transfer of control, you would lock down all non-essential functions - like "flinging" payloads into space - until control has been successfully handed off.
Of course, this is all pointless conjecture on my part - it may have been a hardware malfunction, for all I know. It would be interesting to analyze things like these. Having only a few years real-world experience, I doubt my programming skills would be worth a damn, but I would be thrilled just to have the opportunity to read the code they use before hand. Generally I don't volunteer my time to OSS-like programs, but this is one situation where I could easily see myself helping. Or trying to help, more like it.
Then again, by releasing it beforehand open source, someone else may very well be able to analyze the code and "steal" control of the probe/satellite/whatever-is-using-the-software, possibly using it for nefarious gain, or possibly just being a bunch of dicks. So this probably wouldn't pan out. Still, a nerd can dream.
Some. And in your case, it makes sense that you drive - or ride the bus, rather. In my case, even a bike ride would have taken around 45 minutes - and that's assuming the weather would have been hospitable, which is a pretty rare event in and of itself.
But not every community is like yours and mine. In some cases, you can easily walk your children to school. In some cases, you can even walk, or take public transportation, to work. Yet people choose not to, for whatever reason. Obviously there are times when it makes more sense to drive - say, in a gigantic rain storm, or snow storm, or even "I have to go get groceries after work". But, other times, there are no good reasons other than "I'm really fucking lazy." And people wonder why we're known as "fat, stupid, lazy Americans."
Also, what kind of trees are we talking? What size/age? Are we talking lil' 3' high sprouts? Or 100 year old oaks?
(To be fair, it doesn't logically follow that it is useless - I never defined what usefulness or uselessness entailed. Useful: stop the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works. Useless: unable to stop the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works. Since one copy is made, and copies can be made of that copy, DRM fails to be "useful".)
Note that I said "stop" and not "slow" or "make difficult". DRM isn't there just to be a pain in the ass. DRM is a pain in the ass BECAUSE it is there to stop all unauthorized copying of copyrighted works. If DRM fails to stop this, in entirety, then it fails utterly. All it takes is one copy.
So, the purpose of DRM is to make sure I, and most others, can't copy music, so, instead, we get our copies from the people who can?
If the DRM is broken once, and people get access to the DRM-less copy, the purpose of DRM becomes moot. And since it is true that anything listened to can be copied, and it is true that once copied, that copy can be copied by anyone, without restriction, it then logically follows that DRM is, in practice, useless.
Bow chicka bow wow?
Are you kidding me? My iPod is on the verge of a: being replaced by apple or b: thrown in the garbage for being a shoddy piece of shit. As soon as I (hopefully) get it replaced, I'm giving it to my 13 year old brother and going with the Cowon iAudio X5.
Did I like the iPod interface? Yeah. The hardware quality (in particular longevity) leaves much to be desired.
I would think it would be more along the lines of political considerations. I'm not so sure the US would take kindly to the EU taking high resolution imagery of Area 51/OtherSecretBase and putting them in the public domain. Or China. Or India. Or Pakistan. Or Russia.
It's not that you couldn't technically do it (technically as in "technically legally"). But it would certainly put a crimp on your international dealings.
But, hell, if you want to go for it, do it. The U.S. has decided it doesn't give a fuck what the rest of the world thinks, either, so you can be just like us! Tell the other countries in the world to go fuck themselves and do whatever you want! Once you do it once and find out how easy it is, you won't be able to stop! Weeee!
Misery isn't the only thing that loves company. Idiocy does too.
They also respond well to "hey, bitch! I just threw you 16 million in campaign contributions. get your ass over here and do what I tell you!"
I don't necessarily think you're wrong, but I do think your comment is misplaced, with regard to childsplay.
This was a spur of the moment thing they started before Christmas a few years ago. I remember reading the newspost - they were pissed that gamers were always shown as a bunch of demented teenagers running around with trench coats and black-tape pentagrams on their social studies book covers. They wanted to show these condescending media pricks what the gaming demographic actually is like.
And then they made $110,000 in, what, 2 months? Just for donations for the Seattle Children's Hospital (I'm not sure if that's the name, but it's the children's hospital in the seattle area, I believe). Games - not just video games, but board games and coloring books and crayons and whatever-it-is that kids play with. The response was staggering.
It was after this year that the letters started rolling in. Parents of children in these children's hospitals. Now-grown-up children who visited these hospitals. I highly, highly recommend you read the letters yourself. If you're not choked up at the end of it, then I posit the notion that you're a cylon. Or a heartless monkey. Your call.
Letters concerning childsplay
My favorite.
Yeah, 'cos, I tell ya, there's nothing more important than being able to undo the delete on those viagra emails.
Guess what? Sometimes (and, in my case, most times), I really, really do want to delete. Honest. I'm a big boy now. I'm pretty sure I can decide for myself what I do and do not want to do. If I fuck up, guess what? My bad. I'm pretty sure I can live with that.
So, as an open message to "most human interface specialists" out there, who think they know better than I when it comes to this little matter: Go Fuck Yourself.
Adoringly Yours,
- Me.
Well, when you have the consumers using free software, they're also keeping the money they would have spent on software. They can use this on other things - like, say, research and development, or maybe another office building, or employ a few more workers, etc, etc.
I'm not sure which one would net the government more in the way of taxes (I'm nowhere near being an economist), but it's not as if this money is just going to go away.
If it wasn't for those silly computer labs back in highschool - even if they only taught me Basic and Visual Basic, I never would have gotten involved in computers, much less received a bachelor's degree in computer science.
;D)
I know BASIC isn't the greatest language to begin on, but it did teach basic concepts of programming logic (at least, with regards to iteration and control), and, apparently, was enough to hook me into something deeper.
I was just one student, though. In the giant scheme of things, was it worth it? Who knows. But I'm sure as hell glad my school did have those silly computer labs (though, at this point, it was the late 90's
Harmless, but something you would reasonably want to keep secret. Transvestite midget porn, for instance. It's not illegal, but it's not something you'd want to keep laying around. Then you would have a valid excuse for encrypting it in the first place. You look like a freak, but if you were really trying to not get caught with something illegal, it'd end up being worthwhile.
Troll???? Misinformed, maybe. But troll? I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I wasn't under the impression the entire content (ie: the book) would be available for free. All this would do, for me, is know where to look, or, possibly, what to buy. A book on astronomy, for example, may have a fantastic explanation of plate tectonics, but, if you were to be doing a research paper, would you look there? No. Instead you'd look for books explicitely pertaining to the topic of geology. And thus you would forever be left in the dark concerning the former. Does this not strike you as remarkably silly?
I can understanding not wanting someone to steal a complete copy of your book, but not allowing the contents of your book to be searchable goes against the spirit (if not the letter) of copyright law. The whole point of copyright is to promote public benefit. What is more beneficial - a library whose contents you know nothing of without reading it all yourself or judging by the title - or an indexed and searchable repository of knowledge?
This isn't to say what Google is doing is right in its entirety, but I've yet to hear a compelling argument that says the idea of it is wrong. Remember: intellectual "property", in this case, copyright, was not conferred upon creators just to make them rich. It was also to promote the growth of ideas for the public good. If a searchable library of all our information is not in the public's best interest, then I don't know what is.
Summary: Google may well be breaking the letter of the law, but they're following the spirit of the law more closely than almost any before it. Google may well be implementing things incorrectly, but the general concept; a searchable library, is absolutely wonderful.
How does the moon's distinct lack of heavier elements fall in line with the moon being created at the same time? The mars-sized-object striking a young, hot Earth and ejecting the materials one would find in our crust (rather than the iron and nickel and what-have-you in the center) explains the composition part extremely well. I'm not so sure both the Moon and the Earth forming at the same time would result in the same composition we have here (and I was under the impression quite a few computer models "proved" (take with a grain of salt) that this could not be the case).
Granted, I only had a pair of Astronomy courses, but the man with the Doctorate was pretty firmly convinced of the impact-ejection model. That's not to say he's definitely right, but from what he said, and what I've read in the mean time, this seems to be _the_ prevailing theory.
Maybe I'm just not reading the newest material, though. It's very possible. I do love astronomy, but I don't keep up with it nearly well enough to even be considered a novice.
Shh! You're not supposed to ask questions like this. Console proponents hate when you point out that an RTS or FPS completely sucks ass on these "gaming systems".
The moment you bring it up, the moment they go into a tizzy about how those game types suck anyway and you should just be happy with other types of games, 'cos, hey, they are, and they don't feel like they're missing out on anything.
What works for them has to work for you. Or else!