[Where were the repercussions for the offending officer though?]
Most likely nothing. And that's as it should be. Why? Because he most likely thought that he was in the right
That doesn't matter -- he was out of line, no matter how justified he believed his actions to be and he needs to be accountable for them. By your logic, very few crimes of passion would be punishable... unless you believe there's a different standard for members of law enforcement. In point of fact, I believe there is a different standard, but it is and must be a more strict standard than that applied to the general public. If we cannot expect those who enforce the law to avoid even the mere appearance of impropriety, how dare we expect the general public to abide by, much less the law those individuals enforce?
Did you even RTFA? Yeah, I didn't think so. If you had, you would have seen just how common and how easy it is for such RFID based systems to be worked around or tricked and, yes, unless you had the right mechanical key, you'd still need to crack the steering column to bypass the mechanical locking system.
I had my suspicions about all of that, but the article pretty much spelled it out. So, by your claim, I can gather that either you completely disagree with the information presented there or you didn't read it. If you did read it, what's your counter evidence? Seeing as you present nothing to backup your claims, I'm left to believe you have no clue what you're talking about.
As long as I have plausible deniability before the Powers That Be that I was not the sole utiliser of my connection, I'm golden from a legal perspective.
Or you're the ripe golden apple from some lawyer's perspective -- it isn't the final outcome you need to protect yourself from, it's the litigation costs and/or the inconvenience of having all of your computer, networking and cellphone gear being seized as a part of the investigation. Even when it all turns up clean, you've spent lots of money on a lawyer and lost a larrrrrrge amount of time on your part dealing with the whole process.
Sure, you may well have the moral victory, but the system won.
I'll gladly take a stand in a fight when the results are worthwhile but I fail to see what real principle is at stake here such that it'd be worth all that trouble.
My diagnosis: the Geek Squad does nothing. It was a publicity stunt to make consumers think that Best Buy employees knowledgable technicians, when in reality these so-called "experts" probably spend all day sitting around thinking they're "1337 h@x0rs" because they downloaded TweakXP.
It's such a shame too -- the geek squad started as an independent computer tech service in Minneapolis long before Best Buy bought them... and they had a reputation for being really sharp and being good problem solvers. Now look at 'em. What a shame.
The reason I suggested a new account is pretty straightforward: If the issue isn't cloning (which, frankly I'd be skeptical of as an answer), then it's a problem with the account. I've had some trouble with TMobile (USA) myself and I've found that getting things fixed if you've been labeled a problem (which being hung up on twice is likely a sign that the poster is moving in that direction) is difficult in some cases (note, I've also had some really good experiences with TMobile, go figure).
SO the easiest thing to do if they're not listening to you is get another account -- with them or another carrier, it doesn't matter -- the new account will be free of whatever internal confusion there seems to be connected to the original account.
My suggestion was really an attempt at a catch-all solution.
And that holds true for any authentication system.
Lock your users out (so they have to come to you) after 3 tries.
Yes, but this then EASILY enables a denial of service attack. If I don't want you to be able to log in, all I need to do is fail to enter your password 3 times. That's why the temporary lock-out and active monitoring is a good thing (tm).
-inco
oh i see, DRM's fine so long as the software is easy to use... riiight..
To a point, yes, actually. DRM is hated so much by many people because it makes software very difficult to use even when you're not doing anything that would violate anyone's rights. If someone could offer a mystical, magical DRM solution that never so much as made a peep unless the user was actually (and let's say blatantly) violating copyright and not protected by fair use exemptions, etc. etc. and it was 100% accurate, the only people who would care would be those who are breaking the copyright law (as to the validity/fairness of those laws, I'll leave that for another time...) because everyone else would not even know the DRM software was there... And that's almost what Apple's DRM software does. I've only been aware of it once and that was when I had made a few too many copies of one of my playlists that contained iTMS purchased songs (which I was, in fact, backing up (mmm hmm)).
Now where Apple's DRM scheme fails the usability metric is in that music protected by it is unusable with other music players/systems -- that's a huge crimp in usability but at the moment it's mitigated by the fact that Apple makes the best (IMHO) portable players out there and they dominate the market so in practical terms, a minority of people are affected by this. Nevertheless, as I said, this does make Apple's DRM scheme fail my usability test and therefore it's short of that perfect ideal, of course.
The Constitution specifically states that there can be no laws which abridge (i.e., curtail) the freedom of the press.
Who said anything about laws? I wasn't under the impression such archaic things applied any longer... You can do anything as long as it's in the name of national security.
Were I your employer, I'd be a bit concerned that you're asking slashdot this question....
No offense really intended, but the question is too vague and too open-ended to really be answered well here and it's that lack of specificity that makes me worry a bit about your qualifications for the position you're in. By all means, please, bring in outside help for any situation that you need advice on -- for the sake of your employer and customers, but slashdot is not the best place for high-quality, industrial grade advice that you should hang your hat, job, and other people's money on. That having been said, what exactly are you trying to back up? How frequently does it need to be done? How quickly? How will restores be handled -- who will do them, when and why? What are the demands of the media? Does it need to be simply stored on site or will it be transported? How (mailing? courier?) Would a networked option work for backing up? If not, why not?
That's just a start to the questions that are really unanswered (and need to be) for anyone to answer your question "How would you backup information securely?" It sounds like you think a thumb-drive will be an acceptable answer to you, but it's unclear why you've settled on that...What makes such a system better than a well scripted encryption scheme and commodity media (anything from CD-Rs to removable tape or hard disks?)
Without knowing the specifics, any answer would be incomplete at best, shooting blind at worst...
I can't figure out for the life of me why all the Republicans I knew in the 90s who were vehemently opposed to government intrusion into people's private lives are so very fucking eager to open the doors now. Was it 9/11? Did they get scared, are they that weak that they're hoping for any piece of illusionary safety they can scrabble up? The more cynical part of me says no, it's because all the branches of the government are controlled by Republicans now, and they want more power for their guys.
I'm with you on that confusion. I saw myself as a 'Republican Minded Independent' back in the '90s and now I'm about as far from what I see that party coming to as I felt I was from the Democrats. It would be easy if I could now bring myself to agree with the politics of the Democratic Party, but alas, no dice... So I really am left to wonder where the hell the conservatives are when it comes to genuine issues like this -- if the Republicans are not as conservative on government intrusion as the Democrats aren't they somehow off their traditional party line?
Exactly. The metric shouldn't be whether or not the current administration/government officials/law enforcement officials (etc) are abusing power and invading privacy, but rather whether or not any given power can be abused and what oversight exists to protect the rights of the innocent (or the accused) in the case that such abuse happens.
I'm worried about many of the provisions of the patriot act and the powers that they grant, but I'm terrified by the clear lack of oversight on most, if not all, domestic intelligence gathering that is coming to light now and this program is no exception.
Sacrificing liberty in the name of protecting liberty is...um...simply moronic.
Wow. You didn't read my reply after the first few lines, did you? The major reason it's wrong is that there is a fundamental inequality between a 17 year old and a 50 year old and that pretty much guarantees that the 50 year old will be taking advantage of the 17 year old in some way, shape or form. The taboos and illegalities mentioned are neither arbitrary nor groundless, however they were not my major points of contention, they were only the window dressing and you missed the main point.
Assuming that you're referencing the above ages to the 17 y/o daughter, then here's my answer...
In the first two cases (15 and 17 y/o male friends that (probably) want to sleep with her) the desires are socially normal and if the act actually happened consensually, it would perhaps not be the best choice, but it wouldn't be criminal (never mind that in some jurisdictions, 16 or 17 is the age of consent, many states use 18 years as the age of consent ), it wouldn't trample over as many social taboos (be relativist all you want but a 50 y/o sleeping with a 17 y/o is a general taboo and you know it) and it would be between peers (or much closer to peers in a developmental level sense).
In the case of a 50 y/o male that probably wants to sleep with my 17 y/o daughter, it's not socially normal to actually/want/ to do that -- it's not abnormal for an older male to find a mature 17 y/o girl attractive but the want to actually act on that attraction is not socially normal or appropriate.
If the 50 y/o male did actually sleep with my 17 y/o daughter, it'd be wrong for many reasons, it wouldn't be legal in many states, for one. But much more importantly, it wouldn't be between equals in any sort of sense -- developmentally, experientially, power, etc. all of those would be unequal between those two individuals and that makes it different than the other two cases you suggest and wrong for those very reasons. Healthy sexual experiences usually require there to be some sort of equality in power/experience, etc. for one person to not be victimized by the other. Moreover, it's that very inequity and power differential that draws many younger women to older men (and younger men to older women in some cases, to be sure) -- there's this false sense of acquiring added maturity by dating/sleeping with someone older for at least some younger individuals -- I know I saw it in my youth, amongst my friends and classmates. Therefore, the 50 y/o trying to act on his desires is a danger and he may well try to and be able to use his experience and power/charasima/implied wisdom/whatever you want to say to unfairly take advantage of the 17 year old.
Sure. I bet you're fun at parties, aren't you? Even still, I'll bite. I used the word "basically" correctly. Check the OED, if you like. -- I more or less summarized his suggestion in many fewer words than he did originally. You may take issue with that summary, but that doesn't mean that I used the word 'basically' incorrectly. Now go find something real to be a little/. nazi about, please.
Basic to what he said, is usability and ease of use.
Which is exactly where Apple is aiming (and more often than not hitting spot on). So what's your point? What the original poster was asking for is already on the market, in many ways, and Apple is clearly aiming to make it more so.
Heck, why isn't there MS Office for XBox 360? Is someone asleep at the wheel there? How perfect would that be? I could just walk into Target, then walk out with a machine that would (out of the box) plug into a monitor (DVI), plug into a TV, handle any of the modern USB peripherals, play DVDs, surf the web, and do 90% of the 'work' stuff without ever having a virus? Considering the popularity of Live CDs I suspect that a Windows Office 360 Live CD for the Xbox 360 would be a huge hit. Of course, you'd need to subscribe to Live or something for backups - but hey, even better, right?
Have you been looking at Apple's business model recently? You just described the mac mini, with iWork, iLife and a.mac subscription. Basically, what you seem to be advocating is a really locked down version of windows on inexpensive hardware, mainly for security concerns (that heretofore, the mac community hasn't really had to worry about) with most of the apps the average user would want pre-installed on it. A mac mini is really close to that and is getting more so (without the lockdown or the seeming need for it) as time goes on...
Yeah, this ALWAYS used to happen to me when I had a Nextel phone, circa 1999 or so -- it was particularly bad with some car stereos. I've heard it ocasionally with various GSM phones, but always with cheap cheap cheap electronic radios, and never as loud as the signal from the old nextel. Basically, I'd suggest trying a different phone (if you're using a GSM phone and can swap the SIM) or a better set of speakers, as it really does seem to be device dependent (unless we're talking the old nextel phones -- didn't they recently switch frequency ranges? if not, then maybe the current ones are an issue as well).
With Boot Camp, Apple is able to truly work as a replacement for your PC.
And they've done it in a way that will, for the short run at least, sell more copies of Windows (non-OEM ones at that) and therefore keep Microsoft from being completely against it/threatened (though they assuredly won't be overjoyed either).
Seems to me that it's Dell and other PC manufacturers that have to be a little worried now...
Thank you -- I was kinda expecting apple's obfuscated link to include sessioning info. Despite my best efforts (okay a quick glance) I couldn't find a clearly permanent link.
-t
The better question is: For all practical purposes, why you NEED a reasonably priced production car that does 0-60 in FOUR seconds? Are in that much of a hurry to get to the next stoplight?
Because I want it. Who the hell are you to judge my hobby, my likes and my preferences? Moreover, if I'm aiming to adopt a technology that allows me to enjoy what I want while making less of an impact on the environment than even most vehicles of any sort on the road today and that allows us to find new markets for domestically produceable products, then I think it's more than good.
See, the problem with attitudes and questions like yours is that they fundamentally miss the most important part of the equation -- humanity. Some of us like gardening, some of us like painting, some of us like quilting, some of us like any number of other things and some of us like fast cars. Whatever that interest may be, being human means you have things and activities that vastly improve the self-perceived quality of life and trying to reduce it to some sort of litmus test of "practicality"[1] completely strips away what it means to have an enjoyable life. Just because you can't understand that specific want doesn't mean it's unnecessary and demanding some sort of justification for it is, in fact, missing the point to such an extent that it seems likely that very little can be said to ever get you to recognize it.
[1] Note, however, that you're more than welcome to argue against it for other reasons, such as dangers to others, yadda yadda, as clearly the rights of the individual can't be used to trample over the rights of other individuals, but you didn't say that -- you demanded some sort of justification in terms of practicality and that's missing the point
I assume the iMac will be getting a similar speed bump? Kinda silly have laptops available with faster procs than the desktops.
Silly? Not at all -- the iMac is a consumer targeted desktop, not their pro-line, whereas the PowerB...err MacBook is their pro-line laptop. Moreover, given their respective price points there better be a speed advantage for the significantly more expensive laptops.
But I think this approach is not very elegant. You need a copy of windows, you need to wait for windows to boot up to run any windows application, and the performance will always be singificantly slower than on a native windows box.
Though it is becoming less and less inelegant, particularly with the inclusion ofVanderpool technology in the chips that the new macs are based on, you'll be better able to virtualize each OS into its own little world and not have to worry about some of the traditional costs of emulation, possibly...
Moreover, if you setup the systems to boot simultaneously then the startup lag you mention will barely be noticed -- especially given that OS X is reported to boot much more quickly on intel hardware than on the previous PPC hardware, the overall user experience will not be compromised, potentially if one simul-boots the two OS's side by side via some sort processor virtualization scheme. And with that, I have completely reached the limit (and stepped over) that which I can claim to know or understand on this topic =)
One word: Money.
Apple has lots of it. They can through gobs of money at the problem, and that will always move things faster then a grass roots problem. Just imagine 150 engineers working full time on Wine. They've previously gotten MacOS9 programs to run in MacOSX, so they probably already have a pool of engineers with the needed talents.
Exactly -- and to be clear, my thought was more that Apple and the apple user base (new and old) would give the momentum and sheer technolust required (as well as the money) to get it to the point that a copy of windows works transparently within OS X sooner than WINE on OS X becomes a reality.
I feel as though WINE has an additional or different aim than a sandboxed Windows in OS X project would (regardless of who does it), at the moment. Put simply, one of the not so subtle aims of the WINE project (as an outside observer) is clearly to shut Microsoft out of the picture and simply reverse engineer the requisite libraries, etc. to get apps written for windows to work with Linux -- there's a wholesome F/OSS ideal wrapped up in that and I philosophically support that notion.
However, you must admit that's not the primary aim of what Apple or a majority of the OS X user-base would be after in getting a copy Windows working in OS X. At the moment, I don't care so much if I have to buy a copy of Windows to get it to run on my (hypothetical) new intel powered mac -- I just care that I can do it, and even better if I can do it w/in the safer confines of OS X, sandboxing Windows, or if nothing else, just along side OS X using processor level virtualization to run both OS's at the same time. If I cared more about the ideal of not giving money to a corporate/closed-source software vendor, I'd already be using Linux. Moreover, I want that functionality sooner rather than later, so spending a bit of cash on a copy of Windows to install on my intel mac is still cheaper than buying a PC to go along side my mac -- assuming that mac ownership is a must, this is still a win, costwise.
Slashdot Mirror
[Where were the repercussions for the offending officer though?]
Most likely nothing. And that's as it should be. Why? Because he most likely thought that he was in the right
That doesn't matter -- he was out of line, no matter how justified he believed his actions to be and he needs to be accountable for them. By your logic, very few crimes of passion would be punishable... unless you believe there's a different standard for members of law enforcement. In point of fact, I believe there is a different standard, but it is and must be a more strict standard than that applied to the general public. If we cannot expect those who enforce the law to avoid even the mere appearance of impropriety, how dare we expect the general public to abide by, much less the law those individuals enforce?
Did you even RTFA? Yeah, I didn't think so. If you had, you would have seen just how common and how easy it is for such RFID based systems to be worked around or tricked and, yes, unless you had the right mechanical key, you'd still need to crack the steering column to bypass the mechanical locking system.
I had my suspicions about all of that, but the article pretty much spelled it out. So, by your claim, I can gather that either you completely disagree with the information presented there or you didn't read it. If you did read it, what's your counter evidence? Seeing as you present nothing to backup your claims, I'm left to believe you have no clue what you're talking about.
As long as I have plausible deniability before the Powers That Be that I was not the sole utiliser of my connection, I'm golden from a legal perspective.
Or you're the ripe golden apple from some lawyer's perspective -- it isn't the final outcome you need to protect yourself from, it's the litigation costs and/or the inconvenience of having all of your computer, networking and cellphone gear being seized as a part of the investigation. Even when it all turns up clean, you've spent lots of money on a lawyer and lost a larrrrrrge amount of time on your part dealing with the whole process.
Sure, you may well have the moral victory, but the system won.
I'll gladly take a stand in a fight when the results are worthwhile but I fail to see what real principle is at stake here such that it'd be worth all that trouble.
My diagnosis: the Geek Squad does nothing. It was a publicity stunt to make consumers think that Best Buy employees knowledgable technicians, when in reality these so-called "experts" probably spend all day sitting around thinking they're "1337 h@x0rs" because they downloaded TweakXP.
It's such a shame too -- the geek squad started as an independent computer tech service in Minneapolis long before Best Buy bought them... and they had a reputation for being really sharp and being good problem solvers. Now look at 'em. What a shame.
The reason I suggested a new account is pretty straightforward: If the issue isn't cloning (which, frankly I'd be skeptical of as an answer), then it's a problem with the account. I've had some trouble with TMobile (USA) myself and I've found that getting things fixed if you've been labeled a problem (which being hung up on twice is likely a sign that the poster is moving in that direction) is difficult in some cases (note, I've also had some really good experiences with TMobile, go figure).
SO the easiest thing to do if they're not listening to you is get another account -- with them or another carrier, it doesn't matter -- the new account will be free of whatever internal confusion there seems to be connected to the original account.
My suggestion was really an attempt at a catch-all solution.
Get a new account -- new SIM's for both you and your partner and do it sooner rather than later, for your sake =)
Yes, but this then EASILY enables a denial of service attack. If I don't want you to be able to log in, all I need to do is fail to enter your password 3 times. That's why the temporary lock-out and active monitoring is a good thing (tm). -inco
To a point, yes, actually. DRM is hated so much by many people because it makes software very difficult to use even when you're not doing anything that would violate anyone's rights. If someone could offer a mystical, magical DRM solution that never so much as made a peep unless the user was actually (and let's say blatantly) violating copyright and not protected by fair use exemptions, etc. etc. and it was 100% accurate, the only people who would care would be those who are breaking the copyright law (as to the validity/fairness of those laws, I'll leave that for another time...) because everyone else would not even know the DRM software was there... And that's almost what Apple's DRM software does. I've only been aware of it once and that was when I had made a few too many copies of one of my playlists that contained iTMS purchased songs (which I was, in fact, backing up (mmm hmm)).
Now where Apple's DRM scheme fails the usability metric is in that music protected by it is unusable with other music players/systems -- that's a huge crimp in usability but at the moment it's mitigated by the fact that Apple makes the best (IMHO) portable players out there and they dominate the market so in practical terms, a minority of people are affected by this. Nevertheless, as I said, this does make Apple's DRM scheme fail my usability test and therefore it's short of that perfect ideal, of course.
Who said anything about laws? I wasn't under the impression such archaic things applied any longer... You can do anything as long as it's in the name of national security.
(haven't we had enough of this crap yet?)
No offense really intended, but the question is too vague and too open-ended to really be answered well here and it's that lack of specificity that makes me worry a bit about your qualifications for the position you're in. By all means, please, bring in outside help for any situation that you need advice on -- for the sake of your employer and customers, but slashdot is not the best place for high-quality, industrial grade advice that you should hang your hat, job, and other people's money on. That having been said, what exactly are you trying to back up? How frequently does it need to be done? How quickly? How will restores be handled -- who will do them, when and why? What are the demands of the media? Does it need to be simply stored on site or will it be transported? How (mailing? courier?) Would a networked option work for backing up? If not, why not?
That's just a start to the questions that are really unanswered (and need to be) for anyone to answer your question "How would you backup information securely?" It sounds like you think a thumb-drive will be an acceptable answer to you, but it's unclear why you've settled on that...What makes such a system better than a well scripted encryption scheme and commodity media (anything from CD-Rs to removable tape or hard disks?)
Without knowing the specifics, any answer would be incomplete at best, shooting blind at worst...
I'm worried about many of the provisions of the patriot act and the powers that they grant, but I'm terrified by the clear lack of oversight on most, if not all, domestic intelligence gathering that is coming to light now and this program is no exception.
Sacrificing liberty in the name of protecting liberty is...um...simply moronic.
Wow. You didn't read my reply after the first few lines, did you? The major reason it's wrong is that there is a fundamental inequality between a 17 year old and a 50 year old and that pretty much guarantees that the 50 year old will be taking advantage of the 17 year old in some way, shape or form. The taboos and illegalities mentioned are neither arbitrary nor groundless, however they were not my major points of contention, they were only the window dressing and you missed the main point.
In the first two cases (15 and 17 y/o male friends that (probably) want to sleep with her) the desires are socially normal and if the act actually happened consensually, it would perhaps not be the best choice, but it wouldn't be criminal (never mind that in some jurisdictions, 16 or 17 is the age of consent, many states use 18 years as the age of consent ), it wouldn't trample over as many social taboos (be relativist all you want but a 50 y/o sleeping with a 17 y/o is a general taboo and you know it) and it would be between peers (or much closer to peers in a developmental level sense).
In the case of a 50 y/o male that probably wants to sleep with my 17 y/o daughter, it's not socially normal to actually /want/ to do that -- it's not abnormal for an older male to find a mature 17 y/o girl attractive but the want to actually act on that attraction is not socially normal or appropriate.
If the 50 y/o male did actually sleep with my 17 y/o daughter, it'd be wrong for many reasons, it wouldn't be legal in many states, for one. But much more importantly, it wouldn't be between equals in any sort of sense -- developmentally, experientially, power, etc. all of those would be unequal between those two individuals and that makes it different than the other two cases you suggest and wrong for those very reasons. Healthy sexual experiences usually require there to be some sort of equality in power/experience, etc. for one person to not be victimized by the other. Moreover, it's that very inequity and power differential that draws many younger women to older men (and younger men to older women in some cases, to be sure) -- there's this false sense of acquiring added maturity by dating/sleeping with someone older for at least some younger individuals -- I know I saw it in my youth, amongst my friends and classmates. Therefore, the 50 y/o trying to act on his desires is a danger and he may well try to and be able to use his experience and power/charasima/implied wisdom/whatever you want to say to unfairly take advantage of the 17 year old.
Sure. I bet you're fun at parties, aren't you? Even still, I'll bite. I used the word "basically" correctly. Check the OED, if you like. -- I more or less summarized his suggestion in many fewer words than he did originally. You may take issue with that summary, but that doesn't mean that I used the word 'basically' incorrectly. Now go find something real to be a little /. nazi about, please.
Which is exactly where Apple is aiming (and more often than not hitting spot on). So what's your point? What the original poster was asking for is already on the market, in many ways, and Apple is clearly aiming to make it more so.
Have you been looking at Apple's business model recently? You just described the mac mini, with iWork, iLife and a .mac subscription. Basically, what you seem to be advocating is a really locked down version of windows on inexpensive hardware, mainly for security concerns (that heretofore, the mac community hasn't really had to worry about) with most of the apps the average user would want pre-installed on it. A mac mini is really close to that and is getting more so (without the lockdown or the seeming need for it) as time goes on...
Yeah, this ALWAYS used to happen to me when I had a Nextel phone, circa 1999 or so -- it was particularly bad with some car stereos. I've heard it ocasionally with various GSM phones, but always with cheap cheap cheap electronic radios, and never as loud as the signal from the old nextel. Basically, I'd suggest trying a different phone (if you're using a GSM phone and can swap the SIM) or a better set of speakers, as it really does seem to be device dependent (unless we're talking the old nextel phones -- didn't they recently switch frequency ranges? if not, then maybe the current ones are an issue as well).
And they've done it in a way that will, for the short run at least, sell more copies of Windows (non-OEM ones at that) and therefore keep Microsoft from being completely against it/threatened (though they assuredly won't be overjoyed either).
Seems to me that it's Dell and other PC manufacturers that have to be a little worried now...
Thank you -- I was kinda expecting apple's obfuscated link to include sessioning info. Despite my best efforts (okay a quick glance) I couldn't find a clearly permanent link. -t
you buy one of these
Because I want it. Who the hell are you to judge my hobby, my likes and my preferences? Moreover, if I'm aiming to adopt a technology that allows me to enjoy what I want while making less of an impact on the environment than even most vehicles of any sort on the road today and that allows us to find new markets for domestically produceable products, then I think it's more than good.
See, the problem with attitudes and questions like yours is that they fundamentally miss the most important part of the equation -- humanity. Some of us like gardening, some of us like painting, some of us like quilting, some of us like any number of other things and some of us like fast cars. Whatever that interest may be, being human means you have things and activities that vastly improve the self-perceived quality of life and trying to reduce it to some sort of litmus test of "practicality"[1] completely strips away what it means to have an enjoyable life. Just because you can't understand that specific want doesn't mean it's unnecessary and demanding some sort of justification for it is, in fact, missing the point to such an extent that it seems likely that very little can be said to ever get you to recognize it.
[1] Note, however, that you're more than welcome to argue against it for other reasons, such as dangers to others, yadda yadda, as clearly the rights of the individual can't be used to trample over the rights of other individuals, but you didn't say that -- you demanded some sort of justification in terms of practicality and that's missing the point
Silly? Not at all -- the iMac is a consumer targeted desktop, not their pro-line, whereas the PowerB...err MacBook is their pro-line laptop. Moreover, given their respective price points there better be a speed advantage for the significantly more expensive laptops.
Though it is becoming less and less inelegant, particularly with the inclusion of Vanderpool technology in the chips that the new macs are based on, you'll be better able to virtualize each OS into its own little world and not have to worry about some of the traditional costs of emulation, possibly...
Moreover, if you setup the systems to boot simultaneously then the startup lag you mention will barely be noticed -- especially given that OS X is reported to boot much more quickly on intel hardware than on the previous PPC hardware, the overall user experience will not be compromised, potentially if one simul-boots the two OS's side by side via some sort processor virtualization scheme. And with that, I have completely reached the limit (and stepped over) that which I can claim to know or understand on this topic =)
Apple has lots of it. They can through gobs of money at the problem, and that will always move things faster then a grass roots problem. Just imagine 150 engineers working full time on Wine. They've previously gotten MacOS9 programs to run in MacOSX, so they probably already have a pool of engineers with the needed talents.
Exactly -- and to be clear, my thought was more that Apple and the apple user base (new and old) would give the momentum and sheer technolust required (as well as the money) to get it to the point that a copy of windows works transparently within OS X sooner than WINE on OS X becomes a reality.
I feel as though WINE has an additional or different aim than a sandboxed Windows in OS X project would (regardless of who does it), at the moment. Put simply, one of the not so subtle aims of the WINE project (as an outside observer) is clearly to shut Microsoft out of the picture and simply reverse engineer the requisite libraries, etc. to get apps written for windows to work with Linux -- there's a wholesome F/OSS ideal wrapped up in that and I philosophically support that notion.
However, you must admit that's not the primary aim of what Apple or a majority of the OS X user-base would be after in getting a copy Windows working in OS X. At the moment, I don't care so much if I have to buy a copy of Windows to get it to run on my (hypothetical) new intel powered mac -- I just care that I can do it, and even better if I can do it w/in the safer confines of OS X, sandboxing Windows, or if nothing else, just along side OS X using processor level virtualization to run both OS's at the same time. If I cared more about the ideal of not giving money to a corporate/closed-source software vendor, I'd already be using Linux. Moreover, I want that functionality sooner rather than later, so spending a bit of cash on a copy of Windows to install on my intel mac is still cheaper than buying a PC to go along side my mac -- assuming that mac ownership is a must, this is still a win, costwise.