(.....A State ID is required for all citizens, is used as the key to identify that individual in most or all databanks......)
For many purposes this is your SS number. It is needed to file various tax returns, anytime you want something that requires credit or a credit check. Renting a car without a credit card is almost impossible. Paying for large items, such as a car, with actual currency forces the receiver of such cash to file an SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) with the Feds. Many insurance companies, landlords, all banks, employers and others require you to give them your SS number.
Whether we like it or not, the whole world is on the path to 666, where "no one is permitted to buy or sell without the mark". Since cards of all kinds can be lost or stolen, the requirement will eventually become some sort of chip with all the needed information to allow a cashless system of trade. The ID chip has been in use for some time now in animals and eventually will be used on humans, at some point ALL humans.
That of course is the ultimate aim of Governments and to some extent big business. Ideally they want to know WHERE you are at all times (GPS) know WHO you communicate with (log files), how much money you make and WHAT you spend it on. It is the money part that likely offers the best control mechanism.
While there is still cash money available, there can still be anonymous economic exchanges which escape taxation, for example. Once an ID system is in place that uniquely keeps all information on every individual, including the money, cash will no longer be needed nor allowed. An implanted, remotely readable chip will eventually replace a card that can be lost or stolen.
(.....Just Say NO!.....)
When apply for a job, open a bank account or want medical treatment you must give your SS number. Just say NO! Try to rent a car without a credit card, Just say NO! There are an increasing number of every day things that people used to be able to do anonymously, but no longer. At one time, getting on an airplane was no different than getting on city bus.
The world is well on its way to a universal system, where your every move and all your financial transactions get tracked, as is predicted in the Bible, to be used by a central world government eventually.
(..... For example, Christians have been given two orders: "Thou shalt not kill," and "be subject to the law of the land."....)
First of all, the word is not "kill", but rather "murder". There is a difference both morally and legally. The second part is that laws and edicts of God are above the laws of man. For example, Jesus commanded Christians to teach His ways and rules for living. He did NOT tell them to enforce them by the sword upon other, such as has unfortunately often been done by organized Christian religion. When man's laws conflict with God's commands, Christians must obey God, but be willing to face the consequences of breaking those manmade rules. Jesus Himself, as well as His followers, all throughout the ages have done so, to the point of death.
(....To me, you appear to be missing the crucial distinction between what you believe is moral and the standards of morality you (or society as a whole) should be able to inflict on the rest of society....)
God doesn't impose his moral laws upon us by force and neither should Christians impose them on others, as again has wrongly been done in the past and is still advocated by some Christians. We are not free to disobey God's laws of physics. However God's moral laws are laws of love. Jesus was asked which of all of God's laws was the foremost. Here is His answer to a loaded question:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matt22:37-40)
God gave His laws because he loves us and wants our love in return, as demonstrated by our compliance to His law of love. Love is light and hate is darkness. You along with every person on earth must choose one or the other. This long series of daily life choices becomes permanent after your heart stops beating. Every human will either be with God in the light of His love or in a place of darkness, far removed from Him and that great love, forever. Almost all of the problems every human faces in this life ultimately can be traced back to our individual and collective failure to obey this law of God's love.
That of course is an assertion of belief, just as its opposite is. My point was that a much larger percentage of people now hold your position than when this country was founded. The consequence of that is that there is less agreement on what is moral than what it was in the early days of our country.
If one postulates that there is no giver of absolute moral laws, then who decides what these moral laws should be? Is it the majority? If 99.99% of the population believes that murder or adultery are OK then does that make them right? If 99.99% of the population believes that the earth is flat (like it was once believed), does that make it so? The nazis believed that Jews (and others) were subhuman and eliminated millions of them. Was that right, moral and good, just because they had the power to enforce their beliefs? Of course not!
I happen to believe that the laws of physics are absolute, and as far as we can tell, they operate uniformly through the observable universe because the Lawgiver made them to be so. I also believe that this is true of the laws of morality, also given by the same One who formulated and enforces the laws of physics. The difference is that, in order for love to be, he gave us the freedom to CHOOSE whether we wish to believe and obey these moral codes. You MUST obey the laws of physics or face the immediate, sure consequences of breaking them. The results of breaking God's moral codes are just as sure, but they are delayed in time. In the end, everyone gets to choose whether they want to live in harmony with and in the presence of God in accordance to His will, or far away on their own, forever isolated from their maker. If you do not believe at this time in your life, you will nevertheless be confronted by God at the end of time and be dealt with in perfect justice according to the way you now live. Perhaps you are good and righteous enough to be able to stand before God and be accepted on that basis. I know I am not able to and therefore have chosen to depend on the mercy and forgiveness He offers everyone through Jesus Christ.
(..... It's not as though The Meter was brought down from on high by a white-haired prophet.....)
I never said that. However the meter is based on an arbitrary fraction of a natural dimension. Our time measurements are based on external factors fixed by the laws of motion of atoms and heavenly bodies. Temperature measurements are based on the properties of water, set by the laws of physics. Velocity measurements are referenced to the speed of light or sound. All our measurement standards are ultimately tied in some manner to factors over which we have no control, but are based in some way on the laws of physics legislated by God.
That used to be true for Western Culture, but seems to be on the way out. Among our founding fathers, there was the consensus that humans rights and by extension, moral standards come from God. The foundational documents of the US were formulated within the Judeo-Christian framework.
Both moral standards and physical standards are needed in any society. Just as chaos is inevitable in commerce and science if everyone makes up their own weights and measures, so also chaos results when everyone institutes their own moral guidelines. Physical standards are based on, and traceable to, quantities over which humans have no control. They are imposed on us all by the laws of nature, the author of which is God. Many today deny that God is the creator and designer of the world around us. Therefore it is no surprise that these same people would also deny that there are certain laws of behavior, moral laws, that are inherent in our human nature. The difference is that we have no choice about compliance with the physical laws, but we may choose whether or not to obey God's rules of morality. God says, for example, that adultery is morally wrong, but adulterers don't immediately die, such as they do if they leap off a 500 foot cliff. Telling falsehoods is morally wrong, yet liars don't immediately grow long noses and donkey ears.
It seems though that in the context of the article and copyrights, the word "moral" has a different meaning that what is associated with it in normal daily use.
How does anybody in our relativism wracked society decide what what "morals" are and that artists or anybody else for that matter has such a thing as "moral" rights? Exactly WHO decides what is moral? We have lgislatures and courts decide what's LEGAL, that's all.
....where a VM windows app will run NOTICEABLY SLOWER! DUH!....
This would not be true for many apps. What difference does it make if a program takes.1 sec or.2 sec to do an equivalent operation? For may common uses, virtualization is perfectly fine, while for other uses it sucks. Even on the PPC VPC emulation, there are many programs that run acceptably fine on today's powerful hardware. I use Virtual PC for a few such apps on my PowermacG5 without problems. Apple wants to give Windows users the chance to try their superior OSX running on well made hardware without them having to go cold turkey and throwing away their investment and comfort in Windows. Bootcamp and virtualiztion are the bait.
.... I don't think anyone would be running Windows apps with full privileges......
So what would happen when a program wants to write access the registry, which would not be permitted, or the registry itself is not even there? What about the services that a Windows program might want to use? All this would be a big headache to Apple to provide. Allowing the booting of Windows gets Apple off the hook for any of Windows failings. A program like virtual PC also does this, but in either case, a full version of Windows is still needed to run Windows software on a Mac.
Because MS makes money there, it would also more likely cooperate with Apple on getting Windows software running on Apple hardware. Apple may carry a future version of VPC with VISA and/or XP as an extra cost option from its online store.
Apple after all is a hardware maker, and I suspect is well capable of competing on the quality of their hardware alone. OSX is a big bonus for them. The iPod success demonstrates that a well made product is a big reward for its manufacturer. A huge after market for ipods has also arisen because of this. For the first time, users can directly compare the Mac software under OSX with Windows software. When they learn that their Windows partition or virtual file has become infested with all kinds of malware, while the Mac remains clean, they will draw certain conclusions and demand that their favorite software also to run on Macs under OSX. As more people buy Macs, because they can still run their existing Windows programs, the bigger the incentive and demand for porting these programs to OSX.
.....but the reality is that most desktop apps are just too tied to Windows for that to happen...
For most consumers and small businesses, there are OSX apps available to do the functions now done by Windows apps. In the larger enterprises, there re many programs that do not have any mac equivalents. For this beginning, it was easy to first of all, via Bootcamp, to allow those users that really need to have certain Windows programs, but can or want to do most of their computing on a Mac, to be able to buy a Mac and then run those few Windows apps as well. Virtual PC on the PPC computers allows the use of many Windows programs, all without rebooting into Windows. The emulation is sufficiently fast for certain programs, but dog slow for others. When this virtualization is done for the Intel Macs, the emulation slow down will disappear.
A good solution would be to allow virtualization for most Windows apps, running a version of Windows under OSX, but also allow a user to reboot entirely into Windows for maximum performance. When Connectix first came out with their Virtual PC, they emulated PC HARDWARE and anything that would run on a PC would also run on a PPC. Since the Mac is now running on the same hardware, it ought to be possible to make *any* program, including any OS capable of running on such hardware "think" it is running in such a way that it has that hardware all to itself. Simply start up the VPC program and then install the OS of your choice and all of its software. All of that is then simply another program running under OSX. Given enough memory and disk space, a user could have all past, present and future versions of Windows, Linux and who knows what else, all running simultaneously, allowing the user to switch between them instantly. This would give a new meaning to "universal" since now a Mac could be the first computer that can run ANY software that has ever been written for a personal computer.
.....Thats like saying i should pay more *road* taxes because i drive a supercharged v8, but the guy next door has a 1 cyl hybrid......
But that's exactly what I meant. You DO pay more gas tax which goes for the roads. If your "unlimited" use and that of everybody else's unlimited use becomes high enough, the additional bandwidth cost will be passed on to users. When your neighbors, who mostly use only e-mail and surf the web, learn that they are subsidizing your extraordinarily high P2P usage they may opt for a low measured rate and then your so called unlimited rate will go up dramatically. I hope that that when the measured services start, they will apply to all bits, regardless what information these represent.
......It really doenst cost more to push more bits over the month,.....
However it really DOES cost more to the ISP if everybody starts pushing more bits all at the same time. Except for rush hour times, the road system is adequate. ALL infrastructure providers lay out their systems for average expected use. If that use goes up, the utility systems get stressed and have to increase their capacity. Data is just another utility. The more people shower and flush, the bigger the facilities have to be and that costs more. We accept usage based rates on other utilities, so what is so unusual that this should also be true for a data utility like the Internet? If you pay $39.95 a month for a DSL line and so do your neighbors, why should you not pay more if you wish to push ten times as many bits as your average neighbor? Metered bits are the wave of the future, just as are metered water and electricity, whether we like it or not. The only service I can think of that does NOT increase in proportion to the amount and type of use is broadcasting. A transmitter-studio setup costs about the same, whether there are 1000 or a million listeners.
....See, that is the problem of letting monopolies exist in the data 'market'......
How is this any different from your electric or gas company? If you normal household electric line is insufficient to run that 500 kilowatt super pottery kiln, you can pay the company to set you up the proper line, complete with meter and pay for the amount of electricity you use. On the other hand, if you want to run your 10Kw kiln 24/7, you may do this, but you're still metered and billed at the end of the month. Why should you expect anything different for data? Maybe ISP's should just count packets and charge a certain amount per packet, plus a small fixed 'metering" fee, based on the average needs of all their users.
..... Seriously, the car-analogy is overused to the point of cliche-death around here........
OK how about the toilet analogy then? If everybody in town flushes their toilet at the same time, the water pressure drops and some firefighters might not have enough water pressure to save your house from burning down. Public works services, are sized for some average usage level. If every user starts downloading gigabytes of data, the network becomes overloaded like the LA freeways during rush hour. Building both physical freeways and the information highway to carry more traffic costs money. Usage based costs therefore are a reasonable way to fund faster networks. The first daily 500MB of data goes at full agreed upon speed and then starts to go down gradually to a dial up rate. This way any user can still at least get their e-mail after they have downloaded the full length movie.
.....These really aren't even exact matches, but they're very similar and moreso than the prices you quoted......
How similar are they really? What about the costs of all the anti-malware programs that have to be installed and updated regularly. What about the costs of time and effort of these in addition to the out of pocket up front expenses? How long does a customer have to spend on hold to talk to some service representative who speaks an understandable English? Can you go to a local Dell store and get a problem with the computer resolved? Look at the consumer reports and learn whether Dell or Apple has more reliable hardware or better repair service and customer satisfaction. If you travel a lot, how about the honest working battery life and weight? An extra pound or two can make a difference when your computer bag needs to be lugged from one side of an airport to the other. If someone trips on the power cord, which computer is more likely to fly off the table and get broken? If it does drop, which computer is likely to preserve the HD and its data? Can you easily use the computer in a dimly or dark room if its keys are not lit? Does it matter whether it is thick and as ugly as sin, rather than a sleek, well thought out, pleasing industrial design?
Apple pays attention to such details and customer service. If these are not worth a few extra dollars, by all means save the money up front. You will pay extra in dollars as well as things that cannot easily be figured in terms of money, for as long as you own the slightly cheaper Dell. Anybody who looks only on the raw specs and initial price of a computer IS stuck on STUPID.
....That's funny, plenty of people still use OS X despite the fact that it is not binary compatible with MS Windows....
Programs available for OSX are simple to install and are GUARANTEED to run on all Macs without any special user knowledge about specific flavors or configuration settings needed. Same is true for Windows. Can ONE binary program run on EVERY flavor of Linux on every computer that can normally run Windows? If a developer were to make a Linux program to sell at CompUSA, would it run on the same wide variety of computer that Windows runs on? When Linux can equal Windows or OSX in this ease of use, the Dells of this world will have an incentive to abandon MS.
....X10 can do this - provided you can get all the signals on all phases of your AC power line.......
If you're not afraid of opening your main electric panel, you can connect a 1uF, 600V AC rated capacitor across the two hot lines, (220V) and it will conduct the high frequency X-10 signals to both sides of the line. For 3 phase systems, you'd need 2 such capacitors.
.....After waking up in the middle of the night to find every light in the house on (twice) when I only had X10.....
That reminds me of the time my father-in-law came down from Canada to visit us a few weeks after we were married. The lights in the room where he and mother-inlaw were staying was controlled by an X10 module. The system had actually never acted weird before, but the lights came on in the middle of the night and then went off again. A short time later the cycle repeated. In the morning he was VERY annoyed, threatening to leave immediately if not sooner. He had unscrewed the bulbs and had peace. I investigated the wall switch unit and it seemed to work normally. However, just to be safe, I replaced it and took the offending suspect apart. What had happened was that an ant had bridged the thyristor gate terminal. In the night, when the Bay Area air gets a little damp, the electrocuted ant body absorbed enough moisture to trigger the lights on. The current dried out the ant and the lights would then go off again. After some time, the cycle would repeat! The most annoying feature of the x-10 dimmers is the fact that a power glitch would turn the lights off and they'd stay off. I wonder if the Insteon units also suffer from this shortcoming. X-10 units often fail to respond, but don't switch on or off by themselves usually.
.....Remember, Apple followers have been trained to believe that anything from Apple "Just Works"(tm).....
Presumably the shiny new Mac did 'just work' without problems until these experimenters decided to "poison" their virgin pure Mac with the "evil" software from M$. If Windows is good enough, then a cheap Dell or other such box ought to be good enough also. Recommendation to Mac users: Wait until MS ports their virtual PC to the new Intel Macs. Right now it works just fine on PPC, but it is slow due to the processor emulation. Having to re-boot a computer each time you want to run that one or two programs you can't get on a Mac is really tedious. VPC is just another program that runs under OSX.
....you can switch between programs easily, but then have to use whatever scheme that program uses for switching windows....
In OSX, the Expose function allows easy switching between apps and numerous windows within them. Does MS have something like that? The taskbar gets pretty crowded fast and then it becomes hard to figure out which one is the right one.
....Graphics are theoretically much better on a computer than on the consoles,....
Theoretically is the operative word. I just got our teenager an xbox-360 and its graphics with real 360 games, using a hi-res VGA multisync 20" monitor are as good or better than anything I have ever seen on a computer, PC or Mac. The motion on the Oblivion game is very smooth and realistic and the graphic detail is outstanding. A big reason that a console is better than a general purpose computer (other than much cheaper) is that we can rent games, which is not possible for computers.
....But more importantly, anyone intent on playing games would never buy the current Intel Macs.....
Nor should a serious gamer waste their money on any general purpose computer, but get a real game machine, such as an xbox-360. The graphics and game-play performance on my son's new 360 on a VGA monitor is awesome. No $400 PC comes even close. Keep the old, slow PC or Mac around for the mundane low performance apps lie e-mail, browsing the web and doing your taxes etc. For consoles it is possible to RENT games from Gameplay, but nobody rents PC or Mac games. My boy is pretty good at "solving" most games and then gets bored with them, so renting is cheaper than buying for us.
....Do you really think that randomly typing on a computer keyboard is a good model for evolution?.....
Perhaps you can tell me why it is not. Maybe your and my definition of evolution are very different. Perhaps you can tell me exactly what you think is at the heart of theory evolutionary. I assume you take it as truth that there are one or more designers of man made objects. I also assume that you do not think this is true of "natural" objects, living or not. Tell me WHY you make this distinction, if you do. To me, saying that man made objects are designed and natural things are not, is an artificial distinction that is a belief, but not science. To me, the evidence for design of airplanes and eyeballs is overwhelming.
...Hmmm, doesn't Apple use DRM in its iTunes music and in OS X?....
Apple lets you burn the iTunes music to an ordinary audio Cd with no DRM. After you do that, such a CD is no different from any other standard audio CD you can buy in a store. All they are trying to stop are the unethical people who post music files in the Internet for anybody to download. If such malefactors didn't exist, nobody would have ever even thought of wasting a dime on DRM.
.....And what happens when Windows does it's all too common trick of refusing to boot and let you at your existing files?....
I suppose the way around all this "security" is to print out everything that is REALLY important right after you create it and store it in an old fashioned filing cabinet like was done before computers existed. That way you'll always have your data.
....when you claim that random processes can't produce information you show a complete ignorance of information theory......
Try an experiment. Have a number of children or monkeys type on a keyboard of a computer for a few hours and see if this typing comes up with a running program that will do anything except possibly crash the computer or give an error message. One million monkeys typing on a million typewriters for a thousand years will not produce even a simple poem or story.
Never mind convoluted theories. Information is not physical matter nor energy, although it may be carried by these. Are you not willing to admit that thoughts and ideas are not limited in this way? We humans have the ability to arrange basic units of matter and energy into more complex configurations. These arrangements originate always in someone's mind. Why do you split reality and insist on making the erroneous assumption that the natural world is not ALSO based on the same principles. Why do you get confused by the details from the simple truth that specific structures in both man made and natural realms are originated by thought processes originating in one or more MINDS. You have never addressed that ONE crucial basic issue. The laws of nature and the detailed results of their operation SCREAM at us humans that there is a mind behind the universe. Why are you not willing to acknowledge that complex structures have a designer, regardless whether these things are part of man made things or not.
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(.....A State ID is required for all citizens, is used as the key to identify that individual in most or all databanks......)
For many purposes this is your SS number. It is needed to file various tax returns, anytime you want something that requires credit or a credit check. Renting a car without a credit card is almost impossible. Paying for large items, such as a car, with actual currency forces the receiver of such cash to file an SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) with the Feds. Many insurance companies, landlords, all banks, employers and others require you to give them your SS number.
Whether we like it or not, the whole world is on the path to 666, where "no one is permitted to buy or sell without the mark". Since cards of all kinds can be lost or stolen, the requirement will eventually become some sort of chip with all the needed information to allow a cashless system of trade. The ID chip has been in use for some time now in animals and eventually will be used on humans, at some point ALL humans.
(.... but it will help the Gov. control you.....)
That of course is the ultimate aim of Governments and to some extent big business. Ideally they want to know WHERE you are at all times (GPS) know WHO you communicate with (log files), how much money you make and WHAT you spend it on. It is the money part that likely offers the best control mechanism.
While there is still cash money available, there can still be anonymous economic exchanges which escape taxation, for example. Once an ID system is in place that uniquely keeps all information on every individual, including the money, cash will no longer be needed nor allowed. An implanted, remotely readable chip will eventually replace a card that can be lost or stolen.
(.....Just Say NO!.....)
When apply for a job, open a bank account or want medical treatment you must give your SS number. Just say NO! Try to rent a car without a credit card, Just say NO! There are an increasing number of every day things that people used to be able to do anonymously, but no longer. At one time, getting on an airplane was no different than getting on city bus.
The world is well on its way to a universal system, where your every move and all your financial transactions get tracked, as is predicted in the Bible, to be used by a central world government eventually.
(..... For example, Christians have been given two orders: "Thou shalt not kill," and "be subject to the law of the land."....)
First of all, the word is not "kill", but rather "murder". There is a difference both morally and legally. The second part is that laws and edicts of God are above the laws of man. For example, Jesus commanded Christians to teach His ways and rules for living. He did NOT tell them to enforce them by the sword upon other, such as has unfortunately often been done by organized Christian religion. When man's laws conflict with God's commands, Christians must obey God, but be willing to face the consequences of breaking those manmade rules. Jesus Himself, as well as His followers, all throughout the ages have done so, to the point of death.
(....To me, you appear to be missing the crucial distinction between what you believe is moral and the standards of morality you (or society as a whole) should be able to inflict on the rest of society....)
God doesn't impose his moral laws upon us by force and neither should Christians impose them on others, as again has wrongly been done in the past and is still advocated by some Christians. We are not free to disobey God's laws of physics. However God's moral laws are laws of love. Jesus was asked which of all of God's laws was the foremost. Here is His answer to a loaded question:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matt22:37-40)
God gave His laws because he loves us and wants our love in return, as demonstrated by our compliance to His law of love. Love is light and hate is darkness. You along with every person on earth must choose one or the other. This long series of daily life choices becomes permanent after your heart stops beating. Every human will either be with God in the light of His love or in a place of darkness, far removed from Him and that great love, forever. Almost all of the problems every human faces in this life ultimately can be traced back to our individual and collective failure to obey this law of God's love.
(....There is no God.....)
That of course is an assertion of belief, just as its opposite is. My point was that a much larger percentage of people now hold your position than when this country was founded. The consequence of that is that there is less agreement on what is moral than what it was in the early days of our country.
If one postulates that there is no giver of absolute moral laws, then who decides what these moral laws should be? Is it the majority? If 99.99% of the population believes that murder or adultery are OK then does that make them right? If 99.99% of the population believes that the earth is flat (like it was once believed), does that make it so? The nazis believed that Jews (and others) were subhuman and eliminated millions of them. Was that right, moral and good, just because they had the power to enforce their beliefs? Of course not!
I happen to believe that the laws of physics are absolute, and as far as we can tell, they operate uniformly through the observable universe because the Lawgiver made them to be so. I also believe that this is true of the laws of morality, also given by the same One who formulated and enforces the laws of physics. The difference is that, in order for love to be, he gave us the freedom to CHOOSE whether we wish to believe and obey these moral codes. You MUST obey the laws of physics or face the immediate, sure consequences of breaking them. The results of breaking God's moral codes are just as sure, but they are delayed in time. In the end, everyone gets to choose whether they want to live in harmony with and in the presence of God in accordance to His will, or far away on their own, forever isolated from their maker. If you do not believe at this time in your life, you will nevertheless be confronted by God at the end of time and be dealt with in perfect justice according to the way you now live. Perhaps you are good and righteous enough to be able to stand before God and be accepted on that basis. I know I am not able to and therefore have chosen to depend on the mercy and forgiveness He offers everyone through Jesus Christ.
(..... It's not as though The Meter was brought down from on high by a white-haired prophet.....)
I never said that. However the meter is based on an arbitrary fraction of a natural dimension. Our time measurements are based on external factors fixed by the laws of motion of atoms and heavenly bodies. Temperature measurements are based on the properties of water, set by the laws of physics. Velocity measurements are referenced to the speed of light or sound. All our measurement standards are ultimately tied in some manner to factors over which we have no control, but are based in some way on the laws of physics legislated by God.
.....And that standard is The Holy Bible......
That used to be true for Western Culture, but seems to be on the way out. Among our founding fathers, there was the consensus that humans rights and by extension, moral standards come from God. The foundational documents of the US were formulated within the Judeo-Christian framework.
Both moral standards and physical standards are needed in any society. Just as chaos is inevitable in commerce and science if everyone makes up their own weights and measures, so also chaos results when everyone institutes their own moral guidelines. Physical standards are based on, and traceable to, quantities over which humans have no control. They are imposed on us all by the laws of nature, the author of which is God. Many today deny that God is the creator and designer of the world around us. Therefore it is no surprise that these same people would also deny that there are certain laws of behavior, moral laws, that are inherent in our human nature. The difference is that we have no choice about compliance with the physical laws, but we may choose whether or not to obey God's rules of morality. God says, for example, that adultery is morally wrong, but adulterers don't immediately die, such as they do if they leap off a 500 foot cliff. Telling falsehoods is morally wrong, yet liars don't immediately grow long noses and donkey ears.
It seems though that in the context of the article and copyrights, the word "moral" has a different meaning that what is associated with it in normal daily use.
.....to assert the artist's "moral rights"....
How does anybody in our relativism wracked society decide what what "morals" are and that artists or anybody else for that matter has such a thing as "moral" rights? Exactly WHO decides what is moral? We have lgislatures and courts decide what's LEGAL, that's all.
....where a VM windows app will run NOTICEABLY SLOWER! DUH!....
.1 sec or .2 sec to do an equivalent operation? For may common uses, virtualization is perfectly fine, while for other uses it sucks. Even on the PPC VPC emulation, there are many programs that run acceptably fine on today's powerful hardware. I use Virtual PC for a few such apps on my PowermacG5 without problems. Apple wants to give Windows users the chance to try their superior OSX running on well made hardware without them having to go cold turkey and throwing away their investment and comfort in Windows. Bootcamp and virtualiztion are the bait.
This would not be true for many apps. What difference does it make if a program takes
.... I don't think anyone would be running Windows apps with full privileges......
So what would happen when a program wants to write access the registry, which would not be permitted, or the registry itself is not even there? What about the services that a Windows program might want to use? All this would be a big headache to Apple to provide. Allowing the booting of Windows gets Apple off the hook for any of Windows failings. A program like virtual PC also does this, but in either case, a full version of Windows is still needed to run Windows software on a Mac.
Because MS makes money there, it would also more likely cooperate with Apple on getting Windows software running on Apple hardware. Apple may carry a future version of VPC with VISA and/or XP as an extra cost option from its online store.
Apple after all is a hardware maker, and I suspect is well capable of competing on the quality of their hardware alone. OSX is a big bonus for them. The iPod success demonstrates that a well made product is a big reward for its manufacturer. A huge after market for ipods has also arisen because of this. For the first time, users can directly compare the Mac software under OSX with Windows software. When they learn that their Windows partition or virtual file has become infested with all kinds of malware, while the Mac remains clean, they will draw certain conclusions and demand that their favorite software also to run on Macs under OSX. As more people buy Macs, because they can still run their existing Windows programs, the bigger the incentive and demand for porting these programs to OSX.
.....but the reality is that most desktop apps are just too tied to Windows for that to happen...
For most consumers and small businesses, there are OSX apps available to do the functions now done by Windows apps. In the larger enterprises, there re many programs that do not have any mac equivalents. For this beginning, it was easy to first of all, via Bootcamp, to allow those users that really need to have certain Windows programs, but can or want to do most of their computing on a Mac, to be able to buy a Mac and then run those few Windows apps as well. Virtual PC on the PPC computers allows the use of many Windows programs, all without rebooting into Windows. The emulation is sufficiently fast for certain programs, but dog slow for others. When this virtualization is done for the Intel Macs, the emulation slow down will disappear.
A good solution would be to allow virtualization for most Windows apps, running a version of Windows under OSX, but also allow a user to reboot entirely into Windows for maximum performance. When Connectix first came out with their Virtual PC, they emulated PC HARDWARE and anything that would run on a PC would also run on a PPC. Since the Mac is now running on the same hardware, it ought to be possible to make *any* program, including any OS capable of running on such hardware "think" it is running in such a way that it has that hardware all to itself. Simply start up the VPC program and then install the OS of your choice and all of its software. All of that is then simply another program running under OSX. Given enough memory and disk space, a user could have all past, present and future versions of Windows, Linux and who knows what else, all running simultaneously, allowing the user to switch between them instantly. This would give a new meaning to "universal" since now a Mac could be the first computer that can run ANY software that has ever been written for a personal computer.
.....Thats like saying i should pay more *road* taxes because i drive a supercharged v8, but the guy next door has a 1 cyl hybrid......
But that's exactly what I meant. You DO pay more gas tax which goes for the roads. If your "unlimited" use and that of everybody else's unlimited use becomes high enough, the additional bandwidth cost will be passed on to users. When your neighbors, who mostly use only e-mail and surf the web, learn that they are subsidizing your extraordinarily high P2P usage they may opt for a low measured rate and then your so called unlimited rate will go up dramatically. I hope that that when the measured services start, they will apply to all bits, regardless what information these represent.
......It really doenst cost more to push more bits over the month,.....
However it really DOES cost more to the ISP if everybody starts pushing more bits all at the same time. Except for rush hour times, the road system is adequate. ALL infrastructure providers lay out their systems for average expected use. If that use goes up, the utility systems get stressed and have to increase their capacity. Data is just another utility. The more people shower and flush, the bigger the facilities have to be and that costs more. We accept usage based rates on other utilities, so what is so unusual that this should also be true for a data utility like the Internet? If you pay $39.95 a month for a DSL line and so do your neighbors, why should you not pay more if you wish to push ten times as many bits as your average neighbor? Metered bits are the wave of the future, just as are metered water and electricity, whether we like it or not. The only service I can think of that does NOT increase in proportion to the amount and type of use is broadcasting. A transmitter-studio setup costs about the same, whether there are 1000 or a million listeners.
....See, that is the problem of letting monopolies exist in the data 'market'......
How is this any different from your electric or gas company? If you normal household electric line is insufficient to run that 500 kilowatt super pottery kiln, you can pay the company to set you up the proper line, complete with meter and pay for the amount of electricity you use. On the other hand, if you want to run your 10Kw kiln 24/7, you may do this, but you're still metered and billed at the end of the month. Why should you expect anything different for data? Maybe ISP's should just count packets and charge a certain amount per packet, plus a small fixed 'metering" fee, based on the average needs of all their users.
..... Seriously, the car-analogy is overused to the point of cliche-death around here........
OK how about the toilet analogy then? If everybody in town flushes their toilet at the same time, the water pressure drops and some firefighters might not have enough water pressure to save your house from burning down. Public works services, are sized for some average usage level. If every user starts downloading gigabytes of data, the network becomes overloaded like the LA freeways during rush hour. Building both physical freeways and the information highway to carry more traffic costs money. Usage based costs therefore are a reasonable way to fund faster networks. The first daily 500MB of data goes at full agreed upon speed and then starts to go down gradually to a dial up rate. This way any user can still at least get their e-mail after they have downloaded the full length movie.
.....These really aren't even exact matches, but they're very similar and moreso than the prices you quoted......
How similar are they really? What about the costs of all the anti-malware programs that have to be installed and updated regularly. What about the costs of time and effort of these in addition to the out of pocket up front expenses? How long does a customer have to spend on hold to talk to some service representative who speaks an understandable English? Can you go to a local Dell store and get a problem with the computer resolved? Look at the consumer reports and learn whether Dell or Apple has more reliable hardware or better repair service and customer satisfaction. If you travel a lot, how about the honest working battery life and weight? An extra pound or two can make a difference when your computer bag needs to be lugged from one side of an airport to the other. If someone trips on the power cord, which computer is more likely to fly off the table and get broken? If it does drop, which computer is likely to preserve the HD and its data? Can you easily use the computer in a dimly or dark room if its keys are not lit? Does it matter whether it is thick and as ugly as sin, rather than a sleek, well thought out, pleasing industrial design?
Apple pays attention to such details and customer service. If these are not worth a few extra dollars, by all means save the money up front. You will pay extra in dollars as well as things that cannot easily be figured in terms of money, for as long as you own the slightly cheaper Dell. Anybody who looks only on the raw specs and initial price of a computer IS stuck on STUPID.
....That's funny, plenty of people still use OS X despite the fact that it is not binary compatible with MS Windows....
Programs available for OSX are simple to install and are GUARANTEED to run on all Macs without any special user knowledge about specific flavors or configuration settings needed. Same is true for Windows. Can ONE binary program run on EVERY flavor of Linux on every computer that can normally run Windows? If a developer were to make a Linux program to sell at CompUSA, would it run on the same wide variety of computer that Windows runs on? When Linux can equal Windows or OSX in this ease of use, the Dells of this world will have an incentive to abandon MS.
....X10 can do this - provided you can get all the signals on all phases of your AC power line.......
If you're not afraid of opening your main electric panel, you can connect a 1uF, 600V AC rated capacitor across the two hot lines, (220V) and it will conduct the high frequency X-10 signals to both sides of the line. For 3 phase systems, you'd need 2 such capacitors.
.....After waking up in the middle of the night to find every light in the house on (twice) when I only had X10.....
That reminds me of the time my father-in-law came down from Canada to visit us a few weeks after we were married. The lights in the room where he and mother-inlaw were staying was controlled by an X10 module. The system had actually never acted weird before, but the lights came on in the middle of the night and then went off again. A short time later the cycle repeated. In the morning he was VERY annoyed, threatening to leave immediately if not sooner. He had unscrewed the bulbs and had peace. I investigated the wall switch unit and it seemed to work normally. However, just to be safe, I replaced it and took the offending suspect apart. What had happened was that an ant had bridged the thyristor gate terminal. In the night, when the Bay Area air gets a little damp, the electrocuted ant body absorbed enough moisture to trigger the lights on. The current dried out the ant and the lights would then go off again. After some time, the cycle would repeat! The most annoying feature of the x-10 dimmers is the fact that a power glitch would turn the lights off and they'd stay off. I wonder if the Insteon units also suffer from this shortcoming. X-10 units often fail to respond, but don't switch on or off by themselves usually.
.....Remember, Apple followers have been trained to believe that anything from Apple "Just Works"(tm).....
Presumably the shiny new Mac did 'just work' without problems until these experimenters decided to "poison" their virgin pure Mac with the "evil" software from M$. If Windows is good enough, then a cheap Dell or other such box ought to be good enough also. Recommendation to Mac users: Wait until MS ports their virtual PC to the new Intel Macs. Right now it works just fine on PPC, but it is slow due to the processor emulation. Having to re-boot a computer each time you want to run that one or two programs you can't get on a Mac is really tedious. VPC is just another program that runs under OSX.
....you can switch between programs easily, but then have to use whatever scheme that program uses for switching windows ....
In OSX, the Expose function allows easy switching between apps and numerous windows within them. Does MS have something like that? The taskbar gets pretty crowded fast and then it becomes hard to figure out which one is the right one.
....Graphics are theoretically much better on a computer than on the consoles,....
Theoretically is the operative word. I just got our teenager an xbox-360 and its graphics with real 360 games, using a hi-res VGA multisync 20" monitor are as good or better than anything I have ever seen on a computer, PC or Mac. The motion on the Oblivion game is very smooth and realistic and the graphic detail is outstanding. A big reason that a console is better than a general purpose computer (other than much cheaper) is that we can rent games, which is not possible for computers.
....But more importantly, anyone intent on playing games would never buy the current Intel Macs.....
Nor should a serious gamer waste their money on any general purpose computer, but get a real game machine, such as an xbox-360. The graphics and game-play performance on my son's new 360 on a VGA monitor is awesome. No $400 PC comes even close. Keep the old, slow PC or Mac around for the mundane low performance apps lie e-mail, browsing the web and doing your taxes etc. For consoles it is possible to RENT games from Gameplay, but nobody rents PC or Mac games. My boy is pretty good at "solving" most games and then gets bored with them, so renting is cheaper than buying for us.
....Do you really think that randomly typing on a computer keyboard is a good model for evolution?.....
Perhaps you can tell me why it is not. Maybe your and my definition of evolution are very different. Perhaps you can tell me exactly what you think is at the heart of theory evolutionary. I assume you take it as truth that there are one or more designers of man made objects. I also assume that you do not think this is true of "natural" objects, living or not. Tell me WHY you make this distinction, if you do. To me, saying that man made objects are designed and natural things are not, is an artificial distinction that is a belief, but not science. To me, the evidence for design of airplanes and eyeballs is overwhelming.
...Hmmm, doesn't Apple use DRM in its iTunes music and in OS X?....
Apple lets you burn the iTunes music to an ordinary audio Cd with no DRM. After you do that, such a CD is no different from any other standard audio CD you can buy in a store. All they are trying to stop are the unethical people who post music files in the Internet for anybody to download. If such malefactors didn't exist, nobody would have ever even thought of wasting a dime on DRM.
.....And what happens when Windows does it's all too common trick of refusing to boot and let you at your existing files?....
I suppose the way around all this "security" is to print out everything that is REALLY important right after you create it and store it in an old fashioned filing cabinet like was done before computers existed. That way you'll always have your data.
....when you claim that random processes can't produce information you show a complete ignorance of information theory......
Try an experiment. Have a number of children or monkeys type on a keyboard of a computer for a few hours and see if this typing comes up with a running program that will do anything except possibly crash the computer or give an error message. One million monkeys typing on a million typewriters for a thousand years will not produce even a simple poem or story.
Never mind convoluted theories. Information is not physical matter nor energy, although it may be carried by these. Are you not willing to admit that thoughts and ideas are not limited in this way? We humans have the ability to arrange basic units of matter and energy into more complex configurations. These arrangements originate always in someone's mind. Why do you split reality and insist on making the erroneous assumption that the natural world is not ALSO based on the same principles. Why do you get confused by the details from the simple truth that specific structures in both man made and natural realms are originated by thought processes originating in one or more MINDS. You have never addressed that ONE crucial basic issue. The laws of nature and the detailed results of their operation SCREAM at us humans that there is a mind behind the universe. Why are you not willing to acknowledge that complex structures have a designer, regardless whether these things are part of man made things or not.