Sorry, but you are proving my point. The US did not take action against Iranian citizens, it interfered with internal politics
If interfering with internal politics isn't interfering with civilians what is? Fact is is the US encouraged the overthrow of a democratically elected government. And that wasn't the only tyme either. The US did the same in Iraq, Viet Nam, and Chile. It also supported the invasion of a sovereign nation by another which led to the death of 200,000 of the nation's citizens, one third of the population. But then again the US was built on the invasion of one region after another, meanwhile exterminating the inhabitants. Throughout it's history the USA has been the aggressor.
From what you've posted so far you don't like socialism yet you support a socialist program to build and operate nuclear power plants. Oh I see you say later to privatize it, and how's that going to work, like how Russia's Yukov was privatized instantly creating a billionare? Reminds me of the Russian oil tycoon in Val Kilmer's "The Saint".
There's not going to be a single replacement for gasoline.
Oh, I agree. However instead of spending all that money on nuclear power instead develop energy different sources for different areas. Take the money and install solar where it's sunny, wind farms where it's windy, tidal wave machines on the coast and so on. That's after all of the steps are taken to increase efficiency.
62MW of Solar power. That's laughable, when your average gas turbine peaker cranks out a few hundred MW, and a big coal or nuclear station can crank out a 1000. Look at the energy portfolio of the USA, and its obvious, you need to have nuclear power if you want to get rid of coal.
It isn't obvious, what is obvious is that if energy efficiency measures were taken electrical demand could be cut down to size. The biggest lightbulb I use is a 15 watt CFL and it puts out what a 75 watt incandescent bulb puts out. Other bulbs I have are 12 watt which puts out 60 watt equivalent. Half of the energy used in the US is consumed in buildings, so using efficient lights and fixtures as well as increasing the R value of insulation used can significantly reduce electrical demand. A lot of people design and build homes Off the Grid and are quite capable of using solar or other alternative energy sources to provide all the energy they need. Just because you don't know or won't acknowledge it doesn't mean it's not possible to reduce energy needs.
I would further dispute the idea that there is a "cost" of global warming that should be recovered by the government by raising taxes on carbon.
If the users, and creators of the problem, aren't the ones who pays then who does? The Inuit who falls through the thin ice in the Artic while hunting? Or the Southeast Asian who finds his land and home submerged because of rising sea levels?
the salespeople pushing this are a bunch of fricking crooks.
The real crooks are the ones who create the problem but leave someone else to pay for it.
It's just a no brainer. Better Dead than Red, means something to this day!
Yea, it means you can steal and murder and not have to pay for it!
Arguing that the US started "the war" with Iran is pretty far fetched. While the Iranian people have a legitimate grievance regarding US interference with Iran's internal politics, the US did not take action against them.
I watched a documentary or special of some sort on the subject of solar power, and I was surprised to learn that, according to the program, the first (and longest running) solar power plant in the U.S. was built by the Carter administration.
Yeap, Carter was a big supporter of solar power. If either he had won in 1980 or if Reagan had kept up with it there's a good chance we'd be getting a lot of energy from solar now. But Reagan favored fossil fuel. At the tyme I was reading all I could get on solar as well as wind power and partially because he supported them the first tyme I was able to vote I voted for Carter in 2000.
Don't think I'm a Democrat though. In 1984 I voted against Reagan and in 1988 I voted for Ron Paul. Since then I've vote for Democrat, Independent, Reform, and Republican candidates. I don't vote partyline, I'm registered as "No Party Preference".
You are holding up a single method of mining as representitive of the entire industry.
In the Appalachian mountains much of the coal mining is done by Mountaintop Removal. Here's Google's case study on Appalachian Mountaintop Removal. Mountaintop removal has been used in the Appalachians for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion. "In just two decades, hundreds of mountaintops, more than a thousand miles of stream, and hundreds of square miles of forests have been obliterated by the practice. Opponents say the pollution is also dangerous to people who live in the region." So it's not simply one wiki article as you make it out to be.
using solar as a "peaking" generator, and then using something like nuclear as the base load would likely work okay without being unbearably expensive.
Using solar is one thing but in a freemarket without subsidies nuclear wouldn't survive. If a builder and operator of a nuclear plant had to buy and pay for their own insurance as well as pay for storage and environmental cleanup the cost would be too prohibitive.
Solar is practical once we tax all of its competitors and mandate its use. No thanks.
Solar is practical now, either stop subsidizing all other energy sources or give the same subsidies to solar and I bet it will be cost competitive. Nuclear however would never survive without subsidies.
Bullshit. the status quo is just fine. look around you, the world is fine, it's not falling apart like scare mongers claim.
Yea, and I bet you don't live in Nunavut and have gone hungry and fatherless because after your father broke through thin ice and died of hypothermia, which the Inuit have found out is of grave concern. Nor I bet do you live in Malaysia where you have to worry about seeing your home submerged.
You pay either way, the cost shows up in your tax bill or your electric bill.
Only if you rely on the power company instead of generating your own energy. More and more people are going Off the Grid. At least if producers have to pay for cleaning up then only their users will pay and not those who have their own systems.
We also need to be building less hydro plants that rely on blocking rivers to generate power
I don't recall exactly when or what the title was but early this year or last year/. had an article about a new type of plant to generate power from rivers. Instead of building a dam and channeling water through turbines, the new idea was to have a boom over the water and lower turbines shaped like egg beaters or blenders. The water running by would spin them thus generating electricity.
Even FRANCE primarily uses nuclear power, so why shouldn't we?
So, it's fine with you to place nuclear waste somewhere that can be struck with an earthquake thus spreading radiation for hundreds of miles?
The long-term (tens of thousands of years) issue is only true if the plutonium is buried with the waste, instead of burned in new fuel rods, the way any sane fuel cycle will do.
So you don't care if some of the waste has a half-life of hundreds of millions of years either? Neither do you care if it's taxpayers that have to pay for it, I guess.
The only reason Yucca mountain isn't accepting nuclear waste now is because of this absurd notion that we have to have the waste be safe for all time. You don't need to worry about 10,000 or 100,000 years down the road, as the enviros would have us believe. It's just absurd.
I call BS! Whatever storage area that's picked, it has to be able to last as long what is stored there will last, and some of the waste coming out has a half-life of 100s of millions of years. And this disregards the fact that Yucca Mountain is a seismically active area. Not only was there an earthquake nearby several years ago, but a government building was damaged there in the 1970s. When a place to store waste was first proposed several places were looked at, however because other states had strong congressional representation they were removed from the list. Being last on the list and because it didn't have strong representation Nevada was stuck with Yucca being picked.
Dump the waste into the ocean, actually.
France has already done that. It's nice to know neither they nor you care about future generations.
But solving the nuclear waste issue (or, more accurately, permitting one of the solutions to the nuclear waste problem to be implemented) is not optional. We have to do it to dispose of the waste we've already got. So one of the solutions to disposing of this waste will ultimately be implemented, even if it's just shipping it all to France, where they are disposing of the waste quite handily, thank you very much.
Actually France isn't doing so well with nuclear waste:
The real competition is other forms of clean power generation, like nuclear.
Nuclear power isn't clean! Just as with coal, the material used in nuclear power plants have to be mined. The building of nuclear power plants are energy intensive. This is because they use a lot of concrete, concrete is made from cement, and "Cement production is one of the most energy intensive of all industrial manufacturing processes." Then you have to have someplace for long term storage of the nuclear waste.
why build a concentrated solar plant when you can just build a nuke plant?
Why because you don't have to deal, or leave to your children and grandchildren, with the radioactive waste, as well as the reasons above.
BS! As early as the early 1800s the USSC ruled there is he right to privacy, specifically anonymity. Among other's the right to privacy is grounded in the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech clause. In one case, the 1960 case of TALLEY v. CALIFORNIA, 362 U.S., the US Supreme Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. An MIT page, describes this ruling and another, McIntyre v. Ohio Election Commission, wherein the USSC upheld anonymous speech. In the Talley v California case the court said:
"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all.... Even the Federalist Papers, written in favor of the adoption of our Constitution, were published under fictitious names. It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes."
And if it costs $500m to round trip just for travel, how many people are likely to be able to afford a trip?
I did say "Inexpensive and routine travel is a holdup" in the post of mne you replied too. However, that's where commercial interests fit right in. Private businesses doing research may be able to reduce the price of travel. Factoring in inflation I bet SpaceshipX was able to do what they did for less than what NASA would of spent doing the same thing. And as more is learned the price will come down more. Virgin Galactic is selling tickets for $100,000 and even though they don't yet have a ship they've collected $15,000,000 in down payments.
Mining companies would love to be able to mine the moon as well.
They would? Why? What is up there that is in such short supply down here that it's worth several million per kilogram to mine it and get it back? If you found abundant metals and hydrogen, it might be interesting for getting raw materials for building satellites, I suppose.
You answered it partially yourself. Ores can be processed and forged on the moon where manufacturing then occurs. I bet because of the moon's lower gravity the moon can be mined then either materials or finished produces can be transported to orbit around the earth cheaper than doing on earth then lifting it to space.
Some manufacturers would love the low gravity
And they'd love the microgravity of low Earth orbit, at a tenth or hundredth of the cost even more
when an officer of the law comes knocking with a an official-looking document, legal or not, how can any individual (and you know that corporations are viewed in the eyes of the law as individuals, right?)
Big corporations have their own law departments. However that totally overlooks the facts the Constitution of the USA requires a judge's ok unless law enforcement has a reasonable suspicion. However with any blanket request whoever should be able to figure out there is no reasonable suspicion.
if the companies acted in good faith, point the lawyers at the source.
Easy, call the legal department. When one gets there, he or she should be able to tell if it's a legal request. If it needs a judge's sig they can check to see if a judge actually signed a warrant.
If my ISP recieves a legitimate order to hand over information (warrant) or spy on me (wiretap) they'd do it and what would be a crime if they did it for anyone else is accepted as legal because the investigative power of the government trumphs normal privacy law.
Yes, the government is special, it is governed in what it can do by the Constitution of the USA! Seeing as how there was no judicial review what the Bush admin did was unconstitutional. They should all be taken out and treated like the enemies of the USA they are. What they did was no better than what the Gestapo did.
To put the $30m prize in perspective, launching the shuttle costs around $450m, and launching a Saturn V cost around $430m in 1967. The prize is likely to be less than 10% of the launch cost. Unlike the suborbital X-Prize, there is no real prospect of commercial exploitation either.
I bet Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic would love to be able to open Galactic Moon Hotel, and Spa. Mining companies would love to be able to mine the moon as well. Some manufacturers would love the low gravity. Inexpensive and routine travel is a holdup, as would be building facilities on the moon as they'd need to be built underground so cosmic rays could be blocked at least partially.
iTunes doesn't lockin music. With iTunes I can create a play list and burn it to cd. The only limitation is that I can only burn a specific play list 4 tymes. But I can rearrange the songs and bourn them 4 more tymes. Or I can burn the songs to cd then reimport the cd and do whatever I want. You lose a little sound quality, but then again you loose quality digital vs analogue anyway.
It would seem to me that the smart thing to do here would be to increase the cost of the OS on non-Apple hardware. Remember, not everyone buying a PC is a lost Mac sale, even if they run OS X on it.
And what would the price point be to eliminate lost sales of hardware? $500? $1000? If OS X is licensed at a high price what OEM would license it? With a starting price of $2500 for a Mac Pro if a license were sold for $250 10 clones would need to be sold to make up for the lost sale of 1 Mac Pro, actually it would be more like 8 or 9 because of the saving in the cost of the hardware. And then, who's going to pay for and test the clones so they "just work"? Because when clones start crashing Apple will start to look bad, "Macs aren't any more stable than Windows PCs". I wish it were financially feasible for Apple to license OS X, but I don't see a way for it to work.
I bet the single biggest reason why more people don't use Linux is because there aren't many PCs that come with Linux preinstalled. And most people don't install an OS, they just buy a computer from the store, plug everything in and power up. They want it working right out of the box.
Every time I hear this, I wonder if there's any money to be made in the pre-installed Linux market. Dell seems to think so, and they haven't even bothered to do it right.
More and more OEMs are preinstalling Linux on PCs now, I bought one about a year ago. One thing that prevented this before was Microsoft's licensing of Windows, in order to get the OEM pricing for Windows OEMS had to pay a license for every PC sold whether Windows was installed or not. It may still be the case but I don't think so now, so some OEMs are willing to try Linux in their lineups.
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New environmental implementations on coal plants make these units very environmentally friendly.
Oh, yea, right. The Mountaintop removal for coal is so environmentally responsible. NOT!!!
If we want to reduce our foreign dependence on fossil fuels - we have an answer in coal.
A better answer is energy efficiency. With coal you're just substituting one problem with another.
We enjoy relatively low cost energy in the united states
Yea, because energy users never actually see how much the energy they use costs.
FalconSorry, but you are proving my point. The US did not take action against Iranian citizens, it interfered with internal politics
If interfering with internal politics isn't interfering with civilians what is? Fact is is the US encouraged the overthrow of a democratically elected government. And that wasn't the only tyme either. The US did the same in Iraq, Viet Nam, and Chile. It also supported the invasion of a sovereign nation by another which led to the death of 200,000 of the nation's citizens, one third of the population. But then again the US was built on the invasion of one region after another, meanwhile exterminating the inhabitants. Throughout it's history the USA has been the aggressor.
FalconFrom what you've posted so far you don't like socialism yet you support a socialist program to build and operate nuclear power plants. Oh I see you say later to privatize it, and how's that going to work, like how Russia's Yukov was privatized instantly creating a billionare? Reminds me of the Russian oil tycoon in Val Kilmer's "The Saint".
There's not going to be a single replacement for gasoline.
Oh, I agree. However instead of spending all that money on nuclear power instead develop energy different sources for different areas. Take the money and install solar where it's sunny, wind farms where it's windy, tidal wave machines on the coast and so on. That's after all of the steps are taken to increase efficiency.
Falconwhy the hell should we care about the rest of the world. I don't see too many foreign soldiers helping us in Iraq
The sociopath Bush started based on a lie, now he owns it.
Falcon
Oh and no, I'm not your type of "liberal", I am a Classical Liberal best known today as a Libertarian.
62MW of Solar power. That's laughable, when your average gas turbine peaker cranks out a few hundred MW, and a big coal or nuclear station can crank out a 1000. Look at the energy portfolio of the USA, and its obvious, you need to have nuclear power if you want to get rid of coal.
It isn't obvious, what is obvious is that if energy efficiency measures were taken electrical demand could be cut down to size. The biggest lightbulb I use is a 15 watt CFL and it puts out what a 75 watt incandescent bulb puts out. Other bulbs I have are 12 watt which puts out 60 watt equivalent. Half of the energy used in the US is consumed in buildings, so using efficient lights and fixtures as well as increasing the R value of insulation used can significantly reduce electrical demand. A lot of people design and build homes Off the Grid and are quite capable of using solar or other alternative energy sources to provide all the energy they need. Just because you don't know or won't acknowledge it doesn't mean it's not possible to reduce energy needs.
I would further dispute the idea that there is a "cost" of global warming that should be recovered by the government by raising taxes on carbon.
If the users, and creators of the problem, aren't the ones who pays then who does? The Inuit who falls through the thin ice in the Artic while hunting? Or the Southeast Asian who finds his land and home submerged because of rising sea levels?
the salespeople pushing this are a bunch of fricking crooks.
The real crooks are the ones who create the problem but leave someone else to pay for it.
It's just a no brainer. Better Dead than Red, means something to this day!
Yea, it means you can steal and murder and not have to pay for it!
FalconArguing that the US started "the war" with Iran is pretty far fetched. While the Iranian people have a legitimate grievance regarding US interference with Iran's internal politics, the US did not take action against them.
The US, and Britain, supported the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. The CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. encouraged General Fazlollah Zahedi, to overthrow Mosaddeq. Yes, the US did start the war.
FalconI watched a documentary or special of some sort on the subject of solar power, and I was surprised to learn that, according to the program, the first (and longest running) solar power plant in the U.S. was built by the Carter administration.
Yeap, Carter was a big supporter of solar power. If either he had won in 1980 or if Reagan had kept up with it there's a good chance we'd be getting a lot of energy from solar now. But Reagan favored fossil fuel. At the tyme I was reading all I could get on solar as well as wind power and partially because he supported them the first tyme I was able to vote I voted for Carter in 2000.
Don't think I'm a Democrat though. In 1984 I voted against Reagan and in 1988 I voted for Ron Paul. Since then I've vote for Democrat, Independent, Reform, and Republican candidates. I don't vote partyline, I'm registered as "No Party Preference".
FalconYou are holding up a single method of mining as representitive of the entire industry.
In the Appalachian mountains much of the coal mining is done by Mountaintop Removal. Here's Google's case study on Appalachian Mountaintop Removal. Mountaintop removal has been used in the Appalachians for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion. "In just two decades, hundreds of mountaintops, more than a thousand miles of stream, and hundreds of square miles of forests have been obliterated by the practice. Opponents say the pollution is also dangerous to people who live in the region." So it's not simply one wiki article as you make it out to be.
Falconusing solar as a "peaking" generator, and then using something like nuclear as the base load would likely work okay without being unbearably expensive.
Using solar is one thing but in a freemarket without subsidies nuclear wouldn't survive. If a builder and operator of a nuclear plant had to buy and pay for their own insurance as well as pay for storage and environmental cleanup the cost would be too prohibitive.
FalconSolar is practical once we tax all of its competitors and mandate its use. No thanks.
Solar is practical now, either stop subsidizing all other energy sources or give the same subsidies to solar and I bet it will be cost competitive. Nuclear however would never survive without subsidies.
FalconBullshit. the status quo is just fine. look around you, the world is fine, it's not falling apart like scare mongers claim.
Yea, and I bet you don't live in Nunavut and have gone hungry and fatherless because after your father broke through thin ice and died of hypothermia, which the Inuit have found out is of grave concern. Nor I bet do you live in Malaysia where you have to worry about seeing your home submerged.
FalconYou pay either way, the cost shows up in your tax bill or your electric bill.
Only if you rely on the power company instead of generating your own energy. More and more people are going Off the Grid. At least if producers have to pay for cleaning up then only their users will pay and not those who have their own systems.
FalconWe also need to be building less hydro plants that rely on blocking rivers to generate power
I don't recall exactly when or what the title was but early this year or last year /. had an article about a new type of plant to generate power from rivers. Instead of building a dam and channeling water through turbines, the new idea was to have a boom over the water and lower turbines shaped like egg beaters or blenders. The water running by would spin them thus generating electricity.
Even FRANCE primarily uses nuclear power, so why shouldn't we?
"Nuclear Wasteland"
Falconenough
So, it's fine with you to place nuclear waste somewhere that can be struck with an earthquake thus spreading radiation for hundreds of miles?
The long-term (tens of thousands of years) issue is only true if the plutonium is buried with the waste, instead of burned in new fuel rods, the way any sane fuel cycle will do.
So you don't care if some of the waste has a half-life of hundreds of millions of years either? Neither do you care if it's taxpayers that have to pay for it, I guess.
FalconThe only reason Yucca mountain isn't accepting nuclear waste now is because of this absurd notion that we have to have the waste be safe for all time. You don't need to worry about 10,000 or 100,000 years down the road, as the enviros would have us believe. It's just absurd.
I call BS! Whatever storage area that's picked, it has to be able to last as long what is stored there will last, and some of the waste coming out has a half-life of 100s of millions of years. And this disregards the fact that Yucca Mountain is a seismically active area. Not only was there an earthquake nearby several years ago, but a government building was damaged there in the 1970s. When a place to store waste was first proposed several places were looked at, however because other states had strong congressional representation they were removed from the list. Being last on the list and because it didn't have strong representation Nevada was stuck with Yucca being picked.
Dump the waste into the ocean, actually.
France has already done that. It's nice to know neither they nor you care about future generations.
FalconBut solving the nuclear waste issue (or, more accurately, permitting one of the solutions to the nuclear waste problem to be implemented) is not optional. We have to do it to dispose of the waste we've already got. So one of the solutions to disposing of this waste will ultimately be implemented, even if it's just shipping it all to France, where they are disposing of the waste quite handily, thank you very much.
Actually France isn't doing so well with nuclear waste:
"Nuclear Wasteland"
Falcon"The mining techniques we use are reprehensible, and the long term environmental damage incalculable "
You don't know what your talking about.
Neither do you. Mountaintop removal mining is very destructive.
FalconOur consumption of coal has far more consequences than most people have considered:
The mining techniques we use are reprehensible, and the long term environmental damage incalculable
Especially Mountaintop removal mining.
The subsidies and tax breaks for the coal industries are substantial
As are the subsidies for nuclear power.
FalconThe real competition is other forms of clean power generation, like nuclear.
Nuclear power isn't clean! Just as with coal, the material used in nuclear power plants have to be mined. The building of nuclear power plants are energy intensive. This is because they use a lot of concrete, concrete is made from cement, and "Cement production is one of the most energy intensive of all industrial manufacturing processes." Then you have to have someplace for long term storage of the nuclear waste.
why build a concentrated solar plant when you can just build a nuke plant?
Why because you don't have to deal, or leave to your children and grandchildren, with the radioactive waste, as well as the reasons above.
FalconThere is no right to privacy.
BS! As early as the early 1800s the USSC ruled there is he right to privacy, specifically anonymity. Among other's the right to privacy is grounded in the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech clause. In one case, the 1960 case of TALLEY v. CALIFORNIA, 362 U.S., the US Supreme Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. An MIT page, describes this ruling and another, McIntyre v. Ohio Election Commission, wherein the USSC upheld anonymous speech. In the Talley v California case the court said:
"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all.... Even the Federalist Papers, written in favor of the adoption of our Constitution, were published under fictitious names. It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes."
FalconAnd if it costs $500m to round trip just for travel, how many people are likely to be able to afford a trip?
I did say "Inexpensive and routine travel is a holdup" in the post of mne you replied too. However, that's where commercial interests fit right in. Private businesses doing research may be able to reduce the price of travel. Factoring in inflation I bet SpaceshipX was able to do what they did for less than what NASA would of spent doing the same thing. And as more is learned the price will come down more. Virgin Galactic is selling tickets for $100,000 and even though they don't yet have a ship they've collected $15,000,000 in down payments.
Mining companies would love to be able to mine the moon as well.
They would? Why? What is up there that is in such short supply down here that it's worth several million per kilogram to mine it and get it back? If you found abundant metals and hydrogen, it might be interesting for getting raw materials for building satellites, I suppose.
You answered it partially yourself. Ores can be processed and forged on the moon where manufacturing then occurs. I bet because of the moon's lower gravity the moon can be mined then either materials or finished produces can be transported to orbit around the earth cheaper than doing on earth then lifting it to space.
Some manufacturers would love the low gravity
And they'd love the microgravity of low Earth orbit, at a tenth or hundredth of the cost even more
See above.
Falconwhen an officer of the law comes knocking with a an official-looking document, legal or not, how can any individual (and you know that corporations are viewed in the eyes of the law as individuals, right?)
Big corporations have their own law departments. However that totally overlooks the facts the Constitution of the USA requires a judge's ok unless law enforcement has a reasonable suspicion. However with any blanket request whoever should be able to figure out there is no reasonable suspicion.
if the companies acted in good faith, point the lawyers at the source.
Easy, call the legal department. When one gets there, he or she should be able to tell if it's a legal request. If it needs a judge's sig they can check to see if a judge actually signed a warrant.
FalconIf my ISP recieves a legitimate order to hand over information (warrant) or spy on me (wiretap) they'd do it and what would be a crime if they did it for anyone else is accepted as legal because the investigative power of the government trumphs normal privacy law.
Yes, the government is special, it is governed in what it can do by the Constitution of the USA! Seeing as how there was no judicial review what the Bush admin did was unconstitutional. They should all be taken out and treated like the enemies of the USA they are. What they did was no better than what the Gestapo did.
FalconTo put the $30m prize in perspective, launching the shuttle costs around $450m, and launching a Saturn V cost around $430m in 1967. The prize is likely to be less than 10% of the launch cost. Unlike the suborbital X-Prize, there is no real prospect of commercial exploitation either.
I bet Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic would love to be able to open Galactic Moon Hotel, and Spa. Mining companies would love to be able to mine the moon as well. Some manufacturers would love the low gravity. Inexpensive and routine travel is a holdup, as would be building facilities on the moon as they'd need to be built underground so cosmic rays could be blocked at least partially.
FalconiTunes doesn't lockin music. With iTunes I can create a play list and burn it to cd. The only limitation is that I can only burn a specific play list 4 tymes. But I can rearrange the songs and bourn them 4 more tymes. Or I can burn the songs to cd then reimport the cd and do whatever I want. You lose a little sound quality, but then again you loose quality digital vs analogue anyway.
It would seem to me that the smart thing to do here would be to increase the cost of the OS on non-Apple hardware. Remember, not everyone buying a PC is a lost Mac sale, even if they run OS X on it.
And what would the price point be to eliminate lost sales of hardware? $500? $1000? If OS X is licensed at a high price what OEM would license it? With a starting price of $2500 for a Mac Pro if a license were sold for $250 10 clones would need to be sold to make up for the lost sale of 1 Mac Pro, actually it would be more like 8 or 9 because of the saving in the cost of the hardware. And then, who's going to pay for and test the clones so they "just work"? Because when clones start crashing Apple will start to look bad, "Macs aren't any more stable than Windows PCs". I wish it were financially feasible for Apple to license OS X, but I don't see a way for it to work.
I bet the single biggest reason why more people don't use Linux is because there aren't many PCs that come with Linux preinstalled. And most people don't install an OS, they just buy a computer from the store, plug everything in and power up. They want it working right out of the box.
Every time I hear this, I wonder if there's any money to be made in the pre-installed Linux market. Dell seems to think so, and they haven't even bothered to do it right.
More and more OEMs are preinstalling Linux on PCs now, I bought one about a year ago. One thing that prevented this before was Microsoft's licensing of Windows, in order to get the OEM pricing for Windows OEMS had to pay a license for every PC sold whether Windows was installed or not. It may still be the case but I don't think so now, so some OEMs are willing to try Linux in their lineups.
Falcon