If the leaks are right, then it looks like the Thunderbolt (shudder) port is also a mini-DisplayPort (it certainly looks identical, and the leaked box photo says it is MDP and Thunderbolt) - i.e. you just plug your MDP cable in as usual.
That suggests to me that Apple's initial plan for Thunderbolt is more as a "docking" system than a USB/Firewire replacement. After all, there are currently zero Thunderbolt/LightPeak* peripherals to choose from (and I wouldn't hold my breath for either with USB3 just taking off) - but a future Apple Cinema Display (or an iMac) that used the link to provide sound, USB, Ethernet, storage... without the overhead of going over USB would be rather cool.
Also, given that it looks like Apple are going to get behind Lightpeak and push, much like they did with USB, this could be a strategic move to ensure that all would-be third party peripherals sport a through connection (unlike some cheapskate Firewire devices),
(* Oh god, "Thunderbolt and Lightpeak" - *plink* the penny drops... Groan!)
I have a box full of various adapters that Apple forces me to buy every time they change display interconnect to the 'next best thing'.
Yeah, its a pain, and I do miss the PowerBook G4 and 1st Gen MacBook Pro with the full-size DVI port - but on the other hand, people do like their laptops small and their batteries big, but the industry keeps coming out with massive connectors. Look at a teardown of a 13" MacBook Pro and you'll see how the size of the circuit board is determined by the row of connectors down one side, something that's only going to get more ridiculous as more and more of the circuitry is moved to the processor die and the chip count reduces.
...and what interface do you want? If you plug into data projectors you'll need VGA. Some monitors need DVI, newer ones need HDMI. Its not Apple's fault that the VGA cable refused to die and was never completely replaced by DVI. Should Apple build big clunky laptops with 3 big clunky video ports? And apple are far from the worst offenders when it comes to gouging people for video cables: I'm still walking funny from the time I needed a DVI-to-HDMI cable in a hurry and was forced to buy one on the high street (it cost a lot more than an Apple DVI adaptor).
Monitors come with mini displayport? I've not seen many that come with full-sized displayport and even the Apple ones don't use mini displayport,
Displayport is showing up on lots of monitors (mainly higher end ones) including models from Dell and HP. This dealer lists 21 models. I have a HP with DisplayPort, and a (passive) MiniDP-to-full DP cable cost me £4.
Case in point- I also know quite a few video editors loyal to Final Cut that are now looking to move to Adobe Premiere
Its pretty clear that Apple are gradually shifting from the Pro Video/Graphics market and positioning Mac as a "pro-sumer" brand. What's not so clear is whether that is causing graphics pros to abandon the platform, or if the change was motivated by the fact that pros were already abandoning the platform.
Apple got established in the pro graphics/DTP/video market partly because, back in the day, their hardware/software platform ran rings around MS-DOS/Intel systems. Today they don't have such a clear-cut advantage - the hardware is basically the same and, without getting into OS advocacy, Windows is no longer just a pretty shell sitting on top of DOS. Most of the killer pro applications are available on PC, or even PC only, or with Mac versions lagging behind PC releases and sometimes just plain shoddy. Its really going to be a war of attrition from now on, so Apple is right to look for an exit strategy.
...and that exit strategy is based on their success with "boutique" ultra-thin laptop and small form-factor computers for the home and "prosumer" market plus iPod/Pad/Phone for consumers.
One thing that would play well there is a "one connector to rule them all" solution: look at the design of the current MacBook Pros and see how the size and position of the circuit board is constrained by the need to have 8 connectors. As more and more functionality becomes available on just a CPU, the need for optical drives decreases and hard drives are replaced by more compact SSDs, only having to worry about routing one connector to the outside world (maybe even embedded in the power connector/a) would make for even more slim and sexy MacBooks.
This would give us only 2 hours overlap and compound the cross-atlantic communication problem.
A few less 'phone conferences might actually increase productivity...
Plus, when getting stuff ready for a US-based deadlines, those extra few hours for us UKians can be a lifesaver (I want to develop some business contacts with Hawaii!)
Meanwhile, the current time zone is just plain wrong for most of the UK (maybe Scotland need their own time zone). Who needs daylight at 4am in the morning when you could have it at 11pm at night?
If all of those time issues are in correct synchronization,
...which is a complete red herring without the precise time of the accident. Neither TFA or TFA-in-the-TFA give this any more precisely than "about 8:00", nor do they state that the victim was making the call at the time of the accident. Even if you prove definitively that at 7:54:00.00 the defendent was hitting "submit" on facebook and the victim was talking to 911, the defendant's version of events still works - she just had to pull out and drive 2 miles between 7:54 precisely and "about 8:00" (which could be 8:05 as easily as 7:55...)
I think that even for a "preponderance of evidence" you should need some evidence that actually contradicts the defense...
He was calling 911 about the first accident when she struck him.
Classic bit of false inference.
Assuming the phone times were accurate and in sync (big assumption), someone was calling 911 on the victim's phone at the same time as she hit "submit" on her Facebook upgrade. That this was the victim reporting the first accident is a reasonable surmise, but there's no evidence of this. Nor is it stated anywhere that the victim was on the phone at the time of the second accident.
The critical bit of missing information is the precise time of the second accident. If you read TFA-within-TFA this is given as "about 8:00".
So even if the timings are in sync and "about 8:00" was precise, the defendant could reasonably have finished Facebooking 6 minutes before the fatal accident. That sounds like enough time to be parked up, put down your phone, pull out and drive 2 miles. Even easier if "about 8:00" means "8:05" or "8:10".
Its really not worth delving into the details of when the calls/postings were made unless the time of the accident can be pinpointed with comparable accuracy (unless you plan on baffling a jury with bullshit).
Not sure if its down to the rating: I think the real problem is that Watchmen was a movie with an arthouse-sized target audience and a popcorn blockbuster- sized budget. If it had been made on Mini-DV for $50k then it would probably have been seen as a huge success. Serenity probably fell into a similar trap - and it wasn't R-rated. Maybe if we want intelligent sci-fi we're going to have to use our imaginations and live without high-end special effects ("Gattaca", "The Man From Earth", "Moon" anybody...?)
Of course, the other problem is that although Watchemen (the comic) was revolutionary in its time, it took too long to get to the screen: in the meantime we've had big-screen deconstruction of the vigilante superhero myth up the wazoo from other movies (without big blue cocks and explicit rape scenes). Heck, The Incredibles was almost a family-friendly version of Watchmen!
That would be very hard to change, as so many applications would need to be altered.
...but surely it is not beyond the whit of man to emulate drive letters (ln -s/D:/home anybody?) for legacy apps while dragging the rest of the file system into the 1980s?
Instead, the more modern "logical" file system in Windows (as used by the desktop) still feels like an emulation sitting on top of drive letters, and last time I looked required you to use a proprietary GUI.
Still - it could be worse - with all the ex-DEC people involved in Windows NT, they could have gone for the VAX filing system. Actually, that seems to have been the basic philosophy behind WinFS: "Hey, who needs a disc filing system when you can have a DBMS instead" (ans: people who want to use a different DMBS?)
How about getting the directory separator wrong? This has indirectly led to a generation of TV and radio presenters having to say "forward slash" when reading out URLs...
Tell me where you can get a dual core 32gb 3g+wifi ipad with a higher resolution screen, hdmi out, two cameras, and a usb port for less than $800 and I will say this is a bad deal.
Tell me where you can get a Motorola XOOM today, and you might have a point. Unfortunately, the Moto website just says "coming soon". Judging by the rumors, the iPad2 will at least be announced (with a reliable shipping date) before then, and sounds like it will tick all your boxes except the hdmi out.
Anyway, the real point is that the "iPad killers" don't look like they're going to compete with the iPad on price alone - it will come down to Android's better specs vs. the added polish and consistency of iOS.
Browse the web, check email, read ebooks, watch video, play casual games while sitting in a comfy chair.
Email/web/games/ebooks on the move - much better than a phone-sized device, still more portable than a netbook.
Take notes in meetings & have all the papers you need cached in DropBox - far less obtrusive than having a laptop on the desk in front of you. You can even run presentations from it.
Sensible combination is a tablet plus a full-fat laptop if/when you need it and maybe a phone that just, you know, makes phone calls. Tablets are definitely second/third systems. The success of the iPad, c.f. earlier tablet PCs and netbooks is partly because it doesn't even pretend to be a "primary computer" replacement.
If someone is compelling you to use a tablet for a job that demands a full-fat PC then blame them, not the technology.
A static IP is already, effectively, a premium option for ISP customers, and the world hasn't ended.
99% of users don't need a public IP, many ISP customers are already perfectly happy with a dynamic IP, business/university users are already firewalled to hell (making a public IP largely useless) many "user oriented" applications already use proxy-based solutions to cope with this (skype, dropbox, games etc.) - and if you're on ADSL you're not going to want to do any serious serving.
As long as you can shop around for a static IPv4 and/or v6 ISP if you need it I dont see a problem.
90% of users wouldnt notice if they were on NAT. It would be fine for home users who only want web and email, most smartphone users and people who are already stuck behind corporate/university firewalls and proxies.
I work in a university and every desktop PC has a full IP address, but the firewall blocks virtually everything (even http has to go through a local proxy) which pretty much negates the advantage of having an IP - I have to tunnel out to do anything interesting. That is wasteful.
End-user software that might be affected (skype, dropbox, flash video) often already supports tunneling/proxying via HTTP(S) to get around firewalls....and if you cant live with NAT then you have a great incentive to sign up to an IPv6 tunnel service, or seek out an ISP that offers IPv6.
...by making OS X 10.8 IP6 only and banish the evil of IP4, just as the holy Jobs freed us from the tyranny of RS232 ports, floppy drives, keyboards and Philips screwdrivers:-)
But seriously, it will take a Google or Apple to pull a stunt and offer some unique service only available via IP6 to move people.
The Matrix, on the other hand, was a movie where a sequel was completely impossible. Neo had already won. The war was over but for the fussy details.
I don't think that's the problem. The problem was that a major factor in The Matrix's success was the look and atmosphere of the film. There hadn't been anything like it at all in mainstream western cinema - but by the time the sequels hit the streets, "bullet time" and extreme martial arts had become cliches.
Its the same reason that there should never be a sequel to Blade Runner - the plot of which was nothing to write home about, but it completely re-defined the look of on-screen SF. (I'd pay to see a "straight" re-make of the novel, but I doubt it would be commercially viable).
Larry Niven wrote a series of novels with consistent backstory, physics, and an evolution over time -- the Known Space series.
True, but he also wrote several sequels to Ringworld... Now, personally, I liked The Ringworld Engineers but The Ringworld Throne commits the heinous crime of undermining a crucial element of the plot of Engineers (as well as being a rather dull story in which not very much happens).
The second movie also worked as a suspense/thriller, even though we knew what the aliens' abilities were.
Yes - the strength of Aliens was that it took the idea in a completely different direction. The later sequels were more like do-overs of the same idea, although Resurrection did have the added interest of a mismatched crew of space mercenaries (you'd think there was a TV show and maybe a movie in that idea alone - they could have called it "glowworm" or "Tranquility" or something...)
Damn. I should keep better records. I'm pretty sure that I was selling my own application called "Windows" for the Commodore Pet somewhere around 1981. It sold many copies.
Of course, by "selling" I mean knocking out hand-copied tapes for pocket money at the local computer store, "Application" means a farty little 6502 code utility to clear or scroll selected areas on the screen and "many" refers to the widely used "one, two, many, lots" number system.
I should totally go through the attic to see if I have a lawsuit:-)
But seriously folks, the term "window" for an independently clearable/scrollable area of screen probably dates back to the era of the VT100 terminal, or before. I certainly didn't invent it!
With the meat being so far outside what's usually considered food, that could kill it.
Yet much of the mass-produced food that we eat contains ingredients outside what's usually considered food (e.g. Xanthan gum, Cochineal off the top of my head), not to mention the "mehcanically recovered" hooves and noses stuff*. Provided they sift out the legs and wing cases and invent something suitably euphemistic for the ingredients list ("non-animal protein") nobody is going to notice a bit of cockroach meat mixed in with all the other shit in their Frankfurter.
(*although people who see this as a disguisting modern practice seem to forget that even in western cultures, back in olden days, people would strip every last ounce of protein out of a pig or cow carcass and boil up the rest for stock).
Also: a significant chunk of the price of an application is the cost of packaging (media production, artwork, packaging and manual printing, package assembly,...), order processing, shipping & handling, middle-man profit margins, and the like
True. However, I'd have thought most Mac developers were shifting to online sales anyway. Most software I've bought in the last few years has been via downloads: its Apple themselves who have been stick-in-the-muds for not offering iWork/iLife and OS upgrades online.
The "innovation" here is the introduction of a one-stop App store rather than online sofware sales per. se.
Plus, the 3rd HHGTTG book Life, the Universe and Everything started life as Dr Who and the Krikkitmen, the time-travelling Cambridge don in Dirk Gently was from a Who story which was scrapped due to a strike and the exploding spaceship at the end of Dirk Gently was a lift from City of Death.
Oh, and just to really confuse things, Doctor #10 implied that he had met Arthur Dent, somehow.
Slashdot Mirror
If the leaks are right, then it looks like the Thunderbolt (shudder) port is also a mini-DisplayPort (it certainly looks identical, and the leaked box photo says it is MDP and Thunderbolt) - i.e. you just plug your MDP cable in as usual.
That suggests to me that Apple's initial plan for Thunderbolt is more as a "docking" system than a USB/Firewire replacement. After all, there are currently zero Thunderbolt/LightPeak* peripherals to choose from (and I wouldn't hold my breath for either with USB3 just taking off) - but a future Apple Cinema Display (or an iMac) that used the link to provide sound, USB, Ethernet, storage... without the overhead of going over USB would be rather cool.
Also, given that it looks like Apple are going to get behind Lightpeak and push, much like they did with USB, this could be a strategic move to ensure that all would-be third party peripherals sport a through connection (unlike some cheapskate Firewire devices),
(* Oh god, "Thunderbolt and Lightpeak" - *plink* the penny drops... Groan!)
I have a box full of various adapters that Apple forces me to buy every time they change display interconnect to the 'next best thing'.
Yeah, its a pain, and I do miss the PowerBook G4 and 1st Gen MacBook Pro with the full-size DVI port - but on the other hand, people do like their laptops small and their batteries big, but the industry keeps coming out with massive connectors. Look at a teardown of a 13" MacBook Pro and you'll see how the size of the circuit board is determined by the row of connectors down one side, something that's only going to get more ridiculous as more and more of the circuitry is moved to the processor die and the chip count reduces.
...and what interface do you want? If you plug into data projectors you'll need VGA. Some monitors need DVI, newer ones need HDMI. Its not Apple's fault that the VGA cable refused to die and was never completely replaced by DVI. Should Apple build big clunky laptops with 3 big clunky video ports? And apple are far from the worst offenders when it comes to gouging people for video cables: I'm still walking funny from the time I needed a DVI-to-HDMI cable in a hurry and was forced to buy one on the high street (it cost a lot more than an Apple DVI adaptor).
Monitors come with mini displayport? I've not seen many that come with full-sized displayport and even the Apple ones don't use mini displayport,
Displayport is showing up on lots of monitors (mainly higher end ones) including models from Dell and HP. This dealer lists 21 models. I have a HP with DisplayPort, and a (passive) MiniDP-to-full DP cable cost me £4.
Case in point- I also know quite a few video editors loyal to Final Cut that are now looking to move to Adobe Premiere
Its pretty clear that Apple are gradually shifting from the Pro Video/Graphics market and positioning Mac as a "pro-sumer" brand. What's not so clear is whether that is causing graphics pros to abandon the platform, or if the change was motivated by the fact that pros were already abandoning the platform.
Apple got established in the pro graphics/DTP/video market partly because, back in the day, their hardware/software platform ran rings around MS-DOS/Intel systems. Today they don't have such a clear-cut advantage - the hardware is basically the same and, without getting into OS advocacy, Windows is no longer just a pretty shell sitting on top of DOS. Most of the killer pro applications are available on PC, or even PC only, or with Mac versions lagging behind PC releases and sometimes just plain shoddy. Its really going to be a war of attrition from now on, so Apple is right to look for an exit strategy.
...and that exit strategy is based on their success with "boutique" ultra-thin laptop and small form-factor computers for the home and "prosumer" market plus iPod/Pad/Phone for consumers.
One thing that would play well there is a "one connector to rule them all" solution: look at the design of the current MacBook Pros and see how the size and position of the circuit board is constrained by the need to have 8 connectors. As more and more functionality becomes available on just a CPU, the need for optical drives decreases and hard drives are replaced by more compact SSDs, only having to worry about routing one connector to the outside world (maybe even embedded in the power connector/a) would make for even more slim and sexy MacBooks.
This would give us only 2 hours overlap and compound the cross-atlantic communication problem.
A few less 'phone conferences might actually increase productivity...
Plus, when getting stuff ready for a US-based deadlines, those extra few hours for us UKians can be a lifesaver (I want to develop some business contacts with Hawaii!)
Meanwhile, the current time zone is just plain wrong for most of the UK (maybe Scotland need their own time zone). Who needs daylight at 4am in the morning when you could have it at 11pm at night?
If all of those time issues are in correct synchronization,
...which is a complete red herring without the precise time of the accident. Neither TFA or TFA-in-the-TFA give this any more precisely than "about 8:00", nor do they state that the victim was making the call at the time of the accident. Even if you prove definitively that at 7:54:00.00 the defendent was hitting "submit" on facebook and the victim was talking to 911, the defendant's version of events still works - she just had to pull out and drive 2 miles between 7:54 precisely and "about 8:00" (which could be 8:05 as easily as 7:55...)
I think that even for a "preponderance of evidence" you should need some evidence that actually contradicts the defense...
He was calling 911 about the first accident when she struck him.
Classic bit of false inference.
Assuming the phone times were accurate and in sync (big assumption), someone was calling 911 on the victim's phone at the same time as she hit "submit" on her Facebook upgrade. That this was the victim reporting the first accident is a reasonable surmise, but there's no evidence of this. Nor is it stated anywhere that the victim was on the phone at the time of the second accident.
The critical bit of missing information is the precise time of the second accident. If you read TFA-within-TFA this is given as "about 8:00".
So even if the timings are in sync and "about 8:00" was precise, the defendant could reasonably have finished Facebooking 6 minutes before the fatal accident. That sounds like enough time to be parked up, put down your phone, pull out and drive 2 miles. Even easier if "about 8:00" means "8:05" or "8:10".
Its really not worth delving into the details of when the calls/postings were made unless the time of the accident can be pinpointed with comparable accuracy (unless you plan on baffling a jury with bullshit).
Not sure if its down to the rating: I think the real problem is that Watchmen was a movie with an arthouse-sized target audience and a popcorn blockbuster- sized budget. If it had been made on Mini-DV for $50k then it would probably have been seen as a huge success. Serenity probably fell into a similar trap - and it wasn't R-rated. Maybe if we want intelligent sci-fi we're going to have to use our imaginations and live without high-end special effects ("Gattaca", "The Man From Earth", "Moon" anybody...?)
Of course, the other problem is that although Watchemen (the comic) was revolutionary in its time, it took too long to get to the screen: in the meantime we've had big-screen deconstruction of the vigilante superhero myth up the wazoo from other movies (without big blue cocks and explicit rape scenes). Heck, The Incredibles was almost a family-friendly version of Watchmen!
s/GUI/API in line 3
So many TLAs, so few brain cells...
That would be very hard to change, as so many applications would need to be altered.
...but surely it is not beyond the whit of man to emulate drive letters (ln -s /D: /home anybody?) for legacy apps while dragging the rest of the file system into the 1980s?
Instead, the more modern "logical" file system in Windows (as used by the desktop) still feels like an emulation sitting on top of drive letters, and last time I looked required you to use a proprietary GUI.
Still - it could be worse - with all the ex-DEC people involved in Windows NT, they could have gone for the VAX filing system. Actually, that seems to have been the basic philosophy behind WinFS: "Hey, who needs a disc filing system when you can have a DBMS instead" (ans: people who want to use a different DMBS?)
How about getting the directory separator wrong? This has indirectly led to a generation of TV and radio presenters having to say "forward slash" when reading out URLs...
Tell me where you can get a dual core 32gb 3g+wifi ipad with a higher resolution screen, hdmi out, two cameras, and a usb port for less than $800 and I will say this is a bad deal.
Tell me where you can get a Motorola XOOM today, and you might have a point. Unfortunately, the Moto website just says "coming soon". Judging by the rumors, the iPad2 will at least be announced (with a reliable shipping date) before then, and sounds like it will tick all your boxes except the hdmi out.
Anyway, the real point is that the "iPad killers" don't look like they're going to compete with the iPad on price alone - it will come down to Android's better specs vs. the added polish and consistency of iOS.
Seriously, what is the point of a tablet device?
Sensible combination is a tablet plus a full-fat laptop if/when you need it and maybe a phone that just, you know, makes phone calls. Tablets are definitely second/third systems. The success of the iPad, c.f. earlier tablet PCs and netbooks is partly because it doesn't even pretend to be a "primary computer" replacement.
If someone is compelling you to use a tablet for a job that demands a full-fat PC then blame them, not the technology.
A static IP is already, effectively, a premium option for ISP customers, and the world hasn't ended. 99% of users don't need a public IP, many ISP customers are already perfectly happy with a dynamic IP, business/university users are already firewalled to hell (making a public IP largely useless) many "user oriented" applications already use proxy-based solutions to cope with this (skype, dropbox, games etc.) - and if you're on ADSL you're not going to want to do any serious serving. As long as you can shop around for a static IPv4 and/or v6 ISP if you need it I dont see a problem.
90% of users wouldnt notice if they were on NAT. It would be fine for home users who only want web and email, most smartphone users and people who are already stuck behind corporate/university firewalls and proxies. I work in a university and every desktop PC has a full IP address, but the firewall blocks virtually everything (even http has to go through a local proxy) which pretty much negates the advantage of having an IP - I have to tunnel out to do anything interesting. That is wasteful. End-user software that might be affected (skype, dropbox, flash video) often already supports tunneling/proxying via HTTP(S) to get around firewalls. ...and if you cant live with NAT then you have a great incentive to sign up to an IPv6 tunnel service, or seek out an ISP that offers IPv6.
...by making OS X 10.8 IP6 only and banish the evil of IP4, just as the holy Jobs freed us from the tyranny of RS232 ports, floppy drives, keyboards and Philips screwdrivers :-)
But seriously, it will take a Google or Apple to pull a stunt and offer some unique service only available via IP6 to move people.
And perhaps he will have some more time to concentrate on how to bring one of the best sci-fi novels (Forever War) to the big screen.
Speaking of disappointing sequels... :-)
How many people here rented "Gorillas in the Mist" much in the last twenty years?
James Cameron? (Am I the only one who thought Weaver's chain-smoking in Avatar was a reference to "Gorillas in the Smoke"?)
Why do people get so miffed?
Because bad sequels get written and promoted at the expense of new ideas.
The Matrix, on the other hand, was a movie where a sequel was completely impossible. Neo had already won. The war was over but for the fussy details.
I don't think that's the problem. The problem was that a major factor in The Matrix's success was the look and atmosphere of the film. There hadn't been anything like it at all in mainstream western cinema - but by the time the sequels hit the streets, "bullet time" and extreme martial arts had become cliches.
Its the same reason that there should never be a sequel to Blade Runner - the plot of which was nothing to write home about, but it completely re-defined the look of on-screen SF. (I'd pay to see a "straight" re-make of the novel, but I doubt it would be commercially viable).
Larry Niven wrote a series of novels with consistent backstory, physics, and an evolution over time -- the Known Space series.
True, but he also wrote several sequels to Ringworld... Now, personally, I liked The Ringworld Engineers but The Ringworld Throne commits the heinous crime of undermining a crucial element of the plot of Engineers (as well as being a rather dull story in which not very much happens).
The second movie also worked as a suspense/thriller, even though we knew what the aliens' abilities were.
Yes - the strength of Aliens was that it took the idea in a completely different direction. The later sequels were more like do-overs of the same idea, although Resurrection did have the added interest of a mismatched crew of space mercenaries (you'd think there was a TV show and maybe a movie in that idea alone - they could have called it "glowworm" or "Tranquility" or something...)
Like "The Sock Shop" (tm)?
Damn. I should keep better records. I'm pretty sure that I was selling my own application called "Windows" for the Commodore Pet somewhere around 1981. It sold many copies.
Of course, by "selling" I mean knocking out hand-copied tapes for pocket money at the local computer store, "Application" means a farty little 6502 code utility to clear or scroll selected areas on the screen and "many" refers to the widely used "one, two, many, lots" number system.
I should totally go through the attic to see if I have a lawsuit :-)
But seriously folks, the term "window" for an independently clearable/scrollable area of screen probably dates back to the era of the VT100 terminal, or before. I certainly didn't invent it!
With the meat being so far outside what's usually considered food, that could kill it.
Yet much of the mass-produced food that we eat contains ingredients outside what's usually considered food (e.g. Xanthan gum, Cochineal off the top of my head), not to mention the "mehcanically recovered" hooves and noses stuff*. Provided they sift out the legs and wing cases and invent something suitably euphemistic for the ingredients list ("non-animal protein") nobody is going to notice a bit of cockroach meat mixed in with all the other shit in their Frankfurter.
(*although people who see this as a disguisting modern practice seem to forget that even in western cultures, back in olden days, people would strip every last ounce of protein out of a pig or cow carcass and boil up the rest for stock).
Also: a significant chunk of the price of an application is the cost of packaging (media production, artwork, packaging and manual printing, package assembly, ...), order processing, shipping & handling, middle-man profit margins, and the like
True. However, I'd have thought most Mac developers were shifting to online sales anyway. Most software I've bought in the last few years has been via downloads: its Apple themselves who have been stick-in-the-muds for not offering iWork/iLife and OS upgrades online.
The "innovation" here is the introduction of a one-stop App store rather than online sofware sales per. se.
Plus, the 3rd HHGTTG book Life, the Universe and Everything started life as Dr Who and the Krikkitmen, the time-travelling Cambridge don in Dirk Gently was from a Who story which was scrapped due to a strike and the exploding spaceship at the end of Dirk Gently was a lift from City of Death.
Oh, and just to really confuse things, Doctor #10 implied that he had met Arthur Dent, somehow.