MacOS supported mice with two or more more buttons long before Apple switched to Intel-based hardware. Just because Macs shipped with a one button mouse until a couple of years ago doesn't mean that the OS didn't let people use third-party mice with more than one button.
The Psystar is noisy because it's a low quality machine that's been assembled from cheap components that have been put in a cheap case with a cheap power supply.
"The first thing most people notice about the iMac is it's QUIET!"
Until it actually starts doing work that generates some heat that needs to be gotten rid of, and the secondary internal fans start revving up (at least with the iMac G5 series -- can't speak for the Intel versions because I haven't used one).
"People will pay a couple of hundred bucks for quiet, hardware and software support, updates, and the ability to just walk into a brick-and-mortar and pick one up off the shelf, etc."
There are also people who are willing to pay extra for machines that don't wrap a cheap tin box around a bunch of bottom-of-the-barrel components. The video indicates that the sub-set of them who want to run OS X and attendant Mac software will be unlikely to consider one of Psystar's offerings as a way of doing so.
"The anti-Pelagian trend in Europe accepts that often people do not do things that they want to do although apparently they consent."
I suggest you check the laws of some European countries, because they all differ in this regard depending on their individual cultures, so there is no such thing as a European position, or even a definable European trend.
"the law may intervene when a man beats up a woman even though she declines to press charges, on the basis that her consent was not voluntary and that her silence arises from fear rather than consent."
You seem to be assuming that UK law is typical of the rest of Europe, when this is demonstrably not true. In much of Southern and Central Europe for example, legislation against domestic violence didn't exist until quite recently, and there are many complaints from people who live there about governments not being really serious about dealing with it.
"The extreme position taken by many posters on this thread is that, in effect, sexual violence is permissible provided that you cannot find someone to testify against it, and that therefore it is permissible to sell pictures of what may be criminal acts for gain"
What posters are actually claiming is that prosecuting people for having pictures of the authorities say _might have been_ a criminal act violates the presumption of innocence and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, both of which are the foundation upon which the British criminal justice system is built.
"I cannot see that as being a rational position, and it is in fact quite illegal under English law for a criminal to profit in this way from a crime."
And I cannot see how you can claim that prosecuting people for having pictures of what hasn't been proven to be a crime is a rational position, or how it's rationally justifiable to prevent people from profiting from something when the authorities have no proof that any crime was involved in its production.
"In my original post I was clearly (I thought) referring to material which was photographic and therefore a recording of real world acts. But this seems to have been missed by the "libertarians"."
A photograph or movie that depicts something isn't proof that what's on the image actually happened in the way it appears to, so even if we ignore that fact that this law makes it illegal to own images of permitted acts, the fact that somebody has an image showing what seems to be an illegal activity doesn't mean (let alone prove) that anything illegal was involved in producing the image.
"While there is a market for violent pornography or child pornography, criminals will supply it."
Criminals will by definition supply anything people want that's illegal, because if it wasn't illegal, then supplying it wouldn't be a crime, so the suppliers wouldn't be criminals.
"In doing so I doubt they will consider the civil rights of those forced to take part."
What evidence is there to suggest that the majority of so-called violent porn involved anyone being forced to participate? Note also that your attempt to draw a parallel between violent pornography and child pornography is specious, because as has been mentioned elsewhere, this law will make possessing images of lawful sexual acts illegal, whereas child pornography is illegal because it's an image of an unlawful sexual act.
"That is why, to my mind, even though it may be of limited effectiveness, it is right to make possession of this material illegal."
But then your mind is already prone to making specious comparisons, so it's not really surprising that you use them to justify other things.
"Anything you can do to destroy or disrupt the market is attacking the revenue stream that makes the criminals do it in the first place."
Making things people want illegal has three historically demonstrable effects:
1) It drives legitimate suppliers who previously followed the law out of the market.
2) The new black market is one where people pay higher prices for lower quality products, thus making it far more profitable for those who don't give two hoots about the law to serve it (alcohol in the US during the prohibition was an excellent example of this, just as drugs are nowadays, or for that matter, child porn).
3) Those who want whatever has been declared illegal are also driven underground, and therefore become a part of it.
"If you cannot persuade people that they should not pay other people to abuse, rape and beat strangers for their entertainment - then more stringent sanctions are needed."
If they're concerned with protecting people who are abused, then why do they need to make it illegal for people to possess images of themselves involved in _lawful acts_ with their own partners? Once again, you're basing an argument on no evidence other than specious tripe you use to justify your own disapproval of what other people might enjoy doing, which makes you precisely the sort of self-righteous prude that the government's counting on to push crappy laws like this through.
"Poor farmers grow drugs in Colombia and Afghanistan because they pay better and travel better than vegetables."
Again, a load of specious tripe which is probably based on something you've read (probably in the Daily Mail) or seen on TV. How do _you actually know_ that the poor farmers grow those crops because they earn more from them rather than growing them because groups of men with guns tell them to? The growers are after all still poor, while the men with the guns are making piles of money, so there isn't any actual evidence to indicate that the farmers aren't being paid less than they would get from growing and selling apples or pomegranates.
"Here, people are being physically maltreated and the rich Westerners suffer no unpleasant consequences at all (or if they do, it's because they enjoy being whipped - it takes all sorts.)"
More specious tripe based on the entirely unfounded claim that this legislation is meant to stop Nefarious Johnny Foreigner from being nefarious and foreign. OK, so we've now established that you're a xenophobe and a prude, i.e. typically British.
"Those who saw bits of the Mosley tape will be aware that he apparently paid money to beat (and be beaten by) prostitutes, and may wonder what compulsion the prostitutes were under to put up with this kind of treatment."
The same compulsion that's always been used with prostitutes: money.
"How much money would it take for you to do that willingly"
"Politician's are professionals, and as such, their #1 interest is to keep their job - which they do by being reelected, not by throwing people into jail."
You're missing the fact that it's rather easy to be re-elected if the opposition's supporters are in jail, exiled, or too frightened to vote. This tactic has kept Robert Mugabe in power for 28 years in what claims to be a democracy.
"As a matter of fact, it's Hollywood's tendency to eroticize violence that's created the marketplace for violent porn."
Balderdash. Depictions of violence go back to cave paintings, and because we don't know what turned people on 30,000 years ago, it's impossible for us to know whether they whacked off to those images or not.
Humans are a violent species, and an intensely sexual one, and the venerable practice of conquering armies raping every female they could find proves that the two were accompanying one another thousands of years before the movie industry appeared.
"The law is aimed at preventing the creation of such material in locations outside the UK where non-consensual acts can be performed and filmed for sale within the UK."
1. Make extremely broad laws that will criminalise large numbers of British people.
2. Play on the endemic xenophobia that the government can always count on by claiming it's necessary to stop nefarious foreigners who any loyal Brit knows are the source of all evil in the country.
3. Move yet another step closer to having the capability of arresting anyone the government doesn't like.
"Since the sex-slave trade, forced prostitution, rape and abuse are rampant across the globe (including the UK) it's quite hard to argue with an attempt to legislate against one of the causes of it."
They are indeed rampant, but as there doesn't seem to be any shortage of willing participants in the porn industry, there is precisely no _real_ evidence pointing to pornography with adults in having any causal relationship whatsoever with the slave trade, sexual or otherwise.
"Unfortunately the law is poorly worded, overly broad and criminalises people that aren't even indirectly supporting illegal acts."
Has it ever occurred to you that the law might be deliberately vague and overly broad because vague and overly broad laws give the government more potential for arresting people they don't like? After all, you've already claimed that sex slavery is rampant in Britain, so surely a government who was really concerned about such things would use existing legislation to stamp it out at home before worrying about what Johnny Foreigner and his band of worryingly non-British compatriots was doing. It's therefore a good thing that the government has lots of people like you who believe everything they're told, otherwise they might have to come up with some real explanations for laws like this one.
"Slate the law, sure, but at least acknowledge the reasons behind it."
The reasons you've given are specious at best, so excuse us for not accepting that they're anything more than a thin attempt at justifying a broad ability to arrest people by playing on the innate British distrust of foreigners.
"I think that people who don't see a problem with rape (read: likely rapists) are the only ones who would enjoy this sort of trash."
Then please explain why rape fantasies are one of the most common _female_ sex fantasies, despite the fact that none of the women who have them would actually want to be raped.
"Kings and tyrants tend to dislike an armed or an independent population."
Balderdash. Britain had laws mandating both owning and regularly practising with a war bow when they were the "in" weapon, and freemen were expected to supply their own weapons and armour when their lord decided to have a war. Guns didn't start being regulated seriously until after the Russian Revolution, centuries after the country had become a constitutional monarchy that removed all effective power from the king / queen.
Some other European countries had strict feudal weapons bearing laws, and some were fairly liberal, so it's impossible to make blanket statements about "Europe" in this regard, although it sadly doesn't seem to deter Americans whose knowledge of European history can be written on the head of a pin with the bottom half of Mt. Everest from doing so.
It could also be a matter of them really not wanting to become part of MS because they're aware of what tends to happen, or that they know how desperate Ballmer is to find some way of competing with Google, and that there aren't many companies he can buy with any realistic chance of giving them that capability.
"Personally, I think Microsoft should just walk away. Watch that Yahoo stock drop faster than gravity."
The question from Microsoft's viewpoint is whether they can afford to walk away. None of their many efforts to diversify have been particularly successful, and their monopoly position tin PC software means that they have few prospects for the growth that's so beloved of stockholders, so what options do they have besides buying up a company with a significant presence in one of the markets that their own efforts have failed in for years despite having massive amounts of money thrown at them?
"And I'd argue that is enough to get to the protection level that Vista has."
Agreed. I was refuting the parent's suggestion that Apple could stop people from selling machines built from off-the-shelf hardware that are capable of running OS X (hacked or otherwise), not saying that preventing them from selling it pre-installed or supplying materials / instructions telling people how to hack it wouldn't be an extremely effective way of limiting the market for such hardware.
"I think this mostly comes down to fear that these clones might bankrupt the company based on Apple's past exeriences."
The only thing that nearly bankrupted Apple was Apple itself. The current Apple management team knows this, hence the fact that they're running a very different company from the one that existed before Jobs returned to the helm.
" Even if they don't, Mac OS X at $130 is probably subisdized by hardware hardware sales."
I doubt that the boxed set is in any way subsidised from hardware sales, although the ones bundled with Macs (and indeed a growing range of other hardware that uses it) obviously are, much as OEM versions of Windows are also subsidised from hardware sales (and cost a small fraction of what they sell boxed sets for). The fact of the matter is that OS X costs significantly less than Windows to develop (there are many reasons for this), and it doesn't have to act as a cash cow that finances other projects which bleed red ink for years, so Apple can afford to sell it for less while still making a tidy profit on each box.
"Of course, Apple has diversified since it's last jaunt with clones"
And as we've seen with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and AppleTV, OS X is a central part of their current diversification strategy. In fact, it would probably be fair to say that rather than hardware being used to subsidise OS X, it's now a case of OS X giving them the capability to develop new hardware far more cheaply and easily than would be possible if they didn't have a multi-platform, scalable, and highly modular operating system to use on it.
"Microsoft already had clauses on what machines Windows could be installed on, if the vendors could sell other OSes or not, etc. Remember they got caught and punished for it?"
They got caught and punished for abusing a monopoly. Those tactics would have been perfectly legal if Microsoft weren't deemed to have a monopoly on desktop operating systems.
"The same will happen with Apple"
The same will happen to Apple if they ever reach a position where Macs are deemed to have a monopoly of the desktop computer market.
"I think Apple will shut down clone makers, and leave the hackers to their own devices"
Apple can't shut down clone makers because there's nothing illegal about using off-the-shelf hardware that's broadly compatible with theirs, and EFI is an Intel technology, not an Apple one. The most they could do is go to court to prevent them from pre-installing OS X or supplying software or instructions bypassing any Mac-identifying security measures (DMCA could and would be used) but they can't stop them from selling the official Apple boxed version with a machine any more than they can stop other retailers from putting it on the same receipt as other non-Apple stuff.
1. They're an island nation, and do not therefore feel any affinity with Europe at all.
2. Certain elements of the popular press have been blaming all Britain's ills on the EU for several decades.
3. The British government itself also has a habit of saying that any unpopular legislation is "required to comply with EU rules", while conveniently neglecting to mention the fact that (a) they proposed said rules, and (b) no other EU country has either implemented them, or announced an intention to do so.
4. Their history has taught them to see Europe as a place foreign invaders and would-be invaders come from, so they're predisposed to see the EU as yet another plot to take away their sovereignty and put them under European hegemony.
"So what the fuck can I do when there are a large number of fools who elect corrupt officials?"
Very little. The entire US political system is so money-driven that it's very difficult or impossible to win an election without owing favours to wealthy individuals, companies, or well funded lobby groups, so even those who start out meaning well can easily end up in a position where they're forced to represent those who funded their campaign instead of the people who voted for them.
"What if MY officials are not corrupt?"
It's unlikely that any of your officials who won would have clean hands because the existing political system makes it extremely difficult for those with clean hands to mount an effective campaign.
"mass media proved the be the major facilitator in getting the most corrupt politicians re-elected by burying the truth and launching slander campaigns against honest politicians"
The mass media have also been the ones who blew the whistle on corrupt public officials, e.g. Watergate, some of the things the Clintons were up to, and many, many others.
"So now we are seeing a radical change, where the lies are being exposed, where corrupt politicians are being publicly shamed"
The mass media were naming and shaming corrupt politicians long before radio was invented, let alone the Internet. And as is the case now, none of this stopped people from voting for those who had been named and shamed.
"How many mass media adds for the most disingenuous politicians have been latter dismembered across the web, and the lies shown in the adds compared to the truth of the actions."
Why do people need the Internet to tell them that an ad a politician funds about himself or an opponent is a load of self-serving clap-trap? They've been self-serving clap-trap since the main method of advertising was paying someone to shout about you and hand out leaflets, and have continued to be self-serving clap-trap as they've found their way onto each new communications medium. The idea about them being self-serving clap-trap would should therefore have sunk in by now, yet people still seem to believe what's in them despite the fact that hundreds of years of accumulated evidence should mean they completely ignore anything positive a politician says about himself, or anything negative he says about his opponents.
"survival instinct itself defines that you wish to extend your life beyond the moment."
Survival instinct is a genetic imperative that by definition does not include a desire to extend an organisms life beyond its genetically programmed limits. Man is unique in this regard on Earth, so it's more than possible that this particular desire is not shared by extra-terrestrial intelligences.
It's quite obvious that you're a Nokia marketing droid who has either not read or isn't capable of understanding anything I wrote in the post you're supposed to be answering. Please don't bother to spend time answering this one, because I won't read it, and I doubt anyone else here will either.
I was 18 when B7 started its original run, and the effects (and indeed sets) were laughably bad even by the standards of TV series at the time, let alone the SF movies made for the cinema.
The original Battlestar Galactica series came out the same year B7 did, and although many of its special effects look cheesy now, they're _vastly_ better than anything in B7, even though many of the models were, as in B7, also made from household appliances with bits of commercial model kits stuck to them.
Slashdot Mirror
"OS X full supports a two button mouse. Check"
MacOS supported mice with two or more more buttons long before Apple switched to Intel-based hardware. Just because Macs shipped with a one button mouse until a couple of years ago doesn't mean that the OS didn't let people use third-party mice with more than one button.
"The psystar is a *noisy* pc"
The Psystar is noisy because it's a low quality machine that's been assembled from cheap components that have been put in a cheap case with a cheap power supply.
"The first thing most people notice about the iMac is it's QUIET!"
Until it actually starts doing work that generates some heat that needs to be gotten rid of, and the secondary internal fans start revving up (at least with the iMac G5 series -- can't speak for the Intel versions because I haven't used one).
"People will pay a couple of hundred bucks for quiet, hardware and software support, updates, and the ability to just walk into a brick-and-mortar and pick one up off the shelf, etc."
There are also people who are willing to pay extra for machines that don't wrap a cheap tin box around a bunch of bottom-of-the-barrel components. The video indicates that the sub-set of them who want to run OS X and attendant Mac software will be unlikely to consider one of Psystar's offerings as a way of doing so.
"You're giving the stock rebuttal to the stock argument that movie violence begets real-world violence."
LEARN TO FUCKING READ! I was giving a rebuttal to your claim that Hollywood's eroticism of violence was creating the market for violent porn.
"One fantasy begets another fantasy."
My rebuttal said otherwise, and used some historic facts to back it up instead of (as you do) merely saying that something is so.
"the US has the world's largest prison population"
And Britain's is the biggest in Europe.
"When the government is paying for our health care"
The government isn't paying for your health care -- taxpayers are paying for it, and in the UK they get extremely poor value for _their_ money.
"The anti-Pelagian trend in Europe accepts that often people do not do things that they want to do although apparently they consent."
I suggest you check the laws of some European countries, because they all differ in this regard depending on their individual cultures, so there is no such thing as a European position, or even a definable European trend.
"the law may intervene when a man beats up a woman even though she declines to press charges, on the basis that her consent was not voluntary and that her silence arises from fear rather than consent."
You seem to be assuming that UK law is typical of the rest of Europe, when this is demonstrably not true. In much of Southern and Central Europe for example, legislation against domestic violence didn't exist until quite recently, and there are many complaints from people who live there about governments not being really serious about dealing with it.
"The extreme position taken by many posters on this thread is that, in effect, sexual violence is permissible provided that you cannot find someone to testify against it, and that therefore it is permissible to sell pictures of what may be criminal acts for gain"
What posters are actually claiming is that prosecuting people for having pictures of the authorities say _might have been_ a criminal act violates the presumption of innocence and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, both of which are the foundation upon which the British criminal justice system is built.
"I cannot see that as being a rational position, and it is in fact quite illegal under English law for a criminal to profit in this way from a crime."
And I cannot see how you can claim that prosecuting people for having pictures of what hasn't been proven to be a crime is a rational position, or how it's rationally justifiable to prevent people from profiting from something when the authorities have no proof that any crime was involved in its production.
"In my original post I was clearly (I thought) referring to material which was photographic and therefore a recording of real world acts. But this seems to have been missed by the "libertarians"."
A photograph or movie that depicts something isn't proof that what's on the image actually happened in the way it appears to, so even if we ignore that fact that this law makes it illegal to own images of permitted acts, the fact that somebody has an image showing what seems to be an illegal activity doesn't mean (let alone prove) that anything illegal was involved in producing the image.
"While there is a market for violent pornography or child pornography, criminals will supply it."
Criminals will by definition supply anything people want that's illegal, because if it wasn't illegal, then supplying it wouldn't be a crime, so the suppliers wouldn't be criminals.
"In doing so I doubt they will consider the civil rights of those forced to take part."
What evidence is there to suggest that the majority of so-called violent porn involved anyone being forced to participate? Note also that your attempt to draw a parallel between violent pornography and child pornography is specious, because as has been mentioned elsewhere, this law will make possessing images of lawful sexual acts illegal, whereas child pornography is illegal because it's an image of an unlawful sexual act.
"That is why, to my mind, even though it may be of limited effectiveness, it is right to make possession of this material illegal."
But then your mind is already prone to making specious comparisons, so it's not really surprising that you use them to justify other things.
"Anything you can do to destroy or disrupt the market is attacking the revenue stream that makes the criminals do it in the first place."
Making things people want illegal has three historically demonstrable effects:
1) It drives legitimate suppliers who previously followed the law out of the market.
2) The new black market is one where people pay higher prices for lower quality products, thus making it far more profitable for those who don't give two hoots about the law to serve it (alcohol in the US during the prohibition was an excellent example of this, just as drugs are nowadays, or for that matter, child porn).
3) Those who want whatever has been declared illegal are also driven underground, and therefore become a part of it.
"If you cannot persuade people that they should not pay other people to abuse, rape and beat strangers for their entertainment - then more stringent sanctions are needed."
If they're concerned with protecting people who are abused, then why do they need to make it illegal for people to possess images of themselves involved in _lawful acts_ with their own partners? Once again, you're basing an argument on no evidence other than specious tripe you use to justify your own disapproval of what other people might enjoy doing, which makes you precisely the sort of self-righteous prude that the government's counting on to push crappy laws like this through.
"Poor farmers grow drugs in Colombia and Afghanistan because they pay better and travel better than vegetables."
Again, a load of specious tripe which is probably based on something you've read (probably in the Daily Mail) or seen on TV. How do _you actually know_ that the poor farmers grow those crops because they earn more from them rather than growing them because groups of men with guns tell them to? The growers are after all still poor, while the men with the guns are making piles of money, so there isn't any actual evidence to indicate that the farmers aren't being paid less than they would get from growing and selling apples or pomegranates.
"Here, people are being physically maltreated and the rich Westerners suffer no unpleasant consequences at all (or if they do, it's because they enjoy being whipped - it takes all sorts.)"
More specious tripe based on the entirely unfounded claim that this legislation is meant to stop Nefarious Johnny Foreigner from being nefarious and foreign. OK, so we've now established that you're a xenophobe and a prude, i.e. typically British.
"Those who saw bits of the Mosley tape will be aware that he apparently paid money to beat (and be beaten by) prostitutes, and may wonder what compulsion the prostitutes were under to put up with this kind of treatment."
The same compulsion that's always been used with prostitutes: money.
"How much money would it take for you to do that willingly"
The same amount it would cost for any act a
"Politician's are professionals, and as such, their #1 interest is to keep their job - which they do by being reelected, not by throwing people into jail."
You're missing the fact that it's rather easy to be re-elected if the opposition's supporters are in jail, exiled, or too frightened to vote. This tactic has kept Robert Mugabe in power for 28 years in what claims to be a democracy.
"As a matter of fact, it's Hollywood's tendency to eroticize violence that's created the marketplace for violent porn."
Balderdash. Depictions of violence go back to cave paintings, and because we don't know what turned people on 30,000 years ago, it's impossible for us to know whether they whacked off to those images or not.
Humans are a violent species, and an intensely sexual one, and the venerable practice of conquering armies raping every female they could find proves that the two were accompanying one another thousands of years before the movie industry appeared.
"The law is aimed at preventing the creation of such material in locations outside the UK where non-consensual acts can be performed and filmed for sale within the UK."
1. Make extremely broad laws that will criminalise large numbers of British people.
2. Play on the endemic xenophobia that the government can always count on by claiming it's necessary to stop nefarious foreigners who any loyal Brit knows are the source of all evil in the country.
3. Move yet another step closer to having the capability of arresting anyone the government doesn't like.
"Since the sex-slave trade, forced prostitution, rape and abuse are rampant across the globe (including the UK) it's quite hard to argue with an attempt to legislate against one of the causes of it."
They are indeed rampant, but as there doesn't seem to be any shortage of willing participants in the porn industry, there is precisely no _real_ evidence pointing to pornography with adults in having any causal relationship whatsoever with the slave trade, sexual or otherwise.
"Unfortunately the law is poorly worded, overly broad and criminalises people that aren't even indirectly supporting illegal acts."
Has it ever occurred to you that the law might be deliberately vague and overly broad because vague and overly broad laws give the government more potential for arresting people they don't like? After all, you've already claimed that sex slavery is rampant in Britain, so surely a government who was really concerned about such things would use existing legislation to stamp it out at home before worrying about what Johnny Foreigner and his band of worryingly non-British compatriots was doing. It's therefore a good thing that the government has lots of people like you who believe everything they're told, otherwise they might have to come up with some real explanations for laws like this one.
"Slate the law, sure, but at least acknowledge the reasons behind it."
The reasons you've given are specious at best, so excuse us for not accepting that they're anything more than a thin attempt at justifying a broad ability to arrest people by playing on the innate British distrust of foreigners.
"misunderstanding of "unusual" or "kinky" sexual practices is absolutely endemic in British culture"
Misunderstanding anyone who thinks, acts, or looks different from the majority is endemic in humans.
"I think that people who don't see a problem with rape (read: likely rapists) are the only ones who would enjoy this sort of trash."
Then please explain why rape fantasies are one of the most common _female_ sex fantasies, despite the fact that none of the women who have them would actually want to be raped.
"Kings and tyrants tend to dislike an armed or an independent
population."
Balderdash. Britain had laws mandating both owning and regularly practising with a war bow when they were the "in" weapon, and freemen were expected to supply their own weapons and armour when their lord decided to have a war. Guns didn't start being regulated seriously until after the Russian Revolution, centuries after the country had become a constitutional monarchy that removed all effective power from the king / queen.
Some other European countries had strict feudal weapons bearing laws, and some were fairly liberal, so it's impossible to make blanket statements about "Europe" in this regard, although it sadly doesn't seem to deter Americans whose knowledge of European history can be written on the head of a pin with the bottom half of Mt. Everest from doing so.
"Yahoo is being too arrogant for its own good."
It could also be a matter of them really not wanting to become part of MS because they're aware of what tends to happen, or that they know how desperate Ballmer is to find some way of competing with Google, and that there aren't many companies he can buy with any realistic chance of giving them that capability.
"Personally, I think Microsoft should just walk away. Watch that Yahoo stock drop faster than gravity."
The question from Microsoft's viewpoint is whether they can afford to walk away. None of their many efforts to diversify have been particularly successful, and their monopoly position tin PC software means that they have few prospects for the growth that's so beloved of stockholders, so what options do they have besides buying up a company with a significant presence in one of the markets that their own efforts have failed in for years despite having massive amounts of money thrown at them?
"And I'd argue that is enough to get to the protection level that Vista has."
Agreed. I was refuting the parent's suggestion that Apple could stop people from selling machines built from off-the-shelf hardware that are capable of running OS X (hacked or otherwise), not saying that preventing them from selling it pre-installed or supplying materials / instructions telling people how to hack it wouldn't be an extremely effective way of limiting the market for such hardware.
"I think this mostly comes down to fear that these clones might bankrupt the company based on Apple's past exeriences."
The only thing that nearly bankrupted Apple was Apple itself. The current Apple management team knows this, hence the fact that they're running a very different company from the one that existed before Jobs returned to the helm.
" Even if they don't, Mac OS X at $130 is probably subisdized by hardware hardware sales."
I doubt that the boxed set is in any way subsidised from hardware sales, although the ones bundled with Macs (and indeed a growing range of other hardware that uses it) obviously are, much as OEM versions of Windows are also subsidised from hardware sales (and cost a small fraction of what they sell boxed sets for). The fact of the matter is that OS X costs significantly less than Windows to develop (there are many reasons for this), and it doesn't have to act as a cash cow that finances other projects which bleed red ink for years, so Apple can afford to sell it for less while still making a tidy profit on each box.
"Of course, Apple has diversified since it's last jaunt with clones"
And as we've seen with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and AppleTV, OS X is a central part of their current diversification strategy. In fact, it would probably be fair to say that rather than hardware being used to subsidise OS X, it's now a case of OS X giving them the capability to develop new hardware far more cheaply and easily than would be possible if they didn't have a multi-platform, scalable, and highly modular operating system to use on it.
"Microsoft already had clauses on what machines Windows could be installed on, if the vendors could sell other OSes or not, etc. Remember they got caught and punished for it?"
They got caught and punished for abusing a monopoly. Those tactics would have been perfectly legal if Microsoft weren't deemed to have a monopoly on desktop operating systems.
"The same will happen with Apple"
The same will happen to Apple if they ever reach a position where Macs are deemed to have a monopoly of the desktop computer market.
"I think Apple will shut down clone makers, and leave the hackers to their own devices"
Apple can't shut down clone makers because there's nothing illegal about using off-the-shelf hardware that's broadly compatible with theirs, and EFI is an Intel technology, not an Apple one. The most they could do is go to court to prevent them from pre-installing OS X or supplying software or instructions bypassing any Mac-identifying security measures (DMCA could and would be used) but they can't stop them from selling the official Apple boxed version with a machine any more than they can stop other retailers from putting it on the same receipt as other non-Apple stuff.
"why are they so Europhobic?"
1. They're an island nation, and do not therefore feel any affinity with Europe at all.
2. Certain elements of the popular press have been blaming all Britain's ills on the EU for several decades.
3. The British government itself also has a habit of saying that any unpopular legislation is "required to comply with EU rules", while conveniently neglecting to mention the fact that (a) they proposed said rules, and (b) no other EU country has either implemented them, or announced an intention to do so.
4. Their history has taught them to see Europe as a place foreign invaders and would-be invaders come from, so they're predisposed to see the EU as yet another plot to take away their sovereignty and put them under European hegemony.
"So what the fuck can I do when there are a large number of fools who elect corrupt officials?"
Very little. The entire US political system is so money-driven that it's very difficult or impossible to win an election without owing favours to wealthy individuals, companies, or well funded lobby groups, so even those who start out meaning well can easily end up in a position where they're forced to represent those who funded their campaign instead of the people who voted for them.
"What if MY officials are not corrupt?"
It's unlikely that any of your officials who won would have clean hands because the existing political system makes it extremely difficult for those with clean hands to mount an effective campaign.
"Not like I can go vote in their election."
It wouldn't make any difference if you could.
"mass media proved the be the major facilitator in getting the most corrupt politicians re-elected by burying the truth and launching slander campaigns against honest politicians"
The mass media have also been the ones who blew the whistle on corrupt public officials, e.g. Watergate, some of the things the Clintons were up to, and many, many others.
"So now we are seeing a radical change, where the lies are being exposed, where corrupt politicians are being publicly shamed"
The mass media were naming and shaming corrupt politicians long before radio was invented, let alone the Internet. And as is the case now, none of this stopped people from voting for those who had been named and shamed.
"How many mass media adds for the most disingenuous politicians have been latter dismembered across the web, and the lies shown in the adds compared to the truth of the actions."
Why do people need the Internet to tell them that an ad a politician funds about himself or an opponent is a load of self-serving clap-trap? They've been self-serving clap-trap since the main method of advertising was paying someone to shout about you and hand out leaflets, and have continued to be self-serving clap-trap as they've found their way onto each new communications medium. The idea about them being self-serving clap-trap would should therefore have sunk in by now, yet people still seem to believe what's in them despite the fact that hundreds of years of accumulated evidence should mean they completely ignore anything positive a politician says about himself, or anything negative he says about his opponents.
"survival instinct itself defines that you wish to extend your life beyond the moment."
Survival instinct is a genetic imperative that by definition does not include a desire to extend an organisms life beyond its genetically programmed limits. Man is unique in this regard on Earth, so it's more than possible that this particular desire is not shared by extra-terrestrial intelligences.
It's quite obvious that you're a Nokia marketing droid who has either not read or isn't capable of understanding anything I wrote in the post you're supposed to be answering. Please don't bother to spend time answering this one, because I won't read it, and I doubt anyone else here will either.
I was 18 when B7 started its original run, and the effects (and indeed sets) were laughably bad even by the standards of TV series at the time, let alone the SF movies made for the cinema.
The original Battlestar Galactica series came out the same year B7 did, and although many of its special effects look cheesy now, they're _vastly_ better than anything in B7, even though many of the models were, as in B7, also made from household appliances with bits of commercial model kits stuck to them.
"Maybe because that's because I grew up watching Captain Kirk throwing styrofoam boulders at aliens."
There were also several alien world sets that consisted of little more than styrofoam boulders cut in half and placed on a studio floor.