The Greenhouse will likely turn Europe into Greater Scandanavia, the world's populous coastlines into a global Venice, and the Midwest into a thousand-mile Tornado Canyon, not to mention the deserts across the ravaged landscapes when bioweb species can't adapt to the more rapid climate change around them. Some people will adjust, like our great grandmothers did the past few ice ages. But that's as serious a threat to galvanize us into action as a killer meteorite, with much higher probability and immediacy. The political inertia for coping with these other crises derives from exactly the kind of opposition I'm repudiating in this long thread. I expect to survive any of these threats, although my meteorite plan is to calmly wait.
You're comparing a threat that will kill probably every large species on earth in a matter of days to one that will diminish the value of prime ocean front and agricultural property over a period of decades. This may come as a shock to you, but there are still people living in Venice. And Holland, as well. Human ingenuity has dealt with the problem of being below sea level before. And while the agricultural value of some land will decrease, other land will become more productive (and many plants actually thrive on elevated CO2). No, this isn't exactly welcome news to those in the US of us who are now squatting on some of the most prime real estate in the world, but it falls considerably short of ending humanity.
so this object has as much energy as 73,249,299, let's call it 75 MILLION years of electricity production at TODAYS maximum total world capacity
Yep. So you've calculated how much power it would take to stop an asteroid. But I'm a martial artist, so I know that when something big and strong is attacking you, you don't try to stop it; you give it a little shove at right angles to deflect it. So how much do we need to deflect our asteroid? Well, if it's going to hit us dead center, that would be about half the diameter of the earth, or about 6500 km. Let's say that we see it coming far enough out to start pushing 2 years from impact. That means that we will require an acceleration of 3.4 nm/(sec)^2. The corresponding force (taking your figure of 5.2 * 10^14 kg) is 1.75 * 10^6 newtons. Acting over a distance of 6500 km, that works out to 1.14 * 10^13 joules. Divided by 2 years gives us a power requirement of about 182 kilowatts. Doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me, and well within the reach of an ion engine. And certainly considerably less than required to set up a colony on some other planet (which is a worthy goal, but much harder than deflecting an asteroid).
There has never been a plague that was anything close to 100% fatal...until genetic engineering came along...
And there still isn't. There is no reason to believe that genetically engineered diseases will be more universally fatal than natural ones. Nobody knows how to create a universally fatal disease, if it is even possible. Minimally, you would need complete knowledge of all of the variations in the human genome worldwide, and a full understanding of their functional significance. Even if it were possible, there is little incentive to try. Engineered weapons are usually designed to kill the other guy, not your own people as well. That's why diseases like anthrax, which is not transmitted from human to human, have been so popular with weapons designers.
I disagree, due to the energies involved and ranges to target I would suggest that asteroid impacts most certainly are NOT avoidable, because to have a sufficient level of space tech (and energy budget) to afford to alter the delta vee of an asteroid suggests a technology level that already has the human race (and hopefully genetic material from the majority of the bioshpere) so well established OFF earth that the population of earth represents a MINORITY of the entire population.
Energies involved? You can alter the delta-V of an asteroid by shooting it with a.22. And if it is far enough away, that could be enough alteration to avert a collision. As it gets closer, the delta-V required becomes larger, but there are still many possible technically feasible solutions that involve a combination of early warning and various ways of nudging an asteroid. But to know which of the many possible methods are most worth pursuing, we need to know more about the composition of asteroids and how they react to impacts. Hence, the study.
But some more that might occur are extremely huge solar flares, pole shifts, and the mundane but most possible,and most probable, merely running out of oil within the next two decades leading to global chaos and warfare, including extensive NBC warfare, which would in turn lead to a very long lasting and extensive global winter on top of it, from the dust from hugeparts of the world burning down, especially in the northern hemisphere.
Solar flares and pole shifts do not fall into the class of avoidable threats. Running out of oil abruptly simply is not going to happen. It is not like your automobile where you get to the bottom of the tank and your car suddenly stops dead. Rather, the cost gradually rises, which makes alternative energy sources more competitive, which introduces economies of scale and stimulates research that makes alternative energy sources more affordable. So there is a lot of buffering capacity in the international energy supply.
A large nuclear war would probably cause environmental damage on the level of a mid-sized asteroid. It probably wouldn't kill off the species, but it would cut our numbers drastically and possibly return us to an age when life is "nasty, brutish, and short." But while it is virtually certain that a technical solution can be found to defend against asteroid impacts, it's doubtful whether there is a practical technical solution to nuclear war. For the foreseeable future, the only protection against a large scale nuclear war is not to have one.
A novel virus would not be a threat to the survival of humanity as a large asteroid would be, but it could still kill lots of people, as in the great plagues of history. But it seems unlikely that additional investment would improve our chances. We are already heavily invested into research in virology. Beyond a certain point, throwing more money at a scientific problem does not yield much acceleration of progress (remember the war on cancer?)
What about a total nuclear war between say the US+EU vs Russia+China? It would not be enough to kill everyone on the planet straight of, but the mid term effects would be comparable in severity to a massive asteroid crash...
Yeah, probably about as bad as a medium sized asteroid. But I don't see this as a problem amenable to a technical solution. We just have to continue to be smart enough not to do it.
No, you are confusing the damage done by a meteorite with the probability that it will hit.
No. I am suggesting that the preservation of the human species is a worthwhile endeavor quite apart from the preservation of individual lives, and should not be evaluated on the same cost-benefit basis as the preservation of individual lives. And I am arguing that an asteroid (not meteorite) impact is in fact the most probable preventable hazard to the human species as a whole.
Are you proposing we build space arks, because it is possible that the Sun will expand ahead of its 6B year schedule?
Obviously not. Are you? If so, there are a number of questions you must answer to demonstrate that this is a credible, preventable threat. What is the scientific basis for expecting the sun to expand ahead of schedule? Is there any evidence for such events in the past? Where, specifically, do you expect the arks to go. In contrast, there are a variety of possible approaches to protecting against asteroid impact.
Why aren't you more threatened by the plagues and Greenhouse, which have a much higher probability of killing you, directly or through national collapse?
I think we are already investing about the appropriate amount of money into basic biological research in pharmacology, bacteriology, biochemistry, and virology to defend against plagues, and that additional investment is unlikely to yield much additional benefit (although I probably shouldn't admit this, since I am a biologist myself and greater investment in these areas would almost certainly mean more money for me).
Aren't you just more fascinated by the space lasers than by combination therapy, prophylactics, or carbon remediation?
Space lasers do not seem to be a particularly good candidate for asteroid defense, although they might be useful for power transmission. I don't believe carbon remediation on the scale required to make an appreciable difference in global warming is politically feasible, I seriously doubt seriously that it is cost-effective, and I while I think that a slow increase in average temperature will be inconvenient and expensive (and probably more so for the US than most countries--we already have a great climate; almost any change would be for the worse), I think that people will be able to adjust; I do not see a realistic prospect of global disaster.
How do you propose fixing worldwide annihilation of human life by plague or Greenhouse after the fact? When you are dead, you won't care about the rest of the planet, but while you're alive, you can do something about the real threats.
It is highly doubtful that either plague or Greenhouse effect could kill off all human life. There has never been a plague that was anything close to 100% fatal, and it is biologically doubtful that such a thing is possible, given the large diversity and wide distribution of our population. As for the Greenhouse effect, plausible worst-case projections are on the order of a few degrees warmer, occurring over a fairly long period of time, and possibly an increase in severe weather. No plausible projection has the Greenhouse effect producing more than a modest effect on the size of the human population. I would place the probability of annihilation of human life by either of these events essentially at zero.
On the other hand, large asteroid impacts clearly have occurred in the past. There is credible scientific evidence that they have wiped out widely-distributed species in the past. Projections of consequences of a large impact suggest that it is plausible that such an impact could kill all human life. Asteroid impacts are the only known, credible, avoidable event that could potentially wipe out humanity. This would seem to justify significant investment in protection.
All I can say is, if I spend $3000+ on a computer, I better get whatever the hell I want, especially when there are options out there that are under $1000 that aren't $2000 less good.
Nevertheless, it's hard to see how a 3-button mouse that you can pick up for 20 bucks at Radio Shack could make much difference one way or the other. Even if you're only buying an $800 Mac, that's still only 2.5% of the purchase price.
Ditch the 1-button mouse already! Seriously. It's a cliched criticism, I know, but that makes it all the more inexcusable. Give us a damn scroll wheel, 2 or 3 button mouse.
It's not just cliched, it's dumb. A 3 button mouse costs, what, 20 bucks? Anybody who is ready for a 3 button mouse knows where to get one. And like most other things on the Mac, you plug it in and it just works. But every time I teach a new user, I appreciate the wisdom of Apple in making sure that there is no "wrong mouse button." I've had naive users freak out when using my 3-button mouse, after hitting the right button by mistake and having a menu pop up: "What's that? What do I do? How do I get rid of it?"
They have the same advantage over pc's that firefox has over IE, mostly that they dont have much of a market share, so hackers dont spend that much time making viruses for them. As long as they stay relatively unused by the mass public, it will stay that way. If everyone gets the same idea to move to a mac, virus wirters will shift their attention to macs.
Perhaps. Others have argued that Macs, at least for default installation, are less vulnerable than Windows. But you know what? It doesn't matter! Even if Steve Jobs follows all the advice in the letter, OS X is not going to overtake Windows in the immediate future. So Mac users will continue to enjoy a much lower level of risk from worms, malign web sites, and other such hazards. Having Windows around is a bit like being passed on the freeway by a red sports car going 90. You know that you've just acquired temporary immunity over being pulled over for speeding. And the woes of Windows give Apple a little advance warning of future threats.
My gripe is with the laptops. Since Apple knows that most people just toss the one button mouse in favor of a real mouse why not just include two buttons, especially on the laptops?
To me, there is much less of an issue with a laptop trackpad, since it is attached to the keyboard, anyway. So there is little difference to me between having a second keypad button and pressing a modifier key on the keyboard. If I really want the convenience of a mouse, I'll plug one in. What I'd like to see is a scroll wheel next to the trackpad. There is software that emulates one on the edge of the pad, but I don't find that entirely satisfactory.
And while I use a three button mouse myself, every time I work with a new user, I'm convinced that Apple made the right decision in simplifying the mouse. Just the other day, I was trying to train a friend to use a 3 button mouse. She was constantly hitting the wrong button, bringing up menus that she didn't know how to deal with.
Any judge that deems the act of converting a song an individual purchased to a non-DRM format for his/her personal use not to be a fair use under existing copyright law is in error.
However, copyright law becomes irrelevant if the user has accepted an agreement not to do this. This takes it out of the realm of copyright and into the realm of contracts.
Further, requiring waiver of that right as a condition of sale could be an unsconscionable contract provision, particularly in the case of a contract of adhesion like the iTMS user agreement.
Since the user is not obliged to buy the product for survival or employment, and since the restriction does not violate any explicit prohibition, that hardly makes sense. Far more restrictive prohibitions, such as "do not compete" and nondisclosure agreements have been found legal as a condition of employment. Imposing a restriction as a condition of employment is far more serious than a restriction imposed as part of the license of a convenience service, such as web download of music--you need a job to survive, but you can always buy CDs and rip your own tracks.
The fallacy you're engaging here is that if it isn't codified in the Constitution, it's not a right. And yes, I believe that for a judge to rule against the doctrine of Fair Use, that s/he is either philisophically in error, bought, or both.
However, as far as the law is concerned, if it is the Constitution that determines legal rights. And according to the law, Fair Use is not a right, but merely a limited statutory exemption to copyright. So your judge has the choice of being philosophically in error (at least according to your philosophy) or legally in error. Since judges are sworn to uphold the law, that is no choice at all--it is not the prerogative of a judge to decide philosophy; that is up to the people, via their representatives in Congress and the Constitutional Amendment mechanism.
I would like to think that the courts aren't as bought and paid for as the legislators, and if Apple was foolish enough to take someone to court for converting the music s/he bought to non-DRMd AAC losslessly, that Apple would lose. Of course, I could definitely be wrong.
I'm don't see why a judge has to be "bought and paid for" to believe that a legal contract is enforceable. That is, after all, a fundamental principle of law. Much as you might wish that "fair use" were a Constitutional right, there is simply no basis for that in law.
If we suddenly have 100 miles of superstrong material slamming down at hypersonic speed, it's going to be extremely bad
You should think rather of superstrong, superlight tissue paper drifting gently downward in the breeze. And I don't think terrorists are going to be able to fly a jetliner 100 miles up, so we're actually talking only a few miles. However, some thought has to be given how to reattach the thing if it does happen--it seems like at worst it would be a expensive nuisance.
All that assumes that it's possible to waive one's fair-use rights with a Diktat contract. Unconscionable contract provisions are widely regarded as unenforceable, and it isn't unreasonable to expect that conditioning of purchase on signing them away is such a provision.
I don't think you'll find any court that is going to rule that waving "fair use" (which is not a right in a Constitutional sense, merely a limited exemption under the law) is "unconscionable." After all, people routinely are held to do-not-disclose and non-compete clauses as a condition of employment, which is considerably more harsh. Of course, that is a legal argument. The ethical argument is that a deal is a deal--if you aren't willing to accept the agreement, you shouldn't download the music--go buy a CD and rip it yourself.
Spidey's swinging isn't plausable, actually. The scenes where he turns corners are done well, and the scenes where he dangles from sticking-out-things are good, but the basic mode of transport doesn't make any sense. The way he's depicted as going down the straight streets, swinging from lines connected to the buildings on the sides, he should be smacking into the side walls at the bottoms of his swings. There is a way to make it with with alternating arcs weaving back and forth, but the way he's depicted as moving, he's not curving side-to-side enough to be doing that. I think this is why the camera often doesn't show what he's attaching his webs to when he goes straight down the street. If it showed what he was attaching to, it would make it obvious that the swing was happening on the wrong arc
The "Spiderman the Movie 2" videogame is interesting. In the earlier Spiderman games, the webs just attached somewhere up in the sky in limbo. But in the new game, the webs actually have to attach to buildings, and the swinging seems to be in realistic arcs. You don't have to choose the particular building, fortunately--you just point the joystick in the general direction, hit a button, and if there's a target, he'll shoot a web. You do have to choose when to let go of a web. Fortunately, you don't take damage from slamming into buildings, because you do a lot of that at first. I think they may still be cheating a bit on the physics (perhaps a little repulsion from the building at the bottom of a swing?), but I'm not sure. Swinging around a digital model of Manhattan is a blast (which is fortunate, since the rest of the game is pretty much crap).
In real life, tritium's a gas. It's not a metal at anything anywhere close to room temperature and one atmosphere.
Gee, I must have missed the pressure gauge on the side of the container.
Personally, I like the idea of trying to stabilize a fusion reaction by just poking it back every time it starts to go unstable...
Just to be fair, the physics of Doc Oc's arms seems to have been fairly well thought out. Whenever he's lifting something heavy with two arms, he's always got the other two providing him a reasonable base. This is fairly unusual--I often see "strong" characters in movies lifting things in a physically impossible manner. They also, in this movie and the previous one, manage to make Spidey's swinging look quite plausible, which is quite an accomplishment (although making that much web is another matter, as has been pointed out before)
The purpose of the program is to enable people to make fair use of tracks they've purchased. It's of no use without the purchased tracks.
That may or may not be the purpose of PlayFair. However, its function is to remove the DRM. Once the DRM is gone, I can play that track (if somebody gives it to me) whether or not I purchased it. This is what Apple's FairPlay DRM is designed to prevent. Note that even without PlayFair, I can convert Apple's songs to unprotected format with only a slight loss in quality by writing them to a CD-R and then re-ripping them, or by using the various utilities (which are widely available with no interference from Apple) that simulate this process without a physical CD. That seems more than adequate for "fair use," especially since iTunes store users explicitly agree to accept these restrictions before downloading songs. So PlayFair has no use other than to enable people to violate their user agreement with Apple. And it undermines Apple's efforts to make music downloads available with only token DRM. As long as Apple can say that iTunes songs cannot be widely copied in full quality, they will be able to maintain availability of most commercial music. If programs like PlayFair become widely available, Apple will either have to go to a more restrictive DRM, or will lose the ability to offer downloads at relatively low cost. That's why I say that the PlayFair guys are poisoning the well--which has nothing to do with whether it is open or closed source, or Apple's relationship with the rest of the open source community in general.
. . with the Open Source community. Just ask these guys [stargeek.com].
What's that have to do with the open source community? Perhaps you mean the cracker community? Apple's ability to obtain music for their iTunes shop depends upon their ability to convince the recording studios that their rather perfunctory DRM (which can be easily bypassed, without cracking anything, with only a modest loss in quality) is sufficient. These guys are poisoning the well.
because they lock you in on the hardware. Apple's business in on the hardware, not software.
And that may have something to do with their willingness to release many aspects of their OS as open source. What distinguishes the Apple "brand" and sells the hardware, after all, is not their tweaks to postfix, but their user interface. So they can treat their unix implementation as non-proprietary.
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in recorded history no human alone was ever hit by a meteorite
Not quite true. Nobody that we know of has been killed, but there have been a couple of hits.
The Greenhouse will likely turn Europe into Greater Scandanavia, the world's populous coastlines into a global Venice, and the Midwest into a thousand-mile Tornado Canyon, not to mention the deserts across the ravaged landscapes when bioweb species can't adapt to the more rapid climate change around them. Some people will adjust, like our great grandmothers did the past few ice ages. But that's as serious a threat to galvanize us into action as a killer meteorite, with much higher probability and immediacy. The political inertia for coping with these other crises derives from exactly the kind of opposition I'm repudiating in this long thread. I expect to survive any of these threats, although my meteorite plan is to calmly wait.
You're comparing a threat that will kill probably every large species on earth in a matter of days to one that will diminish the value of prime ocean front and agricultural property over a period of decades. This may come as a shock to you, but there are still people living in Venice. And Holland, as well. Human ingenuity has dealt with the problem of being below sea level before. And while the agricultural value of some land will decrease, other land will become more productive (and many plants actually thrive on elevated CO2). No, this isn't exactly welcome news to those in the US of us who are now squatting on some of the most prime real estate in the world, but it falls considerably short of ending humanity.
so this object has as much energy as 73,249,299, let's call it 75 MILLION years of electricity production at TODAYS maximum total world capacity
Yep. So you've calculated how much power it would take to stop an asteroid. But I'm a martial artist, so I know that when something big and strong is attacking you, you don't try to stop it; you give it a little shove at right angles to deflect it. So how much do we need to deflect our asteroid? Well, if it's going to hit us dead center, that would be about half the diameter of the earth, or about 6500 km. Let's say that we see it coming far enough out to start pushing 2 years from impact. That means that we will require an acceleration of 3.4 nm/(sec)^2. The corresponding force (taking your figure of 5.2 * 10^14 kg) is 1.75 * 10^6 newtons. Acting over a distance of 6500 km, that works out to 1.14 * 10^13 joules. Divided by 2 years gives us a power requirement of about 182 kilowatts. Doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me, and well within the reach of an ion engine. And certainly considerably less than required to set up a colony on some other planet (which is a worthy goal, but much harder than deflecting an asteroid).
There has never been a plague that was anything close to 100% fatal...until genetic engineering came along...
And there still isn't. There is no reason to believe that genetically engineered diseases will be more universally fatal than natural ones. Nobody knows how to create a universally fatal disease, if it is even possible. Minimally, you would need complete knowledge of all of the variations in the human genome worldwide, and a full understanding of their functional significance. Even if it were possible, there is little incentive to try. Engineered weapons are usually designed to kill the other guy, not your own people as well. That's why diseases like anthrax, which is not transmitted from human to human, have been so popular with weapons designers.
I disagree, due to the energies involved and ranges to target I would suggest that asteroid impacts most certainly are NOT avoidable, because to have a sufficient level of space tech (and energy budget) to afford to alter the delta vee of an asteroid suggests a technology level that already has the human race (and hopefully genetic material from the majority of the bioshpere) so well established OFF earth that the population of earth represents a MINORITY of the entire population.
.22. And if it is far enough away, that could be enough alteration to avert a collision. As it gets closer, the delta-V required becomes larger, but there are still many possible technically feasible solutions that involve a combination of early warning and various ways of nudging an asteroid. But to know which of the many possible methods are most worth pursuing, we need to know more about the composition of asteroids and how they react to impacts. Hence, the study.
Energies involved? You can alter the delta-V of an asteroid by shooting it with a
But some more that might occur are extremely huge solar flares, pole shifts, and the mundane but most possible,and most probable, merely running out of oil within the next two decades leading to global chaos and warfare, including extensive NBC warfare, which would in turn lead to a very long lasting and extensive global winter on top of it, from the dust from hugeparts of the world burning down, especially in the northern hemisphere.
Solar flares and pole shifts do not fall into the class of avoidable threats. Running out of oil abruptly simply is not going to happen. It is not like your automobile where you get to the bottom of the tank and your car suddenly stops dead. Rather, the cost gradually rises, which makes alternative energy sources more competitive, which introduces economies of scale and stimulates research that makes alternative energy sources more affordable. So there is a lot of buffering capacity in the international energy supply.
A large nuclear war would probably cause environmental damage on the level of a mid-sized asteroid. It probably wouldn't kill off the species, but it would cut our numbers drastically and possibly return us to an age when life is "nasty, brutish, and short." But while it is virtually certain that a technical solution can be found to defend against asteroid impacts, it's doubtful whether there is a practical technical solution to nuclear war. For the foreseeable future, the only protection against a large scale nuclear war is not to have one.
A novel virus would not be a threat to the survival of humanity as a large asteroid would be, but it could still kill lots of people, as in the great plagues of history. But it seems unlikely that additional investment would improve our chances. We are already heavily invested into research in virology. Beyond a certain point, throwing more money at a scientific problem does not yield much acceleration of progress (remember the war on cancer?)
What about a total nuclear war between say the US+EU vs Russia+China? It would not be enough to kill everyone on the planet straight of, but the mid term effects would be comparable in severity to a massive asteroid crash...
Yeah, probably about as bad as a medium sized asteroid. But I don't see this as a problem amenable to a technical solution. We just have to continue to be smart enough not to do it.
No, you are confusing the damage done by a meteorite with the probability that it will hit.
No. I am suggesting that the preservation of the human species is a worthwhile endeavor quite apart from the preservation of individual lives, and should not be evaluated on the same cost-benefit basis as the preservation of individual lives. And I am arguing that an asteroid (not meteorite) impact is in fact the most probable preventable hazard to the human species as a whole.
Are you proposing we build space arks, because it is possible that the Sun will expand ahead of its 6B year schedule?
Obviously not. Are you? If so, there are a number of questions you must answer to demonstrate that this is a credible, preventable threat. What is the scientific basis for expecting the sun to expand ahead of schedule? Is there any evidence for such events in the past? Where, specifically, do you expect the arks to go. In contrast, there are a variety of possible approaches to protecting against asteroid impact.
Why aren't you more threatened by the plagues and Greenhouse, which have a much higher probability of killing you, directly or through national collapse?
I think we are already investing about the appropriate amount of money into basic biological research in pharmacology, bacteriology, biochemistry, and virology to defend against plagues, and that additional investment is unlikely to yield much additional benefit (although I probably shouldn't admit this, since I am a biologist myself and greater investment in these areas would almost certainly mean more money for me).
Aren't you just more fascinated by the space lasers than by combination therapy, prophylactics, or carbon remediation?
Space lasers do not seem to be a particularly good candidate for asteroid defense, although they might be useful for power transmission. I don't believe carbon remediation on the scale required to make an appreciable difference in global warming is politically feasible, I seriously doubt seriously that it is cost-effective, and I while I think that a slow increase in average temperature will be inconvenient and expensive (and probably more so for the US than most countries--we already have a great climate; almost any change would be for the worse), I think that people will be able to adjust; I do not see a realistic prospect of global disaster.
How do you propose fixing worldwide annihilation of human life by plague or Greenhouse after the fact? When you are dead, you won't care about the rest of the planet, but while you're alive, you can do something about the real threats.
It is highly doubtful that either plague or Greenhouse effect could kill off all human life. There has never been a plague that was anything close to 100% fatal, and it is biologically doubtful that such a thing is possible, given the large diversity and wide distribution of our population. As for the Greenhouse effect, plausible worst-case projections are on the order of a few degrees warmer, occurring over a fairly long period of time, and possibly an increase in severe weather. No plausible projection has the Greenhouse effect producing more than a modest effect on the size of the human population. I would place the probability of annihilation of human life by either of these events essentially at zero.
On the other hand, large asteroid impacts clearly have occurred in the past. There is credible scientific evidence that they have wiped out widely-distributed species in the past. Projections of consequences of a large impact suggest that it is plausible that such an impact could kill all human life. Asteroid impacts are the only known, credible, avoidable event that could potentially wipe out humanity. This would seem to justify significant investment in protection.
All I can say is, if I spend $3000+ on a computer, I better get whatever the hell I want, especially when there are options out there that are under $1000 that aren't $2000 less good.
Nevertheless, it's hard to see how a 3-button mouse that you can pick up for 20 bucks at Radio Shack could make much difference one way or the other. Even if you're only buying an $800 Mac, that's still only 2.5% of the purchase price.
Ditch the 1-button mouse already! Seriously. It's a cliched criticism, I know, but that makes it all the more inexcusable. Give us a damn scroll wheel, 2 or 3 button mouse.
It's not just cliched, it's dumb. A 3 button mouse costs, what, 20 bucks? Anybody who is ready for a 3 button mouse knows where to get one. And like most other things on the Mac, you plug it in and it just works. But every time I teach a new user, I appreciate the wisdom of Apple in making sure that there is no "wrong mouse button." I've had naive users freak out when using my 3-button mouse, after hitting the right button by mistake and having a menu pop up: "What's that? What do I do? How do I get rid of it?"
They have the same advantage over pc's that firefox has over IE, mostly that they dont have much of a market share, so hackers dont spend that much time making viruses for them. As long as they stay relatively unused by the mass public, it will stay that way. If everyone gets the same idea to move to a mac, virus wirters will shift their attention to macs.
Perhaps. Others have argued that Macs, at least for default installation, are less vulnerable than Windows. But you know what? It doesn't matter! Even if Steve Jobs follows all the advice in the letter, OS X is not going to overtake Windows in the immediate future. So Mac users will continue to enjoy a much lower level of risk from worms, malign web sites, and other such hazards. Having Windows around is a bit like being passed on the freeway by a red sports car going 90. You know that you've just acquired temporary immunity over being pulled over for speeding. And the woes of Windows give Apple a little advance warning of future threats.
My gripe is with the laptops. Since Apple knows that most people just toss the one button mouse in favor of a real mouse why not just include two buttons, especially on the laptops?
To me, there is much less of an issue with a laptop trackpad, since it is attached to the keyboard, anyway. So there is little difference to me between having a second keypad button and pressing a modifier key on the keyboard. If I really want the convenience of a mouse, I'll plug one in. What I'd like to see is a scroll wheel next to the trackpad. There is software that emulates one on the edge of the pad, but I don't find that entirely satisfactory.
And while I use a three button mouse myself, every time I work with a new user, I'm convinced that Apple made the right decision in simplifying the mouse. Just the other day, I was trying to train a friend to use a 3 button mouse. She was constantly hitting the wrong button, bringing up menus that she didn't know how to deal with.
Why would you pay premium for a closed source operating system
Because you like it better?
and handicapped hardware (one button mouse)?
How can this be an issue? What does a 3 button mouse cost these days, 20 bucks? You just plug it in and (like so much with Apple) it "just works."
Any judge that deems the act of converting a song an individual purchased to a non-DRM format for his/her personal use not to be a fair use under existing copyright law is in error.
However, copyright law becomes irrelevant if the user has accepted an agreement not to do this. This takes it out of the realm of copyright and into the realm of contracts.
Further, requiring waiver of that right as a condition of sale could be an unsconscionable contract provision, particularly in the case of a contract of adhesion like the iTMS user agreement.
Since the user is not obliged to buy the product for survival or employment, and since the restriction does not violate any explicit prohibition, that hardly makes sense. Far more restrictive prohibitions, such as "do not compete" and nondisclosure agreements have been found legal as a condition of employment. Imposing a restriction as a condition of employment is far more serious than a restriction imposed as part of the license of a convenience service, such as web download of music--you need a job to survive, but you can always buy CDs and rip your own tracks.
The fallacy you're engaging here is that if it isn't codified in the Constitution, it's not a right. And yes, I believe that for a judge to rule against the doctrine of Fair Use, that s/he is either philisophically in error, bought, or both.
However, as far as the law is concerned, if it is the Constitution that determines legal rights. And according to the law, Fair Use is not a right, but merely a limited statutory exemption to copyright. So your judge has the choice of being philosophically in error (at least according to your philosophy) or legally in error. Since judges are sworn to uphold the law, that is no choice at all--it is not the prerogative of a judge to decide philosophy; that is up to the people, via their representatives in Congress and the Constitutional Amendment mechanism.
I would like to think that the courts aren't as bought and paid for as the legislators, and if Apple was foolish enough to take someone to court for converting the music s/he bought to non-DRMd AAC losslessly, that Apple would lose. Of course, I could definitely be wrong.
I'm don't see why a judge has to be "bought and paid for" to believe that a legal contract is enforceable. That is, after all, a fundamental principle of law. Much as you might wish that "fair use" were a Constitutional right, there is simply no basis for that in law.
If we suddenly have 100 miles of superstrong material slamming down at hypersonic speed, it's going to be extremely bad
You should think rather of superstrong, superlight tissue paper drifting gently downward in the breeze. And I don't think terrorists are going to be able to fly a jetliner 100 miles up, so we're actually talking only a few miles. However, some thought has to be given how to reattach the thing if it does happen--it seems like at worst it would be a expensive nuisance.
All that assumes that it's possible to waive one's fair-use rights with a Diktat contract. Unconscionable contract provisions are widely regarded as unenforceable, and it isn't unreasonable to expect that conditioning of purchase on signing them away is such a provision.
I don't think you'll find any court that is going to rule that waving "fair use" (which is not a right in a Constitutional sense, merely a limited exemption under the law) is "unconscionable." After all, people routinely are held to do-not-disclose and non-compete clauses as a condition of employment, which is considerably more harsh. Of course, that is a legal argument. The ethical argument is that a deal is a deal--if you aren't willing to accept the agreement, you shouldn't download the music--go buy a CD and rip it yourself.
Spidey's swinging isn't plausable, actually. The scenes where he turns corners are done well, and the scenes where he dangles from sticking-out-things are good, but the basic mode of transport doesn't make any sense. The way he's depicted as going down the straight streets, swinging from lines connected to the buildings on the sides, he should be smacking into the side walls at the bottoms of his swings. There is a way to make it with with alternating arcs weaving back and forth, but the way he's depicted as moving, he's not curving side-to-side enough to be doing that. I think this is why the camera often doesn't show what he's attaching his webs to when he goes straight down the street. If it showed what he was attaching to, it would make it obvious that the swing was happening on the wrong arc
The "Spiderman the Movie 2" videogame is interesting. In the earlier Spiderman games, the webs just attached somewhere up in the sky in limbo. But in the new game, the webs actually have to attach to buildings, and the swinging seems to be in realistic arcs. You don't have to choose the particular building, fortunately--you just point the joystick in the general direction, hit a button, and if there's a target, he'll shoot a web. You do have to choose when to let go of a web. Fortunately, you don't take damage from slamming into buildings, because you do a lot of that at first. I think they may still be cheating a bit on the physics (perhaps a little repulsion from the building at the bottom of a swing?), but I'm not sure. Swinging around a digital model of Manhattan is a blast (which is fortunate, since the rest of the game is pretty much crap).
In real life, tritium's a gas. It's not a metal at anything anywhere close to room temperature and one atmosphere.
Gee, I must have missed the pressure gauge on the side of the container.
Personally, I like the idea of trying to stabilize a fusion reaction by just poking it back every time it starts to go unstable...
Just to be fair, the physics of Doc Oc's arms seems to have been fairly well thought out. Whenever he's lifting something heavy with two arms, he's always got the other two providing him a reasonable base. This is fairly unusual--I often see "strong" characters in movies lifting things in a physically impossible manner. They also, in this movie and the previous one, manage to make Spidey's swinging look quite plausible, which is quite an accomplishment (although making that much web is another matter, as has been pointed out before)
The purpose of the program is to enable people to make fair use of tracks they've purchased. It's of no use without the purchased tracks.
That may or may not be the purpose of PlayFair. However, its function is to remove the DRM. Once the DRM is gone, I can play that track (if somebody gives it to me) whether or not I purchased it. This is what Apple's FairPlay DRM is designed to prevent. Note that even without PlayFair, I can convert Apple's songs to unprotected format with only a slight loss in quality by writing them to a CD-R and then re-ripping them, or by using the various utilities (which are widely available with no interference from Apple) that simulate this process without a physical CD. That seems more than adequate for "fair use," especially since iTunes store users explicitly agree to accept these restrictions before downloading songs. So PlayFair has no use other than to enable people to violate their user agreement with Apple. And it undermines Apple's efforts to make music downloads available with only token DRM. As long as Apple can say that iTunes songs cannot be widely copied in full quality, they will be able to maintain availability of most commercial music. If programs like PlayFair become widely available, Apple will either have to go to a more restrictive DRM, or will lose the ability to offer downloads at relatively low cost. That's why I say that the PlayFair guys are poisoning the well--which has nothing to do with whether it is open or closed source, or Apple's relationship with the rest of the open source community in general.
Apple really is a monopoly when it comes to hardware... want a new G5 with a single processor?
So if Chrysler won't sell you a battery powered PT Cruiser, does that make them a monopoly?
. . with the Open Source community. Just ask these guys [stargeek.com].
What's that have to do with the open source community? Perhaps you mean the cracker community? Apple's ability to obtain music for their iTunes shop depends upon their ability to convince the recording studios that their rather perfunctory DRM (which can be easily bypassed, without cracking anything, with only a modest loss in quality) is sufficient. These guys are poisoning the well.
because they lock you in on the hardware. Apple's business in on the hardware, not software.
And that may have something to do with their willingness to release many aspects of their OS as open source. What distinguishes the Apple "brand" and sells the hardware, after all, is not their tweaks to postfix, but their user interface. So they can treat their unix implementation as non-proprietary.