The average person may not be able (or willing to take the time) to personally evaluate the mathematics and evidence that support scientific theories, but that does not reduce their second-hand understanding to "faith."
I know very little about auto mechanics, but I can tell the difference between a real mechanic and a guy who believes that automobiles run by by the will of God, because when my car breaks down, I can take it to the first guy and he'll fix it, while the second one cannot. Based upon that evidence, I conclude that the first guy has a better understanding of how cars work than the second guy, and therefore that the information he imparts to me on that topic is more likely to be correct. When I make such a judgment about whether somebody is an "authority," I am not making it based upon faith; rather, I am evaluating the evidence in the same way that I would evaluate the results of a scientific experiment. I am looking at the outcome to test a theory as to the level of knowledge of the repairman.
And of course, we are surrounded by such evidence. When we play a CD, we are testing the theory that physicists and engineers have sufficient understanding of sound, laser light, and semiconductors to be able to encode and retrieve music. When we use a GPS, we are testing (along with many other things) whether physicists understand gravity and motion.
Of course, studies of this sort don't actually study criminal violence. Invariably, they study some other behavior which is taken to be a proxy for violence--aggressive play, for example, or in this case, answers to questions that are presumed to measure "moral reasoning."
Balanced against these behavioral studies under highly artificial conditions, we have the incontrovertible fact that as video games have massively increased in popularity, particularly among the demographic (young males) that is responsible for most violence, and as the realism of game violence has increased dramatically, the incidence of real-world violence has declined dramatically.
Of course, that is merely association. We cannot conclude that the inverse relationship between videogame violence and actual violence reflects an anti-violence effect of videogaming. What we can conclude is that any hypothetical pro-violence effect of videogames must be so small as to be completely swamped by other social, economic, or cultural factors impacting the incidence of violent crime.
Which raises the question: why is there so much research effort, and research funding, being directed toward a "problem" that either does not exist in the real world, or else is negligible compared to other factors? Is this merely another manifestation of the perpetual suspicion of an older generation that any activity that children engage in, but their parents did not, must necessarily be harmful?
And if I tell you that when you use their cloud service, you're giving them exactly that?
You wouldn't be telling me anything that I didn't already know. But the point is that it's my information, not the record company's, and I can give it away or sell it as I choose.
That's the problem. They get exactly that, without paying you the $1000 at all -- let alone per song.
The $1000 per song is for exclusive rights, which would prohibit me from selling that information or using a similar cloud service from another vendor, such as Apple.
you missed the point. amazon gets your usage data regarding the music. That's something that no drive vendor gets. that has real value. and it's not something that's yours to give away. some of it is, but not all of it. not the group aggregate actually. that's property of the music owner -- usually the artist or publisher.
That's ridiculous. I've not signed away my rights to information about my own behavior. A music vendor only has rights to my usage data if they pay me for it. For exclusive access to that information, my price is $1,000 per song. So far, nobody has been lining up to buy. Until such time as I sign away exclusive rights to information about me, that information is mine to do with as I wish. I can certainly trade it to Amazon in return for online storage (although in point of fact, Amazon already has some of that information, since I buy most of my music through Amazon).
The 3D isn't actually anything amazing or powerful. It's a parallax barrier and the LCD hardware simple shifts even and odd horizontal lines so they get focused on your left and right eyes separately, and then simply display an offset image to each eye, simulating exactly how your eyes perceive depth in the real world.
To display 3D the system has to calculate and render each frame twice, from two slightly different vantage points. So effectively, it is running at double the nominal frame rate. In addition, to maintain screen brightness when each eye is getting only half the light, the backlight needs to be twice as bright, which also consumes more power.
Hardware outclassed? Dual displays, touch and glasses-free 3D; accelerometer; 3D camera. Which competitor even comes close to matching those hardware features?
If Amazon takes your music and sells it to somebody else, then they are violating copyright. But they have no reason to do that, because they are a digital music store--they already have copies of all of your music--they don't need yours. If they simply provide online storage of the music you have bought (which you own, even though the law limits what you can do with it, just as it limits what you can do with your car or your gun), then they are simply acting in the role of a hard drive vendor. The only difference is where the hard drive resides. Amazon makes no profit from the hard drive storage, unless you purchase more from them (in which case they are providing the same capability as a hard drive vendor). So the free storage serves their business model in that it enhances the value of what they do sell (i.e. music), and it acts as a free sample to interest customers in their paid storage plans.
It's a part of their business model, and their business model makes money.
And a hard drive manufacturer's business model depends upon making money from people storing their data (of which digital music is for most people a large part).
Conflicting cues are nothing new. When you watch a movie, perspective cues tell you that what you are seeing is some distance "behind" the screen, but you have to focus on the screen. Worse, sometimes an object appears "out of focus" on the screen. In the real world, you can bring it into focus by adjusting the focus of your eyes, but on the movie screen that doesn't work.
Moreover, many people have eyes for which the focus doesn't work properly. That's why we wear glasses; we are physically unable to focus our eyes at the point at which our eyes converge. But if I take off my glasses, nothing terrible happens to me--it just makes things look a little blurry.
I'm sure that there are some people who find the sensation of a difference in focus and convergence to be uncomfortable, particularly when the binocular disparity is large (as in exaggerated 3D films that try to poke things "out of the screen" right in your face), but most people tolerate it well for an hour or two, and there's no reason to expect any lasting ill effects.
Any movie or game in which the point of view is moving "tricks your brain" into thinking that you are moving when you actually or not. This includes most movies and all "first person" video games. A 3D game may or may not do this. In many 3D games, the point of view is static, so all it does is "trick your brain" into thinking that you are seeing 3D objects moving around while you are sitting still--which you actually are. I'm fairly sensitive to motion sickness, and occasionally have experienced mild motion sickness from "first person" games. Just like motion sickness from riding in a vehicle, it goes away pretty rapidly when I stop. So far, I've had no ill effects from playing 3DS games for a couple of hours or so. I ignored Nintendo's "take a rest every half hour" warning--if I start to feel uncomfortable, I'll stop for a while, just like any sensible person. So far, it hasn't happened. The warning about children is not based on any actual science, and it is unlikely that there is any actual risk. It's a bit like the warning that video games can cause seizures--it gives Nintendo some legal protection against the inevitable eventuality that somebody will blame Nintendo because his kid needs glasses.
My hypothesis is that you don't need enough energy to cook the whole body. But if there's enough energy to be picked up by a base station hundreds of metres away, then surely it's enough to affect things that are a few centimetres away, in some subtle way. Perhaps like old tooth fillings that could receive radio, maybe a type of molecule inside nerves recieves enough energy to irritate said nerves. It might be completely harmless, but it still hurts.
Biology is not electronics. Electronic circuits don't exist in a sea of water and other molecules rattling about in solution and exchanging substantial amounts of kinetic energy. Electronic devices like cell phones are specifically designed to use energy to detect and amplify weak signals containing tiny amounts of energy. Biology can build some pretty sensitive detectors as well; the eye is capable of detecting a single quantum of light. It employes a specialized system of proteins designed to exploit biological energy stores to respond by the tiny amount of energy required merely to twist (not even break) a molecular bond. But the eye doesn't respond to radio-frequency energy, because even that remarkably sensitive biosensor requires more energy than that contained in a radio-frequency quantum.
Is it possible that a biological system could construct a radio frequency sensor capable of responding to the tiny amounts of energy in radio frequency quanta? Probably. As a biologist, I can't imagine how it could work, but evolution has accomplished many remarkable things. But it's unlikely to happen by accident--we can see light because there is a strong evolutionary advantage to it, driving the refinement of visual sensitivity. So yes, it's probably possible, but it's extraordinarily unlikely. On the other hand, psychosomatic reactions are well documented, not just possible but common. So absent very compelling evidence--the sort of study that I described--a reasonable person will conclude that your symptoms are almost certainly psychosomatic.
I definitely get affected by mobile phone radiation, and it’s not psychosomatic. And when pain happens, then that’s usually a signal that something is not right. And there are too many other people who claim to be affected to simply dismiss it. And, we tend to describe very similar symptoms.
Sorry, but a claim of adverse effects from a mobile phone is so remarkable that you need much something stronger than anecdotal, "A few times I didn't feel the pain, and then I realized that the phone was off."
The key problem is that the amount of energy in a cell phone photon is low relative to the average thermal energy of the molecules in your body that are constantly rattling around and smacking into one another. So it is very, very hard to think of a plausible mechanism for them to cause damage, short of pumping so much radio-frequency energy into your body that you start to cook.
So frankly, the probability that your pain is psychosomatic is much, much higher than the probability that it is a real effect of the phone. And relying upon whether or not you have conscious recollection of whether you turned your phone off to answer the question is absurd. For one thing, the fact that you don't consciously remember doing something does not mean that no part of your brain remembers it, and there is also the problem of selective recollection and observation (are you equally likely to check whether your phone is off if you do experience discomfort?).
Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. So what would be required to test your claim? You'd need a placebo phone that was identical in every respect to the real one, except that it didn't broadcast. It would have to generate the same amount of heat as a real phone. And of course, you couldn't be permitted to make calls, since that would be a dead giveaway. Probably the best would be a couple of featureless boxes, one broadcasting on the cell phone frequency and one not. The person who gave you your "phone for the day" would also have to be "blind" to which phone is which.
Not to mention that a 3D system has to do twice as much perspective calculation to render the image, as it has to generate two full images, one for each eye, for each frame.
Interesting how the thread topic has slipped. When the initial criticism, "Apple...has typically been last in transitioning to new technology" was pointed out to be not merely false, but flagrantly so (Apple not only has not been last, but in terms of transitioning, they have tended to lead the pack in abandoning old tech), those looking for some excuse to pick on Apple pretend that the question was whether whether Apple was first to use new technology.
Sulfur emissions were holding the temperature down, but that was when CO2 was lower. The amount of sulfur necessary to limit the temperature rise from anticipated CO2 levels would be pretty harmful. We may have to resort to some form of geoengineering in the end, considering that so far, efforts to limit rising CO2 have been far short of what is needed, but it would be a very dangerous game.
A lot of misleading statements here. Unfortunately, there are some very wealthy interests that stand to lose from efforts to control CO2, and spend a lot of money spreading misinformation. Scientists end up having to play "whack-a-mole," constantly refuting well-known falsehoods
Articles on his blog (which sometimes reads more like a scientific journal) show that rural stations often show no warming at all - at least, until they have been appropriately "adjusted" (using methods that are generally not released).
the planet has in the past been warmer than today - in that sense, the recent warming is not "unprecedented", and finally (d) millions of years ago CO2 levels were much, much higher than today, so a higher CO2 level is also not unprecedented.
This is entirely a strawman, as no scientist has ever claimed that modern warming or high CO2 is unprecedented in the history of the planet--what is without precedent is the enormous numbers of people living in areas that will be massively impacted by changes in sea level, or huge numbers of people being dependent upon reliable an
Except that the clear, objective data show the temperature rise LEADING the CO2 level increases.
It is an elementary error to expect CO2 to necessarily lead temperature increases, as there is a mutual positive feedback between temperature and atmospheric CO2, and there are also other factors influencing temperature. Correct attribution of changes in global temperature requires accounting of all factors impacting temperature, including solar radiation, volcanic eruptions, and human particulate pollution as well as CO2 pollution. When this accounting is done, the data show that the modern rise in CO2 is responsible for most of the modern temperature increase. Citations may be found here
Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas, but it is not a big problem (unless something destabilizes ocean methane clathrates) because it does not persist in the atmosphere nearly as long as CO2
Common sense is a poor guide to systems of any complexity. This includes the effects of CO2 on living organisms as well as on climate. CO2 is not poisonous at concentrations projected under any remotely plausible scenario, and CO2 in the atmosphere is essential to life on earth.
On the other hand, there is a wealth of significant, clear, objective data that indicates that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will result in global warming (and indeed, has already done so), and there is strong reason to believe that the increased warmth will lead to massive costs, both in terms of money and in terms of harming the well-being of huge numbers of people.
We've run Mac OS Server for years using Mac tower hardware. While I was sorry to see the XServe go (we were thinking of buying one), pretty much any Mac, equipped with a good backup system, will function well as a server for a small business or moderate size workgroup.
Cancer survival is highly uncertain. Some people beat the averages by many years. Investors already know that Jobs probably is not going to be personally micromanaging Apple for many years longer. Those who think that is critical in the near term have already sold their stock. The value of the additional knowledge given to investors who hope to "time the market" in order to maximally profit from Jobs's death or permanent retirement (or more optimistically, his return to full-time management status) hardly justifies the invasion of his privacy.
I asked you to point out where Apple announced this. Needless to say, an article on a rumor site (and quoting a non-Apple source) does not qualify as an Apple announcement.
There has been some speculation in the news, but I think it's mistaken. At present, we have only Sony's side of the story of why their app was rejected. Apple declined comment, except to note that the rules had not changed. The only clarification to the rules since then is the one Apple just issued, and it refers specifically to subscriptions rather than books.
As to Sony's app, there is a long history of apps being initially rejected, accompanied by overheated media speculation that Apple was moving to lock out a competitor (remember Google Voice?), only to have the app approved after only minor changes.
If you were following the thread, the claim was, "Apple already made the same changes to their InApp Purchases requirements with the same 30% cut to Apple if purchased via the InApp Purchase, and that they have to offer the same price via their own website and through the Apple Store."
As of yesterday, that is false. None of the reports I've seen and nothing I've found on Apple's web sites indicate that the new rules are being delayed until June (perhaps you can point out where Apple announced this?), but in any case, the new rule is limited to subscriptions and new customers. So it looks like the claim that Apple is trying to grab a share of Amazon's book/Kindle sales is also untrue.
Slashdot Mirror
The average person may not be able (or willing to take the time) to personally evaluate the mathematics and evidence that support scientific theories, but that does not reduce their second-hand understanding to "faith."
I know very little about auto mechanics, but I can tell the difference between a real mechanic and a guy who believes that automobiles run by by the will of God, because when my car breaks down, I can take it to the first guy and he'll fix it, while the second one cannot. Based upon that evidence, I conclude that the first guy has a better understanding of how cars work than the second guy, and therefore that the information he imparts to me on that topic is more likely to be correct. When I make such a judgment about whether somebody is an "authority," I am not making it based upon faith; rather, I am evaluating the evidence in the same way that I would evaluate the results of a scientific experiment. I am looking at the outcome to test a theory as to the level of knowledge of the repairman.
And of course, we are surrounded by such evidence. When we play a CD, we are testing the theory that physicists and engineers have sufficient understanding of sound, laser light, and semiconductors to be able to encode and retrieve music. When we use a GPS, we are testing (along with many other things) whether physicists understand gravity and motion.
Of course, studies of this sort don't actually study criminal violence. Invariably, they study some other behavior which is taken to be a proxy for violence--aggressive play, for example, or in this case, answers to questions that are presumed to measure "moral reasoning."
Balanced against these behavioral studies under highly artificial conditions, we have the incontrovertible fact that as video games have massively increased in popularity, particularly among the demographic (young males) that is responsible for most violence, and as the realism of game violence has increased dramatically, the incidence of real-world violence has declined dramatically.
Of course, that is merely association. We cannot conclude that the inverse relationship between videogame violence and actual violence reflects an anti-violence effect of videogaming. What we can conclude is that any hypothetical pro-violence effect of videogames must be so small as to be completely swamped by other social, economic, or cultural factors impacting the incidence of violent crime.
Which raises the question: why is there so much research effort, and research funding, being directed toward a "problem" that either does not exist in the real world, or else is negligible compared to other factors? Is this merely another manifestation of the perpetual suspicion of an older generation that any activity that children engage in, but their parents did not, must necessarily be harmful?
You wouldn't be telling me anything that I didn't already know. But the point is that it's my information, not the record company's, and I can give it away or sell it as I choose.
The $1000 per song is for exclusive rights, which would prohibit me from selling that information or using a similar cloud service from another vendor, such as Apple.
That's ridiculous. I've not signed away my rights to information about my own behavior. A music vendor only has rights to my usage data if they pay me for it. For exclusive access to that information, my price is $1,000 per song. So far, nobody has been lining up to buy. Until such time as I sign away exclusive rights to information about me, that information is mine to do with as I wish. I can certainly trade it to Amazon in return for online storage (although in point of fact, Amazon already has some of that information, since I buy most of my music through Amazon).
To display 3D the system has to calculate and render each frame twice, from two slightly different vantage points. So effectively, it is running at double the nominal frame rate. In addition, to maintain screen brightness when each eye is getting only half the light, the backlight needs to be twice as bright, which also consumes more power.
I haven't seen these problems, even before I installed the update.
Hardware outclassed?
Dual displays, touch and glasses-free 3D; accelerometer; 3D camera.
Which competitor even comes close to matching those hardware features?
If Amazon takes your music and sells it to somebody else, then they are violating copyright.
But they have no reason to do that, because they are a digital music store--they already have copies of all of your music--they don't need yours.
If they simply provide online storage of the music you have bought (which you own, even though the law limits what you can do with it, just as it limits what you can do with your car or your gun), then they are simply acting in the role of a hard drive vendor. The only difference is where the hard drive resides.
Amazon makes no profit from the hard drive storage, unless you purchase more from them (in which case they are providing the same capability as a hard drive vendor). So the free storage serves their business model in that it enhances the value of what they do sell (i.e. music), and it acts as a free sample to interest customers in their paid storage plans.
And a hard drive manufacturer's business model depends upon making money from people storing their data (of which digital music is for most people a large part).
Conflicting cues are nothing new. When you watch a movie, perspective cues tell you that what you are seeing is some distance "behind" the screen, but you have to focus on the screen. Worse, sometimes an object appears "out of focus" on the screen. In the real world, you can bring it into focus by adjusting the focus of your eyes, but on the movie screen that doesn't work.
Moreover, many people have eyes for which the focus doesn't work properly. That's why we wear glasses; we are physically unable to focus our eyes at the point at which our eyes converge. But if I take off my glasses, nothing terrible happens to me--it just makes things look a little blurry.
I'm sure that there are some people who find the sensation of a difference in focus and convergence to be uncomfortable, particularly when the binocular disparity is large (as in exaggerated 3D films that try to poke things "out of the screen" right in your face), but most people tolerate it well for an hour or two, and there's no reason to expect any lasting ill effects.
Any movie or game in which the point of view is moving "tricks your brain" into thinking that you are moving when you actually or not. This includes most movies and all "first person" video games. A 3D game may or may not do this. In many 3D games, the point of view is static, so all it does is "trick your brain" into thinking that you are seeing 3D objects moving around while you are sitting still--which you actually are. I'm fairly sensitive to motion sickness, and occasionally have experienced mild motion sickness from "first person" games. Just like motion sickness from riding in a vehicle, it goes away pretty rapidly when I stop. So far, I've had no ill effects from playing 3DS games for a couple of hours or so. I ignored Nintendo's "take a rest every half hour" warning--if I start to feel uncomfortable, I'll stop for a while, just like any sensible person. So far, it hasn't happened. The warning about children is not based on any actual science, and it is unlikely that there is any actual risk. It's a bit like the warning that video games can cause seizures--it gives Nintendo some legal protection against the inevitable eventuality that somebody will blame Nintendo because his kid needs glasses.
Biology is not electronics. Electronic circuits don't exist in a sea of water and other molecules rattling about in solution and exchanging substantial amounts of kinetic energy. Electronic devices like cell phones are specifically designed to use energy to detect and amplify weak signals containing tiny amounts of energy. Biology can build some pretty sensitive detectors as well; the eye is capable of detecting a single quantum of light. It employes a specialized system of proteins designed to exploit biological energy stores to respond by the tiny amount of energy required merely to twist (not even break) a molecular bond. But the eye doesn't respond to radio-frequency energy, because even that remarkably sensitive biosensor requires more energy than that contained in a radio-frequency quantum.
Is it possible that a biological system could construct a radio frequency sensor capable of responding to the tiny amounts of energy in radio frequency quanta? Probably. As a biologist, I can't imagine how it could work, but evolution has accomplished many remarkable things. But it's unlikely to happen by accident--we can see light because there is a strong evolutionary advantage to it, driving the refinement of visual sensitivity. So yes, it's probably possible, but it's extraordinarily unlikely. On the other hand, psychosomatic reactions are well documented, not just possible but common. So absent very compelling evidence--the sort of study that I described--a reasonable person will conclude that your symptoms are almost certainly psychosomatic.
Sorry, but a claim of adverse effects from a mobile phone is so remarkable that you need much something stronger than anecdotal, "A few times I didn't feel the pain, and then I realized that the phone was off."
The key problem is that the amount of energy in a cell phone photon is low relative to the average thermal energy of the molecules in your body that are constantly rattling around and smacking into one another. So it is very, very hard to think of a plausible mechanism for them to cause damage, short of pumping so much radio-frequency energy into your body that you start to cook.
So frankly, the probability that your pain is psychosomatic is much, much higher than the probability that it is a real effect of the phone. And relying upon whether or not you have conscious recollection of whether you turned your phone off to answer the question is absurd. For one thing, the fact that you don't consciously remember doing something does not mean that no part of your brain remembers it, and there is also the problem of selective recollection and observation (are you equally likely to check whether your phone is off if you do experience discomfort?).
Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. So what would be required to test your claim? You'd need a placebo phone that was identical in every respect to the real one, except that it didn't broadcast. It would have to generate the same amount of heat as a real phone. And of course, you couldn't be permitted to make calls, since that would be a dead giveaway. Probably the best would be a couple of featureless boxes, one broadcasting on the cell phone frequency and one not. The person who gave you your "phone for the day" would also have to be "blind" to which phone is which.
Not to mention that a 3D system has to do twice as much perspective calculation to render the image, as it has to generate two full images, one for each eye, for each frame.
Interesting how the thread topic has slipped. When the initial criticism, "Apple...has typically been last in transitioning to new technology" was pointed out to be not merely false, but flagrantly so (Apple not only has not been last, but in terms of transitioning, they have tended to lead the pack in abandoning old tech), those looking for some excuse to pick on Apple pretend that the question was whether whether Apple was first to use new technology.
Sulfur emissions were holding the temperature down, but that was when CO2 was lower. The amount of sulfur necessary to limit the temperature rise from anticipated CO2 levels would be pretty harmful. We may have to resort to some form of geoengineering in the end, considering that so far, efforts to limit rising CO2 have been far short of what is needed, but it would be a very dangerous game.
A lot of misleading statements here. Unfortunately, there are some very wealthy interests that stand to lose from efforts to control CO2, and spend a lot of money spreading misinformation. Scientists end up having to play "whack-a-mole," constantly refuting well-known falsehoods
False. Analysis of stations that (according to Watts) were found to be well sited and not subject to urban heat island effects show the same increasing temperature trend, indicating that correction for urban heat island effects (by methods which have been published) cannot account for the warming trend. Independent analysis has multiply replicated these results. Moreover, satellite measurements, which are not subject to this bias, show the same trend.
False. Arctic warming is not merely a "presumption;" it is supported by multiple lines of evidence, including measurements of loss of arctic ice and satellite data.. And the antarctic, far from being "presumed" to be warming, is predicted from climate models to be relatively slow to respond to global warming trends, and the best way to estimate precisely how temperatures are changing in various regions of Antarctica, based upon satellite as well as weather station data, is a matter of active ongoing debate in the scientific literature.
However the scientific evidence shows clearly that the current warming is not due to the "solar cycle."
There are multiple factors impacting global temperatures over the past 200 years, of which CO2 is only one, so one cannot naively simply ask "which came first?" Correct accounting must take into account all factors, including changes in solar irradiance, human particulate pollution, volcanic eruptions, and human CO2 pollution.When all of these are taken into account, CO2 is found to be the cause of the modern warming trend.
This is entirely a strawman, as no scientist has ever claimed that modern warming or high CO2 is unprecedented in the history of the planet--what is without precedent is the enormous numbers of people living in areas that will be massively impacted by changes in sea level, or huge numbers of people being dependent upon reliable an
It is an elementary error to expect CO2 to necessarily lead temperature increases, as there is a mutual positive feedback between temperature and atmospheric CO2, and there are also other factors influencing temperature. Correct attribution of changes in global temperature requires accounting of all factors impacting temperature, including solar radiation, volcanic eruptions, and human particulate pollution as well as CO2 pollution. When this accounting is done, the data show that the modern rise in CO2 is responsible for most of the modern temperature increase. Citations may be found here
Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas, but it is not a big problem (unless something destabilizes ocean methane clathrates) because it does not persist in the atmosphere nearly as long as CO2
Common sense is a poor guide to systems of any complexity. This includes the effects of CO2 on living organisms as well as on climate. CO2 is not poisonous at concentrations projected under any remotely plausible scenario, and CO2 in the atmosphere is essential to life on earth.
On the other hand, there is a wealth of significant, clear, objective data that indicates that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will result in global warming (and indeed, has already done so), and there is strong reason to believe that the increased warmth will lead to massive costs, both in terms of money and in terms of harming the well-being of huge numbers of people.
We've run Mac OS Server for years using Mac tower hardware. While I was sorry to see the XServe go (we were thinking of buying one), pretty much any Mac, equipped with a good backup system, will function well as a server for a small business or moderate size workgroup.
Cancer survival is highly uncertain. Some people beat the averages by many years. Investors already know that Jobs probably is not going to be personally micromanaging Apple for many years longer. Those who think that is critical in the near term have already sold their stock. The value of the additional knowledge given to investors who hope to "time the market" in order to maximally profit from Jobs's death or permanent retirement (or more optimistically, his return to full-time management status) hardly justifies the invasion of his privacy.
I asked you to point out where Apple announced this. Needless to say, an article on a rumor site (and quoting a non-Apple source) does not qualify as an Apple announcement.
There has been some speculation in the news, but I think it's mistaken. At present, we have only Sony's side of the story of why their app was rejected. Apple declined comment, except to note that the rules had not changed. The only clarification to the rules since then is the one Apple just issued, and it refers specifically to subscriptions rather than books.
As to Sony's app, there is a long history of apps being initially rejected, accompanied by overheated media speculation that Apple was moving to lock out a competitor (remember Google Voice?), only to have the app approved after only minor changes.
If you were following the thread, the claim was, "Apple already made the same changes to their InApp Purchases requirements with the same 30% cut to Apple if purchased via the InApp Purchase, and that they have to offer the same price via their own website and through the Apple Store."
As of yesterday, that is false. None of the reports I've seen and nothing I've found on Apple's web sites indicate that the new rules are being delayed until June (perhaps you can point out where Apple announced this?), but in any case, the new rule is limited to subscriptions and new customers. So it looks like the claim that Apple is trying to grab a share of Amazon's book/Kindle sales is also untrue.