how much of their feature set revolved around music downloads? If they're going to use that as a primary feature, they're going to have to support several future proprietary secure music formats. Unless it's upgradable to these currently-unspecified standards, it may be seen as nothing more than a neat music piracy medium.
The rest of the features look great, but they sure talk about downloads a lot. That just doesn't seem like it's going to happen with large scale music distribution anytime soon, except of course peer to peer MP3 sharing.
You're right, I don't want ethnic differences to go away, I just don't think that going out of our way to point out these differences is very productive. The purpose of the census is to determine who gets what amount of money, and rather than that money being spread by need (for example), it is being influenced by people's faith, skin color, or ethnic background.
That just encourages divisions and barriers between the various groups. I'm 100% for diversity and I think healthy interaction between groups is great. Collecting government statistics about groups that are separated by only superficial differences, then making policy based on those statistics, just doesn't make any sense to me.
It's bad enough when one religious group feels the need to stomp on another group, and it's worse when the government goes out of it's way to highlight that the groups are, and always will be, exclusive separate parts.
My partial solution - make an honest effort to actually BELIEVE that we're all part of the same human race. Force our politicians to deal with us on that basis rather than on our faith or whatever other groupings they want to stick us in.
It's the same fight over race questions on census forms. I've been checking "other" and writing in "human" on surveys and other forms since age 14. That pisses the bean counters to no end, but I don't identify with any race/ethnic group OTHER than "human", so they can go fook themselves.
The only documents I've checked a predefined box on are documents that could have gotten me turned down for a security clearance or tossed in jail for failing to obey a direct order. But if they don't specifically tell me to check one specific box on any given form...
Other: Human
Begin Mushy Philosophy.
It's about time more people start identifying with ALL of their fellow humans, not just the few that come from the same place or look the same, or worship exactly the same. (What about running the same operating system?) That's one of the joys of working in the military... The diversity and "brotherhood" at work is rather refreshing after watching petty little race/ethnic/gang wars on TV every night.
End Mushy Philosophy, resume Rabble Rousing.
The Jedi thing down under is just another good step in the fight against the bean counters who feel the need to keep everyone in their separate little worlds, each with their separate, special needs. That kind of enforced stereotyping will keep racial/religious/ethnic groups at each others throats forever. Maybe that's what they want, because they have big government programs devoted to endlessly "solving" them forever? I simply can't believe that's the right answer.
...is identifying how we can pass the crisis-response knowledge on to the next generation of employees. One focus in US military exercises is not only on how each situation is dealt with, but how each person knows what to do in the first place. Rather than simply train each person from scratch then hoping they remember what to do under every single set of circumstances, the US Air Force often creates multi-purpose response checklists and "continuity" binders/folders that contain everything from basic response overviews to detailed information on how to deal with various problems. Saying "I'm not sure but the answer is written right *here*" is very nearly as good as having the answer memorized especially if the answer is available to everyone in the organization.
It's a huge pain in the a$$ to prepare this material but it helps insure that there's always SOMEONE around who knows what to do and there is a source of info to check when the crap hits the fan. A little investment in time to create these documents pays off in a big way, one incident at a time. These are living documents instead of regulations, so they are continually subject to improvement or even disposal if they become obsolete or something better comes along.
This kind of thing ought to work in the corporate world especially in a company where there is a measure of procedural inertia that carries on regardless of who is holding down each particular job.
At the risk of sounding slightly paranoid...
on
Is Law Copyrighted?
·
· Score: 1
This kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME with the US Government. Usually it is pork barrel spending provisions that get tacked onto other legitimate bills that the politicians want to hide from US citizens, but more and more politicians want people to shut up and consent to being governed without worrying about the gory details.
The usual claim is that a citizen's true voice is expressed in the voting booth where he or she votes for their representatives, but a true citizen's responsibility does not end there regardless of what they're told. It is very important to keep track of what your representatives actually do while in office.
This bit about copyrighting public law proposals is dishonest and outright dangerous in a constitutional republic like the United States. Any work or derivative from works done in public service must remain in the public domain. This needs to apply to any document that touches on our systems of government except in clear cases of national security (and then they should be subject to oversight.)
If they want to hide their proposals and bills, they're clearly trying to hide something or gain profit from keeping you ignorant. This is how things work in the corporate world, but it's a dangerous attitude when it comes to government. Fight back, find out how YOUR representatives vote.
Why couldn't NASA just have accepted the inevitable, and maybe tossed in a few experiments for Tito to help out on? Hook up a gizmawhatchit to his dinguszoib and see how many froobits he trings per hour while in space.
Or whatever, ANYTHING to make it so he isn't just a waste of space. Hell, if I was paying my way, I think it would be cool to get to do some real live research too. Just feeding the friggen mice would be neat.
Instead, Tito spent a few days in space and NASA got NOTHING (nada, zip, zilch) out of it except a big PR cream pie in the face for dragging their heels on the whole thing. What a buncha short sighted people.
Yes yes, I understand that in the lawsuit-happy US of A they would be liable if he was an "official" crew member and something bad happened, but we didn't get into space in the first place by being a bunch of wimps. As long as he's already there, give the guy something useful to do and get something back. That's what waivers are for anyhow.
As for Senator Glenn, I respect him and his accomplishments more than most people but in this case he's chasing the past.
Why can't they just chain together a bunch of potatos like that spudserver? They could get higher voltages and power density by slicing them thin and stacking them in a tube. Sure, it wouldn't last quite a week and they might need to pay the folks at Pringles for using their idea, but they could EAT the spuds if they got hungry so that would make up for it. I read somewhere on the internet that the military is working on a super high power laser defense system for it's portable kitchens that is powered entirely by army rations. Point defense AND it's tasty! I want to be an army cook just to get to shoot those lasers.
As a USAF pilot I see a lot of safety reports about JP4 and JP8, and it's amazing how unpredictable it can be. One aircraft lands safely with fuel pouring out of a broken fuel line, another lands flaming like a blowtorch. One guy gets away tossing a lit match into a bucket of JP8, another blows up himself and a hangar full of planes with a small static discharge spark during refuelling operations because he didn't ground himself properly and wasn't wearing approved clothing.
You're right of course, just being in combat is hazardous but we can at least try to minimize the risk level by minimizing as many self-induced threats as we can.
The amount of energy transferred from a modern rifle round is likely to be enough to ignite even methanol. Steel core bullets are commonly used and they can strike sparks (in addition to the impact energy they transfer) when they hit various materials.
The article also suggests that other fuels can be used including jet fuel, and this seems more likely as the soldiers could refill their fuel cells from the same source that refills tanks and other vehicles. It wouldn't be very efficient to require a brand new supply chain just for these fuel cells. Jet fuel also doesn't explode very easily (a common demonstration involves tossing a lit match into a bucket of jet fuel - it doesn't ignite), but tag a bottle full of the stuff with a high speed bullet and it will vaporize and ignite with a huge fireball. Methanol will do the same, and the trace amount of hydrogen present in the device may simply act as a trigger to ignite the rest of the stored fuel.
Of course, this is just quibbling. The point is that carrying liquid fuel is hazardous in a combat area.
Remember that warfare is "merely" the last step taken when non-violent diplomacy fails to produce the desired effects. War is just another political tool, and the way to reduce it's use is to modify the national objectives and political behaviors.
War is supposed to be the last resort when all else fails. With that as a starting argument, it only makes sense that the instruments of war are as efficient as possible to get the job done in as short a time as possible with a minimum of undesirable disruption to either side of the conflict. Reducing the tools of the world's military forces to knives and clubs (or fists and feet) would simply cause the conflicts to drag on endlessly. Better to get it over with so non-violent diplomacy can continue.
Don't hinder the "science of war", come up with better diplomatic alternatives so war isn't necessary. Then back it up with a really big stick.
A good flight sim takes all the cpu, memory, and video performance you can throw at it. The higher resolution you can get, the more detail you can get, the higher color depth, the better anti-aliasing, the more immersive and realistic the simulation will be. And it all has to run at or above around 20-30 frames per second, otherwise it's disorienting and the realism is ruined.
Flight sims will likely ALWAYS push the hardware envelope. The killer hardware for flightsims will be high-res 3D graphic capable VR goggles that can smoothly pan the view, but that is years away at the current pace of things.
In the meantime, try running the latest microsoft flight simulator with all the graphic details full up and at high resolution. Then get on the web and order up your next upgrade.
I'm certain that a bullet smacking the fuel cell will cause somewhat more concern than a bullet "merely" whizzing past or even striking a soldier's body armor. Body armor isn't proof against a liter or so of burning fuel. I'd expect the fuel cell to have some sort of containment system and it's own armor, but that's still a bunch of flammable goodness in your gear.
I'm sure the risk can be minimized to an acceptable level, but it will still remain a hazard. Considering that some soldiers were killed during Desert Storm by inadvertently injecting their own chem warfare antidote doses into their skulls when using their packs as pillows, these fuel cells had better be made extremely foolproof.
50 years is pretty optimistic for CD lifespans. I've found that after 2-3 years, a typical audio CDR blank will begin to show noticable degredation and after 5 years is sometimes completely unreadable due to internal corrosion or other faults, even using good quality CDR blanks.
Of course, factory burned CD's last much longer but we're talking about digital archives, and those are typically burned by individuals using some sort of CDR or CDRW blanks.
If someone ran Jon Katz through lzip, would anyone notice?
Or...
lzip 1.0 bug found - when I ran a Jon Katz article through lzip and the file size INCREASED. I suspect it has to do with an entire file being composed of worthless bits but I'm not sure.
Or...
The US Government has been using this for months now, witness speeches by the Pres...
Why do people assume it's a simple device just because it was easily assembled from parts that came in a few boxes? Nothing was said about the parts themselves, just that they assmbled easily.
A PC assembles easily, but I sure as heck can't come up with one in my workshop from a pile of sand, a tube of epoxy, and a couple blocks of aluminum and copper...
My Mom's company went cheapo and bought a bunch of A/V quality tapes instead of normal data quality tapes. They saved an enormous amount of money. Unfortunately the number of errors on the tapes doubled the backup time and made it impossible to restore.
Cheap is NOT the way to go for backups. Get quality backup media and use equipment with the best reliability you can find. Otherwise the time, effort, and money may be entirely wasted.
I found that the brighter colors made me flinch somewhat, which doubled my reaction times. Using dark slate gray, I got a.11 time, and the best I ever got with crimson was.22.
I did the test by hitting start, then clicking and holding stop so my mouse-click speed wasn't factored into my reaction time.
I wonder if a test could be made using a drag racing light setup, but with different colored lights, seeing if different colors could affect reaction times.
The problem with buying the computer with NT pre-installed then dumping it later on, is that you also are buying the service/support contract with Dell. I doubt that they would provide much support for someone who buys an NT computer then installs linux later on.
For the normal consumer it probably isn't a big deal, but for a company looking for a complete solution, it's a huge issue.
You're paying the monthly fee for the organized multiplayer aspects of the game. There are a few online simulations that charge hourly or monthly fees even though the GAME itself is a free download.
I'll gladly take real human opponents/allies over AI even if it means that I have to pay a subscription fee for access to the servers. AI killing got old several years ago, and most "multiplayer" games only offer up to 8 or so simultaneous players at one time. The pay to play multiplayer services offer (in some cases) over 200 people in one arena at any given time. The gameplay complexity goes waaaaay up when you get past about 30 players.
Informational freedom has nothing to do with it... The fee is (IMO) a reasonable charge for using the servers that make these "massively multiplayer" games possible. If you don't want to pay, you can always play some single player game by yourself. Also realize that the subscription fees generally pay for R&D towards the next game or version, benefitting the player in the future.
A law like this would likely have the same effect it's had on the auto industry... Any non-OEM parts installed can immediately void the warranty at any dealer's discretion. Buy a computer, upgrade the video card, and have the motherboard go sour, then they could say "you're not using our parts, too bad".
While I like the idea as far as it goes for replacing systems with intermittant hardware failures, any quality manufacturer or retailer already has a good customer service policy for this. My fear would be that all new computer purchasers would have to pay for the currently-optional extra year of hardware warranty coverage.
Both of my parents recently bought new computers... My Mom got a pretty fast Micron and my Dad got a near-top-end Dell. My Mom got approximately 20 hours free tech support to resolve some hardware compatibility issues (her scanner cause the whole computer to flake out until she got the drivers and resources figured out), and my Dad's wouldn't post so Dell immediately sent him a new computer without requiring him to first send back the original computer.
I fail to see how a lemon law could have further helped either of them, since both companies responded immediately and appropriately to get them up and running. Over the last 4 years, they both previously owned Gateway computers, and between the two of them they got over $800 in free parts under warranty (hard drives, power supplies, etc.) A lemon law certainly wouldn't have helped there either.
Slashdot Mirror
how much of their feature set revolved around music downloads? If they're going to use that as a primary feature, they're going to have to support several future proprietary secure music formats. Unless it's upgradable to these currently-unspecified standards, it may be seen as nothing more than a neat music piracy medium.
The rest of the features look great, but they sure talk about downloads a lot. That just doesn't seem like it's going to happen with large scale music distribution anytime soon, except of course peer to peer MP3 sharing.
You're right, I don't want ethnic differences to go away, I just don't think that going out of our way to point out these differences is very productive. The purpose of the census is to determine who gets what amount of money, and rather than that money being spread by need (for example), it is being influenced by people's faith, skin color, or ethnic background.
That just encourages divisions and barriers between the various groups. I'm 100% for diversity and I think healthy interaction between groups is great. Collecting government statistics about groups that are separated by only superficial differences, then making policy based on those statistics, just doesn't make any sense to me.
It's bad enough when one religious group feels the need to stomp on another group, and it's worse when the government goes out of it's way to highlight that the groups are, and always will be, exclusive separate parts.
My partial solution - make an honest effort to actually BELIEVE that we're all part of the same human race. Force our politicians to deal with us on that basis rather than on our faith or whatever other groupings they want to stick us in.
It's the same fight over race questions on census forms. I've been checking "other" and writing in "human" on surveys and other forms since age 14. That pisses the bean counters to no end, but I don't identify with any race/ethnic group OTHER than "human", so they can go fook themselves.
The only documents I've checked a predefined box on are documents that could have gotten me turned down for a security clearance or tossed in jail for failing to obey a direct order. But if they don't specifically tell me to check one specific box on any given form...
Other: Human
Begin Mushy Philosophy.
It's about time more people start identifying with ALL of their fellow humans, not just the few that come from the same place or look the same, or worship exactly the same. (What about running the same operating system?) That's one of the joys of working in the military... The diversity and "brotherhood" at work is rather refreshing after watching petty little race/ethnic/gang wars on TV every night.
End Mushy Philosophy, resume Rabble Rousing.
The Jedi thing down under is just another good step in the fight against the bean counters who feel the need to keep everyone in their separate little worlds, each with their separate, special needs. That kind of enforced stereotyping will keep racial/religious/ethnic groups at each others throats forever. Maybe that's what they want, because they have big government programs devoted to endlessly "solving" them forever? I simply can't believe that's the right answer.
...is identifying how we can pass the crisis-response knowledge on to the next generation of employees. One focus in US military exercises is not only on how each situation is dealt with, but how each person knows what to do in the first place. Rather than simply train each person from scratch then hoping they remember what to do under every single set of circumstances, the US Air Force often creates multi-purpose response checklists and "continuity" binders/folders that contain everything from basic response overviews to detailed information on how to deal with various problems. Saying "I'm not sure but the answer is written right *here*" is very nearly as good as having the answer memorized especially if the answer is available to everyone in the organization.
It's a huge pain in the a$$ to prepare this material but it helps insure that there's always SOMEONE around who knows what to do and there is a source of info to check when the crap hits the fan. A little investment in time to create these documents pays off in a big way, one incident at a time. These are living documents instead of regulations, so they are continually subject to improvement or even disposal if they become obsolete or something better comes along.
This kind of thing ought to work in the corporate world especially in a company where there is a measure of procedural inertia that carries on regardless of who is holding down each particular job.
This kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME with the US Government. Usually it is pork barrel spending provisions that get tacked onto other legitimate bills that the politicians want to hide from US citizens, but more and more politicians want people to shut up and consent to being governed without worrying about the gory details.
The usual claim is that a citizen's true voice is expressed in the voting booth where he or she votes for their representatives, but a true citizen's responsibility does not end there regardless of what they're told. It is very important to keep track of what your representatives actually do while in office.
This bit about copyrighting public law proposals is dishonest and outright dangerous in a constitutional republic like the United States. Any work or derivative from works done in public service must remain in the public domain. This needs to apply to any document that touches on our systems of government except in clear cases of national security (and then they should be subject to oversight.)
If they want to hide their proposals and bills, they're clearly trying to hide something or gain profit from keeping you ignorant. This is how things work in the corporate world, but it's a dangerous attitude when it comes to government. Fight back, find out how YOUR representatives vote.
Why couldn't NASA just have accepted the inevitable, and maybe tossed in a few experiments for Tito to help out on? Hook up a gizmawhatchit to his dinguszoib and see how many froobits he trings per hour while in space.
Or whatever, ANYTHING to make it so he isn't just a waste of space. Hell, if I was paying my way, I think it would be cool to get to do some real live research too. Just feeding the friggen mice would be neat.
Instead, Tito spent a few days in space and NASA got NOTHING (nada, zip, zilch) out of it except a big PR cream pie in the face for dragging their heels on the whole thing. What a buncha short sighted people.
Yes yes, I understand that in the lawsuit-happy US of A they would be liable if he was an "official" crew member and something bad happened, but we didn't get into space in the first place by being a bunch of wimps. As long as he's already there, give the guy something useful to do and get something back. That's what waivers are for anyhow.
As for Senator Glenn, I respect him and his accomplishments more than most people but in this case he's chasing the past.
Why can't they just chain together a bunch of potatos like that spudserver? They could get higher voltages and power density by slicing them thin and stacking them in a tube. Sure, it wouldn't last quite a week and they might need to pay the folks at Pringles for using their idea, but they could EAT the spuds if they got hungry so that would make up for it. I read somewhere on the internet that the military is working on a super high power laser defense system for it's portable kitchens that is powered entirely by army rations. Point defense AND it's tasty! I want to be an army cook just to get to shoot those lasers.
As a USAF pilot I see a lot of safety reports about JP4 and JP8, and it's amazing how unpredictable it can be. One aircraft lands safely with fuel pouring out of a broken fuel line, another lands flaming like a blowtorch. One guy gets away tossing a lit match into a bucket of JP8, another blows up himself and a hangar full of planes with a small static discharge spark during refuelling operations because he didn't ground himself properly and wasn't wearing approved clothing.
You're right of course, just being in combat is hazardous but we can at least try to minimize the risk level by minimizing as many self-induced threats as we can.
The amount of energy transferred from a modern rifle round is likely to be enough to ignite even methanol. Steel core bullets are commonly used and they can strike sparks (in addition to the impact energy they transfer) when they hit various materials.
The article also suggests that other fuels can be used including jet fuel, and this seems more likely as the soldiers could refill their fuel cells from the same source that refills tanks and other vehicles. It wouldn't be very efficient to require a brand new supply chain just for these fuel cells. Jet fuel also doesn't explode very easily (a common demonstration involves tossing a lit match into a bucket of jet fuel - it doesn't ignite), but tag a bottle full of the stuff with a high speed bullet and it will vaporize and ignite with a huge fireball. Methanol will do the same, and the trace amount of hydrogen present in the device may simply act as a trigger to ignite the rest of the stored fuel.
Of course, this is just quibbling. The point is that carrying liquid fuel is hazardous in a combat area.
Remember that warfare is "merely" the last step taken when non-violent diplomacy fails to produce the desired effects. War is just another political tool, and the way to reduce it's use is to modify the national objectives and political behaviors.
War is supposed to be the last resort when all else fails. With that as a starting argument, it only makes sense that the instruments of war are as efficient as possible to get the job done in as short a time as possible with a minimum of undesirable disruption to either side of the conflict. Reducing the tools of the world's military forces to knives and clubs (or fists and feet) would simply cause the conflicts to drag on endlessly. Better to get it over with so non-violent diplomacy can continue.
Don't hinder the "science of war", come up with better diplomatic alternatives so war isn't necessary. Then back it up with a really big stick.
Flight Simulations
A good flight sim takes all the cpu, memory, and video performance you can throw at it. The higher resolution you can get, the more detail you can get, the higher color depth, the better anti-aliasing, the more immersive and realistic the simulation will be. And it all has to run at or above around 20-30 frames per second, otherwise it's disorienting and the realism is ruined.
Flight sims will likely ALWAYS push the hardware envelope. The killer hardware for flightsims will be high-res 3D graphic capable VR goggles that can smoothly pan the view, but that is years away at the current pace of things.
In the meantime, try running the latest microsoft flight simulator with all the graphic details full up and at high resolution. Then get on the web and order up your next upgrade.
I'm certain that a bullet smacking the fuel cell will cause somewhat more concern than a bullet "merely" whizzing past or even striking a soldier's body armor. Body armor isn't proof against a liter or so of burning fuel. I'd expect the fuel cell to have some sort of containment system and it's own armor, but that's still a bunch of flammable goodness in your gear.
I'm sure the risk can be minimized to an acceptable level, but it will still remain a hazard. Considering that some soldiers were killed during Desert Storm by inadvertently injecting their own chem warfare antidote doses into their skulls when using their packs as pillows, these fuel cells had better be made extremely foolproof.
50 years is pretty optimistic for CD lifespans. I've found that after 2-3 years, a typical audio CDR blank will begin to show noticable degredation and after 5 years is sometimes completely unreadable due to internal corrosion or other faults, even using good quality CDR blanks.
Of course, factory burned CD's last much longer but we're talking about digital archives, and those are typically burned by individuals using some sort of CDR or CDRW blanks.
If someone ran Jon Katz through lzip, would anyone notice?
Or...
lzip 1.0 bug found - when I ran a Jon Katz article through lzip and the file size INCREASED. I suspect it has to do with an entire file being composed of worthless bits but I'm not sure.
Or...
The US Government has been using this for months now, witness speeches by the Pres...
They should patent the idea especially if they can figure out some way to make Amazon.com give them money as a result.
Has RaMbUs sued you yet?
Followup: If so, do they want the death of Nvidia or just your firstborn sons?
Sounds like they're talking about tech support licenses for specific releases by specific companies.
Why do people assume it's a simple device just because it was easily assembled from parts that came in a few boxes? Nothing was said about the parts themselves, just that they assmbled easily.
A PC assembles easily, but I sure as heck can't come up with one in my workshop from a pile of sand, a tube of epoxy, and a couple blocks of aluminum and copper...
My Mom's company went cheapo and bought a bunch of A/V quality tapes instead of normal data quality tapes. They saved an enormous amount of money. Unfortunately the number of errors on the tapes doubled the backup time and made it impossible to restore.
Cheap is NOT the way to go for backups. Get quality backup media and use equipment with the best reliability you can find. Otherwise the time, effort, and money may be entirely wasted.
I found that the brighter colors made me flinch somewhat, which doubled my reaction times. Using dark slate gray, I got a .11 time, and the best I ever got with crimson was .22.
I did the test by hitting start, then clicking and holding stop so my mouse-click speed wasn't factored into my reaction time.
I wonder if a test could be made using a drag racing light setup, but with different colored lights, seeing if different colors could affect reaction times.
Spell Checker
Very interesting topic and quite an informative article, but it took me 2 minutes to figure out what "no diplay" meant.
The problem with buying the computer with NT pre-installed then dumping it later on, is that you also are buying the service/support contract with Dell. I doubt that they would provide much support for someone who buys an NT computer then installs linux later on.
For the normal consumer it probably isn't a big deal, but for a company looking for a complete solution, it's a huge issue.
You're paying the monthly fee for the organized multiplayer aspects of the game. There are a few online simulations that charge hourly or monthly fees even though the GAME itself is a free download.
I'll gladly take real human opponents/allies over AI even if it means that I have to pay a subscription fee for access to the servers. AI killing got old several years ago, and most "multiplayer" games only offer up to 8 or so simultaneous players at one time. The pay to play multiplayer services offer (in some cases) over 200 people in one arena at any given time. The gameplay complexity goes waaaaay up when you get past about 30 players.
Informational freedom has nothing to do with it... The fee is (IMO) a reasonable charge for using the servers that make these "massively multiplayer" games possible. If you don't want to pay, you can always play some single player game by yourself. Also realize that the subscription fees generally pay for R&D towards the next game or version, benefitting the player in the future.
*bzzzt* he was talking about audio (his references to the big echo dishes and modems) not RF.
*bzzzt*
*bzzzzt*
I get debate points for typing *bzzzt*, right?
A law like this would likely have the same effect it's had on the auto industry... Any non-OEM parts installed can immediately void the warranty at any dealer's discretion. Buy a computer, upgrade the video card, and have the motherboard go sour, then they could say "you're not using our parts, too bad".
While I like the idea as far as it goes for replacing systems with intermittant hardware failures, any quality manufacturer or retailer already has a good customer service policy for this. My fear would be that all new computer purchasers would have to pay for the currently-optional extra year of hardware warranty coverage.
Both of my parents recently bought new computers... My Mom got a pretty fast Micron and my Dad got a near-top-end Dell. My Mom got approximately 20 hours free tech support to resolve some hardware compatibility issues (her scanner cause the whole computer to flake out until she got the drivers and resources figured out), and my Dad's wouldn't post so Dell immediately sent him a new computer without requiring him to first send back the original computer.
I fail to see how a lemon law could have further helped either of them, since both companies responded immediately and appropriately to get them up and running. Over the last 4 years, they both previously owned Gateway computers, and between the two of them they got over $800 in free parts under warranty (hard drives, power supplies, etc.) A lemon law certainly wouldn't have helped there either.