I'm sure the laws are different state to state (and I don't know what they are in CA), but I'd be willing to believe that yes, you could be jailed because you're taking advantage of someone else's screwup.
To draw an analogy, you walk into the bank and there's a pile of $100 bills sitting on the counter. The armored car driver screwed up and left them there. You take them. Is it not stealing because somebody at the bank screwed up?
If you forget to lock your car and leave the keys in the ignition and I drive off with it, do I get to keep your car because you screwed up?
...and all of those things are usually advertised. Also, a "First Time Deposit Bonus" might make sense if you did it once. After the second or third time it came up, you can probably assume that something is amiss.
If I remember correctly, slot machines in Las Vegas also show you the odds and payouts if a particular combination comes up. So I know the rules when I sit down to the slot machine. If the machine was paying $10 no matter what came up on the display, I'd know that something was wrong. If the machine was always showing the $10 payoff combination, I would know that something was wrong based upon the odds.
Agreed. While I like the principle that the casino screwed up and they should eat the loss, there's another legal element involved: Stolen Property.
If I leave a bag of money in the middle of the casino and somebody takes money out of it, it is stealing. The argument, "Well, how was I supposed to know? I figured it was just free money!" won't cut it.
If a slot machine pays off $10 for every dollar I put in all the time, there's a point where a "reasonable person" would say that there's something wrong with the machine. Where that point is might be dependent on who was putting in the money at the time, admittedly. If I'm a tourist and this is the first time I've ever played a slot machine, that tolerance might be higher than, say, a Las Vegas resident who has played slot machines consistently. Their behavior might also be involved--again, if our savvy Las Vegas resident came in every day for a month, put a dollar in and got back $10, they might have believed they'd found a "lucky" machine. If the same savvy Las Vegas resident sat in front of the machine for two hours and kept winning, you could assume that they knew something was wrong. If the tourist did it, perhaps not.
I'll admit it's been awhile since I played a slot machine, but if I remember correctly the machine shows the odds of winning certain amounts. So it could also be argued that if I sit in front of the machine for an hour and keep winning, the label on the machine should have tipped me off that something here is amiss.
IANAL, but if I remember correctly, part of the criteria for a charge of receiving stolen property is whether or not a "reasonable person" would determine that something here is fishy. If a person offers me a real Rolex watch for $40, a "reasonable person" would assume that it's either fraudulent or stolen. If it turns out to be stolen, I can get busted for receiving stolen property. Yes, it would go to a jury who'd have to decide whether a "reasonable person" would think that paying $40 for a real Rolex watch was just a hell of a good deal.
The woman who reported the machine to the casino has it right - the casino doesn't give you your money back if a machine jams, so it shouldn't work the other way. While I agree in the business process, there is another analogy to be considered: Stolen Property.
IANAL, but as I understand it (and I may be wrong, so be gentle if I am), the rules of stolen property basically state that if a "reasonable person" would conclude that the property is stolen, you knowingly received stolen property whether you claim you knew it was stolen or not. So if a guy offers to sell me a new BMW car for $500, a "reasonable person" would conclude that the car is stolen.
I think banks use a similar principle when they make a mistake. If your account goes from $1,000 to $100,000 and you didn't make any deposits, a "reasonable person" would conclude that the bank made a mistake and you don't get to keep that money. Of course, in the case of banks, there are agreements that you sign where you recognize this fact. Not so in a casino--at least not that I've ever seen.
So, it could argued, if the machine gave credit every time you put money in, a "reasonable person" would conclude that the machine is faulty and the money taken from the machine could be considered "stolen."
[...] probes do a much better job more easily, at a fraction of the cost, and a probe's survivability is much less of an issue. Probes are an extension of humanity's collective intelligence, and they bring back to humanity at least as much data as a real, flesh and bone human. That's always the question I have. Do Probes do a "better job"?
Now, I'll admit I disagree with your opinion on sending people to Mars. But I agree with the basic tenets about the expenses involved--probes are definitely easier and cheaper. The question I always have is--do you get better science when you send scientists versus sending probes?
I'm not sure that question has ever been explored. Do we know more about the Moon than the Soviet Union because we sent astronauts versus robotic probes? I know we brought back a lot more moon rocks (Apollo brought back 381kg versus the Luna missions' 0.325kg), so there has to be some value there. The Soviet Union's 2 Lunakhod rovers travelled 47km, whereas the 3 LRVs transported astronauts 90km (in comparison, Spirit and Opportunity together have travelled about 18 kilometers). Obviously, the more you see the better chance you have of making a discovery.
Personally, what I think might be a cheaper way to go is "telepresence." Rather than sending people to land on Mars, you send people to orbit Mars. You then send down a batch of rovers which can be controlled by the people in orbit. You'd probably be able to achieve much better bandwidth between a probe on the planet and a person in orbit (versus a person on Earth), allowing for 3D cameras with very high resolution. "Bionic" hands on a rover could pick up interesting things that the astronaut sees and take them to a launcher which would send them up to the astronauts in orbit. There'd be negligible signal delay, allowing for real-time images and decision making by an astronaut driving the rover along the surface. After awhile, the ship with the people returns to Earth with tons of new data about Mars and leaves the rovers on Mars.
The idea is to get the brains closer to the thing they need to study. While I agree that we don't necessarily need to send people to walk around on Mars (though I think that's a good goal), I'm not sure 50-300 million miles away is a good idea either.
Makes sense, but I would imagine that you're not shedding much weight. The amount of fuel to land one person safely doesn't go up all that much if you're trying to land two. In other words, you'd end up needing more fuel to land those 10 different crew pods than you would if you landed one pod with 10 people in it.
Because I need a car analogy, an SUV carrying 10 people does not use significantly more gasoline than an SUV carrying one person. However 10 SUVs carrying 1 person each will use up more gasoline than the one SUV carrying 10 people.
All the people need is a lightweight lander and some way to travel to the other equipment. That seems reasonable. But assume a worst-case scenario--you land on the opposite side of the planet to where your supplies are? The "some way to travel to the other equipment" might end up having to be pretty heavy.
What you would want, if you sent down the supplies separately, is a maneuverable lander so you could be fairly certain you were going to be able to land right next to your food and air and such. But, again, that's going to be pretty heavy so you still have problems building this lander.
[...] can't they use jet engines to slow it down [...] Yes, they can. However, jet (or rocket, since there's very little oxygen on Mars to run a jet) engines require some sort of propellent (ie, fuel). This would also have to be brought along from Earth. And it would have to be a whole lot of fuel, considering Mars' gravity is stronger than the moon.
Part of the problem is that, unlike the moon, you can't really use just one system (like the LEM did on the moon). But the more systems you add in, the more complexity and reliability issues.
So I presume you are against the police using spyware as a tool in all circumstances? Would your opinion change if the Police had a warrant? What if asked your permission to "snoop" your notebook that was stolen from you a week before in an effort to recover it? No, not in all circumstances. That's just being ridiculous. I have no problem with police using spyware anymore than I have a problem with police doing wiretaps, once they have gotten the appropriate permission to do so. But that's really not what this is about.
That said, commercial enterprises that are selling me security software to perform a certain task should not be making exceptions. Would you buy encryption software that had a "back door" so that the police could decrypt whatever you encrypted? I know I wouldn't because it wouldn't be secure. How do I know that a former police officer--who found out the "back door" from some previous case--wouldn't be going through my stuff? How do I know some disgruntled officer didn't sell the information to thieves? How do I know some disgruntled company employee didn't sell the information to thieves?
Yes, you can try to sell me software that will detect spyware but won't detect certain "police-issued" spyware. But I won't be buying it.
The problem is, very few people in the Islamic world are polygamous anymore. Maybe a few rich Afghans, Sudanese, or Saudis, but they represent a tiny fraction of all Muslims. Indeed. I worked with some Saudi guys several years ago and we chatted about this and I did some reading on the subject (A little project I was tasked with was to create a "family tree" type of program which would deal with polygamy within the royal family. Never finished it, but it was entertaining...)
My friends made the comment that the Koran says that you can have as many wives as you can afford. That's the important part--most people can afford one wife. Remember that, since women aren't allowed to work, the man is the sole breadwinner and must be able to support his family. The religious officials are not going to approve a second marriage if the groom obviously cannot support two families.
I also read an interesting thing about how a brother would be obligated to take over for another brother if he died. So if I died, my brother would marry my widow and legally she would be his wife. That doesn't necessarily mean that he'd be sleeping with her or anything like that--only that he was now responsible for taking care of her and our children.
There was also some interesting stuff I skimmed over about how there were marriages inside families. A well-to-do man might take an "unmarriable" cousin for a second wife. Again, the concept of "responsibility" and not sex comes in--it's more the idea that he is responsible for supporting this woman. There was also some stuff about how you would sometimes see these marriages in order to keep money in the family. I don't remember who was responsible for paying who in a marriage, but whichever way it worked the money would still be available within the family if it was needed.
As I understand it, Mars has an atmosphere but it is slowly being ripped away by solar winds. It may be gone in another, oh, 50,000 years or so.
Of course, it's sort of a silly argument. If we have the capability of giving Mars an atmosphere, we probably have the ability to replace chunks torn off by solar winds.
However, if they were able to go to the moon in 1969 and deal with the dust there, where AFAIK they didn't have a sample of lunar dust either, then I think that in 2007 we should have no problem dealing with Martian dust. I wouldn't be so sure.
Remember that our first dealing with lunar dust was July 20th, 1969, where astronauts spent a whopping 2 and a half hours outside and something like 22 hours total on the lunar surface. So, to use a fun example, if Martian dust is as abrasive as lunar dust and it's blowing around, this might just have an affect on astronaut spacesuits and such. Considering the expense of going to Mars, yes, I do expect the first mission to spend more than 2 hours outside and 22 hours on the surface. Which means we should check out as many potential issues as possible that would affect their ability to stay there.
I'd rather not spend all that money on a mission and discover that Martian dust storms have screwed up the airlock and they can't go outside anymore after 3 weeks.
Not that I think it's likely, but it's worth checking out.
I don't really care if the government knows I'm buying my wife an anniversary gift.
The issue really is that we don't know how the government is using this data. For example, as George Bush put it, "If you're talking to Al Qaida, we want to know what you're saying" seems pretty legitimate on the surface and most of us would agree with it. But how reliable is the information that I'm talking to Al Qaida? How many links away from the original source do we track?
For example, I have a friend in Saudi Arabia. Does the fact that he's muslim and from a place that supports terrorism make me a suspect if he calls me? Do all who talk to me become suspects? Do all who talk to them become suspects? If I become a suspect, how long do I remain a suspect? Will I have to get strip-searched if I get on an airplane two days after talking to my friend? A week? A month? A year? The rest of my life? Is there a way for me to know that I'm a suspect? Is there a way for me to get off of a suspect list?
What oversight is there to determine that the government has reasonable suspicions? What oversight is there regarding the sharing of this information with other government entities, both foreign and domestic?
To me, that's the privacy issue. Yes, I have no problem with the concept that if "the bad guys" are talking to each other, "the good guys" should be listening in. I just like to make sure that I have an advocate when the government comes forth with the claim that I'm a "bad guy" who deserves to be listened to and that my status as "bad guy" is reviewed from time to time in order to determine whether it is worth listening to me or not.
I can guarantee you that delivery system for all the new nicotine based drugs will not be cigarettes. You're right. Your doctor isn't going to say, "Take two Marlboro's and call me in the morning." If necessary, the doctor would prescribe some pill that you take which contains nicotine or a synthetic version that is not addictive.
That said, there are plenty of people who like to do things that are supposedly good for them. The Grandparent's example of drinking wine is a great one--I know of a few people who have started having a glass or two of wine in the evenings because it's supposed to be good for them.
So a smokeless cigarette that delivers nicotine without all the tar and other chemicals in a regular cigarette may be the new "healthy" thing to do, like drinking wine.
Steve said, "The first leg is the Mac business, which Steve addressed by saying that they have the 'best Macs' in the new product pipeline ever right now, and that the stuff coming out in the next year is 'off the charts.'" Hey, I like Apple products as much as the next Mac user. But we hear this every year--"The Macs we ship next year will be the best ever!" It's arguably not inaccurate (technology gets better and better and "This is this year, not next year.") but come on! He always says that!
First, I could see the next-generation iPod being more of an "iPhone sans phone." So take the iPhone and lop off the microphone and the speaker and you have the next iPod. You can still watch movies, TV shows and other video downloaded from your computer on a worthwhile-sized screen for, say, $299 (30GB).
Keep the WiFi capability and you can browse the web with Safari and watch YouTube for $399.
The trickier-part of multitouch will be the iPod nano. That might become the new "simple music player."
I don't own an iPhone and haven't even seen the videos concerning how to use multitouch--short of the demos that Jobs has given. So I'll admit I'm running on ignorance, here.
That said, I'm not sure what use "gestures" would be on a MacBook's trackpad.
Clicking? It's there. Scrolling? Also there. Dragging? Also there. Right-Clicking? I think there's a way to do it, but I may be wrong (I'm a long-time Mac user--I rarely right-click).
Short of that, I'm not sure what else there is that would be applicable. The "gesture" of expanding or contracting (pinching), while useful on the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen, probably wouldn't be all that important on the MacBook's 13-inch screen.
Maybe I'm just unimaginative, but I can't think what gestures I'd want. About the only one that comes to mind would be a better way of dragging (only because I usually don't use this on a laptop because I can never get it to work reliably).
Also, speaking as a Canadian, there is no way that the Russians would be able to claim "all of the arctic" in any event. Canada would fight before that happened (seriously). Actually, you two would end up having a hockey game over it.
Yeah, I was at a fight last night when a hockey game broke out.
That's pure speculation. We don't know the reason Apple didn't do 3G. Well, not entirely. There has been some discussion about that. It seems, that's one of the reasons Apple has explicitly stated to reporters.
Some 3G phones offer the ability to disable 3G features in order to save battery life. There's no reason Apple couldn't have done that in the same manner that they allow WiFi to be disabled. The problem with this is that usually that is a decision made in hindsight:
"What? My battery is at 2%?! Why oh why did I leave 3G turned on! Now I have a dead box until I can find a power outlet!"
Talk about a "bad user experience."
So I can understand Apple's argument on the subject. It's a trade-off. Steve doesn't like external battery packs so the only juice you get is what you carry with you in the device. So you can't have anything that munches too much power because it's not like you have a work-around (like buy extra batteries).
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I'm sure the laws are different state to state (and I don't know what they are in CA), but I'd be willing to believe that yes, you could be jailed because you're taking advantage of someone else's screwup.
To draw an analogy, you walk into the bank and there's a pile of $100 bills sitting on the counter. The armored car driver screwed up and left them there. You take them. Is it not stealing because somebody at the bank screwed up?
If you forget to lock your car and leave the keys in the ignition and I drive off with it, do I get to keep your car because you screwed up?
...and all of those things are usually advertised. Also, a "First Time Deposit Bonus" might make sense if you did it once. After the second or third time it came up, you can probably assume that something is amiss.
If I remember correctly, slot machines in Las Vegas also show you the odds and payouts if a particular combination comes up. So I know the rules when I sit down to the slot machine. If the machine was paying $10 no matter what came up on the display, I'd know that something was wrong. If the machine was always showing the $10 payoff combination, I would know that something was wrong based upon the odds.
Agreed. While I like the principle that the casino screwed up and they should eat the loss, there's another legal element involved: Stolen Property.
If I leave a bag of money in the middle of the casino and somebody takes money out of it, it is stealing. The argument, "Well, how was I supposed to know? I figured it was just free money!" won't cut it.
If a slot machine pays off $10 for every dollar I put in all the time, there's a point where a "reasonable person" would say that there's something wrong with the machine. Where that point is might be dependent on who was putting in the money at the time, admittedly. If I'm a tourist and this is the first time I've ever played a slot machine, that tolerance might be higher than, say, a Las Vegas resident who has played slot machines consistently. Their behavior might also be involved--again, if our savvy Las Vegas resident came in every day for a month, put a dollar in and got back $10, they might have believed they'd found a "lucky" machine. If the same savvy Las Vegas resident sat in front of the machine for two hours and kept winning, you could assume that they knew something was wrong. If the tourist did it, perhaps not.
I'll admit it's been awhile since I played a slot machine, but if I remember correctly the machine shows the odds of winning certain amounts. So it could also be argued that if I sit in front of the machine for an hour and keep winning, the label on the machine should have tipped me off that something here is amiss.
IANAL, but if I remember correctly, part of the criteria for a charge of receiving stolen property is whether or not a "reasonable person" would determine that something here is fishy. If a person offers me a real Rolex watch for $40, a "reasonable person" would assume that it's either fraudulent or stolen. If it turns out to be stolen, I can get busted for receiving stolen property. Yes, it would go to a jury who'd have to decide whether a "reasonable person" would think that paying $40 for a real Rolex watch was just a hell of a good deal.
IANAL, but as I understand it (and I may be wrong, so be gentle if I am), the rules of stolen property basically state that if a "reasonable person" would conclude that the property is stolen, you knowingly received stolen property whether you claim you knew it was stolen or not. So if a guy offers to sell me a new BMW car for $500, a "reasonable person" would conclude that the car is stolen.
I think banks use a similar principle when they make a mistake. If your account goes from $1,000 to $100,000 and you didn't make any deposits, a "reasonable person" would conclude that the bank made a mistake and you don't get to keep that money. Of course, in the case of banks, there are agreements that you sign where you recognize this fact. Not so in a casino--at least not that I've ever seen.
So, it could argued, if the machine gave credit every time you put money in, a "reasonable person" would conclude that the machine is faulty and the money taken from the machine could be considered "stolen."
Now, I'll admit I disagree with your opinion on sending people to Mars. But I agree with the basic tenets about the expenses involved--probes are definitely easier and cheaper. The question I always have is--do you get better science when you send scientists versus sending probes?
I'm not sure that question has ever been explored. Do we know more about the Moon than the Soviet Union because we sent astronauts versus robotic probes? I know we brought back a lot more moon rocks (Apollo brought back 381kg versus the Luna missions' 0.325kg), so there has to be some value there. The Soviet Union's 2 Lunakhod rovers travelled 47km, whereas the 3 LRVs transported astronauts 90km (in comparison, Spirit and Opportunity together have travelled about 18 kilometers). Obviously, the more you see the better chance you have of making a discovery.
Personally, what I think might be a cheaper way to go is "telepresence." Rather than sending people to land on Mars, you send people to orbit Mars. You then send down a batch of rovers which can be controlled by the people in orbit. You'd probably be able to achieve much better bandwidth between a probe on the planet and a person in orbit (versus a person on Earth), allowing for 3D cameras with very high resolution. "Bionic" hands on a rover could pick up interesting things that the astronaut sees and take them to a launcher which would send them up to the astronauts in orbit. There'd be negligible signal delay, allowing for real-time images and decision making by an astronaut driving the rover along the surface. After awhile, the ship with the people returns to Earth with tons of new data about Mars and leaves the rovers on Mars.
The idea is to get the brains closer to the thing they need to study. While I agree that we don't necessarily need to send people to walk around on Mars (though I think that's a good goal), I'm not sure 50-300 million miles away is a good idea either.
Makes sense, but I would imagine that you're not shedding much weight. The amount of fuel to land one person safely doesn't go up all that much if you're trying to land two. In other words, you'd end up needing more fuel to land those 10 different crew pods than you would if you landed one pod with 10 people in it.
Because I need a car analogy, an SUV carrying 10 people does not use significantly more gasoline than an SUV carrying one person. However 10 SUVs carrying 1 person each will use up more gasoline than the one SUV carrying 10 people.
What you would want, if you sent down the supplies separately, is a maneuverable lander so you could be fairly certain you were going to be able to land right next to your food and air and such. But, again, that's going to be pretty heavy so you still have problems building this lander.
Part of the problem is that, unlike the moon, you can't really use just one system (like the LEM did on the moon). But the more systems you add in, the more complexity and reliability issues.
That said, commercial enterprises that are selling me security software to perform a certain task should not be making exceptions. Would you buy encryption software that had a "back door" so that the police could decrypt whatever you encrypted? I know I wouldn't because it wouldn't be secure. How do I know that a former police officer--who found out the "back door" from some previous case--wouldn't be going through my stuff? How do I know some disgruntled officer didn't sell the information to thieves? How do I know some disgruntled company employee didn't sell the information to thieves?
Yes, you can try to sell me software that will detect spyware but won't detect certain "police-issued" spyware. But I won't be buying it.
My friends made the comment that the Koran says that you can have as many wives as you can afford. That's the important part--most people can afford one wife. Remember that, since women aren't allowed to work, the man is the sole breadwinner and must be able to support his family. The religious officials are not going to approve a second marriage if the groom obviously cannot support two families.
I also read an interesting thing about how a brother would be obligated to take over for another brother if he died. So if I died, my brother would marry my widow and legally she would be his wife. That doesn't necessarily mean that he'd be sleeping with her or anything like that--only that he was now responsible for taking care of her and our children.
There was also some interesting stuff I skimmed over about how there were marriages inside families. A well-to-do man might take an "unmarriable" cousin for a second wife. Again, the concept of "responsibility" and not sex comes in--it's more the idea that he is responsible for supporting this woman. There was also some stuff about how you would sometimes see these marriages in order to keep money in the family. I don't remember who was responsible for paying who in a marriage, but whichever way it worked the money would still be available within the family if it was needed.
Of course not! That would be silly!
But what about Diamonique?
Hey, c'mon! They're sponsoring hep barbecues!
...but, but, but... Then it wouldn't be "GNU/Linux"!
As I understand it, Mars has an atmosphere but it is slowly being ripped away by solar winds. It may be gone in another, oh, 50,000 years or so.
Of course, it's sort of a silly argument. If we have the capability of giving Mars an atmosphere, we probably have the ability to replace chunks torn off by solar winds.
Remember that our first dealing with lunar dust was July 20th, 1969, where astronauts spent a whopping 2 and a half hours outside and something like 22 hours total on the lunar surface. So, to use a fun example, if Martian dust is as abrasive as lunar dust and it's blowing around, this might just have an affect on astronaut spacesuits and such. Considering the expense of going to Mars, yes, I do expect the first mission to spend more than 2 hours outside and 22 hours on the surface. Which means we should check out as many potential issues as possible that would affect their ability to stay there.
I'd rather not spend all that money on a mission and discover that Martian dust storms have screwed up the airlock and they can't go outside anymore after 3 weeks.
Not that I think it's likely, but it's worth checking out.
I don't really care if the government knows I'm buying my wife an anniversary gift.
The issue really is that we don't know how the government is using this data. For example, as George Bush put it, "If you're talking to Al Qaida, we want to know what you're saying" seems pretty legitimate on the surface and most of us would agree with it. But how reliable is the information that I'm talking to Al Qaida? How many links away from the original source do we track?
For example, I have a friend in Saudi Arabia. Does the fact that he's muslim and from a place that supports terrorism make me a suspect if he calls me? Do all who talk to me become suspects? Do all who talk to them become suspects? If I become a suspect, how long do I remain a suspect? Will I have to get strip-searched if I get on an airplane two days after talking to my friend? A week? A month? A year? The rest of my life? Is there a way for me to know that I'm a suspect? Is there a way for me to get off of a suspect list?
What oversight is there to determine that the government has reasonable suspicions? What oversight is there regarding the sharing of this information with other government entities, both foreign and domestic?
To me, that's the privacy issue. Yes, I have no problem with the concept that if "the bad guys" are talking to each other, "the good guys" should be listening in. I just like to make sure that I have an advocate when the government comes forth with the claim that I'm a "bad guy" who deserves to be listened to and that my status as "bad guy" is reviewed from time to time in order to determine whether it is worth listening to me or not.
That said, there are plenty of people who like to do things that are supposedly good for them. The Grandparent's example of drinking wine is a great one--I know of a few people who have started having a glass or two of wine in the evenings because it's supposed to be good for them.
So a smokeless cigarette that delivers nicotine without all the tar and other chemicals in a regular cigarette may be the new "healthy" thing to do, like drinking wine.
Set it on fire.
"Well, well. If it isn't number 2..."
I disagree.
First, I could see the next-generation iPod being more of an "iPhone sans phone." So take the iPhone and lop off the microphone and the speaker and you have the next iPod. You can still watch movies, TV shows and other video downloaded from your computer on a worthwhile-sized screen for, say, $299 (30GB).
Keep the WiFi capability and you can browse the web with Safari and watch YouTube for $399.
The trickier-part of multitouch will be the iPod nano. That might become the new "simple music player."
I don't own an iPhone and haven't even seen the videos concerning how to use multitouch--short of the demos that Jobs has given. So I'll admit I'm running on ignorance, here.
That said, I'm not sure what use "gestures" would be on a MacBook's trackpad.
Clicking? It's there. Scrolling? Also there. Dragging? Also there. Right-Clicking? I think there's a way to do it, but I may be wrong (I'm a long-time Mac user--I rarely right-click).
Short of that, I'm not sure what else there is that would be applicable. The "gesture" of expanding or contracting (pinching), while useful on the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen, probably wouldn't be all that important on the MacBook's 13-inch screen.
Maybe I'm just unimaginative, but I can't think what gestures I'd want. About the only one that comes to mind would be a better way of dragging (only because I usually don't use this on a laptop because I can never get it to work reliably).
Yeah, I was at a fight last night when a hockey game broke out.
Thanks! I'll be here all week! Try the veal!
"What? My battery is at 2%?! Why oh why did I leave 3G turned on! Now I have a dead box until I can find a power outlet!"
Talk about a "bad user experience."
So I can understand Apple's argument on the subject. It's a trade-off. Steve doesn't like external battery packs so the only juice you get is what you carry with you in the device. So you can't have anything that munches too much power because it's not like you have a work-around (like buy extra batteries).