>Why do I need to tell the OS what my keyboard layout is? Why can't it figure this out on its own?
Actually, in Vista, it does. You see, Bill Gates used the time machine he has hidden in the Earth's inner core to go 300 years into the future and being back a method of looking into the mind of the computer user to determine their primary language and what keyboard layout they would prefer, implemented entirely in software! Sadly, since the implementation uses SSE4, it'll only work if you're CPU is a Core 2 Duo...
(If you're asking why the keyboard can't tell the OS what layout it is; broadly, the problem is that keyboards of different languages are essentially the same underneath -- the same key pressed will send the same mapping code to the computer. The printed lettering on the top, from the keyboard's persepective, is arbitary -- it only makes sense because OS will map the code to the right letter, given the right keyboard layout. This allows, to pick a few advantages: a user to rearrange the keys to suit themselves (e.g. to the Dvorak layout) and then change the keyboard layout in the OS, and have it match up; and someone who uses a slightly different keyboard layout (e.g. UK English) to use a US keyboard, change the layout in the OS, and use the mappings they're used to. A touch-typist can use a keyboard with completely blank keys if they want, just by selecting the right layout in software. None of these would be possible if the layout was hard-coded into the keyboard).
>P.S. I you would like to sell me $900 in gold for $600 I'd be more than willing to send you payment.
I was not 'offering' to send you $900 in gold, I was offering to send you something which *I* would value at $900 and would have cost me $900 (as a consequence of man-hours put in if nothing else), but that few other people would value similarly. Hence, from the same laws of supply and demand the you quote, it would not be worth what I would be attempting to sell it for, even though it is sold 'below-cost'.
>That is the single worst event of reasoning I have ever witnessed. Please tell me you don't take yourself seriously! The PS3 does what it was intended to do and does it well, sold out and will continue to sell each and every unit. I guess we are all just buying gold toilet paper huh? Maybe somebody should teach you a lesson on Supply and Demand.
You have monumentally missed the point. I was pointing out that to say, as you did, that if something is expensive and sold below cost it therefore must be good value, is not only patently false but frankly stupid. My choice of a somewhat extreme counterexample was intended as an illustration of this. The PS3 may be good value or it may not be, but to say that the fact that it is sold below cost precludes the latter possibility is ridiculous.
So expensive / below cost necessarily implies good value? Hey, do you want to buy this gold-leaf-embroidered roll of toilet paper I made? Only $600, and a bargain too, since it cost me $900 to make!
Whilst I'm at it, imagine it's 1980 -- do you want to buy this excellent Sony Laserdisc player -- only $600, and would be bargin at twice the price! Brand new disc playing technology!
>I can't imagine why an energy research organization would actually seek out and listen to national energy secretaries in developing
>energy analysis - can't they just publish some near-term doom-and-gloom conclusions with only selective data like everyone else?
So when a single company with stated links to oil-producing countries comes up with the conclusion that we should continue to rely on oil, that's "seeking out and listening... in developing energy analysis", but when "everyone else" (and that does include pretty much everyone) comes to opposite conclusion, that's "doom-and-gloom... with only selective data"? That's some good, objective critical thinking skills you got there...
I doubt anyone can prove who funds them, but past keynote speakers at their annual conference have included the energy secretaries of both Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and Rilwanu Lukman, the Secretary-General of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).
Uh, no. This is a legal fine. MS can't pay a fine to a court with vouchers for their software any more than you can pay a parking fine with a book of coupons.
>People like those deserve such awards. Nelson Mandela, Gorbachev, Thatcher are very prestigious people... Linux does not feed people in Africa and other poor nations, no sirey. His presence on that list dilutes the other recipients prestige.
Absolutely! Let's all get together and admire the great work Margaret Thatcher did to improve the plight of the poor; both in Africa, and through greatly improved social welfare programs in Britain. And lets not forget her stellar work on the NHS, without which it may not have been the well-funded bastion of easy access to essential healthcare for rich and poor alike that it is today!
No, 5 years was the old maximum, there is no minimum.
>Again, people who do SERIOUS crimes that physically hurt and disable people...can get less time than 5 years.
Well, yes, of course, if there are sufficient mitigating circumstances. That's the point of having a judge, to make such a decision.
Again, the ten year limit is not a sentencing guideline, it's a limit. Just because a judge has the power to send someone down for ten years, doesn't mean they will. It is very possible that no-one is ever sentenced to anywhere near ten years under this new law, if no-one commits an offence of sufficient severity; but the sentence is available if someone does. The government has the power to declare martial law if someone drops a piece of litter, doesn't mean they will.
That's what this will do, let the judges have discretion over individual cases and sentencing freedom in order to make the punishment fit the crime, whilst sill imposing an upper limit. 10 years is only the absolute maximum penalty they are permittted to impose under law; that doesn't mean that every wannabe hacker who brings Geocities down for 5 minutes is going to spend 10 years in jail.
>Vista Enterprise or Vista Ultimate- the OS of child pornographers. I notice none of these people asked the obvious question about the destructive potential of BitLocker on the science of computer forensics.
Sorry, but that's a load of scaremongering bull. Encryption is not a new thing. Anyone who wants to has been able to encrypt files has been able to do so quickly, easily, with minimum effort, and for free for quite a long time now, using something like Truecypt. Having full drive encryption on enterprise versions of Windows is not going to change a thing; the people who are going to pay for more a more expensive version of Windows in order to use full drive encryption are not going to be those who would not have otherwise used encryption.
>Windows Vista will be an enormous disruption in how people use their computers. They will have to learn the new environment and the new software that goes with it, and it will be some time before they get used to it and become comfortable with it. Well. If you're already planning on disrupting your computing experience that much in the vague hope that, "Maybe this time will be better," then you are obliged to try out Linux.
Sorry, but please, please shut up and go away. There are certainly a large number of truly excellent arguments in favour of using Linux instead of Windows. But condescendingly informing people that they are somehow 'obliged' to try Linux instead of Windows, whilst ignoring or dismissing the real and existing - but emphatically not unsurmountable - barriers that exist to switching, is unhelpful, patronising, and arrogant.
No, you don't need a DX10 card to run Vista. You need a a DirectX 9 card with 128 MB of Video RAM for Aero Glass, or any old 2D chip for Aero Standard, Aero Basic, Classic, etc.
>just look at the PS3 or Zune: you can't pull the wool over everyone's eyes all the time.
Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. Slashdot readers may have a good idea of the real issues behind the PS3 and Sony's tactics, especially, but Slashdot readers are not a significant proportion of Joe Public. To the average consumer, "Sony" still conjures up images of reasonably reliable shiny metal consumer electronics, not RIAA lawsuits, rootkit CDs, or the Blu-ray DRM debacle. Sorry to tell you, but it's the advertising and PR campaigns alone that will make or break the PS3; it's how well they can sell that their product is really worth $600. Same applied to the Zune. What Slashdot readers consider "the real issues" will factor into it little if at all.
Doesn't MS have a UI standards document that they are supposed to follow
Yes, and they are following it. Trouble is, the standards document in question is the *Vista* user interface guidelines (hence the lack of file menu, button-menus, etc.). Microsoft's decision - whether you think it was a good one or not (probably not) - was to have the XP/2003 version of IE7 have the same UI as was developed for the Vista version. So IE across Windows versions is consistant, but IE with the rest of XP's applications is not.
>The total light output of a white screen vs the light output of a dark screen is an interesting metric, but calling it contrast borders on fraud because it's not a relevant metric where contrast is of interest: Showing dark and bright areas in one picture.
I'm guessing you didn't RTFA. The entire point of this screen is that it has a large number of small, discrete light sources, each covering no more than a few pixels, each isolated from the others, and each individually adjustable; so a dark area from a picture with both light and dark areas *is* just as dark as the dark area of a screen that's completely dark.
I'd rather have a theoretical metric measured in idealised conditions which, though they may not be ever available in the real world, can be carefully controlled and repeated, making comparison meaningful, than one measured in "the real world" that makes meaningful comparison impossible since it would depend on ambient light, wall colour, etc. wherever it was measured. The latter may give a number closer to what you'd get in reality, but since it's closer by an unknown margin that will vary depending on the room manufacturers use to measure in, it would in fact be COMPLETELY USELESS for comparisons, which rather takes the point away from specifying it in the first place.
> f the room isn't entirely dark (and a room with an HDR display in it isn't perfectly dark if you're not watching only renditions of/dev/zero), then the reflectiveness of the display surface limits the contrast, unless it's a black hole, as I mentioned before
Nope. The specified contrast is the ratio of EMITTED, RADIATED light from a bright pixel to EMITTED, RADIATED light from a dark pixel. Certainly, ambient light will reduce the effective contrast in reality, but the definition of specified contrast ratio assumes no ambient or reflected light. Obviously. How could it be otherwise, or the contrast ratio would be meaningless unless you specify everything from amount of ambient light to the colour of the walls along with it.
No. Think about it: unless you're really pressing your nose right up to the screen, for a monitor to display a reflection of the image on the face of whoever's looking at it, it would have to radiate at a single angle (probably perpendicular) only. You wouldn't be able to see the whole screen, only a few pixels per eye at any one time. Ever stood in front of a projector screen and looked at the projector? Like that. It would be utterly useless as a monitor.
N.B. if you have something like the left side of the screen one colour and the right side a different one, you may well be able to see that by looking at your face, but that's more due to the fact that your face isn't flat; the left side slopes backwards from centre to edge, and vice versa for the right side. You certainly wouldn't be able to see detail.
Don't be an idiot. You don't have to have "a black hole in the display" for a pixel to have effectively zero brightness, you just have to have it not generate any light (excluding blackbody radiation, which is negligible in the visible spectrum at room temp). One of the photos in TFA is of the monitor displaying a black screen in a dark room; you can't tell it from the surroundings. The pixels can be individually completely switched off (actually, that's not strictly true, a group of a few pixels can be switched off), giving a contrast ratio of (max brightness)/0 -- hence the divide by zero error, as the grandparent said.
You wouldn't call "Just like the leftists trivialize human rights violations and terrorism because to do otherwise wouldn't support their socialist views." a "polarizing and moronic assertion"? You do actually have a good point, but it was that GP I was replying to.
>Look, we don't know half of what we think we do. The one great thing about science in this day and age is that we are continously changing what we know as fact as our ability to observe becomes better and better. Old theories that were hard to prove can be supported and previous "unalterable" facts are dismissed.
You are correct in theory, but you are drawing completely the wrong conclusions from it. Yes, theories change, become more refined, perhaps become obsolete. Newton's laws of motion were superceded by relativity. But does that mean that in the 300 years between Newton and Einsten everyone should have dismissed Newton because at some point a more refined theory is going to come along? No, of course not; in Newton's age his laws were the best science could offer, were well-supported by evidence, and thus were eventually universally accepted by Scientists. Ditto Global warming. Of course we don't have 100% perfect climate models and better ones are continuously being developed. But saying we should ignore the whole issue because of that; dismiss it because in the future we will be able to observe it better? Obviously not, and if you'll forgive me, that is an incredibly stupid argument.
>We can barely predict the weather from day to day let alone week to week. We can't accurately predict the number of hurricanes, typhoons, or the like. Yet at the same time you want me to believe that enough is known to tell me that we are all going to die in 10 years?
You are making the (quite common) mistake of confusing weather (local day-to-day and year-to-year variation) with climate (averaged systems over decades). The reason we cannot predict day-to-day weather is that weather is chaotic (in the mathematical sense; look it up). Climate, however, is not.
>Just admit you know about as much about the climate as the other side.
Who is "the other side"? It's certainly not climate scientists, the people actually studying it. Pick up ANY scientific journal -- Nature or Science are rather dense for non-scientists, so try New Scientist or Scientific American or any one of countless others. Attend scientific conferences. Go to lectures. Look at the graphs. Read the reports produced by any of the major scientific bodies, either US-based or international. Or the G8. Or the UN. They all say the same thing.
>Fact is, we are still discovering the variables. In no shape or form can you have the definitive anwser without all the variables.
I'm sorry, but to put it lightly, that is bullshit. Which variable exactly is it you are disputing? It is fact that burning fossil fuels gives out carbon dioxide. The amount can be calculated from the amount of fossil fuels burned. This goes into the atmosphere, and since the rate at which the World's fauna is converting this back into Oxygen is reasonably static (or even decreasing, since we're cutting down vast amounts of the rainforest every year), the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will rise. Independant confirmation of this is given by the fact that carbon dioxide levels are rising has been measured many times by laboratories around the globe (e.g. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/8/88/Mauna_ Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png for one example). This rising is far above the usual cyclic fluctations due to ice age cycles (see http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/d/d3/Carbon _Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png). Also, it is fact that greater levels of carbon dioxide lead to greater trapping of the Sun's energy. This is settled science, and can be independantly confirmed by anyone with a cylinder of carbon dioxide, a temperature probe, and an inquiring mind. Lastly, greater trapping of the Sun's energy will lead to a reasonably predictable rise in global ave
>Spend some money on improving Wine (it would be really easy for them, compared to anyone else who wants to do it), et voila -- near-perfect backward compatibility
I don't think so. It is probably possible (though not easy) to get Wine working with any particular application you choose, though it may take more or less time depending on the development team you have. But to have something that works with *every* application? There are many millions of Windows apps out there, a large percentage of which are privately written and obviously not publicly available for testing. Not to mention all the legacy hardware with device drivers written for Windows. If you implement something general enough to work with everything and anything, you've basically got -- Windows, with maybe a few unrecognisable shreds of Linux buried underneath. And there goes the entire point.
Not to mention that Windows has also had virtual desktops since 2001 (although the implementation is admittedly inferior to Spaces). I assume Mac fanboys choose to ignore that since as you have to download it they regard it as 'not technically part of the OS'; but personally I'd rather have it as a free download than pay $129 for it...
Slashdot Mirror
>Why do I need to tell the OS what my keyboard layout is? Why can't it figure this out on its own?
Actually, in Vista, it does. You see, Bill Gates used the time machine he has hidden in the Earth's inner core to go 300 years into the future and being back a method of looking into the mind of the computer user to determine their primary language and what keyboard layout they would prefer, implemented entirely in software! Sadly, since the implementation uses SSE4, it'll only work if you're CPU is a Core 2 Duo...
(If you're asking why the keyboard can't tell the OS what layout it is; broadly, the problem is that keyboards of different languages are essentially the same underneath -- the same key pressed will send the same mapping code to the computer. The printed lettering on the top, from the keyboard's persepective, is arbitary -- it only makes sense because OS will map the code to the right letter, given the right keyboard layout. This allows, to pick a few advantages: a user to rearrange the keys to suit themselves (e.g. to the Dvorak layout) and then change the keyboard layout in the OS, and have it match up; and someone who uses a slightly different keyboard layout (e.g. UK English) to use a US keyboard, change the layout in the OS, and use the mappings they're used to. A touch-typist can use a keyboard with completely blank keys if they want, just by selecting the right layout in software. None of these would be possible if the layout was hard-coded into the keyboard).
>P.S. I you would like to sell me $900 in gold for $600 I'd be more than willing to send you payment.
I was not 'offering' to send you $900 in gold, I was offering to send you something which *I* would value at $900 and would have cost me $900 (as a consequence of man-hours put in if nothing else), but that few other people would value similarly. Hence, from the same laws of supply and demand the you quote, it would not be worth what I would be attempting to sell it for, even though it is sold 'below-cost'.
>That is the single worst event of reasoning I have ever witnessed. Please tell me you don't take yourself seriously! The PS3 does what it was intended to do and does it well, sold out and will continue to sell each and every unit. I guess we are all just buying gold toilet paper huh? Maybe somebody should teach you a lesson on Supply and Demand.
You have monumentally missed the point. I was pointing out that to say, as you did, that if something is expensive and sold below cost it therefore must be good value, is not only patently false but frankly stupid. My choice of a somewhat extreme counterexample was intended as an illustration of this. The PS3 may be good value or it may not be, but to say that the fact that it is sold below cost precludes the latter possibility is ridiculous.
So expensive / below cost necessarily implies good value? Hey, do you want to buy this gold-leaf-embroidered roll of toilet paper I made? Only $600, and a bargain too, since it cost me $900 to make!
Whilst I'm at it, imagine it's 1980 -- do you want to buy this excellent Sony Laserdisc player -- only $600, and would be bargin at twice the price! Brand new disc playing technology!
...Or not.
A very pretty, pre-customised, credit-card-sized drinks coaster!
>I can't imagine why an energy research organization would actually seek out and listen to national energy secretaries in developing
>energy analysis - can't they just publish some near-term doom-and-gloom conclusions with only selective data like everyone else?
So when a single company with stated links to oil-producing countries comes up with the conclusion that we should continue to rely on oil, that's "seeking out and listening... in developing energy analysis", but when "everyone else" (and that does include pretty much everyone) comes to opposite conclusion, that's "doom-and-gloom... with only selective data"? That's some good, objective critical thinking skills you got there...
I doubt anyone can prove who funds them, but past keynote speakers at their annual conference have included the energy secretaries of both Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and Rilwanu Lukman, the Secretary-General of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).
Make of that what you will..
Uh, no. This is a legal fine. MS can't pay a fine to a court with vouchers for their software any more than you can pay a parking fine with a book of coupons.
>People like those deserve such awards. Nelson Mandela, Gorbachev, Thatcher are very prestigious people... Linux does not feed people in Africa and other poor nations, no sirey. His presence on that list dilutes the other recipients prestige.
.
...Oh, wait...
Absolutely! Let's all get together and admire the great work Margaret Thatcher did to improve the plight of the poor; both in Africa, and through greatly improved social welfare programs in Britain. And lets not forget her stellar work on the NHS, without which it may not have been the well-funded bastion of easy access to essential healthcare for rich and poor alike that it is today!
. .
>Ok...then 5 years seems to be the minimum.
No, 5 years was the old maximum, there is no minimum.
>Again, people who do SERIOUS crimes that physically hurt and disable people...can get less time than 5 years.
Well, yes, of course, if there are sufficient mitigating circumstances. That's the point of having a judge, to make such a decision.
Again, the ten year limit is not a sentencing guideline, it's a limit. Just because a judge has the power to send someone down for ten years, doesn't mean they will. It is very possible that no-one is ever sentenced to anywhere near ten years under this new law, if no-one commits an offence of sufficient severity; but the sentence is available if someone does. The government has the power to declare martial law if someone drops a piece of litter, doesn't mean they will.
>let the penalty fit the crime
That's what this will do, let the judges have discretion over individual cases and sentencing freedom in order to make the punishment fit the crime, whilst sill imposing an upper limit. 10 years is only the absolute maximum penalty they are permittted to impose under law; that doesn't mean that every wannabe hacker who brings Geocities down for 5 minutes is going to spend 10 years in jail.
>Are these people just incredibly arrogant or plain stupid?
Why does it have to be either-or?
>Vista Enterprise or Vista Ultimate- the OS of child pornographers. I notice none of these people asked the obvious question about the destructive potential of BitLocker on the science of computer forensics.
Sorry, but that's a load of scaremongering bull. Encryption is not a new thing. Anyone who wants to has been able to encrypt files has been able to do so quickly, easily, with minimum effort, and for free for quite a long time now, using something like Truecypt. Having full drive encryption on enterprise versions of Windows is not going to change a thing; the people who are going to pay for more a more expensive version of Windows in order to use full drive encryption are not going to be those who would not have otherwise used encryption.
>Windows Vista will be an enormous disruption in how people use their computers. They will have to learn the new environment and the new software that goes with it, and it will be some time before they get used to it and become comfortable with it. Well. If you're already planning on disrupting your computing experience that much in the vague hope that, "Maybe this time will be better," then you are obliged to try out Linux.
Sorry, but please, please shut up and go away. There are certainly a large number of truly excellent arguments in favour of using Linux instead of Windows. But condescendingly informing people that they are somehow 'obliged' to try Linux instead of Windows, whilst ignoring or dismissing the real and existing - but emphatically not unsurmountable - barriers that exist to switching, is unhelpful, patronising, and arrogant.
No, you don't need a DX10 card to run Vista. You need a a DirectX 9 card with 128 MB of Video RAM for Aero Glass, or any old 2D chip for Aero Standard, Aero Basic, Classic, etc.
>just look at the PS3 or Zune: you can't pull the wool over everyone's eyes all the time.
Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. Slashdot readers may have a good idea of the real issues behind the PS3 and Sony's tactics, especially, but Slashdot readers are not a significant proportion of Joe Public. To the average consumer, "Sony" still conjures up images of reasonably reliable shiny metal consumer electronics, not RIAA lawsuits, rootkit CDs, or the Blu-ray DRM debacle. Sorry to tell you, but it's the advertising and PR campaigns alone that will make or break the PS3; it's how well they can sell that their product is really worth $600. Same applied to the Zune. What Slashdot readers consider "the real issues" will factor into it little if at all.
Doesn't MS have a UI standards document that they are supposed to follow
Yes, and they are following it. Trouble is, the standards document in question is the *Vista* user interface guidelines (hence the lack of file menu, button-menus, etc.). Microsoft's decision - whether you think it was a good one or not (probably not) - was to have the XP/2003 version of IE7 have the same UI as was developed for the Vista version. So IE across Windows versions is consistant, but IE with the rest of XP's applications is not.
>The total light output of a white screen vs the light output of a dark screen is an interesting metric, but calling it contrast borders on fraud because it's not a relevant metric where contrast is of interest: Showing dark and bright areas in one picture.
I'm guessing you didn't RTFA. The entire point of this screen is that it has a large number of small, discrete light sources, each covering no more than a few pixels, each isolated from the others, and each individually adjustable; so a dark area from a picture with both light and dark areas *is* just as dark as the dark area of a screen that's completely dark.
I'd rather have a theoretical metric measured in idealised conditions which, though they may not be ever available in the real world, can be carefully controlled and repeated, making comparison meaningful, than one measured in "the real world" that makes meaningful comparison impossible since it would depend on ambient light, wall colour, etc. wherever it was measured. The latter may give a number closer to what you'd get in reality, but since it's closer by an unknown margin that will vary depending on the room manufacturers use to measure in, it would in fact be COMPLETELY USELESS for comparisons, which rather takes the point away from specifying it in the first place.
> f the room isn't entirely dark (and a room with an HDR display in it isn't perfectly dark if you're not watching only renditions of /dev/zero), then the reflectiveness of the display surface limits the contrast, unless it's a black hole, as I mentioned before
Nope. The specified contrast is the ratio of EMITTED, RADIATED light from a bright pixel to EMITTED, RADIATED light from a dark pixel. Certainly, ambient light will reduce the effective contrast in reality, but the definition of specified contrast ratio assumes no ambient or reflected light. Obviously. How could it be otherwise, or the contrast ratio would be meaningless unless you specify everything from amount of ambient light to the colour of the walls along with it.
No. Think about it: unless you're really pressing your nose right up to the screen, for a monitor to display a reflection of the image on the face of whoever's looking at it, it would have to radiate at a single angle (probably perpendicular) only. You wouldn't be able to see the whole screen, only a few pixels per eye at any one time. Ever stood in front of a projector screen and looked at the projector? Like that. It would be utterly useless as a monitor.
N.B. if you have something like the left side of the screen one colour and the right side a different one, you may well be able to see that by looking at your face, but that's more due to the fact that your face isn't flat; the left side slopes backwards from centre to edge, and vice versa for the right side. You certainly wouldn't be able to see detail.
Don't be an idiot. You don't have to have "a black hole in the display" for a pixel to have effectively zero brightness, you just have to have it not generate any light (excluding blackbody radiation, which is negligible in the visible spectrum at room temp). One of the photos in TFA is of the monitor displaying a black screen in a dark room; you can't tell it from the surroundings. The pixels can be individually completely switched off (actually, that's not strictly true, a group of a few pixels can be switched off), giving a contrast ratio of (max brightness)/0 -- hence the divide by zero error, as the grandparent said.
You wouldn't call "Just like the leftists trivialize human rights violations and terrorism because to do otherwise wouldn't support their socialist views." a "polarizing and moronic assertion"? You do actually have a good point, but it was that GP I was replying to.
>Just like the leftists trivialize human rights violations and terrorism because to do otherwise wouldn't support their socialist views.
Remind me, which political party is attempting to rewrite the Geneva conventions to legitimise torture?
>Look, we don't know half of what we think we do. The one great thing about science in this day and age is that we are continously changing what we know as fact as our ability to observe becomes better and better. Old theories that were hard to prove can be supported and previous "unalterable" facts are dismissed.
You are correct in theory, but you are drawing completely the wrong conclusions from it. Yes, theories change, become more refined, perhaps become obsolete. Newton's laws of motion were superceded by relativity. But does that mean that in the 300 years between Newton and Einsten everyone should have dismissed Newton because at some point a more refined theory is going to come along? No, of course not; in Newton's age his laws were the best science could offer, were well-supported by evidence, and thus were eventually universally accepted by Scientists. Ditto Global warming. Of course we don't have 100% perfect climate models and better ones are continuously being developed. But saying we should ignore the whole issue because of that; dismiss it because in the future we will be able to observe it better? Obviously not, and if you'll forgive me, that is an incredibly stupid argument.
>We can barely predict the weather from day to day let alone week to week. We can't accurately predict the number of hurricanes, typhoons, or the like. Yet at the same time you want me to believe that enough is known to tell me that we are all going to die in 10 years?
You are making the (quite common) mistake of confusing weather (local day-to-day and year-to-year variation) with climate (averaged systems over decades). The reason we cannot predict day-to-day weather is that weather is chaotic (in the mathematical sense; look it up). Climate, however, is not.
>Just admit you know about as much about the climate as the other side.
Who is "the other side"? It's certainly not climate scientists, the people actually studying it. Pick up ANY scientific journal -- Nature or Science are rather dense for non-scientists, so try New Scientist or Scientific American or any one of countless others. Attend scientific conferences. Go to lectures. Look at the graphs. Read the reports produced by any of the major scientific bodies, either US-based or international. Or the G8. Or the UN. They all say the same thing.
>Fact is, we are still discovering the variables. In no shape or form can you have the definitive anwser without all the variables.
I'm sorry, but to put it lightly, that is bullshit. Which variable exactly is it you are disputing? It is fact that burning fossil fuels gives out carbon dioxide. The amount can be calculated from the amount of fossil fuels burned. This goes into the atmosphere, and since the rate at which the World's fauna is converting this back into Oxygen is reasonably static (or even decreasing, since we're cutting down vast amounts of the rainforest every year), the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will rise. Independant confirmation of this is given by the fact that carbon dioxide levels are rising has been measured many times by laboratories around the globe (e.g. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/8/88/Mauna_ Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png for one example). This rising is far above the usual cyclic fluctations due to ice age cycles (see http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/d/d3/Carbon _Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png). Also, it is fact that greater levels of carbon dioxide lead to greater trapping of the Sun's energy. This is settled science, and can be independantly confirmed by anyone with a cylinder of carbon dioxide, a temperature probe, and an inquiring mind. Lastly, greater trapping of the Sun's energy will lead to a reasonably predictable rise in global ave
>Spend some money on improving Wine (it would be really easy for them, compared to anyone else who wants to do it), et voila -- near-perfect backward compatibility
I don't think so. It is probably possible (though not easy) to get Wine working with any particular application you choose, though it may take more or less time depending on the development team you have. But to have something that works with *every* application? There are many millions of Windows apps out there, a large percentage of which are privately written and obviously not publicly available for testing. Not to mention all the legacy hardware with device drivers written for Windows. If you implement something general enough to work with everything and anything, you've basically got -- Windows, with maybe a few unrecognisable shreds of Linux buried underneath. And there goes the entire point.
Not to mention that Windows has also had virtual desktops since 2001 (although the implementation is admittedly inferior to Spaces). I assume Mac fanboys choose to ignore that since as you have to download it they regard it as 'not technically part of the OS'; but personally I'd rather have it as a free download than pay $129 for it...