This could mean the beginning of the end of traditional telephony, ie. mobile carriers will soon simply become ISPs with no one using its voice/SMS/MMS services.
Insofar as we are headed that way, that "end" began a long time ago -- long enough that the FCC (as discussed on/. last month) is already investigating regulatory approaches to handling the transition from the existing telephone network to a IP-based network.
Apple allowing VoIP over 3G on iPhone isn't the beginning of that end.
We just need a long-term plan to accomplish space colonization over the next 100,000 to 1,000,000 years.
I'm having trouble imagining any "million year plan" being meaningful. If we're not to the point where a plan can be executed within at most maybe a handful of generations, any "plan" is most likely going to be an exercise in sheer science fiction dressed up in the language of a plan, not a real meaningful plan.
First off, it is based on iPhone OS 3.2. What the hell?!?!??! So you're telling me I'm going to spend at minimum $500 on a device that is just as locked down as an iPod Touch or iPhone?
Nope, no one is telling you that you are going to spend anything.
Hope that clears up the confusion.
Secondly, it is completely devoid of ANYTHING...no external ports (except when using dongles hooked up to the 30-pin connector...huzzah for accessories:/), no flash support, no multitasking (oh great, so I can't have AIM and Safari open at the same time? Epic Fail.)...it just seems to be an extremely restricted device considering the $500 entry price.
A Kindle DX has about the same entry price, and is about the same size, and does less (OTOH, it does have a 3G connection, which you have to pay more for on the iPad.)
Third, what exactly are you getting for that price? Let's look at the fully loaded 64 gig/3G-enabled version. For roughly $800, you are buying a locked-down device with zero expansion options, zero USB ports or flash card readers, and no way to upgrade.
And paying about the price of a high-end, dedicated ebook reader to do it. Which has many of the same limitations, and less breadth of functionality (though it is better for the specific purpose of reading ebooks.)
The iPad is hardly uniquely limited in the world of mobile devices.
I was disappointed to see the iPad following the App Store model rather than full-on Mac OS X.
You are disappointed to see a publicly-traded for-profit company follow the model of a product that was a runaway success rather than one that is a much more modest commercial success in its target market?
an increasing number of us nerds (where 'nerd' == cerebral) are dissatisfied with the dull slow lowest-common-denominator pop-psychology politically-correct schlock ladled out at public schools.
[citation needed]
TFA represents a major political victory for homeschooling, at a time when that right is under attack (re: California).
"Political", maybe, in terms of spin, but its not a substantive and certainly not a legal victory for homeschooling in general, because (among other things) asylum proceedings don't operate under the laws that would apply in domestic homeschooling cases, and aren't controversies between the real parties in interest in the policy for which asylum is sought (the potential asylee and the government whose policy is challenged), but are cases where the parties to the case are the potential asylee and the US government, which may or may not have motivation to vigorously defend (or even really fully investigate the facts of) the challenged practice. (And whose motivation to do so may change between one asylum hearing and the next.)
It may have had a whack-job religious basis, but the decision stands in defense of my ability to give my sons a non-religious hyper-rational high-intensity education.
You might like to think that, but it really doesn't. A legal challenge to a (US) state schooling requirement would operate under completely different laws (the general police powers of the state viewed against only the express limits on State power in the US Constitution, rather than US asylum laws) and be a proceeding where the party with a real interest in the policy was actually represented. This kind of asylum hearing -- raising a different question evaluated under completely different law -- would not only not provide binding precedent, but would not even provide much in terms of persuasive precedent for such a case.
I've only got about 25 years of experience (20 of it professional), but even I am starting to run into the situation where experience just isn't considered something valuable anymore - "why should we pay you X thousands of dollars more than this kid right out of college? You both know C++, right?"
The question, though, is reasonable -- as long as they are willing to listen to an answer. Years of experience aren't valuable on their own, they are valuable to the extent that you've leveraged them to gain broader or deeper knowledge and skills that are themselves valuable in the position for which you are being considered (which its quite possible to fail to do much of while still accumulating years of experience -- I'm sure we've all met people who spend years basically marking time in a job, and manage to stay employed and even get promoted within an organization. Would you want a hiring organization to automatically see someone like that as more valuable than you if they happened to have more years of experience than you do?)
OTOH, oftentimes the people hiring may have an excessively narrow view of the relevant skill sets for the job they are hiring for, or be subject to short-term pressures that lead them to overvalue saving personnel costs and undervalue talent.
You're then defining resolution as number of pixels which is useless
Number of pixels is useful for somethings, dot pitch is useful for others. Both are important.
Otherwise, a 1x1 display would be better than a 1920x1080 screen, so long as the single pixel on the former was smaller than one pixel on the latter.
but when you compare the screen size as well you will see that an image will look sharper on the iPhone screen than the iPad screen.
If viewed from the same distance, sure. But I don't think that that represents typical usage: the way I see most people using smartphones like the iPhone is that they only hold it at arms length when using the dialer or some other big-button function, and hold it much closer for web browsing, texting, other work that requires seeing detail on the screen. That's not how I've usually seen people use tablets, or how I'd expect them to use the iPad.
Actually it has a WORSE resolution than the iPhone (132ppi Vs 163ppi)
PPI measures dot pitch (well, the reciprocal of dot pitch), not resolution (screen size, resolution, and dot pitch are all related, of course, but they aren't the same thing.) The iPad has a higher resolution than the iPhone, and a larger screen size; since the screen size is larger by a greater factor than the resolution, it also has a larger dot pitch (and, thus, lower pixels-per-inch.)
But who wants to watch movies on a 4:3 screen anyway.
As opposed to a 16:9 screen? Anyone who wants to see anything originally filmed for IMAX without big black bars on the sides. (IMAX is 1.43:1, which is just a little wider than 4:3, and a lot more square than 16:9.)
The iPhone supports HTML 5 (at least video tag and Google is using it for voice),
Actually, Google is using HTML5 features for the UI for the Google Voice web app for iPhone, but is not using HTML5 for voice. In this case, capitalization really matters.
In common use, they might usually be referred to that way, but technically birds are dinosaurs. Whether or not other dinosaurs had feathers.
Closely related they may be, but birds are birds.
Technically, birds are birds, but birds are a subset of dinosaurs, which are a subset of reptiles, which are a subset of animals, which are a subset of living things, and saying "birds are not dinosaurs, birds are birds" is exactly like saying "reptiles aren't animals, reptiles are reptiles."
The fact that none of those other first world nations can project power in the manner that we can should be abundantly clear to anyone who has studied geo-politics. The United States is the only country on Earth that can project it's power anywhere on the globe. This capability is derived from our large defense budget and strategic partnerships. It places us in the unique position of being able to act as a stabilizing influence on world affairs.
It gives us a unique capability to invade people; while, in theory, if used properly, this capacity ought to be able to back up an intelligently-planned diplomatic strategy and so promote stability, one can debate whether there is much evidence that that has been what it has actually done, and, indeed, one could argue that what we've invested to get that power to intervene (and what we've done with it) has actually weakened the diplomatic position that it would actually require to use it to promote stability.
From a purely selfish standpoint we have no reason to be there
You think we are there for altruistic reasons rather than purely selfish ones?
we obtain the majority of our oil imports from Western Hemisphere sources.
If you think that doesn't mean that getting the production policies we want out of the world's most significant oil producing region isn't something that is in our purely selfish interests, you don't understand markets. Even if we didn't get any of our oil from the Middle East, a change in production policies in the region affects global prices. Further, Venezuela (one of those "Western Hemisphere" sources we get oil from) is part of OPEC, and their actual production policies, therefore, are not independent of the actions of Middle East governments even beyond the normal effects of markets.
What do you suppose would happen if we left? I envision one of two outcomes, neither good for world stability:
1) China and the EU start to intervene in the Middle East to protect their own energy interests. India is caught in the middle and forced to pick sides. Russia is floating around as a wild card.
China and the EU already intervene in the middle east to protect their own energy interest. Why do you think Iran has Silkworm missiles? India already is caught in the middle between China and Chinese allies (though not so much in the Middle East.)
2) Absent the protection of the United States, the Saudis and other Sunni States start arms build ups to deter Iran (and Iraq?).
The Saudis and the other Sunni states have been building up arms to "deter" Iran (including Iraq--at the time, Sunni-led--invading Iran with the backing of the US as well as most of the wealthy Sunni states of the Persian Gulf) with the support of the United States for decades. The US becoming less involved would weaken this long-term effort, not accelerate it, since the US has been actively promoting this process (after the 1990-1991 war, it shifted to focus a while to supporting the Sunni states other than Iraq arming against Iraq, but since toppling the previous Iraqi regime, Iran is the boogeyman again.
Eventually they come to the conclusion that they have no choice other than to seek a nuclear deterrent. Israel is floating around as a wild card.
Iran doesn't really do anything to convince Sunni states that they need a nuclear deterrent that Israel (plus a certain first world country that has a history of intervening when Sunni states don't do its will sufficiently) doesn't already do.
Can Japan or the EU project enough power to ensure that the Middle East remains relatively stable and their oil imports don't dry up?
The US has been investing quite a lot of power to ensure that the Middle East remains unstable for decades, by propping up unpopular dictatorships throughout the region and funding most of the wars in the region (sometimes, funding both sides of one war at the same time), even when it wasn't starting them itself.
There has never been a serious threat to Japan or Europe's oil supply (or the US's, for that matter) from the Middle East that wasn't a largely or entirely a result of US involvement in the region (the embargo of the 1970s was a direct result of US and British support for Israel, the tanker war of the 1980s was a direct consequence of Iraq's war -- sponsored and sustained by the US, to the point where US officials -- including Donald Rumsfeld -- rushed to assure Iraq that our support for them would not waver when the first revelations and international condemnation came of Iraq's use of chemical weapons -- against Iran.)
Getting off the earth might mean our species survives for longer than if we put all our (womens') eggs in one planetary basket.
It might, sure. Trying to do that might mean that our species survives shorter, depending on what we take resources away from to make the effort. (And trying to advance it now by investing massive resources in manned space missions in our local neighborhood when we haven't any idea of any place useful to go for anything but "hey, we visited" purposes might actually make it take longer before we get permanent, independently viable human colonies anywhere else, compared to, say, investing more heavily in surveying space with space-based telescopes, investing in robot probes to understand conditions on other planets, and investing in the basic scientific research that might actually lead to ways to live places other than on earth.)
I think that the convincing argument has yet to be made that any allocation of resources that involves current investment in the particular projects that Obama would scrub, provides a rational expectation either of better quality of life or longer survival of the human race than the actual proposed current allocation of resources. I'd certainly be interested in seeing such an argument, but all I'm seeing is clear hyperbole and unsupported conclusions stated as if they were received wisdom from on high.
I think the word you are looking for is "idiot". Spelling it wrong doesn't strengthen your point. (Of course, your point seems to be based entirely on your outrage that I would take a position that exists only in your mind and not in anything I posted, so its pretty weak in any case.)
Money spent on space gets returned ten fold.
I didn't argue anywhere against money being spent on space. I made a point that the "spending money on space is the only way to prevent the eventual death of the species" argument is misplaced.
Technology spinoffs, research, keeping technically trained people employed, motivated and at home, and the actual dollar amounts we're talking about are piddlingly small.
Yes, those could all be good arguments that spending money on space exploration contributes the overall quality of life, which is exactly what I argued we should be using as the yardstick in making resource allocation decisions. (I wouldn't assume that deep space exploration is an especially efficient way of attaining those things, even compared to things that are also within NASA's mission like terrestrial aviation research, but I wouldn't assume that its not at least competitive with other uses, either.)
You make me ashamed to be the same species with your give up and surrender, the Universe is too big for us talk.
I don't recall ever advocating giving up and surrendering, or that the position that the Universe is too big for us. If anything, my argument was based on the premise that the Universe is too small for the position that I was arguing against to be tenable.
But perhaps insulting people based on your own inventions is easier than paying attention and responding to their actual positions.
In that case, it's just like a general purpose netbook
Except that the tablet format (which is less than ideal for anything that needs substantial text input) is more convenient for reading.
or any of the other tablets already out there.
Except that there are a dearth of tablet-focussed applications; running apps like an iPod Touch (iPhone apps that don't require the phone-specific functionality) basically gives it access to a vast library of mostly-inexpensive applications targetted at a tablet-like UI (most of them, at launch, will be apps designed for a smaller screen than the iPad has, but that isn't likely to be a big problem.)
Anyhow, the OP claimed it was an ebook reader, intending to replace the Kindle, which is clearly ludicrous.
Its pretty clear that one of the key selling points is utility as an eReader, and so, yes, one of things it is competing with is dedicated eReaders like the Kindle, Nook, etc. (And, since it runs iPhone apps, it has one clear advantage over the Kindle and Nook, in that not only can you use the bundled bookstore, but any supported by an reader app available for the iPhone.)
But its not trying to be a better single-use eReader than those, its trying to hit the sweet spot of being good enough at that while doing other things that people will see it better to get an iPad than getting a netbook and a dedicated eReader.
Watching movies? Maybe, but of course Flash is how one watches movies online
Or HTML5 video, which YouTube (who has recently entered contract to get TV content) has started to support, and which Safari supports.
There's also the question of how you get non-online movies to it, doesn't appear to have USB or SD card the like so you have to transfer everything wirelessly from your desktop and then save them on the small internal memory.
It comes with a dock connector and a cable to connect the dock connector to a USB port on a computer (just like iPods, iPhones, etc.), and there is an "Camera Connector" accessory that includes both a USB connector and an SD card reader that can be used to transfer videos and photos from SD cards. So, I would say your "you must transfer everything wirelessly from your desktop" description is just plain wrong.
"Ip ad" doesn't mean anything in English. "Is late" meant Duke Nukem Forever for several years.
OTOH, "I pad" (which is how "iPad" is pronounced) does mean something in English, usually involving deception (whether it refers to a resume or an undergarment), so I can't see how that makes "iPad" a better product name than "iSlate".
OTOH, whether it is a good enough eReader is an open question.
The LCD can do so much more, so much better, but eInk still takes the cake for readability and power consumption. Which is why the Kindle goes 2 weeks on a charge vs 10 hours.
Sure, but is 2 weeks on a charge really that much better than 10 hours from a practical standpoint for most users? Once you get more time on a charge than you are likely to be away from a point where you can conveniently plug into to recharge, the marginal utility of additional battery life is low (its nice, but not all that important.)
The Kindle DX is a fairly optimized single-purpose device. The iPad is designed to be a "good enough" device for a wide variety of purposes. Its not as good of a reader as the Kindle DX, to be sure. OTOH, its a lot better web browsing tool than the Kindle DX, a lot better mobile media player than the Kindle DX, and a lot better platform for a wide array of other applications than the Kindle DX. And, yes, in each of those other roles, there are better narrowly-focussed devices than the iPad -- few of which are as good of an eReader at the price as the iPad is.
My biggest problem with this is that it seems to be locked into the app store, just like the iPhone. In that sense, it does LESS than a netbook. Not saying this won't be successful, since Apple is nothing if not great at marketing consumer electronics, but what does this do for me task-wise that I can't do on a netbook?
Its a convergence device. As such, its designed to be a better netbook than the Kindle DX, a better eReader than an EeePC, and a better portable media player than either.
Its not a better netbook than a dedicated netbook, or a better eReader than a dedicated reader (though, of course, Apple will try to sell it as being better in both these roles than the existing competition.) And maybe not a better portable media player for most uses than an iPod Touch. But Apple's bet is that the perceived price/utility it will provide is better than any of dedicated readers/netbooks because it does a good enough job in all three roles to be a one-stop multirole device.
With the Shuttle put to bed, and now Constellation, NASA is done. Yeah, maybe a few robot probes will go out, but that's not what people get excited about (and are thus willing to fund).
So, the idea of the massive expensive of funding manned missions to the Moon and Mars is to create public interest which will support funding those same missions?
And, really, for quite some time robot probes have, though far less expensive, generated more positive public attention for NASA than the manned space program.
Why is it suddenly NASA's job to monitor global warming? Why not create an agency with that job, instead of re-allocating something that has for many decades been all about space exploration?
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration hasn't ever been all about space exploration -- forward looking terrestrial military and civilian aviation research has been a major part of their brief since the agency was founded (actually, since its predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, was founded.) Space exploration is just the stuff that gets the most press.
Space based weather, climate, geological, ocean, etc., studies have all been part of NASA work since approximately the time of the first satellite with sensors usable for such studies.
And if you wanted to direct all climate work to another agency, there is no need to create a new agency, as there is an existing agency within whose main mission such research clearly falls: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Of course, redirecting that work from NASA to NOAA wouldn't mean NASA goes to the moon, it just means NASA shrinks. Its not like NASA has its own independent revenue stream which is being tapped for climate work.
Slashdot Mirror
Insofar as we are headed that way, that "end" began a long time ago -- long enough that the FCC (as discussed on /. last month) is already investigating regulatory approaches to handling the transition from the existing telephone network to a IP-based network.
Apple allowing VoIP over 3G on iPhone isn't the beginning of that end.
I'm having trouble imagining any "million year plan" being meaningful. If we're not to the point where a plan can be executed within at most maybe a handful of generations, any "plan" is most likely going to be an exercise in sheer science fiction dressed up in the language of a plan, not a real meaningful plan.
This supports the claim that people have been critical of No Child Left Behind.
It does not support the claim that an "increasing number of us nerds" are disatisfied with public schools for the reasons cited in GGP.
Please don't flippantly make fact claims unsupported by evidence.
Nope, no one is telling you that you are going to spend anything.
Hope that clears up the confusion.
A Kindle DX has about the same entry price, and is about the same size, and does less (OTOH, it does have a 3G connection, which you have to pay more for on the iPad.)
And paying about the price of a high-end, dedicated ebook reader to do it. Which has many of the same limitations, and less breadth of functionality (though it is better for the specific purpose of reading ebooks.)
The iPad is hardly uniquely limited in the world of mobile devices.
You are disappointed to see a publicly-traded for-profit company follow the model of a product that was a runaway success rather than one that is a much more modest commercial success in its target market?
I think your expectations are irrational.
[citation needed]
"Political", maybe, in terms of spin, but its not a substantive and certainly not a legal victory for homeschooling in general, because (among other things) asylum proceedings don't operate under the laws that would apply in domestic homeschooling cases, and aren't controversies between the real parties in interest in the policy for which asylum is sought (the potential asylee and the government whose policy is challenged), but are cases where the parties to the case are the potential asylee and the US government, which may or may not have motivation to vigorously defend (or even really fully investigate the facts of) the challenged practice. (And whose motivation to do so may change between one asylum hearing and the next.)
You might like to think that, but it really doesn't. A legal challenge to a (US) state schooling requirement would operate under completely different laws (the general police powers of the state viewed against only the express limits on State power in the US Constitution, rather than US asylum laws) and be a proceeding where the party with a real interest in the policy was actually represented. This kind of asylum hearing -- raising a different question evaluated under completely different law -- would not only not provide binding precedent, but would not even provide much in terms of persuasive precedent for such a case.
The question, though, is reasonable -- as long as they are willing to listen to an answer. Years of experience aren't valuable on their own, they are valuable to the extent that you've leveraged them to gain broader or deeper knowledge and skills that are themselves valuable in the position for which you are being considered (which its quite possible to fail to do much of while still accumulating years of experience -- I'm sure we've all met people who spend years basically marking time in a job, and manage to stay employed and even get promoted within an organization. Would you want a hiring organization to automatically see someone like that as more valuable than you if they happened to have more years of experience than you do?)
OTOH, oftentimes the people hiring may have an excessively narrow view of the relevant skill sets for the job they are hiring for, or be subject to short-term pressures that lead them to overvalue saving personnel costs and undervalue talent.
Number of pixels is useful for somethings, dot pitch is useful for others. Both are important.
Otherwise, a 1x1 display would be better than a 1920x1080 screen, so long as the single pixel on the former was smaller than one pixel on the latter.
If viewed from the same distance, sure. But I don't think that that represents typical usage: the way I see most people using smartphones like the iPhone is that they only hold it at arms length when using the dialer or some other big-button function, and hold it much closer for web browsing, texting, other work that requires seeing detail on the screen. That's not how I've usually seen people use tablets, or how I'd expect them to use the iPad.
PPI measures dot pitch (well, the reciprocal of dot pitch), not resolution (screen size, resolution, and dot pitch are all related, of course, but they aren't the same thing.) The iPad has a higher resolution than the iPhone, and a larger screen size; since the screen size is larger by a greater factor than the resolution, it also has a larger dot pitch (and, thus, lower pixels-per-inch.)
As opposed to a 16:9 screen? Anyone who wants to see anything originally filmed for IMAX without big black bars on the sides. (IMAX is 1.43:1, which is just a little wider than 4:3, and a lot more square than 16:9.)
Actually, Google is using HTML5 features for the UI for the Google Voice web app for iPhone, but is not using HTML5 for voice. In this case, capitalization really matters.
In common use, they might usually be referred to that way, but technically birds are dinosaurs. Whether or not other dinosaurs had feathers.
Technically, birds are birds, but birds are a subset of dinosaurs, which are a subset of reptiles, which are a subset of animals, which are a subset of living things, and saying "birds are not dinosaurs, birds are birds" is exactly like saying "reptiles aren't animals, reptiles are reptiles."
It gives us a unique capability to invade people; while, in theory, if used properly, this capacity ought to be able to back up an intelligently-planned diplomatic strategy and so promote stability, one can debate whether there is much evidence that that has been what it has actually done, and, indeed, one could argue that what we've invested to get that power to intervene (and what we've done with it) has actually weakened the diplomatic position that it would actually require to use it to promote stability.
You think we are there for altruistic reasons rather than purely selfish ones?
If you think that doesn't mean that getting the production policies we want out of the world's most significant oil producing region isn't something that is in our purely selfish interests, you don't understand markets. Even if we didn't get any of our oil from the Middle East, a change in production policies in the region affects global prices. Further, Venezuela (one of those "Western Hemisphere" sources we get oil from) is part of OPEC, and their actual production policies, therefore, are not independent of the actions of Middle East governments even beyond the normal effects of markets.
China and the EU already intervene in the middle east to protect their own energy interest. Why do you think Iran has Silkworm missiles? India already is caught in the middle between China and Chinese allies (though not so much in the Middle East.)
The Saudis and the other Sunni states have been building up arms to "deter" Iran (including Iraq--at the time, Sunni-led--invading Iran with the backing of the US as well as most of the wealthy Sunni states of the Persian Gulf) with the support of the United States for decades. The US becoming less involved would weaken this long-term effort, not accelerate it, since the US has been actively promoting this process (after the 1990-1991 war, it shifted to focus a while to supporting the Sunni states other than Iraq arming against Iraq, but since toppling the previous Iraqi regime, Iran is the boogeyman again.
Iran doesn't really do anything to convince Sunni states that they need a nuclear deterrent that Israel (plus a certain first world country that has a history of intervening when Sunni states don't do its will sufficiently) doesn't already do.
The US has been investing quite a lot of power to ensure that the Middle East remains unstable for decades, by propping up unpopular dictatorships throughout the region and funding most of the wars in the region (sometimes, funding both sides of one war at the same time), even when it wasn't starting them itself.
There has never been a serious threat to Japan or Europe's oil supply (or the US's, for that matter) from the Middle East that wasn't a largely or entirely a result of US involvement in the region (the embargo of the 1970s was a direct result of US and British support for Israel, the tanker war of the 1980s was a direct consequence of Iraq's war -- sponsored and sustained by the US, to the point where US officials -- including Donald Rumsfeld -- rushed to assure Iraq that our support for them would not waver when the first revelations and international condemnation came of Iraq's use of chemical weapons -- against Iran.)
It might, sure. Trying to do that might mean that our species survives shorter, depending on what we take resources away from to make the effort. (And trying to advance it now by investing massive resources in manned space missions in our local neighborhood when we haven't any idea of any place useful to go for anything but "hey, we visited" purposes might actually make it take longer before we get permanent, independently viable human colonies anywhere else, compared to, say, investing more heavily in surveying space with space-based telescopes, investing in robot probes to understand conditions on other planets, and investing in the basic scientific research that might actually lead to ways to live places other than on earth.)
I think that the convincing argument has yet to be made that any allocation of resources that involves current investment in the particular projects that Obama would scrub, provides a rational expectation either of better quality of life or longer survival of the human race than the actual proposed current allocation of resources. I'd certainly be interested in seeing such an argument, but all I'm seeing is clear hyperbole and unsupported conclusions stated as if they were received wisdom from on high.
I think the word you are looking for is "idiot". Spelling it wrong doesn't strengthen your point. (Of course, your point seems to be based entirely on your outrage that I would take a position that exists only in your mind and not in anything I posted, so its pretty weak in any case.)
I didn't argue anywhere against money being spent on space. I made a point that the "spending money on space is the only way to prevent the eventual death of the species" argument is misplaced.
Yes, those could all be good arguments that spending money on space exploration contributes the overall quality of life, which is exactly what I argued we should be using as the yardstick in making resource allocation decisions. (I wouldn't assume that deep space exploration is an especially efficient way of attaining those things, even compared to things that are also within NASA's mission like terrestrial aviation research, but I wouldn't assume that its not at least competitive with other uses, either.)
I don't recall ever advocating giving up and surrendering, or that the position that the Universe is too big for us. If anything, my argument was based on the premise that the Universe is too small for the position that I was arguing against to be tenable.
But perhaps insulting people based on your own inventions is easier than paying attention and responding to their actual positions.
Except that the tablet format (which is less than ideal for anything that needs substantial text input) is more convenient for reading.
Except that there are a dearth of tablet-focussed applications; running apps like an iPod Touch (iPhone apps that don't require the phone-specific functionality) basically gives it access to a vast library of mostly-inexpensive applications targetted at a tablet-like UI (most of them, at launch, will be apps designed for a smaller screen than the iPad has, but that isn't likely to be a big problem.)
Its pretty clear that one of the key selling points is utility as an eReader, and so, yes, one of things it is competing with is dedicated eReaders like the Kindle, Nook, etc. (And, since it runs iPhone apps, it has one clear advantage over the Kindle and Nook, in that not only can you use the bundled bookstore, but any supported by an reader app available for the iPhone.)
But its not trying to be a better single-use eReader than those, its trying to hit the sweet spot of being good enough at that while doing other things that people will see it better to get an iPad than getting a netbook and a dedicated eReader.
Or HTML5 video, which YouTube (who has recently entered contract to get TV content) has started to support, and which Safari supports.
It comes with a dock connector and a cable to connect the dock connector to a USB port on a computer (just like iPods, iPhones, etc.), and there is an "Camera Connector" accessory that includes both a USB connector and an SD card reader that can be used to transfer videos and photos from SD cards. So, I would say your "you must transfer everything wirelessly from your desktop" description is just plain wrong.
OTOH, "I pad" (which is how "iPad" is pronounced) does mean something in English, usually involving deception (whether it refers to a resume or an undergarment), so I can't see how that makes "iPad" a better product name than "iSlate".
Its clearly not an ideal eReader.
OTOH, whether it is a good enough eReader is an open question.
Sure, but is 2 weeks on a charge really that much better than 10 hours from a practical standpoint for most users? Once you get more time on a charge than you are likely to be away from a point where you can conveniently plug into to recharge, the marginal utility of additional battery life is low (its nice, but not all that important.)
The Kindle DX is a fairly optimized single-purpose device. The iPad is designed to be a "good enough" device for a wide variety of purposes. Its not as good of a reader as the Kindle DX, to be sure. OTOH, its a lot better web browsing tool than the Kindle DX, a lot better mobile media player than the Kindle DX, and a lot better platform for a wide array of other applications than the Kindle DX. And, yes, in each of those other roles, there are better narrowly-focussed devices than the iPad -- few of which are as good of an eReader at the price as the iPad is.
Its a convergence device. As such, its designed to be a better netbook than the Kindle DX, a better eReader than an EeePC, and a better portable media player than either.
Its not a better netbook than a dedicated netbook, or a better eReader than a dedicated reader (though, of course, Apple will try to sell it as being better in both these roles than the existing competition.) And maybe not a better portable media player for most uses than an iPod Touch. But Apple's bet is that the perceived price/utility it will provide is better than any of dedicated readers/netbooks because it does a good enough job in all three roles to be a one-stop multirole device.
Its:
The question is will it be good enough in each of these roles that the compromises make it worthwhile?
So, the idea of the massive expensive of funding manned missions to the Moon and Mars is to create public interest which will support funding those same missions?
And, really, for quite some time robot probes have, though far less expensive, generated more positive public attention for NASA than the manned space program.
Individually and as a race, we are all going to die. We don't have any chance as a race, and getting off "this rock" doesn't change that one bit.
OTOH, we do have a choice about where we direct resources and what effect that has on the quality of life.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration hasn't ever been all about space exploration -- forward looking terrestrial military and civilian aviation research has been a major part of their brief since the agency was founded (actually, since its predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, was founded.) Space exploration is just the stuff that gets the most press.
Space based weather, climate, geological, ocean, etc., studies have all been part of NASA work since approximately the time of the first satellite with sensors usable for such studies.
And if you wanted to direct all climate work to another agency, there is no need to create a new agency, as there is an existing agency within whose main mission such research clearly falls: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Of course, redirecting that work from NASA to NOAA wouldn't mean NASA goes to the moon, it just means NASA shrinks. Its not like NASA has its own independent revenue stream which is being tapped for climate work.