Actually, that's one of the very few problems you won't have trying to raise plants on Mars, considering it makes up 95% of the atmosphere. Even despite the greatly lower atmospheric pressure, it has more CO2 per unit surface area than Earth.

Of course, everything else you mentioned, along with the lack of oxygen, is pretty accurate

Oh for god's sake. How can you use the same piece of evidence in two places without even reading the abstract of the paper?

That is the title of the cited paper. Often, scholarly papers contain information beyond the content of the title. For example, following the provided link to the article reveals this in the first line of the abstract:

Indeed.

The parent was joking/speculating. CS5 just came out for OS X and Windows. Dropping OS X support in the future would be ballsy, but its biggest effect would probably be keeping people on CS5 for a long time.

ClickToFlash works fine. Or were you talking about MobileSafari? Why would you want a flashblock plugin for a browser that doesn't have a flash player?

It sounds like you didn't know this when you bought it, despite the fact that it's always been that way, and it's never been a secret to anyone. Caveat emptor.

Since we're doing the whole opinions-as-facts thing: xkcd and Penny Arcade are funny because I find them funny.

It's neat that a lot of people seem to agree, but my opinion of their humor doesn't require it.

Jobs' argument is poorly stated. But I do see a difference here:

One is devices that all view the same open web. Apple pisses you off for not letting your run your browser of choice on the iPhone? You can buy any other phone and get to exactly the same content. This approach puts the power in the market, and it's what Jobs appears to be, advocating, in a half-assed, self interested way, of course. And if I want to buy a locked down phone? That's my business, not yours.

The other is devices that view a web where the good bits are all controlled by Adobe. Now suppose Adobe pisses you off for not including some feature, or performing poorly on your device of choice. Your option here is basically to conform to Adobe's wishes or do without the content they lock up.

Basically, I'm okay with Apple doing what they want as long as I have the option of not buying or using their products (disclaimer: I currently own an iPhone. They haven't crossed my personal line yet). I don't really have that option with Adobe, although it's getting a lot better lately.

I'm not entirely sure what happens to the borrowed shares owed when stock is shorted, but my guess is that people who've shorted Palm's stock and still owe outstanding shares stand to lose a lot if the stock becomes delisted. I imagine many people were shorting Palm, and perhaps they were willing to pay more than the HP buyout price to make sure they get the stock back to their creditors while they still can.

There is some indication that the iPad has sold more than a million units already. Now, it's a sexy new gadget that could turn out to be a flash in the pan. But if competitors bet that it is, and lose, they could stand to 1.) lose a ton of money and 2.) hand Apple a virtual monopoly. Nobody but Apple wants that.

Your post is insightful, but this bothers me a bit:

Forgive me for singling you out, but why would competition from HP necessitate that RIM be "taken down"? Isn't it more likely that it would spur RIM to improve the blackberry line? And wouldn't that be better than replacing one virtual monopoly with another? There seems to be this pervasive idea among geeks that there is one superior technology, and therefore all others must die. The last thing I want is a monoculture, no matter who owns it.

How are smartphones not already ultra-portable computers? And if they're not, why would adding only a projector change that?

A merger would generally only be prevented under anti-trust if it would create a monopoly. As HP and Palm are both relatively minor players in the market, that's not an issue here.

And about that worst case scenario I was reluctant to think about.

The problem I have is how they establish whether someone is a non-citizen. They will wind up asking actual citizens to verify their citizenship status in the course of complying with this law, because if they aren't sure someone is a citizen, they have to ask. Further, while an Arizona driver's license is proof of (at least) legal residency status (at the time the license was issued), the same can't be said for many other states, notably New Mexico. Ironically, legal residents are in a much better position that citizens are to establish to a random cop that they are legally permitted to be here.

So suppose I'm an American Citizen with a valid New Mexico driver's license driving through Arizona. I don't have my birth certificate or passport on me, because I have no reason to believe I should require either of those documents to travel between US states. Suppose further that my tail-light is burnt out, but I don't know about it, and I get pulled over. During the course of this lawful interaction, for whatever reason, the officer suspects that I am an illegal alien, and asks to verify my citizenship status. I show him my New Mexico ID

From here, there are two possibilities. First, he accepts my ID as valid proof of my legal residency, even though it is no such thing. Honestly, I believe that this will happen in most cases like this, even though nothing has been demonstrated to the officer. The other possibility is that the officer correctly recognizes that I don't have valid proof of my citizenship or legal residency, and takes me to the lock-up pending investigation. At best, assuming the officers involved are cooperative and non-hostile, it could take several hours for the county clerk's office/hospital where I was born to get the needed documents so I can be released. I don't want to think about the worst case scenario.

Now suppose that, despite the fact that I am a citizen, my English isn't that great, or I'm mentally challenged and can't really understand what's going on, or I just managed to somehow piss off the cop.

I believe the chance that something like this will happen, more than once, is quite high. Regardless, it's possible under both the new law in Arizona and the existing, unenforced federal law. This makes them both bad laws, in my opinion. I don't deny that illegal immigration is a big problem in need of a solution, but there must be a better way than this.