The g600 certainly looks programmable - is there no option to reassign the primary buttons? Hell, it seems like even the buttons on my normal Logitech office mouse can be reassigned, certainly the click-wheel can be. (on Linux at the moment, so I can't double check)

If the advertising said X was a feature, and that claim was a factor in me buying it for the asked-for price, then I paid for that feature. All else is irrelevant.

On the other hand, almost my entire video collection is DVDs, but I would still much rather watch them on a 1080p screen. My computer has enough horsepower to upscale and deinterlace them beautifully. And then there's the few works of video art where the additional detail is worth the added storage space.

Meanwhile for the un-tech masses a DVD, Blue-ray, or UHD video all take roughly the same amount of storage space - one ~5" plastic disc, plus case (usually)

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Seriously - who notices such things except the people who enjoy spotting them?

So what's the problem? It's not like 1080p TVs took the world by storm - it's been almost two decades and plenty of people still have CRTs. Most people replace their TV when the old one starts to fail, at which point I will certainly be willing to pay a modest premium for 4K. In the mean time let the enthusiasts have their fun.

Personally I suspect one of the major drivers behind 4K screens will be computer monitors - there's much to be said for standardized resolutions, and even on a 30" screen the difference with 1080p is dramatic. Hell, I'd kill for a 4K screen on my 15" laptop, I'm tired of reading blocky, pixelated text.

How many people have 30+" TVs? How many people have computers? How many would occasionally benefit from connecting a large-screen monitor that doesn't suck to their computer?

Or alternately, how many people don't want to always watch TV from at least two screen-diagonals away? Why do people sit in the front rows of a theater where they cave to crane their necks back to see the whole screen? I *like* having the image fill most of my field of view, and that means sitting considerably closer than one diagonal away from the screen, at which range the individual pixels at 1080p are clearly visible.

Let me guess - you took the time to adjust the brightness, contrast, color, etc. settings to suit your room? In my experience most people don't, and the defaults that are tuned to look good in the over-bright fluorescent lighting of the display rack look horrible anywhere else.

That makes sense from a marketing perspective, after all the store staff isn't going to fiddle with anything, but it would be really nice if there were a quick and easy option to switch to "living room defaults". Maybe even an overlay in the corner for the first few minutes after being turned on that says "Currently using showroom defaults. Do you want to switch to settings much better suited to the average living room?" That would probably dramatically improve the image quality for 90% of users.

I'm objecting to you complicating the thought-experiment to no good end. Lots of different factors affect *some* deserts - but the common factor among *most* deserts is extremely low humidity, and extremely high diurnal temperature swings.

I'm beginning to be convinced, I certainly agree it would appear to violate the laws of thermodynamics otherwise, but it just doesn't feel right.

Umm, maybe I'm missing something important, but is not the the whole point of optics to transform radiation flux? The Hubble for example concentrates all the light from a star hitting it's entire multi-meter lens onto just a few pixels of its imaging plane. If the person was just standing next to the star the net energy transfer would be zero, but as soon as you introduce optics you should be getting get asymmetries in the energy transfer.

A set of properly tuned lenses or reflectors can project the image (or at least radiant flux) of the person over the entire surface of the star, and conversely an image of the star over the entire surface of the person. The two bodies will then experience a net energy transfer until the total radiation flow in both directions is equal: at which point if you were standing in the column of light between my reflectors you would see the same radiation flux in both directions. However, once focused on to the surface of the respective bodies the flux will be radically different - the person has far less surface area, and thus the concentrated flux levels will be far higher around them than around the star. Which means of course that they would have to be *radically* hotter than the star to be emitting the same amount of total energy.

I will admit though that at first glance this seems to break the laws of thermodynamics, I just don't see the flaw. Is it really not possible to focus the entire output of a radiant surface onto something smaller than itself? That just seems very unlikely - after all the converse is clearly not true: a lightbulb can light a room with no problems. Seal it in a perfectly reflecting globe with a single tiny hole and the luminous intensity will climb until the light escaping through the hole is equivalent to the light emitted by the bulb. The bulb's temperature will obviously climb as well as it reabsorbs photons, but so long as it doesn't destroy itself, if you're putting 100W of power in, sooner or later you'll be getting 100W of light streaming out of that tiny hole. I think that's actually part of the principle behind lasers, but it's been a long time since I reviewed the physics there, so don't hold me to that.

Neither of those seems to address my question. Plank's Law applies to matter, and as they state in the photon gas article, photons only interact with each other under very extreme situations - any thermalization of photon energy happens as a result of their interaction with the matter of the containing vessel, which *does* have a temperature in the normal sense of the word. I'm getting the distinct impression that "photon temperature" is more of a mathematically rigorous analogy than an inherent physical property.

And sure, the sample is always emitting photons - I figured from context it was obvious that I meant "heats up compared to if it *wasn't* absorbing those photons"

Real gamers know the odds and work for the casino.

One more reason not to brake aggressively. If you're in the habit of slamming on the brakes at the last moment, then if/when they fail the second or so it takes for even a competent, alert person to realize that and apply the parking brake means it's already too late to avoid at least a minor collision. The lag is normally hidden by our perceptions, but it takes ~1/8th of a second just for the signal to release the wheel to travel from your brain to your fingers.

In fairness self-driving cars must by necessity have a multitude of sensors and a "brain" that in some sense "understands" how it is interacting with the world around it. And they already have a pretty impressive track record compared to human drivers.

Sensor-driven safety systems on the other hand have an incredibly limited perspective, and usually only enough brains to implement a few heavily assumption-laden rules based on that grossly incomplete data. That they often make stupid mistakes is hardly surprising. I mean who thought it was a good idea to not let the car get within X feet of a barrier? Ensure that it slows down sufficiently to avoid a collision, sure, but if it were creeping forward at 5mph it can stop practically instantly. Hell, it could be a wonderful feature for a tight garage - just drive in and for the last second or so the car automatically slows to a crawl and stops with it's bumper almost touching the wall (or the "stop sign" you've put exactly where you want). Of course that could cause issues if you relied on it to stop you in traffic - on an upslope where the guy in front of you is driving a stick you will likely end up with a crunched bumper - but it's a *safety* feature, it's there to save your ass from disaster when you've failed in your job as driver - you don't want to encourage people to use it on a regular basis, it's too stupid for that to be a good idea.

So how about one law against reckless driving, augmented by a non-binding, non-comprehensive list of example behaviors that will get you busted.
Intoxication, texting, talking on the phone, leaning into the back seat to get your baby's toy off the floor, etc.

No, steering with your feet while juggling angry cats blindfolded is not explicitly on the list - but a reasonable person can look at the list and say it probably qualifies, so let a jury decide on the particulars. That's their job after all - not just to decide on the facts, but to make sure the law is being applied justly.