Pick different example. iPhone Mk 1 cost 600 dollars. iPhone 4 costs 200 dollars. Apple wasn't losing money even at the beginning. Now the Xbox, that's a good example.

I think they can be justifiably proud of this technological terror they've constructed.

Well, obviously they need to run some instances of Windows for research and testing purposes to protect the public, but you'd think the organization devoted to cybersecurity would run something with fewer targeted attacks designed especially for it.

The space tug was one of the first things that was cancelled in the space station program http://www.astronautix.com/craft/otv.htm We're doing this whole space station thing in such a half-assed manner because approximately half of the people in Congress would dearly like to see the entire thing cancelled (and this is not a vote along party lines). They try at every chance to kill the thing outright but it's always so far been saved at the last moment (with subtantial cuts) in a political compromise. And the thing about a compromise is that it's a solution that no one is happy with, ie, half-assed. That's the main reason. The other reason is that the station is in LEO, and thus is subject to significant atmospheric drag via the attenuated atmostphere. It's not a permanent orbit. Within a few years at most, without periodic reboosts (which cost fuel), the station would reenter the atmosphere and burn up. The primary reason that the station is in such a low orbit relates to the quality of the launchers we had to launch it. Without a Saturn V class, we had no real capability to project more mass than a telecom satellite to a significantly higher orbit. The Clarke orbit is filled with junk from dead comsats, so it's unsuitable for permanent habitation even if we could reach it with so much mass. And the area between LEO and GEO is mostly unreachable by the supply and personnel rockets we had with significant payload. So basically, the reason this station program is so half-assed can be laid at the feet of the people who killed the Saturn V. Skylab was launched in 1 launch. The ISS took dozens to be mostly complete.

Would be for the freelancers to form a company called "Amalgamated IT" or "Federated Freelancers" or something and share *one* bookkeeper between the lot of them. That will reduce the regulatory burden to the bare minimum on each of them, they all contribute a small amount to the maintenance of the bookkeeper, and basically continue business as usual. Maybe hire another one if the first gets too overwhelmed with the amount of bookkeeping, after all, there are advantages to delegation.

Because Apple doesn't use BIOS. Apple uses EFI.

"oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes." Well, let's get the little buggers some oxygen! They're on our side, they should be getting all the help they need. Let's get an aircraft carrier in there, and use the power from the reactors to pump as much oxygen down to them as is necessary.

I got my iPad the day they came out. I knew it would be an amazing technology experience because I had used an iPhone for 3 years before that. The iPad is responsive and light. It's instant-on. It's not designed to replace a full-size computer; its design includes the premise that you already have a full computer of some sort to sync it with. It's not designed to replace a netbook for a hard-core techie. I have a netbook for when I need to go into a server closet somewhere and physically interface with a machine, whether via ethernet cable or USB to serial adapter. Honestly, I wouldn't want to risk my iPad in that environment. It's made of glass and a nearly-disposable 9 inch netbook is a much safer bet. So what's the iPad for? The iPad is for instant, trouble-free interaction with the web (minus flash of course). The iPad is for checking your email, reading an ebook, checking a PDF manual, listening to a podcast, listening to streaming radio, watching Weather radar, or watching a film or tv show via netflix. It's also good for games. I've ordered pizza with it, made skype phone calls with it, banked with it, filed my state sales tax reports with it. Any time I have both my iPhone and my iPad within reach I invariably reach for the iPad to do something online, because it's much easier than squinting at a tiny screen and constantly having to zoom in. When I'm out and about, I use my iPhone and don't bring my iPad, because the big advantage of the iPhone is portability (well, that and cellular calls). I've downloaded the iWork productivity suite, and it's cool, but I don't see myself using it too much, as I have other full-size computers. But if somebody sent me a document and I needed to make a quick change or I needed to make a presentation it could be quite handy to use the iPad for that with the appropriate cable. I've used it to SSH into my servers, and it works for that, but if I were going to be in for a long session, I'd want to move to a physical keyboard. Which I could do if I bought the keyboard dock or a bluetooth keyboard. Or, if I used one of my full computers. So, in summary, the iPad is not your only computer, it's not intended to be, it's an adjunct. It makes your life easier. It's lightweight net connectivity, somewhat like those Internet Appliances that were touted at the turn of the century, but with excellent multimedia capabilities, more portability and a much much better interface. In some ways, the touch interface for using the web is faster than a mouse, since there's not the lag time of moving the pointer and having to aim it precisely. It feels totally responsive thanks to all the animationw which mask loading times and lags which are so apparent on other smartphones and portable platforms. As the inventors of the progress bar realized, people are willing to wait for the computer if it seems like it is actually doing something. Now, as for the common complaints of the slashdot crowd: No flash : Not a big deal since I have Netflix, which is mostly better than Hulu anyway. Also, the ABC player is good for their content. Youtube HTML5 works well as does CNN's video. Non-removable battery: Also not a big deal, the battery charges fully in about 2 hours, and I've been getting more than the advertised 10 hours out of a single charge routinely. Also the standby time is excellent. Not completely free: I have linux boxes for when I want to maximize freedom. But even so, this concern is overblown with the iPad. A member of the development program can write whatever app he wants for his own iPad and Apple doesn't get to decide whether or not he syncs it onto his device and runs it. Apple's role as gatekeeper only happens when the App store is involved and in that particular case they are deciding on whether or not they want to use their infrastructure to distribute your application to others. I don't think that's unreasonable for a software distributor to be able to decide what software they want to distribute. If there's an issue there, go develop for another platform, we have plenty of choices on the market. No businessman is guaranteed a market just because he has developed a product. No USB ports: slightly annoying, true. I wouldn't mind more expandability. Apple's design minimalism I guess. At least we can be assured that crappy USB drivers won't crash the system. No SD card slots: Also slightly annoying, would be nice, but then they wouldn't be able to sell their camera connection kit. No camera: A camera seems like a no-brainer to me, but I'm betting Apple is holding back that feature to stimulate a wave of upgrades for the next version. Pioneers get arrows in the back, we've always known that. But for a 1.0 device, it's a pretty sweet release. No file manager: As a technologist, I find this most annoying. i'd like to be able to download PDFs, movies, etc to my ipad via the browser and save them, rather than just being able to read them inside the browser when I'm on the page. But apparently the non-techie population finds the concept of file paths and virtual object permanence hard. So each app manages their own files in a non-changable location. Again, more design minimalism to support our differently-abled brothers. No background tasks except Apple approved ones: Slightly annoying. i'd like to be able to play Pandora or other internet radio while browsing. The most egregious lack though seems to be in Apple's leaving the Clock app from the iPhone off of the iPad. This was an extremely valuable app because it runs in the background and has a loud continuous alarm, unlike the tinny sound effects played only once available in the calendar app. There are many 3rd party clocks but you'd have to leave that app running the whole time while in standby mode for the alarm to go off. I still use my iphone as an alarm as a result. Backgrounding is supposed to be addressed in the next version of the OS.

Gravity is can be simulated through constant acceleration. To extract water, you use fractional distillation by heating the asteroid material using concentrated sunlight in accelerated frame of reference. A spinning structure has been the traditional concept of how to create "artificial gravity". Another idea would be to fling asteroid material away using mass drivers to accelerate the whole rock.

Government doesn't make things? Hmm, lets ask the Army Corp of Engineers about that. You know, the people who built the irrigation projects that made large numbers of people living in the Western United States possible? Or let's ask a small organization called ARPA about this project they had called computer networking? Or let's ask the municipal water treatment plants in those cities lucky enough to still have public utilities./ I went to high school and college in building built by this government organization called the Works Projects Administration, which, admittedly isn't around any more, but built an awful lot of infrastructure in its time. Many companies have Governments as their sole customers, e.g. aerospace weapons firms. If they're signing the checks and paying for it all to be produced with guaranteed profit (cost-plus), can we really say they're not producing them? What about if they paid for the R&D, (which they did)? And the testing facilities? In Austin, Texas of all places, the publicly-owned city electrical utility produces power that is both cheaper and cleaner than all of the deregulated power firms in the rest of the state. And then there's public schools and public universities, which produce graduates, scientific research, art, music and literature. There's the Federally-Funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory which built the robots currently roving around on Mars. You might want to check your facts.

Is your proposition that the dissolution of GM, and the banking industry is preferable to government control? The existing people in control drove those industries into the ground, destroying billions and billions of value. Preventing evildoers and/or idiots from screwing over millions of American citizens is the primary goal of Government. It's right there in the preamble of the Constitution "promote the general Welfare.".

Maybe if I used the word "free" you'd be correct. But there are plenty of non-free markets that are still markets.

Please, Bad Analogy Guy, explain to us how differences in physical geography cause different needs for digital freedom.

Americans shoot pirates (the seagoing kind), we need a better name for the Copyright Reform party on this continent. Let's call it the Broadside Party! As in, "Give them a Broadside!". Also has a copyright-related punny meaning. Or maybe the U.S. version can be the Upside Party, as in "Smack them Upside Da Head!"

Yes, of course, Communists *always* go for market-based solutions like requiring people to purchase private health insurance, or creating a commodities market for carbon dioxide to create an entire new bunch of rich financiers. Maybe learn a little about the things you're against so you can argue against them intelligibly?