I believe the US elections of the past few years show that as long as the average consumer is distracted by shiny toys, nothing else makes any impact on their brain. Apple products are the ultimate in shiny toys, thus, they are wildly successful.

There are many other shiny toys that target people with more money than brains, and most are also wildly successful: almost every heavily advertised movie or video game (regardless of actual quality), "premium" automobiles that are just re-badged versions of cheaper makes, and, of course, casinos.

I think anyone (including /. readers) should be proud if they are not one of the sheep, but rather a thinking human being. Even if you are an Apple fan (which means you likely aren't a big thinker...I kid) it's pretty easy to figure that an iPhone plus some other device (netbook, eReader, etc.) is a better bang for your buck than an iPad.

You have to pay $99 if the version of iPhone OS on your iPhone doesn't have a jailbreak yet.

Well, if you can design a windmill, solar cell, tidal turbine or other naturally-powered generator so that you can leave it alone for decades (centuries?), it can pay itself off compared to the cost of operating a traditional fuel-burning plant, although the payoff time would be so slow it may need subsidies to get investment going.

I do agree that, beyond research/prototype funding, government shouldn't subsidize these technologies until they are able to compete commercially on their own merits. Until it's cost effective, the money is better spent on clean coal or nuclear.

I know you aren't serious, but in case anyone is curious: Last I heard, this process is so slow the sun going red giant on us is a more pressing issue. Somehow changing this moon escapism process shouldn't have any real effect on people even billions of years from now.

a few years ago, they all used friendster

sometime in the recent past (12 mos?) i noticed they were all on facebook now

yes, exactly as you say, its a dying distinction

Nonsense. Law is simply morality that's been codified.

That's a false equivalence, which if accepted creates a tautology.

The law in some jurisdictions provides for a death penalty. The fact that a death penalty is authorized by law does not automatically make it moral -- it is moral to some, and immoral to others. This is but one example.

The law may reflect particular versions of morality, but it is even more frequently amoral. Building codes specify how your house must be built. There is nothing inherently immoral in building a non-compliant structure or owning a non-compliant structure (excluding fraudulent sales to others), yet the law does not allow it.

The law of copyright is 300 years old. The morality of copying is subject to debate. Your general proposition appears to be that it is immoral to copy a work. If so, one must question why it is immoral to copy a work the day before a copyright expires yet moral to copy the same work the day after the copyright expires. Note: the morality of complying with copyright is not in question -- you've argued that law is codified morality, and not than that it is immoral to flout the law.

I perused the project website, and was pleased to see that they hope to have native clients for OS X and GNU/Linux by year's end.

I'm happy to see efforts in this direction, and hope that it might lead to more gaming options on those client platforms.

More details on these specific plans here: http://dev.ryzom.com/versions/show/15

Actually that's not a flame. The only way to download the SDK is if you pay to become an iPhone developer and even if you did acquire the SDK through other means, you'd still need a certificate from Apple to actually run it on your phone. The only other option is to jailbreak the phone.

Wonder if the cracked version will have lan...

I though we all knew at this point there is no such thing as junk DNA- it's all used for something, whether it be patches supplied by bacteria, viruses, or who knows what.

Dave

I'm not sure how much I care about the ability to bend my books.

Yes, paper bends... As I turn a page it bends... But bendability isn't really something fundamental to the function of a book. A book's primary purpose is the display of information.

I mean... Is a magazine somehow better than a 500 page novel just because it's more bendable?

Are hardcover books somehow inferior to paperbacks, simply because they're less bendable?

I have a nook, and I read plenty of books on it. And I have never, ever found myself thinking you know what would make this ereader perfect? If I could just bend it...

I personally think its ridiculous that MS has to offer alternative browsers at all. An operating system is not just the kernel, but all the software bundled on top. IE8 is just a value add on top of windows; one you can easily replace. That some users are so incompetent (I say this with love) they could not install another browser is a testament to the reason why MS even bundled IE8 to start with. Windows is usually bundled with lots of software that have alternatives; from games, to notepad, to web servers. Why not give users a choice of Apache, Lighttpd, IIS, etc. when installing Windows? I say this as a guy who has been using primarily using Linux, both at home and work, for the past 8 or 9 years. I think I'd be very annoyed if Ubuntu required me to choose amongst alternatives for each large piece of software it installs by default.

Without the full text of the "Pigeons" article, I don't know what their experimental methods were, but it could be that they rewarded the pigeons for choosing drawings that the researchers themselves classified as "good" based on some consistent criteria that the pigeons were able to follow.

Silly as the article's title might sound, it turns out that pigeons are remarkably good at "reading" photographs and drawings. Something we might keep in mind when we dismiss these creatures as "dumb animals" (I'm referring here to pigeons, not scientists). Here's an example:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T2J-494CHVR-C&_user=18704&_coverDate=01%2F30%2F2004&_rdoc=5&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%234920%232004%23999349998%23476623%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=4920&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=12&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=fda3fc422365343df5668529b4fe708f

I guess you are comparing a DJ too much with a common jukebox.

A real DJ entertains his guests by throwing them a storyline of music. They mix the music so the public will be able to continue to move on their groove.

Nothing to do with royalties and all that; nothing with commercials; just plain mixing music in a way it doesn't disturb the dancing flow.

Radio Jockeys are quite the same; only they won't have their dancing crowd to attend but their listeners. The entertaining factor stays the same; wether the crowd is dancing or getting entertained by listening to 'm. A good DJ knows when to mix what on the right moment and will feel together with its audience. A Jukebox doesn't since it'll only play on command.