Someone needs to mod you up now dammit.

While fanbois love to have a Vietnam war style body count, isn't it supposed to be about profits?

Otherwise we'd be eating crap, because 50 million flies can't be wrong.

I have no idea where he got that idea, because my experience was much more like yours. The PC was fragile, updates broke programs and reset options, people had to constantly re-learn things to do what they had already been doing (ribbon and 8/8.1) and other productivity killers that necessitated many PC support people.

But one thing. I use terminal in OSX a lot to do quite a bit of stuff. It can do a lot of cool stuff very quickly. You just have to look at OSX as the biggest Linux distro out there.

Yes. I've spent a lot of time futzing with my PC's a lot working with my Macs. There is a reason why companies have a lot of people keeping their PCs running. People who use PCs at work probably give a big boost to Apple for their home products.

The price. After watching two nerds nearly come to blows over a 5 cent difference in the price of a RAM stick some years ago, I find the whole thing rather silly. I get the impression that all slashdotters drive around in Toyota Corollas, or whatever else the cheapest car is at the moment.

This is not like the Apple costs 20 times what a comparable PC costs. This is a relatively small amount, and often when similar features are compared, the differential is darn small. No comparing an old EEPC netbook to a macbook plus thankyouvery much.

That's part of it. Several years back, the MS fans bragged about their choice of peripherals, add ons, cards that they could buy, while the measly Apples were stuck with a few.

Now that same argument is used to try to explain why the MS PC is not as well integrated as the Apple product.

In addition, Apple is a hardware company first, and they have a lot of software that is knitted for the OS. I have used Final Cut Studio just about forever, and even iMovie to do video work. I've also run Adobe Premiere on the PC end because some times I just had to use a MS PC. It's quickly obvious which is the superior program, and much of that superiority is based on that integration. And the workflow in the studio suites is just doggone nice.

So whereas Apple is used to hardware/software integration, these other guys are busy trying to write to handle a lot of different machines. And that appears to be a big advantage for Apple.

They certainly did give it a kick in the ass though.

If in the ideal world of the apple hater, I wonder what version of DOS we would be using on our Blackberry's?

I suggest that you stand by to find out just what it costs to not do anything.

Besides, there is a whole litany of "Costs too much", from cleaning the air and rivers, to reducing pollution form cars, to gas mileage to electric cars, to wind power and solar power. All going to be too expensive.

And we have cleaner air water and land, cars that get good gas mileage and low pollution and good performance, electric cars that have decent range and can beat the crap out os most vehicles, and lately ther has bee the begginings of whining about wind and solar having a competitive edge.

It's called progress. It's called better quality of life. Just like we don't kill people in London with coal burning pollution or light the Cuyahoga river on fire:

http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~zwang...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

We gotta move on, even if it costs a little money. And in the end, it can even be profitable.

Sorry you got that from my post. Just like antibiotics, we should use herbicides sensibly. If you can nuke those weeds, it looks awesome and pristine out in th fields, and if the cash crop don't mind, it's balls to the wall.

When you use large amounts of Herbicides, and indiscriminately, there are maybe 1 in 10,000 plants that you were trying to kill that don't shrivel up and dry. Eventually, they are the ones you are trying to kill, but now "Roundup ready" is worthless, because you have ot use a different herbicide.

And yeah, farmers will pour on the Roundup, because in conjunction with Roundup ready seeds, they can increase yields,

For a while.

This stuff is great, until we find out we are cultivating super-weeds. Google "Roundup Ready resistance". Eventually, we'll have to find a different chemical to control weeds. Then another. Then another.

Complete side note, but organic farmers have started using water jets to get rid of weeds. Even more they have been adding things like corn gluten to the pressure weeders to fertilize at the same time as they cut. The gluten helps kill the weeds too.

The downside is that it's at least a two person job. Someone has to drive while another aims and shoots. No known resistance has been developed to a high pressure water jet.

Disclaimer: I am not anti GMO. I am however, concerned about pesticide resistance, and the concept of engineering plants to allow us to use more pesticides, which is a fine way to accelerate resistance. I also eat organic as much as possible because I think it tastes better - but harbor no delusions of us feeding the world that way.

No more than a person cured by a patented drug. People are not patentable.

Your other questions have the same answer.

This philosophical foray makes me think a large degree of cannibis was involved.

Shup and pass those fritos, man!

I hate the idea of growing corn for fuel.

But I gotta call bullshit on this report. If biofuels fail, it will be because of political interference in the process, not some inherent shortcoming. Many ways to generate fuel, but The politics involved seem to have us concentrate on corn based fuel, are chosen to send money towards farming interests more than make for efficiency.

There are ways to pretty efficiently generate biofuel that don't use food crops. Problem is, they don't use a biosource that fits in with the political baksheesh process. So we use corn.

There are some elephants in the room anyhow.

We do really need an energy dense fuel source that we can transport efficently with many vehicles. Airplanes, jet fighters, long distance heavy freight trains aren't likely to ever run on batteries. And unless there is really a never ending, hence abiotic supply of oil, we're going to have to find something else. Problem is, petrofuels set a pretty high bar.

Though widely reviled by some, ethanol is here to stay as a fuel additive. Of all the choices in boosting octane, it is about the best. Tetraethyl lead is nasty-ass deadly toxic stuff, and MTBE is capable of tainting groundwater with ease. Ethanol one way or the other is needed. It's interesting that some 6 percent of the nation's fuel supply is now ethanol additives.

So if a certain amount is needed just to keep running our petrofuels in the first place, we should look at generating it efficiently. Drinkypoo notes algae generation. I've seen the reactors (who ever thought I'd be giving a citation to a "drinkypoo" Oh well, when you're right, you're right.

Another thing is as long as we are burning stuff, the concept of what makes for less carbon in the atmosphere ends up just silly arguments. A certain amount of energy is going to be had by burning, so we have on concentrate on burning what we must, and moving away from it for everything else.

A final note - it is irony of the highest order to read in the report about how cheap solar and wind power are making it difficult for biofuels to compete. But there is some wisdom to be gained in that. While we are garroted by having to use food as fuel in our politically based ethanol production system, wind and solar have been much more innovative, and the industries have worked hard at lowering their cost. And they have largely succeeded. The present biofuel system is based on sending money to producers, not efficiency or ecological sense.

If I read my tea leaves correctly, your stuff will have an ip address - and at least at first they'll try to do it via wifi. Might be an issue when you have 50 things trying to connect, as well as all your neighbors. But let's assume that all that is working.

Let's look at your refrigerator. It will probably have a touch screen monitor on the front, that will be able to give you information about the internal operations and maybe even a video preview of what's inside.

And commercials. You'll probably have to watch a food commercial before you can open the door. No more of this getting up for a beer stuff while regular TV is on a commercial break. The promise of food after watching will train us just like a dog will do tricks for a treat.

With rfid on all your foodstuffs, the refrigerator will be able to inventory and report on what is getting low.

You'll then watch some sponsored commercials trying to get you to switch brands or reorder the same brand item. Deals and coupons to be had.

You'll be able to install apps for weight loss on your refrig to only allow a certain number of calories to be extracted a day for the person on a diet.

If you are on a diet, you'll be able to watch commercials for Weight watchers, Zumba Exercise, and other stuff.

There can be a touchpad rug sensor that records your weight and reports it to your physician.

Then you can watch commercials about Hydroxycut, or there is some new prescription meds out for that.

Then you can watch commercials about Bringing lawsuits against the Weight loss medicine companies. Remember, they only get paid when you WIN!

Then your neighbor's kid will find out how to screw with the settings, and you'll need two factor identification to use your fridge. You'll see commercials advising the best anti virus apps for refrigerators.

Did I mention all the commercials?

Screw that crap - I'll keep my beer in an old styrofoam ice chest.

Burma Shave?

Or has slashdot gone over the edge this morning? Crazy FUD shit goin' on heah! I'm not certain the premise that an implant designed to break up epilepsy is turning people into cyborgs, or even "entering the age of".

At least not until we start integrating our brain implants into the Internet of "Things". Gonna take a mu metal hat to block that shit.

Then again, I can wager that most of the Apple is evul commentary here is posted by people who hate Apple anyhow.

That's sort of disingenuous in itself. But if the tax laws are changed because of Apple, I can get behind that - only not because it's Apple, but because the system is bollixed up.

Yeah, you catch crap some times.

A few years back, a sudden snow squall reduced visibility along a stretch of I-80 near snow shoe PA. The good citizens driving 80 miles per hour bumper to bumper were caught in a sudden whiteout. The inevitable happened, and several people were killed as they all slammed into each other, and it was an awful flaming mess.

They - families and mis. blamers - tried to blame the state for not having the roads suitable (for 80 mph bumper to bumper), the weather service for not forecasting a sudden squall - which would be impressive to forecast every squall in the foothills and along the Allegheny front. Everything but 80 mph bumper to bumper was apparently to blame.

Point is, we're humans. We assign blame. It makes no sense for a snowstorm to be the mayor of Atlanta's fault, but that's what we do. If he closed down the city, and no storm happened, he'd be blamed for causing the city to lose money.