Apple needs to move on to it's next "it" device. That is what will keep customers loyal.

Apples success in the late decade with it's irevolution has been it's ability to bring market appeal to devices we all knew one way or another would take off. Other companies were always first if not trying for years to make something cool yet apple appears to make it work and be cool overnight.

Did it again with it's retro iMacs
Transforming it into Trendy Fashionable Laptop
MP3 players
Smart phones with apps
Tablets

While I don't trust estores with DRM because they can go belly up, the Apple store has been around long enough you can trust it to be around at least another decade. And whatever content you have you can be sure that it will work well across all your Apple devices. If they can hold onto %20 of each market with loyal fans and they keep innovating...

What could it do next time? Maybe a deluxe textbook ereader for schools? Multiple ereaders on your desk system? Self publish it's own line of textbooks with the best authors and take over high school and college textbooks? All with the catchy phrase "Going back to school.."

Or torpedo if in the water.

Of course Valve will create their own Linux distribution. It might even be just a live USB drive. Valve has enough clout to force hardware manufactures to provide drivers, open or closed. It can set it's own standard for DRM and everyone will follow.

You can see where Windows is going. It's going the app store model. Valve is it's own app store. Valve doesn't want to be subject to the Microsoft tax at the MS app store where all software will eventually have to come from. Valve is a publisher so it's not looking split it's margin with Microsoft.

Valve provides it's own evolving DRM and QA for game development companies. It's provides the support. It only makes sense, they could do even more for Linux than they have done with Windows. With TPM modules on every motherboard it means they could use it just like Microsoft. They will compile and sign their own packages for their own Ubuntu like distribution. If you want to use another Linux distribution you can dual boot it or run it in a VM. With the Valve Linux kernel being TPM'd you might even be able to boot a TMP'd Windows 8 in a virtual machine eventually.

With VT-d and AMD IOMMU which makes hardware PCI passthrough possible as Valve I might even create a dedicated micro distribution for a hypervisor or two. Something that could boot in a second that could then boot anything else in a VM. They could then make this hypervisor really efficient with PCI passthrough then their Linux distribution would always run in a VM. Modern machines could then run Windows 8 and Linux efficiently side by side. Want to play a game of quake real quick, switch to the valve VM. Want to run any other closed Linux app, run it from the valve VM. Want to run open source Linux apps, switch to the Ubuntu or BSD VM. The valve VM becomes it's own environment and platform separate from Microsoft. Closed source games and open Linux apps running side by side.

Sounds like a coup against Microsoft to me. It won't be perfect overnight and likely it will evolve for a couple generations. But it will give them clout over Microsoft should MS try to strongarm them. Lets not forget how much money is involved. Computer games pull in more money than the movie industry.

If you have the skillset it is easy. It does take work though even if you do have that skillset. The number one motivation to do work is necessity, the second being interest.

I write software myself. But the web browser is too much like an operating system. I use it too much. It should do what it does and do it well. I felt like I was drowning in version numbers. What broke the camels back is when they defaulted to a chrome style UI. Too much change in the primary interface. I don't remember there being a choice on the installation screen or there being a couple year transition. It actually motivated me to use chrome since it seemed to change less. I already had it installed, I just felt more motivated to move on.

The problem with Mozilla is that they are focusing on one product "Firefox" for web browsing too much. I liked it when they started gutting Firefox and putting things into extensions and addons. But that was mostly behind the scenes. When it came to changing the UI they should have forked the product.

My opinion is the Mozilla foundation should be developing multiple backends and multiple frontends and half a dozen browsers. They should have competing visions. It's open source and there is no one right answer for everyone. Some people like lots of change and a faster pace and others just want it to work and to get work done. It shouldn't be one product. The reality is they can do both and people can install both. And let me be specific, I don't want "stable" releases, I want actual different products. I don't want versions, I want vision, direction, and philosophy. And then I want to choose what works for me.

Window 8 is about turning windows into an embedded platform like an iphone. Both securing the systems and letting them like a cut of all software through their software store. You'll be installing windows 8 with a smile on your grandmothers and parents computers. Of course you wouldn't be caught dead using it. All enthusiasts have all long jumped ship on windows except for gaming.

With windows 8 and Microsoft taking a cut I expect it to motivate a PC games dedicated Linux distribution and more development on hypervisors to run multiple Linux versions without a performance hit. Valve in particular will probably lead the effort.

I'm more surprised that bios replacement isn't already more prominent. It's not all that complicated to reverse engineer hardware initialization, it's just that it isn't necessary. Hardware will always be rootable. And software will always be able to implement emulation and man in the middle on such hardware. It will just require more active participation from the hardware owner, no virus or software installation will be able root the system without you actively participating.

Were these people on US soil when they performed these acts?

Am I the only US citizen that is concerned about this?

Is Saudi Arabia now able to extradite me because I read playboy?

Lets throw out the old model.

Instead lets have panels approve needed inventions for fields. The patent would sort of then be the x prize for the invention.

Then the panel would decide the relative reward for winning the patent. It could be a fixed amount. And it can also be longer than 18 years. It could be x amount per produced item for x years. Or a set licence fee per organization per year. Payments could also be structured to match inflation.

This way some things such a medical treatment for rare disorders could have a low enough corporate "tax" to be affordable but still produce money a hundred years from now.

Also lets throw out that patents are a contract and can't be reevaluated.

Windows 8 will not be a tradition desktop OS. It will be an app platform for the desktop. All apps will have to be sold through Microsoft and MS will get their cut. But this also means all apps will be signed by Microsoft and apps will be revocable. So all malware will have to go through MS and they will subject everything to their standards.

No more viruses, no more trojans. Everything with a documented license though Microsoft. There might be few 0 day exploits now and again but it will be now and again but overall a 99.999% improvement.

For businesses and grandmothers alike this will be a good thing.

Enthusiasts will still root their machine but for the most part they will move on to running Linux and Windows side by side in a hypervisor. And a couple years later Apple will start selling OSX targeted to a hypervisors and generic PC hardware because their app store will make more selling software than hardware.

Surely we could provide enough supplies to maintain a dozen people on mars indefinitely. Any missions going into space could have extra payloads and bigger rockets to lift supplies to escape orbit. The supplies could more or less take their time in getting to mars and they could wait in orbit when they get there to be brought down where they were needed. Seed supplies such as technical gear and material to build machine shops and smelters and hydroponic greenhouses. Without a doubt there is metal and raw materials to be found on mars and a couple small fission reactors would be easy enough to assemble and dismantle and moved as needed.

Once there chemicals propellants can be made with the excess energy from the fission reactors. Twenty years later a return rocket might possibly be assembled to take them into orbit and rendezvous with a return vessel. Retirement.

One of the things we need in the US is mandatory licensing and a commission that determines fair prices.

Fair use isn't just about usable free stuff. All too often businesses will horde information and IP at unreasonable prices. Information which in the public interest should be available at a reasonable price.

The public gives IP rights holders it's so called "right". The public does this theoretically because it's in the public's own best interest to promote things such as science, literature and art. But the public also deserves value from those it's gives a copyright or a patent and as such in no way it's it a contradiction for it to set fair pricing because without it the "right" holder could claim no income at all.

Take patents. Should I be able to patent a medical procedure that will save lives? What if I said I wanted something unreasonable like a trillion dollars per treatment. The fundamental question is what is in the public's own interest! We should not allow information hoarders. We award creativity and achievement not hoarding.

It looks like they are wearing sweaters and shorts. Scantily clad maybe by Taliban definition. Who is kidding who.

And the lyrics are obviously being used in good humor and fun and not in a vulgar way.

Practical chemistry is the application of material science. Teach backyard and kitchen chemistry. What they will never teach you in school.

Start with the basics of acids and bases. Supervise him getting burned by some of the stronger acids. That's the most important lesson he can learn young and must remember, i.e. fire and chemicals are dangerous. Build a primitive battery and show him how to anodize aluminum and etch copper clad board. You also have old fashioned photography. Make your own film. Electrolysis of water, then burn the captured gasses back into water vapor and finally condense back into water.

Show him how to build a still and make moonshine(seriously). Then you can teach him about refining and purifying materials. Later when he gets to the age of 14 or 15 you can teach him how to make his own firecrackers and simple plastic explosives(obviously limiting him to very small quantities.) This would be no different or dangerous than teaching about gun ownership, responsibility and marksmanship.

And all in between you can tech him the history all these things as well as the mistakes people have made in not really understanding the chemistry of what they were doing.

I don't remember the specifics but there was once a scientist and ether is was illegal to have gold or he was afraid of it being stolen. So he dissolved a not insignificant amount of gold into a liquid and kept it on his shelf amongst other chemicals and no one was the wiser.

Then take over the business from the US. They could institute no fault laws and hold space launches that go bad unsuitable.

In the united states it's also trivial to setup shell companies to take a fall for anything. Companies are only liable for up to what they have in the bank and their infrastructure collateral. A company at risk for disaster and being sued will transfer it's money easily enough and rent it's critical infrastructure. Nothing to stop them from going bankrupt.

Only thing your risking is your short term income of up to a year which for a spaceport could be substantial. Subcontractors can possibly be sued to recover income they made from said company for something like a year prior under laws that make shell companies somewhat accountable for at least a trifle something.