Uhh... What Star Trek movie were you watching?

Because in the one *I* watched, they traveled through the event horizon of a black hole, and came back out again (although, this is actually an interesting question over in Trek-land; warp engines let you travel FTL, so could you escape a black hole? I mean, after the tidal forces ripped your puny ship into it's component atoms, of course...)

Or, how about the "space dive", where they leaped out of a shuttlecraft and suddenly lost all their inertia? How about re-entering the atmosphere in a space-suit without any worries about friction or heat?

Or how about that giant drill? Why did it fall when they cut it off the ship? If the ship was in geosynchronous orbit, then the drill must have been traveling slightly slower than geo-synchronous orbital speed; it should have very gently drifted eastwards.

We'll need a new filesystem, too. ext3 specifies a 32-bit field for timestamps. Moving to a 64-bit architecture doesn't help you there. ext4 has a "fix" that will take us forward another few hundred years.

Actually, shockingly Sony is turning out to be the open one here, since they've added support for epub, an open standard based largely on XML and XHTML.

I know; it's like the sky is purple and pigs are zipping through the air.

Mobipocket can't be read on a Sony reader (without breaking the DRM).

Mobipocket can be read on your computer until your computer hard drive crashes and you have to reinstall your OS, at which point your computer gets a new Mobipocket key, and all your existing books won't read anymore.

Mobipocket is a format designed to be incompatible with the rest of the world from the word go.

Meanwhile, here in Canada, Bell is effectively forcing all their competitors to use the same usage-based-billing scheme they are.

This is probably to stop Lynx browsers from properly displaying content. I'm betting this move was backed by bribe money. Clearly this is aimed at reducing compatibility with Lynx. MS is just trying to steal away market share.

Absolutely. I'm not making any claims here that the Apple laptop is not a beautiful machine, because I think it is, and obviously for some people it is a very worthwhile investment.

However, the claim TFA makes is that the huge price of a 17" Apple laptop is not comparable to a cheap HP 17" laptop, because it's a bit like comparing apples (no pun intended) and oranges. But, I think the ad points out an important truth; HP sells both apples and oranges, but Apple just sells apples. "Lauren", our quintessential hip young person, probably just wants a piece of fruit. If the orange will suit her needs, then she doesn't need to spend the extra for an apple (regardless of whether it is an HP apple or an Apple apple).

Ok, I think I've tortured that metaphor enough.

If you want a laptop to write a few essays for class, send some email, watch some youtube clips, catalog pictures from your point-and-shoot camera, then the 17" HP is going to fill your needs. Is it really worth the extra money to go Apple just for the shiny lickable interface that is OS/X?

Giving the Apple a point for "construction" seems a little dubious to me. There's no doubt that the fancy aluminum shell on the Mac is much sturdier than my all plastic Dell from work, but my Dell laptop seems to stand up just fine to the rigors I put it through. If the Mac were made of aircraft grade aluminum, would it be even better? Not really.

Giving a "point" to Apple for Firewire seems equally dubious. Most consumers who are choosing between a PC laptop and a Mac likely don't know what FireWire is, and the other laptops all HAVE a FireWire port, just a slower one. FireWire 800 is a "feature" that very few people need.

The point to Apple for "sound" is perhaps most dubious of all, since the Sony has some slick specs in this department as well.

Methinks the TFA is slightly biased.

If the universe is deterministic, then it follows that it is predictable, but unfortunately you don't get to choose outcomes, because your choice is determined by firing of neurons in your brain, which is caused by chemical processes based on the history of your brain. In other words, your choice is predictable, and therefore isn't really a choice at all.