And this is exactly why people don't go to the Grand Canyon or climb mountains.

Old news. It launched two weeks ago and disappeared going Mach 20 (ish). The atmosphere apparently has a sweet tooth. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/04/27/darpa-loses-contact-with-mach-20-hypersonic-glider-during-test-flight/

I meant that as, lets send unmanned objects to the moon, and leave the manned missions to going some place new. I wish we could just set up a moon base and plop down there for a couple years, but there's no way that can happen AND still move forward with exploration. We would end up exactly where we are now, with a pretty cool little base hanging in the sky, but no one pushing boundaries because NASA doesn't have enough money to have multiple manned missions at once. If NASA was given another few billion dollars a year, maybe we could afford to design moon base and a heavy lifter, all while maintaining our robotic presence and the ISS, not to mention reopening the technology department to actually solving issues of long term space flight. It's unrealistic to expect that much from an organization that only gets half as much funding as it did last time it was asked to plant a flag on a rock.

I disagree with that sentiment. I believe if we go back to the moon, we'll end up in another shuttle situation. Doing something better than we did before (going into LEO, in the shuttle's case), but getting stuck with it. By skipping the moon we won't get stuck at another way point. If we go to an asteroid, we can study the moon along the way, maybe, but setting foot on a rock we've already been to won't be the goal, and that right there is the key point of this plan. NASA's express mission is to explore, and frankly, it hasn't been doing a very good job of that in terms of manned missions lately. Some may say that we don't need manned missions to explore. They may be right on the surface, but everyone's good friend Neil DeGrasse Tyson has some very good words on that subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQhNZENMG1o&feature=player_embedded

Clear (clear.com) has been advertising pretty heavily in Atlanta for city-wide Wi-Max. I can't speak for how well it works, but I can only imagine that they are getting a decent amount of business, seeing how they advertise more visibly than any other company in ATL outside of Turner.

It's not always about the exploration, its about maintaining jobs for a very intelligent portion of society productive in a way that doesn't give us more ways to destroy each other and creating spin off technologies. Exploration is just a cool benefit. With out reaching farther we become stagnant, which weakens us scientifically.

Honestly, there aren't to many foreign companies capable of space flight (one in Europe, if I recall correctly, nothing elsewhere private that I know of), so I don't see that being a problem. With out enough technological advancement, space is absurdly costly. There is a reason it's been purely government work until recent years.

For sports, there is nothing bigger. ESPN 360 is starting to become a big deal on college campuses, but there are blackouts if there is local television coverage. The major marketing pushes for TVs around here is always for 'the big game.' I don't have a TV either, but game day is when I hunt one down.

I agree with your gift analogy, but technically speaking, you're recieving a gift from hundreds of people. I'm not a tax expert, but I'm pretty sure they don't tax gifts worth very little (e.g. less than a dollar). Bittorrent isn't the gift-giver, its just the envelope that the money is in, the gift givers are the hundreds of seeders and leachers.

Its called football for the same reason "soccer" is called football, because it's played on foot (as opposed to being played on horses). Rugby football is just called rugby because the rules were formalized in Rugby. Soccer is called such because the English decided it was cool to add '-er' to the end of words in the 1800s, so association football became 'assor-er'. This is also why rugby is occasionally called rugger.

Sure, they don't force you to buy music from iTunes, sure, but they do control the way the user generally uses it. iPods appeal the most to the non-technical crowd, who probably don't know, for example, that the Amazon mp3 store exists. iTunes is much more a store than a music player. I'm not saying its unfair, but its not like its the most open system either. It's like MS doesn't force you to use WMP or IE, its just what's most likely going to happen for the average user.

Also, if Apple REALLY wanted a DRM free store, then it would be. Amazon REALLY wanted it, and they have it, and Apple has far more pull in the digital music front than Amazon does.

By the way, neither mp3 or aac formats are open. Both require a patent license for manufacturers and developers. ogg is open, and Apple does not support it at all as far as I know (it was definitely incompatible with iTunes in the recent past).

Finally, Apple's philosophy is to make money. That is the be all and end all for companies. NEVER romanticize this. I will give Apple that they have a great skill at image control, but they are just as ruthless as Microsoft when it comes to making money, MS just got the upper hand first so Apple can play the less evil underdog.

My bias: I use Linux (usually Ubuntu) for leisure/small tasks, XP and Vista 64bit for gaming/study/real work, and OSX at my part time job as a creative person, and honestly, I like OSX the least by far. I also disapprove of the abuse of the word irony.