I'm sooo buying Apple stock, you've convinced me.

Depending on how your facility is ducted, it might not cost much to try both options and measure the results.

Call me naive, but... Why not do both at once?

Cold air goes in from the bottom (or one side), through the rack, and hot air goes out the top (or the other side). I realize that companies don't really care about such minutiae, but that would allow the mere humans that occasionally need to service all those expensive racks to experience a temperature other than 40F or 120F.

Or, hey, how about just cooling the damned things with intelligently ducted outside air and cutting the electric bill by a third?

How does NASA intend to haul it into orbit? I know there are only a couple of shuttle missions left, and I didn't think the Constellation program is due to launch before 2015?

That judge better keep track of what his (or her, I didn't RTFA yet) kids are doing online. This is the kind of ruling that can come back to haunt them. Of course, once the RIAA discovers that it has nailed a Federal judge's kid, they'd drop the case like a hot potato.

Yeah, file-sharing has become kind of like speeding when not in heavy traffic, or smoking pot in California - it may be technically illegal, but tons and tons of people do it on a small scale without profiting much from it or causing any major, immediate harm to their neighbors, so it is generally ignored, and there is no peer pressure not to. Once in a while someone gets in trouble for these things, but most of the time most people don't, and few people prioritize the respective laws very highly. The times they have'a changed, and legality does not necessarily define social acceptability. The difference here is that the RIAA/MPAA pack it in and head for the hills when they see a challenge, unlike the Feds in a lil' ol' weed case, because precedent is a major concern for Big Media, while federal law is pretty clear.

One reason a lot of us keep giving the cable company full access to our bank accounts (Time Warner in my case) is simply the ease. I'm in my mid-thirties and don't watch nearly as much TV as when I was growing up, and most of what I do watch can be found in various places online. However, finding them and keeping up with what is current or next to be watched is no simple matter, and certainly not as easy as subscribing to a podcast. This turns some of us off, and the need to locate everything is like the opposite of a DVR, in terms of convenience. Cable is much easier to manage, even with my crappy-ass Scientific Atlanta 8240HDC box (I hate you with a passion! Was your interface designed in 1954 by a monkey trained to be a civil engineer?) and Time Warner's inherent crappiness.

Then there's the matter of sports. Yes, I said that on slashdot. Seriously. A lot of us (cable/satellite subscribers, not /. readers) are into sports, which pretty much need to be viewed live, or at least nearly so, to prevent spoilers. My local MLB team has its own channel, the NBA team has a regional Fox Sports channel, and the college football team I follow has a lot of games on ESPN and the stupid BIG Ten "network". Finding these games online in HD and for cheap/free is nearly impossible. I concede that our NFL team is usually broadcast over the air, though that requires a pretty decent antenna at my outlying location, which is too much considering the only other things I like on broadcast TV are The Office and the occasional peek at Conan O'brien or Jimmy Fallon. OTA digital HDTV sucks, in my experience. Not putting a tower up for that, so I continue to be gouged for cable. And AT&T is the local Bell, with U-Verse available in adjacent counties, though they can't even tell me when it might be deployed here, so their version of the standard rip-off is not even an option. Cable it is! *ewwwww*

Corporate CEO not entirely honest? Oh, my, bring the smelling salts, I feel faint.

I think it would be different if he were selling addictive poison, cooking the planet, or selling tainted food. Otherwise, this is just standard issue corporate deception.

As I see it, there are several things going on that he doesn't want to talk too much about. First and foremost, above and beyond the slowdown, is that there are no standards for Flash advertising. It's a race to the bottom, and it causes everyone with a modicum of technical skills (i.e., 90th percentile or better among Apple's customers and would-be customers, I think) to install a Flash Blocker. We do this, why? Because it makes browsing better. How can Apple get that same improvement for the other 90%? One option is, he can ban Flash, and promote alternatives for popular Flash applications while he has the market ability to do it. Then there's the slowdown, and the desire to control the platform's evolution, and I would be surprised if he were not looking into the problem of HOW do you present advertising that doesn't annoy people. The App Store may be a model for that, too.

Another obvious problem, not discussed, is the difficulty of virus-proofing the platform. It's not a matter of "user education" -- saying that, is another way of saying, "won't happen, ever". A side-effect of the no-interpreters rule, is that the only "programs" that run, are those that are eyeballed and approved at the app store. Flash, as a programmable widget implicated in previous hacks (e.g., the Flash+UPNP attack on DNS from home routers) is certainly on the list of things to avoid. Acrobat Reader in its full form (recently the cause of a PDF-hosted hack) is another bad guy -- another Adobe product. I don't know quite why Jobs doesn't talk about this (does this make relations with Symantec and McAfee difficult? Is this like talking about death in a hospital?), but it's an obvious reason to rule with an iron hand.

So, I think it's just plain silly to complain about this. He's got good reasons, he's not talking about them, and I think the not-talked-about reasons are much more interesting than the official ones, or the complaints about how this chokes off innovation.

And by-the-way, here's one way to think about what Apple might do, that has not much effect on the consumer, might make life better for them, but would be devastating to other corporations. Supposing that Apple did for the iPod/iPad/iPhone, what I like to do on my home router, which is just plain block all the popular advertising sites. If you want your advertising to be seen by Apple customers, you go through Apple. Why should I complain, that I am deprived of the ability to see ads that I already take actions to avoid? If Apple does a better job with the advertising, bully for them. But the advertisers, whoo-hoo, won't that be fun?

This is probably diverging a bit on the original question, but seeing your 70-80 "modern datacenter" range reminded me of something I've wondered about lately: Has anyone researched the tradeoff point between when the server cooling fans start spooling up and turning the temperature up to run a "hot" floor? Running fans at a higher RPM certainly translates into more current draw than if they're running at their lowest speed. Sure, the equipment can stand running hotter and you're being "green" by not running the A/C as much, but are you just trading that for extra power wasted on spinning a whole lot of fans faster?

Exactly when did allowing a paranoid network admin to continue to deny access to critical city systems to anyone but himself become "right"?

Regardless of the mitigating circumstances, Childs was still in the wrong on this one -- having dimwit managers is not an excuse for denying the rightful owners of the systems access.

What????

(1) it unfairly punishes sellers that focus on many small sales

A sales tax is a percentage. 7% of $100 is the same rate as 7% of $1000. If company A made 1,000,000 sales at $1 and Company B made 1 sale at $1,000,000 dollars they would both pay $70,000 dollars in sales tax. How is there anything unfair between Company A and Company B again?

it unfairly punished buyers that need to make any small purchases

No it does not for the same reasons as above.

it does nothing to stop people from just bulk purchasing things so they only every make one "transaction" per month or year (which will only further encourage conglomeration and other creative tax dodging).

Which is why sales tax is a percentage, not a flat amount like $1 per transaction. If that were really true Costco would be 1000 times bigger a company, you would pay for your utilities a year in advance (accounting for an average and receiving a rebate), and we would have refrigerators and freezers the size of Coliseums.

Its a percentage.

In short, there's a reason there's a focus on income and not transactions when it comes to taxation.

Yeah. It's called control. An active tax system that focuses on the People's income and not Corporations allows:

1) The IRS to be created.
2) To be FOUND GUILTY BEFORE INNOCENT, not in a court of the law, but by IRS employees that are allowed to know precisely DICK about your type of business and be completely incompetent.
3) A government entity with the absolute power to seize property, ruin lives, and generally act like complete asshats because of #2.
4) A government entity that rarely pays for its mistakes, while making the People dearly pay for theirs.
5) A government entity that is a complete coward and would rather get a court case dismissed than allow the creation of precedence which could be used by others to defend themselves.
6) A system of tax codes so ridiculously complex that the People, who are the most disadvantaged to understand it, can benefit the least from any knowledge that could be used to avoid 'higher tax liabilities'
7) A system of tax codes so ridiculously complex that the People, who are the most disadvantaged to be represented in their creation, that they are ultimately created by the wealthy, the powerful, and the Corporations. Those with money generally have the means by which to enjoy a substantially reduced 'tax liability'
8) The excuse to violate privacy and inspect the incomes, purchasing habits, and finances of the People.
9) The simple tool possessed by Government and the Influential to ruin lives, and put undue pressure on others to conform to whatever. A tax audit is a serious threat and damaging regardless of innocence. It costs time and money.

10) The ability for Government to gain an incredibly valuable information gathering tool for Intelligence without ever making it look like an Intelligence Gathering Tool.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.................

Let's break down the alternative?

A consumption tax based system.

1) Corporations, not the People, bear the responsibility for compliance. Generally speaking, Corporations can afford tax services (already do), must be aware of the laws and comply with them (mostly so), and already bear the burden of compliance with so many other rules and regulations. Adding another one could hardly make a dent.

2) A passive system, as far as the People are impacted. When you consume something your tax is included. Nothing more complicated than that for the People.

3) Your finances and banking data become truly private again. Unless you are suspected of a crime you can enjoy your privacy in peace, which is what the Founding Fathers intentioned all along.

4) No organization exists that can take away your freedom and property again without due process and treat you as guilty before innocent.

5) To provide benefits for the poor simply do not tax food stuffs.

6) Make the People equal again with Corporations and the Wealthy. When somebody purchases a multi-million dollar private jet they will generate far more taxes than most normal people do in 10 years, instead of it being a write off and not taxed now. It will actually be fair. I could care less that a rich person ultimately pays more taxes, as long as the rate is the same.

This definitely does NOT deserve to be modded "insightful".

Corporations? Damned thieves can tramply anyone, and everyone, with no repercussions.

Really? If people don't like the actions of a corporation they have the right not to fucking buy that corporations products, and you'll see how quickly the things change.

Go ahead, people, cheer for the corporations. None of them are doing anything for you.

Except for everything you see around you. Was PC made by a government decree? Can you remind me which government invented, and made economically profitable electricity, car, airplane, TV, cell phone, etc etc?

Your government supplies your drinking water, builds your roads, responds in the event of disaster, and much, much more.

I'm glad you saved the most idiotic comment for last. The government DOES NOT do any of those things. It is the taxpayer money that pays for all of those things, the government simply manages it (usually in a notoriously inefficient, wasteful and corrupt way). Yes in some cases it is a necessary evil to put all our money together and pay for some things that way though it should be avoided wherever possible. In any case, there is nothing to be thankful to the government for! It is simply taking our money and paying for things on our behalf. Please try to remember that simple concept.

You do realize that KDE, for example, also uses the same HTML component - KHTML - for both its standalone browser, and help system

There is a very big difference here you miss.
You're trying to compare the Linux security model with Microsoft's lack of any security model.

The act of compromising a Linux box in any way is a very difficult task, mostly impossible unless you have direct access to the thing.

Windoz on the other hand is the script kiddies wet dream.
Very few windoz users have the knowledge to secure the their boxs and this is clearly evident by the percentage of M$ boxes pwnd by the botnets and variety of worms/viruses/trojans/malware running rampant in the wild.

Give me a break. Pressing the F1 key will kill your system? WTF is going on in redmond? Are these losers all on crack?

New Hampshire believes in an environment where... property taxes pay for police and fire protection...

So if I'm visiting New Hampsire, and I get mugged or pickpocketed on the street, or my car bursts into flame on the highway, I should not expect to call any authorities and have them respond?

What kind of dumb response is this? Paying for police and fire with property taxes is normal for probably every state, and obviously these services aren't limited to residents.

I was not referring to monopoly as in exclusive right to control a technology (that's what the patent system is actually about). I meant monopoly in the sense of gaining control over a market (in this case the market of smartphones) that is actually larger than that single technology by locking in users (as illustrated with my steering wheel example).

The patent system was not designed to create the latter and applying patents in this way borders on anti-competitive practices.

In my opinion many user interface patents should not be granted in the first place as they lack the necessary degree of inventive ingenuity. They are just anti-competitive 'land grabs'.

"Many user interfaces have been patented, including one of the most enduring, the QWERTY keyboard."

I may be mistaken, but I don't think that the two are comparable.

The patent which includes the QWERTY key layout is focused on the engineering specifics of one particular implementation of a mechanical keyboard. Sholes, the inventor, wasn't trying to claim a patent on "pressing keys to apply ink to paper", or even "rapidly pressing multiple keys". That had all been done before.

This seems very different from today's "user interface" patents, most of which seem to be a thin layer of design laid atop someone else's actual invention. Which is not to user interfaces are unimportant, just that they should not be patentable.

I am not sure I agree. Anonymity on the internet is valuable and important. A domain is kinda formal though. Slashdot for instance is somewhat responsible for the content here. They don't need to really police it but if it were brought to Taco's attention people were arranging drug deals or something they would be obligated to help, the authorites.

All and all I think its a good point of balance; if you are going to have your own domain there should be a responsible part that can be easily determined and contacted when needed.