Here are a counter-argument from comments on the blog:

mike_s said...
They presumably use Doppler radar, which can measure speeds throughout the system, instead of relying on point sources, which can't.

The ISS, and manned spaceflight in general, is a pointless waste of money. Not a troll, just a (well-justified) opinion.

In the novel 2010 by Arthur C. Clarke (the follow up to 2001), Jupiter is revealed to have a diamond the size of the earth at its core.

Every language has warts. If that's your definitely of "bad language" you can find such problems in any popular language.

Have you seen an average person's Windows box lately? It's full of random crap they've downloaded, each of which installs a desktop shortcut, a toolbar in the browser, a tray icon that pops up daily. Each one is "free" so you'll download it, but then uses all of these various ways of getting in your face to try to get you to spend money somehow. And that's if you're lucky, and don't have any malware.

Now think about an iPhone/iPad. They don't have nearly as many extension points, so they're not as customizable, but the upside is that there's less hooks for programs to get into and pop up in your face (and slow down and destabilize your system). Not to mention that the App Store blocks crappy/malicious/deceitful software.

I really hope that iOS will take up the mantle of an it-just-works machine for the average non-nerd. Walled gardens have their disadvantages, I agree. But they sure are pretty.

Um... not the same day. The day before. And: "Biologists believe the bird deaths were stress-related from either fireworks or weather and are unrelated to the fish kill near Ozark, Stephens said."

"When will China emerge as a military threat to the U.S.? In most respects the answer is: not anytime soon -- China doesn't even contemplate a time it might challenge America directly. But one significant threat already exists: cyberwar. Attacks -- not just from China but from Russia and elsewhere -- on America's electronic networks cost millions of dollars and could in the extreme cause the collapse of financial life, the halt of most manufacturing systems, and the evaporation of all the data and knowledge stored on the Internet."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/cyber-warriors/7917/

Your comment is not so helpful unless you explain the difference. They sound like synonyms to me.

No, but they do have an "inside" for snow to pile up in. And that's probably worse since the place where the snow rests in this case (the bottom of the shield) would be higher up than in the other case (the top of the shield below it).

Check out the bio-mimicry database: http://asknature.org/

Here's the really interesting TED talk where the founder introduces it, and describes some examples of nature's engineering at work: http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action.html

If you don't like a company crippling a product, what are the alternatives?

Well, one alternative is that the company couple sell different physical products with the different capabilities. Of course, that would increase costs, so both the crippled and uncrippled versions would cost more.

Or, the company could only sell uncrippled hardware. Now, what price would they sell it for? They certainly can't sell it for the lower price of a crippled product, because they'd lose money. So now you've lost the choice between a lower-price/lower-featured product, and a higher-price/higher-featured product. In other words, richer people win, poorer people lose.

So we should recognize that there's a benefit to being able to sell different sets of features to different consumers. More people get what they want at a price they can afford.

I hope this doesn't come across as cynical, because it's not meant to be. But one very reasonable strategy is to work hard at your regular job, and donate money to charitable causes.

I've often thought about how to put my software engineering skills to good use, and that's the best I've been able to come up with. If you can't find a great outlet to directly put your skills to use at a charitable organization, this is a pretty reasonable proxy. It lets you do what you do best, for the people that find it most helpful (i.e. a company that's willing to pay you for it), rather than having to shoehorn your skills where there may not be a great match.

If there's an volunteer opportunity that's actually a good fit, that's obviously a good mechanism (and probably more psychically rewarding). But if not, I think this is an efficient alternative.