The moon would be ok. In a Venus-trailing orbit would be much better. One of the problems we have is that we can only see asteroids when they're lit up by the Sun, and asteroids that have an orbit almost entirely inside of the Earth's orbit are hard to see--only the backside gets lit up, so we can't see them very well.

A vehicle placed at Venus's orbit, though, would be able to see those potentially dangerous asteroids quite well.

You misunderstand what GP was saying..."brute force" in this case means computationally being able to examine every possible path for the game to take, not the play strategy.

I can't wait until we can buy a Toyota and install Mercedes software on it.

Oh, wait, your analogy was flawed. Microsoft doesn't make hardware. Ooops. Maybe we should let Toyota continue to be "closed" and we can choose to buy a Toyota or not...just like you can choose to buy a BB or iPhone or Android and those manufacturers can define what will and won't run on their hardware.

Apple doesn't even have the #1 spot in smartphone manufacturers, I don't know where you get "monopoly" from. Maybe you're just an idiot.

Feb 2010 Smartphone Market share

To call Tier One a "spaceship" is a gross misrepresentation. The Space Shuttle is a spaceship.

Tier One/Space Ship One traveled suborbitally. The Space Shuttle (STS) is an orbiter. The difference? SSO travels at Mach 3. STS hits Mach 25.

SSO flights take 3 people suborbitally. STS takes 7. Which is more important when you consider:

SSO flights take dozens of minutes. The STS can be up for 16+ days. It has to carry food, water, and process wastes for that length of time.

Space Ship One carries essentially no cargo. The Space Shuttle takes 25 metric tons to orbit.

Space Ship One is a suborbital craft. It is not a true space ship, despite its name. It would likely require multiple orders of magnitude more than $30M before it could orbit the planet.

Really? Re-formatting and installing all of your software has taken only an hour each time? That's pretty good. When I reformat, it takes about 4 hours just to reinstall WoW...that's well over $200 right there...of course, I can (sort of) do other things while it's installing.

And how much time and money have you spent, upgrading and maintaining?

My point was that my time is very valuable, especially my time off from work. I don't have to spend time to shop for new parts, installing them, maintaining, virus checking, etc., etc....and that's worth $500 to me. If you include your time, I'll bet that you spent more than $500 keeping that XP machine running.

Some people value money over time, some people value time over money. That's a place where Ballmer doesn't seem to look--why ARE people willing to spend $500 more for a machine? People don't really throw that sort of money away for a logo, no matter what he or you think. They believe that they are getting at least that much more value out of the system, or they wouldn't pay for it. It's probably true that some folks see value in the logo--I sure don't--but I do see value in both the reliability and longevity of the system, and the "turnkey" sort of nature to it.

nope, not gonna happen...it's my money, and I buy Apples because it's my experience that they last longer than cheap PCs and take less maintenance time than any PC. You don't have to believe me, and I don't really care if you do.

no, it's not. It's the combination of hardware reliability and software reliability that's worth it to me, anyway.

Vista and my iPhone convinced me to try out an iMac. I'm never going back. This thing is GREAT. Worst problem that I've had was solved in less than an hour. I just had to fight viruses on my PC, I gave up and did a full reinstall...probably took me a total of 14 hours, and it's not the first time I've had to do stuff like that.

I suppose the question of value depends on how much you value your time...I value mine quite a lot, that $500 is a real bargain to save 14 hours once or twice in the computer's lifetime.

Macs are way cheaper if you amortize the price of their useful life. My PC desktops generally last about 2.5 years, sometimes as much as 3. My Macs generally last about 4.5-6 years.

That $500 is a bargain, especially when you consider the time it takes to transfer all the programs over to a new system...

I'm a "switcher" to the Mac platform, but I still keep a PC around the house.

I spent about ten hours last weekend trying to repair a virus infestation. I finally gave up, so I then spent 4 more hours reinstalling the OS and all the programs I normally use.

I earn a bit more than $50 an hour, so I would have saved way more than $500 worth of my time had that PC been a Mac.

Even if the Mac had been infested, just stick the OS disk in, reformat the drive, open Time Machine, and drag my personal files onto the computer. Done in an hour or so.

Wow, you're right--I never looked that up. Shuttle masses just over 2,000,000 pounds and Saturn V was just over 3,000,000 pounds. Thanks! Love the space trivia...

It's the solid rocket boosters that make the difference. Each SRB provides about 2.8 million pounds of thrust at sea level. 5.6 million pounds of thrust gives quite a kick!

Yes, it really is. There's a reason that almost all nonmedical doctorate degrees carry the same title: Doctor of Philosophy. In its highest form, all human knowledge is similar--it requires human thought, and as such is inherently philosophy.

It doesn't matter if you think there's no valid gripe.
 
Apple upset its most loyal, most wealthy customers. Upset customers don't buy things. Loyal, wealthy customers not buying things is bad for business.
 
You can waste your time complaining about these upset customers all you want--it won't affect this obvious logic.