Did Jack Thompson become the new CEO of the Red Cross or something? Are people over there so bored that they have taken up whether blowing someone away through a game is a violation of the law?

NPR did a retrospective that compared Jobs to Tesla and Edison and I started yelling at my radio when I heard it. Tesla was a genius, Einstein was a genius. Edison? Maybe. Steve Jobs was an innovator and perhaps even extraordinary. He certainly has contributed a great deal to the modern age of computing and digital devices. But a genius? I doubt that. Anyone can take an existing device and simplify it, make it shinier, or easier to use. Steve Jobs was just better at that than most people. I might even go so far as to say he was better at it than almost anyone else. But nothing he did was beyond that scope of work or what I would call "revolutionary."

Before the Apple fanbois go postal, the iPhone wasn't a true invention. Neither was the iPod, iPad, iMac, or pretty much any other apple iDevice. They were refinements of technology that already existed. They were good refinements to be sure, but nothing more than that. Smart phones existed long before the iPhone did, just like computers existed long before the first Macs, just like MP3 players existed long before the first iPods.

Instead of puffing him up and placing him on some god-like pedestal, remember Steve Jobs for what he was: a great designer, a great marketer, and someone who brought high technology to the masses.

I didn't find out until late Saturday afternoon and by then, all the stores in the area were sold out. Over the course of the next two days, I went from one bogged down retailer website to another until I had amassed three confirmation orders via email, for HP Touchpads. All three were canceled via email yesterday, including the one from CDW that actually charged my debit card. There are still several retailers(Newegg, Circuit City, ect..) who have them in stock(verified via telephone), but have not lowered their prices yet. There is also the matter of anyone who didn't sell their stock and returned them to HP instead. Hopefully I'll end up with one by the time this is all said and done.

I don't have a need for a touchpad for the same reason I don't have a need for an iPad. But, for $99, I think I could find a use for it. =)

Bad news on this one, if you own a current gen gaming console(Xbox 360 ect...), this is already the case.

You know, I've never understood this one. If you have written a zero to every sector on the hard drive, including the hidden space, how in the world is it possible to recover any data at all?

Sales tax isn't a tax on businesses, not directly. It's a tax on consumers. What is at issue here is the perceived total price of an item. All other things being equal, when two different companies offer the same product, consumers will choose the one that is cheaper 100% of the time. If Amazon offers something that Tiger Direct offers for the same price, chances are Amazon will get the sale because Tiger Direct charges sales tax.

I am not saying I agree with Amazon, but from their perspective, they do not need to have a physical presence in Texas to sell to consumers in Texas. I highly doubt they put a distribution center in Texas solely because they thought they wouldn't have to charge sales tax. They likely built a distribution center in Texas because of a corporate tax incentive designed to lure business to Texas or perhaps because of Texas's longtime anti labor union practices.

This weekend my black labrador retriever snarfed two bags of M&M's off the kitchen counter while I was out raking leaves. He ingested roughly a pound and a half of chocolate. On the way to the vet hospital, I joked that if my dog lived through the chocolate poisoning, I was going to kill him. My wife understood this to be my way of dealing with the stress and that I really was worried about my dog and was in no way inclined to actually kill him. In other words, she got the joke.

If my wife got the joke, what is so hard about seeing the "joke" behind what this politician said? Or is it possible that my wife is smarter than the people that arrested this guy?

[sarcasm] that parents should take an interest in what their kids are watching because we all know that responsible parents are the last thing this world needs..... [/sarcasm]

I wonder what would happen if Pres Obama, who IS a Blackberry user, ended up calling Verizon to complain about the Bing lock in.

I don't suppose the blog was accompanied by a short video of Asa Dotzler and Steve Balmer making Ducktales-like swan dives from a diving board into a swimming pool filled with cash?

"'They provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don't like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business."

Does this mean that Dell and HP should get out of the computer manufacturing business because they provide a device that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes? You might as well sue the oil companies because they provide the gasoline that powers the automobiles used in vehicular homicide.

Why am I suddenly curious about the annual revenue of iiNet? Something tells me that iiNet probably can't afford a protracted legal battle in the way that say... Dell or AT&T could.

The MAFIAA may change names and countries, but the bullshit is still the same.

If the judge has ruled that Mininova did not violate any laws, how does he have the legal foundation to order them to enforce a law that they have not broken?