Many users who run IE7 either have a.) no choice or b.) no idea what is IE7/IE8/IE9 and the differences between them.
Instead of imposing a tax on them which confuses non-tech-savvy end-users, why not display the "IE7 not supported, please follow these instructions to upgrade"?

This tax probably unnecessarily increases complexity in their billing systems, which is never a good thing.

Despite all the negative press around Foxconn, I'd still like people to take these matters into perspective.

China is experiencing growing pains, where it sometimes sacrifices the benefits/rights of its citizens to ensure more people are fed and its economy can grow to support its population. Most other countries have experienced such pains, and have taken time to progress past that stage. Some point out that we can try to reduce the length of that stage by applying pressure. Well, the only non-destructive plan would be to inject huge amounts of money into China for them to develop their infrastructure and economy. Otherwise, any plans by a "rights activists" will simply stunt China's growth, jobs, economies and throw their citizens into poverty and joblessness.

Now, on the other hand, if your goal isn't to encourage rights in China but to "bring the jobs back" as an act of vengeance or desperation, then arguing for better rights in China might serve your goal. But don't argue for such under pretenses of desiring "far rights to all". As such arguments will do nothing to help them, and will certainly backfire.

Your government will never do that.

You can't just penalize Apple, you literally have to penalize every company producing something that is more than a few components.
It's not just assembly that's made of cheap labor: from resource extraction, to the production of individual components, to assembly, that exploits cheap labor.
America as a whole will lose competitiveness if this was applied, as believe me, no other country will be foolhardy enough to follow.

If you thought the economy/job market was bad, try checking after this regulation is passed.
Companies will literally FLEE overseas.

It's not irrelevant at all. Focusing all the attention on one company isn't going to do anyone any good. For one, the focus becomes on the company and not the workers. It attracts all the haters who prefer to focus their attention on "how apple is doing bad" and not "how we can make this better". Frankly, I've not seen a thoughtful solution here besides "Boycott Apple!". How about an organization that promotes/advertises/labels products which are made with fair labor?

You're assuming a lot of things without any evidence.

a.) Nobody, including people protesting, want to put anyone out of business.
REALLY? Because any intelligent onlooker will know how this ends. Either Apple/China/Foxconn will do nothing except some basic PR, or Apple decides Foxconn's suicides are too costly and moves to another third-world factory. So yes, you may not "want it" but that's going to happen in reality.

b.) They're "forced to be content"? Have you even met a significant number of people from China? They're GRATEFUL for the opportunity to work, because they have never had so much as a stable job before. Many of these factory workers are funding their children's education. That's the China Dream, to give their children the opportunity they never had. They're not going to fulfill that dream if they're homeless on the street or working on a farm.

(This might sound like a pro-China shill, but seriously, change your perspective. You'll probably never understand how much they prefer working in a factory than sleeping in the streets/farming.)

Strawman. I never said Time was the SOLE cause of anything, which is what you are implying above.
Time is needed, given their current growth trajectory, to grow wealth as a nation and allow their people to accumulate wealth, to pass on to their children, who will eventually climb the social-economic class through education. This takes time in terms of generations. Just as in the US, the minorities accumulated wealth and had more education opportunities over time, allowing them to improve their standard of living. Trying to act as a global gatekeeper and short circuiting this process is an exercise in futility.

Most people commenting about Foxconn have lost all perspective because they allow themselves to be blinded by Apple hate.

Let me explain why bashing Apple and Foxconn about this is so, so foolish.

1.) Poorer working conditions aren't exclusive to Apple's factories, or even Foxconn.
If you're trying to uphold your ideal working conditions on workers who create products you use, please take a step back and stop buying any product from any store. I can confidently tell you that all the products you use: your computer, tech gadgets, electronics, shoes, clothes, etc. are all made by workers in poor conditions, often even poorer than that of Foxconn. Instead of protesting against Apple/Foxconn, vote with your wallet instead of bitching in an online forum and feeling self-righteous after doing so.

2.) Workers are -happy- about their job and working conditions. It's you who feel unhappy about them.
Many workers are happy about their job and working conditions, in Foxconn and other such factories. These factories provide a lot of things (not just money) that they would never be able to dream of: a shelter over their head, varied meals, water, electricity, and more. Many of these people are uneducated and would be jobless otherwise. They need and are happy about these jobs. Your protesting will NOT IMPROVE THEIR LIVES. You will render them jobless (as you boycott these products and companies pull out of these countries) and effectively kill off their means of living.

3.) Progress takes time.
Most Americans have forgotten their past when there were still slaves, often in FAR worse conditions than that of China. It's been proven that a country needs time to develop, and attempting to shortcut the process will lead to disastrous results. 10 years ago, these people whom you claim to be working in "poor conditions" were starving because a drought wiped out their crops. Their lives have improved, and will improve as long as they have jobs.

The article seems to gloss over the most critical point that breaks this deal, painting LightSquared as a victim in the process:

LightSquared's spectrum (which was bought from another company) was for SATELLITE transmissions, not TERRESTRIAL.
Satellite spectrums are much cheaper, but can't be used for terrestrial transmissions.
LightSquared is in fact trying to cheap out by using a cheaper spectrum.

Analogy:
LightSquared tried to buy a plot of cheap residential land to start a chemical/manufacturing plant, which affects nearby residents.
They should have bought a piece of commercial land that supports their requirements.

More technically:
Satellite signals are weak as they are sent from huge distances from satellites with limited power. To receive these signals, the receivers must be tuned to be sensitive to these signals. If LightSquare were to transmit terrestrially from the bordering spectrum (to pass through walls and what-have-you), the transmitted strength will be thousands of times stronger than the GPS signals, invariably causing interference with GPS signals. Even if GPSes are built with a filter (which they shouldn't need to, the nearby spectrums should also be weak signals!), it would be prohibitively expensive/unfeasible to filter the strong terrestrial signals.

I'll hazard a guess here: don't underestimate Amazon's branding and market reach.
The Kindle series is massively popular and has raised awareness in the e-reader market far better than any of its competitors.
Many people might actually give an Android tablet a shot (not referring to geeks here) considering the stellar track record Kindle presents.

Time and again, /.ers always predict a product's performance based on it's technical merit (e.g. Apple products).
What many fail to realize is that the vast majority of the consumers don't give a crap about technical merit; marketing, usability and design is really important.
Amazon's services has gathered a strong following and a tablet guaranteed to work with all their services may appeal to quite a few people.

I don't think it's really fair to say at this stage that SSDs aren't more reliable than hard drives.

For one, SSDs are still rather new. Yes, they've been around for a few years but compared to hard drives they are still at the beginning of their development cycle, and it shows: firmware issues and recalls, as stated in the article, may be a heavy contributing factor to the SSD failure rates. We can expect this to drop as manufacturers continually revise their firmware and manufacturing techniques for the better.
For another, the article also notes that the SSD failure rates, to this point, are rather constant. If this trend holds, SSDs can easily outstrip HDDs in reliability by the 3rd or 4th year.
Finally, SSD has been coined reliable often in the perspective of the average consumer. The benefits are obvious: when mishandling occurs (which happens much more often than you'd think, even on desktops), HDDs will have a far higher chance of damage.

Hence, while the results of this article is indeed interesting, perhaps a study done when the technology matures further would be more useful.

Just because many companies astroturf their products doesn't make it right, it is still false advertising.

They should be called out for it and these actions should be discouraged (preferably by law).
And that's exactly what this article attempts to do.

Subway wants to provide us with food, because they want to know what we eat.
Let's stop that "evil empire" by eating.

The answer isn't to stop consuming, but rather to encourage increased competition.

This is correct.

From my limited understanding of Japanese, the article refers to reactor #3, not explosion #3.
I know Slashdot has limited editors, but shouldn't you at least click and check the links before posting such an important piece of news?

Many local news outlets will pick up and spread this piece of disinformation.

So what you're saying in car analogy terms:
Roads will exist, and roads will need maintenance whether they are used or not. So we shouldn't charge road users for it right, because 'the maintenance needed to be done anyways'.

Yes, the bandwidth is 'free' and SMS bandwidth will be used either ways.
Just as someone needs to pay to build the roads in the first place (and more roads as the car usage goes up), someone needs to pay to build cell phone towers (and more towers as more phones are needed).

Now of course there are several ways to go about this:
1.) Everyone Tax: If cell phone service is deemed critical enough, the government taxes everyone to pay for the expansion of services.
2.) Per-Cellphone Tax: Just like the road tax, the government controls the expansion of the system through a monthly fee from all cell phone users. Of course, that means infrequent users will be charged the same high monthly fee to get SMSing.
3.) Free Market: Providers distribute the costs through various more 'tangible' services in order to allow greater accessibility to infrequent users whilst making the frequent users bear the brunt of the costs.

Since Americans scream "COMMUNIST!" at the first two options, naturally the third has taken root.

The -REAL- problem, however, is that alot of the money is not used for expansion but instead wasted by top management in terms of salary, lawyering, entertainment, etc.
You need to break up your monopolies, America, or let the government intervene.

Printer drivers were just one of the examples.
I suspect this guy doesn't know much about the specifics, and his comptroller just told him it's more financially viable to switch back to Windows.

Frankly, I believe that Linux is causing a great deal of inconvenience to both them and businesses that work with them.
Just Microsoft Office alone and the poor job OpenOffice does of transparently replacing it is sufficient to piss off a whole lot of employees.

It's hard to put a hard figure on lost productivity as employees are encumbered by inexperience or poor UI.
Training helps (and that costs quite a nice amount too), but I'm pretty certain employees work far faster on a UI they're familiar with.