The developer is at fault, not Apple. Apple is not party to the GPL terms just because a developer with a political agenda chooses to upload an application to the App Store. The developer is at fault for choosing a distribution medium for his software that is incompatible with GPL terms. It's not any more complicated than that.

The fallacy in this article is that designers are the ultimate arbiters of how a web site gets built. It's just not the case. If I am paying the bills and I want to reach the largest possible audience, my first instruction to the designer working for *me* is going to be to avoid Flash, Java, and anything else that is plug-in dependent like the plague. Flash sites are inaccessible to the vision impaired, they are not generally searchable, they are prone to breakage when plug-ins are out of date or non-existent, and they are generally not maintainable by the organization they were created for once they are delivered.

Sorry, but sticking with standards based solutions and tools that manipulate open formats is the way to go if you, Mr. Designer-boy, are working for me. In a market-driven economy, designers are a commodity, not an industry force. They're gonna do what they are paid to do.

Actually the real reason is the pyrotechnics that are used to deploy the landing gear and the drogue chute as well. They both have to be armed and deployed manually by a series of buttons on the glare shield. It has been a long standing rule in manned space flight that anything that can explode on command like that is always operated manually unless it is impossible for some reason. The fact that neither system can be re-stowed after deployment is problematic.

You totally miss my point. Yes, mathematically your vote counts exactly the same. Politically, a vote from a sparsely populated area counts for far less than a vote from a populous area, simply because the economics of campaigns and time . Spending an hour talking to 10 voters in a New Hampshire barn is not going to garner the same number of votes as spending an hour talking to 50,000 people in a LA stadium. So why is a politician going to care about the issues facing 10 voters over the issues facing 50,000? They aren't. So ditching the electoral college and moving to a popular vote means that while everyone's vote counts exactly once, their opinions, beliefs, needs and issues will only count in proportion to the population of the area they live in.

You are missing the point. Yes, your tiny, insignificant, individual vote from B.F.E counts just as much as Mr. Downtown Manhatten. But your problems and your ideas and your concerns don't. Because you don't get to vote as a bloc anymore. You don't get the power of voting with others in your state to make your STATE'S voice heard. The concerns of your state (if they aren't the same as those of a densely populated, voter-rich one) can be easily and safely ignored because there's no need to woo you directly or pay attention to your issues after election. Think it through and you might understand why the tyranny of the popular majority is what the electoral college attempts to address. It isn't about your vote, it is about your concerns and issues being addressed before, during, and after the vote. Your issues in a less-populated region will simply matter only in proportion to your population now. Enjoy!

As Alexis de Tocqueville said, People get the government they deserve. If you're "smart" enough to think Iowa has it right, then by all means, please enjoy the pig farts and corn husks of your new overlords.

Read what I wrote. You are the one getting screwed by this concept. Candidates will only care about states with large, dense populations if the electoral college goes away. Makes campaigning cheaper and more efficient to address the needs of 40 million Californians in one campaign visit than 3 million Iowans in one visit. And if elected, they only need to pander to the same densely populated states. So you can forget Washington ever caring about marginal or fringe issues from smaller states.

The electoral college has as one of its purposes the ability to keep small states from being disenfranchised in national elections. Any state can tip the balance, so all are important. With a popular vote, the tyranny of the populous states will mean that smaller states are irrelevant and can safely be ignored. In short, this idea is stupid and Iowa should be spanked for trotting it out again. If it ever came to pass, they deserve what they get.

Not true at all. Candidates are only going to campaign where they get maximum exposure to draw the popular vote. Large states like California, New York, and Florida will dominate the campaign. Fly-over states, New England, and much of the South will be ignored. That means their issues will be ignored.

A campaign stop in LA is going to generate orders of magnitude more exposure for a candidate than a stop in Des Moines. You are deluded if you think your vote in Iowa is going to draw as much attention from a candidate (or an elected official) as a voter in California.

You misunderstand my point. Theoretically, a vote in Iowa is worth as much as a vote in California. But the theory will not hold up under the economics of time and money in a real campaign. To a candidate, a campaign stop in California is worth orders of magnitude more votes than a campaign stop in Iowa. It is simply the case that by turning it into a popular vote, candidates will maximize their exposure in places where they will reach the densest number of voters and avoid places that are an inefficient use of their time and campaign funds. It means that the middle of the country gets ignored. It is not going to work the way people naively assume.

Finally us white aristocratic land owners won't be the only ones electing the president!

Nope, what it means now is that California, New York, Florida, and Texas will pick our president. I am sorry, but if my state votes overwhelmingly for the losing candidate and its electoral votes get cast for the other candidate because they won the popular vote, explain to me how democracy was served?

People who think the Electoral College is bad have to be ignorant of the consequences of doing away with it. What it means is that candidates for national office will only campaign in a handful of states that will guarantee a popular majority. No one will ever again campaign in New England, the Midwest, or much of the South. So by doing away with electoral votes and tying them to the popular vote, you are potentially disenfranchising a huge number of states and their citizens from any meaningful participation in national elections.

Is that what you want?

but we are NOT producing food for 7 billion

No, we are wasting much of our production capacity on stupid, tree-hugging, already-shown-to-be-a-wrong-solution "technology" like ethanol production from corn. And a lot of people starve, not because there isn't enough food for them. But because there are corrupt, nasty people between them and a stable food supply.

Interestingly, there are roughly 2 acres of arable land per person on the planet right now. And guess what? Global warming would actually increase that acreage by almost 25% if average global temperatures rose 3F. It's entirely possible that a warming planet (despite the realities of sunspot cycles and impending cooling cycle) is actually required to support humanity, rather than being a harbinger of its demise.

Truth is, we are too stupid to know and too enamored with our culture of "fear" to admit it.