OK, I'll give you a better reason. The toxic fumes from whiteboard markers give me migraines. But that's just one of many reasons why I don't work for [corporate code factory].

The original tubular Apple iSight camera had a three-piece mechanical iris lens cover made of white plastic that would open and close when the front bezel was twisted, in addition to the LED on top of the device. It was behind a glass cover, so there was absolutely no functional value to this "door" other than to let the user know that the camera could not possibly be looking at them when the device was switched off. I'm sure it must have added greatly to the cost of the camera, but Jobs and Co. must have thought inspiring a feeling of privacy and security in the user important enough to justify the cost. Once cameras got small and cheap enough to build into every machine, this method of visual feedback was dispensed with, at least on machines built by Apple. I have explained to countless Mac clients over the years that the light is indeed hard-wired to the camera and cannot be disabled, that after I get done configuring their machine it will be safe from any and all malware (assuming they do not change certain settings), yet if they still feel the least bit uneasy, a piece of tape or post-it note over the camera is nothing to be embarrassed about. After all, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you...

On the upside, maybe the compressed air will keep crumbs and other foreign matter out from underneath the keys, thus helping to prevent one of the most common modes of failure with existing keyboard technology.

The Extended Keyboard II is actually an ancient barge of a keyboard; beige plastic with the old six-color Apple logo in the corner. I picked up 10 of them for $50 on eBay a few years ago. It connects via the long-obsolete Apple Desktop Bus, requiring an adaptor for use with USB. I find the current keyboard offerings from Apple to be mediocre at best. If I am going to be typing more than a few paragraphs, I prefer to break out the old beige keybarge. I have often heard them referred to as "The One True Keyboard" by those who know. For me, the only thing that ever came close was the original keyboard that came with my IBM PC/XT (long since landfilled). I liked the springy sounds it made. Each key had a slightly different tone. Would love to have samples of those sounds to assign to keypresses. The sounds of serious typing...

Typing this on an Apple Extended Keyboard II plugged into an iMate USB To ADB Adaptor. Best. Keyboard. Ever.

Have they been slashdotted? All the so-called mirrors I have found so far point back to them.
Does anyone have a link to a working mirror or a torrent?

I was just browsing pictures on NASA's site the other day that showed workers on lifts wearing harnesses. In an environment where dropping a wrench could cause millions of dollars in damage, these have got to be some of the most careful workers around, which leads me to believe that something really unusual must have happened, like several things going wrong at once. TFA is quite short on details. It goes without saying that damage to expensive equipment can not be compared to the loss of a human life, but I'm saying it anyway.

Children do not have the same rights as adults under most legal systems. Additionally, while they are in school, the school is usually given some form of guardianship-by-proxy over the children, so that some adult is always in control of, and has responsibility for, those children. This probably explains why the school administrator felt justified in coercing the child to log in to her facebook account from school, even though the postings in question were probably not made from school grounds. Regardless from where the postings were made, the fact that these children felt entitled to make slanderous statements in response to perceived slights shows a profound lack of judgement and an obvious failure of their parents, and the educational system, to instill in them a sense of propriety, decency and common sense. As usual, I weep for the future.

Like I really want the security of my city depending on someone who's been huffing exhaust fumes and performing a mundane, repetitive task all day. Also, having humans touch currency that is then going to be shuffled in with other currency and redistributed to countless other humans passing over the bridge seems to me an ideal vector for any number of terrorist chemical or biological attacks. Other than that, the Homeland Security angle sounds like a great argument.

Time Pilot 1984 was a kick-ass 2D scroller. But then I am a dinosaur whose FPS skills peaked with Quake and UT (where you could always set your FOV to whatever you wanted, IIRC). Whatever. I'll still kick your schoolboy ass at paintball or conkers or petanque or tennis or nine ball. "Never give a sword to a man who can't dance." - Confucius. Oh, and you can stay on my lawn, I don't give a shit about it.

As someone who has unboxed, set up and distributed literally thousands of Macs over the years, I can safely say that the vast majority of users do not need, want or care about most of the cables, adapters and other stuff that comes in the box. If selling some of those things separately can lower the cost of the base machine for those who don't need them, not to mention keeping millions of unwanted dongles out of landfills, I'm all for it.

I see many other ways that public safety is compromised over money and the bottom lines of many big industries besides just Big Medicine. What if, just to idly speculate, the root cause(s) of Autistic Spectrum Disorders turned out to have something to do with one or more of the Persistent Organic Pollutants that pregnant women and developing babies in this and other "developed" nations are pretty much marinating in for most of their lives? You think Big Petroleum or any of its marvelous industries (electronics, personal care and fragrance, cleaning products, plastics, processed food, etc.) are going to like being implicated in that? The army of lawyers they unleash will make a horde of Uruk-hai look like Tribbles.