Plus, US mail offers greater protection than email. If you attempt to commit fraud via sending something by the US mail or intercept someone's mail, you're looking at a felony. With all the spam, I don't trust any of the email I receive from a bank, credit card, etc. So before email can completely replace regular postal mail, we'd have to see the same level of protections. Maybe the US postal service could have a service where they offer an optional digital signature that the sender can use and is legally protected from forgery.

But, why leave it up to people's employers? There's no business benefit to "giving" people more daylight for their leisure activities, and there's no way it would be uniform since it would be subject to the whims of all the companies. Throw the schools on top, and you've got chaos. We're more than just employees; we're citizens. So it makes sense the citizens (a.k.a., "the government") to step in and declare that we're moving the clocks around. I admit I used to be more annoyed with daylight saving time when I was younger, but now that I have kids, it's great to have more daylight hours in summer evenings to enjoy things outside.

No kidding. I don't think the submission helps by being vague about what was being posted:

Possible response? I wasn't sure what that meant, so I read Lessig's blog to get an idea of sort of "possible responses" Apple was cruelly censoring. If his post is any indication of what he posted on his forum, no one should be surprised the Apple deleted it:

Heating up the WiFi chip to 300 degrees? And it worked "quite well??" No surprise at all that Apple deleted this kind of "advice" from their official support forums. Reading a suggestion like that on Lessig's blog is one thing, but when it's posted on Apple's official support forum, someone is bound to assume wrongly that Apple is approving the suggestion. No wonder that Apple deleted it. I imagine Apple will also be deleting posts that suggest to users that they boil their iPhones or microwave them because the method seemed to "work quite well."

I think the author is missing the point about Vader's motives. The article said:

For reasons that never get explained — and can’t be justified militarily — Vader joins the Stormtrooper assault on the base. So much for his major weapon against the Rebels, and the primary reason for ordering the Walkers to invade and destroy the generator. Once Vader opts to bring down the shield and lead the invasion, he’s lost the battle.

The author assumes that Vader actually cared about winning whatever military objectives the Empire had. I don't think he did. In Episode V, Vader wanted only one thing: to get Luke Skywalker. I imagine that after the Death Star was destroyed and there was a big ceremony highlighting to everyone in the Rebel Alliance that Luke was the hero, word got to the Empire (and Vader) that someone named Skywalker was involved. Vader may have claimed that the name had no meaning for him, but it certainly did. So that's why he went down to the base. He didn't trust the stormtroopers to be able to capture Luke; he was going to do it himself.

In Episode IV, Vader seemed to be nominally to be a team player (at least he stopped choking that guy in the conference room) and willing to take orders. By the time Episode V rolled around, Vader was off the leash. All he wanted was to get Luke to turn him into his Sith Apprentice and everything else (stormtroopers, admirals, star destroyers, what have you) was just fodder. So although I enjoyed the article, I don't think Vader's tactics weren't because of poor planning or insight. If every Rebel escaped and every Imperial died, it wouldn't matter to him if he captured Luke.

It other words: it's not that I'm a bad driver. It's that I needed to get to the airport to make my flight and that now-dented car was a rental.

- Reading tweets/Facebook posts (and with a flick of the iDrive, it will read the tweet out to you)

- Posting one of five/six canned tweets/Facebook status messages (e.g., "It's xx outside, and I'm driving my BMW!") - so you aren't trying to compose a message while you drive

- Web radio

- Looking at your calendar/address book

- News RSS feeds

So it has the capacity to be dangerously distracting, but BMW's implementation is limited enough that it's not. Of course, the driver could still be distracted if they're reading Facebook while they're driving, but if they're going to do that, they would do that anyway with their smartphone in their hand.

Rob, for old time's sake, please repost your resignation as a dupe in about a week :-)

I think his life story would make a great movie. It would be fitting if Pixar made their first CG animated biography with Steve Jobs as the subject, although I'm not sure how you could get kids excited about it.

Jobs is arguably the best business leader of our era.

He co-founded the hugely successful Apple out of the proverbial garage, got fired from his own company, went off and started NeXT, bought Pixar from George Lucas and turned it into something big. At the same time, he came back to Apple, made a huge hit with the iMac, then the iPod, then the iPhone, and now the iPad. Now Apple one of the most successful companies around. I'm not sure if any other business leader's accomplishments could beat that story.

What impresses me is, as others have said, he actually cared about the products his company made. He wanted to make a "dent in the universe" and he actually did. He didn't do it by managing to costs or other things that business schools tell people to do, but by putting products and the user experience first.

+1 Insightful

That's an interesting point. IANAL, but if I understand what Blizzard is doing (you buy a copy of the game, find something randomly which has a real cash value), reading on The Straight Dope, there is a similar issue with Pinball back in the day:

Interestingly, there's another analogy: I assume that the value of the item is related to its usefulness (a powerful two-handed, with four empty sockets will be worth more on the market than an etherial dagger that can't be repaired), which when outfitted to your character will make it easier for you to fight more powerful creatures and earn better, more valuable drops. That means in other words, you can pay more money to increase the odds that you find even more valuable items. That makes it similar to the "payoff gimmicks" in the linked example where you pay more money to increase your chances of winning.

I suspect that Blizzard's lawyers are taking this into account and will impose the appropriate limitations to avoid having Diablo III (hmm... that name should draw the ire of anti-gambling religious advocates) banned under Internet gambling prohibitions. Maybe you'll be limited to buy and sell strictly ornamental items with no material effect on the game play as opposed to the set pieces introduced in the LOD expansion pack.

Here's a depressing thought: not if the "dimwits" are running things. The original poster was right; political conservatives are trying to set up their own parallel institutions to give "backing" to their own opinions.

There was an article in the Boston Globe that the Bush Administration had hired some 150 graduates of Regent law school (which was founded by Pat Robinson), which proclaims its purpose is to "provide [rightwing] Christian leadership to change the world,"

It's only a matter of time before conservatives start setting up their own politically conservative science departments to match.

But it doesn't even have to wait that long. Next time we get a Republican president, we can look forward to political conservatives making scientific policy there as well. Back in 2005, a Bush administration aide (with no scientific credentials), made edits to government reports on climate change. From the New York Times article:

So, this victory is important, but the war against science isn't won or even over.

And in a democracy, the government *is* the people, so you have people (or at least the majority of them) collectively deciding how to direct their collective behavior. We're talking about moderately increasing the efficiency of light bulbs, not fascism.

I think reputable companies will live up to their warranties. We had an early failure with a GE CFL. We sent them the receipt, and GE sent us a coupon for a new bulb in a week or two-- no muss, no fuss.

Sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying: I thought you were saying he had permission to install his software because Apple lets its visitors install software. Obviously you weren't saying that, so we are likely in agreement.

I doubt that. You can use the webcam on them to take photos (using Photo booth, etc.), but to suggest that a customer is implicitly allowed to install software that surreptitiously photographs other customers and then displays them in public is ridiculous. If what you suggest were the case, then that would mean Apple is implicitly allowing people to install keyloggers or similar malware. Just because Apple didn't post a sign saying, "don't install surveillance software, malware, worms, viruses, trojan horses, etc." doesn't mean that people should assume they are allowed to do that; common sense says otherwise.

Apple is providing its store guests with computers to use for reasonable purposes. I can't think of any way that what he was doing could be considered to be reasonable. In fact, it was closer to harassment (for Apple's customers) and spying (and repeatedly, since he admits he had to repeatedly return to reinstall the software after it was erased). Thus, his newfound trouble with law enforcement.

That's probably what he did, and I think he's trying to just cover his tracks. I think he was hoping for a "ask for forgiveness rather than for permission" situation.

He should have gone to the Apple Store manager, told them explicitly what he wants to do: "I'm going to install software on all the Macs in this store, which will randomly take photos of your customers and upload the photos to my website, which I'll then display publicly for my art project." Then when they said, "no," go find something else to do with his time.