Yeah, I get what you're saying. My point falls more along the lines of, if you lower the limit from what has been the accepted standard, you're going to end up with a lot of people falling between the new and old limits getting arrested...without a proportionate increase in safety. I get the feeling people aren't going to simply stop having that second bottle of beer with dinner because the percentage rate dropped by .03; at least not until their friends and family who were always responsible drinkers before the change start running afoul of it. Then again, I guess there's always a "user education" period...

Ultimately, I'm just always wary when the law makes it easier and easier to be a lawbreaker. I'd hate for people who legitimately exercise responsible drinking to inadvertently find themselves in trouble.

All this will result in is more arrests. The average Joe isn't going to know the difference between .08% and .05%; the only result will be a larger probability in jail time for someone who would otherwise be considered fine to drive today. If we're going to change the numbers in this manner, why not just make it 0% and at least be clear about the message: Drink at all, and you'd better be willing to not drive for a couple of hours.

I wonder if a workaround for this technicality would be for services to offer to "buy" your phone, they unlock it, and subsequently offer your previous phone for sale to you. So long as money changes hands in the right order, would this be classified as legal despite violating the spirit of the law?

As an IT administrator at a large public university, I can say with absolute truthfulness that it is still the case that public [state] professionals are largely underpaid in comparison to their private-sector peers. As stated, we get great benefits, [usually] more holidays, and don't get laid off with little notice; that's the trade-off, and we know that going in.

However, we usually get annoyed when the agreed-upon terms of our employment are changed after the fact. Here in Florida, state employees were previously not required to contribute to their pensions; the current governor disagreed with this particular benefit and successfully pushed for this to be changed. At this point, we get back to the concept of promises; when I was hired, it was at a lower wage on the condition that the lower salary is offset by not contributing to my pension plan (among other things). If the government wants to save money by forcing contribution, that's fine so long as this new aspect of the terms of employment is enforced on new hires from the date this law was passed. This is not the case, and that's why the law is now being challenged in the Supreme Court.

Ultimately, it can be said that if people are so offended by this ex post facto law, they can find employment in the private sector and take a higher wage. I completely agree; while I hope the law is struck, it's not a "deal breaker" for me given the value I receive from other benefits that the state is choosing to still honor. Still, on principal, the terms of an agreement should be honored and not changed without due process, bargaining, etc., and that's what is at issue here.

...and not using some form of AdBlock anyway?

I'm sure it'll make an interested read / skim, but it seems like this is all stuff we've known they've been doing for years.

Just came across this on The Oatmeal today.

Unfortunately, security isn't that big of a deal to Apple...yet. With the increase in market penetration the bulls-eye on Macs is getting larger and a lot more tempting; hopefully they realize this before something very serious happens and take steps to bolster their in-house security research (or hell, outsource it).

Those are mostly (if not completely) social issues. Some of us Republicans feel we should respect the rights of our fellow human beings, live and let live, while also feeling that Big Government is a bad idea and fiscal conservatism is good. Not everyone that identifies with either major political party is intently "Black or White" in their ideas; in fact, I'd say those who don't identify themselves as being in the "Grey" are the people you need to worry about on both sides.

Yes, the first amendment should protect someone from saying that. It's when the money exchanges hands and the deal is actually struck that you have someone acting criminally.

It's not so much that clients are specifically avoiding Blackboard; schools and such are vastly under-funded, and given the choice between competent free software with smaller support costs and a proprietary LMS, why pay the premium? My university has been steadily moving courses from Blackboard to Moodle for that reason specifically.

So long as the services and prices of these companies remain the same, I don't think clients are going to care who the owner is.

Not even. I'm sure eventually people will just start using URL shortening services to post links (if it becomes a larger problem of censorship, perhaps TPB will start generating them itself for users to share).

Terabyte drives (or close to them) are practically a standard in new desktops. It would have been much more practical to lower the absurdly-high 16 GB of RAM (c'mon, does it need more than 8 as the baseline?) and use the cost savings there to beef up on storage, either through more space available or SSDs.

You could very well ask them why they prefer a competitor's products; I'd encourage anyone in this situation (including Microsoft) to do so. There's a huge difference, however, between allowing employees to bring in their personal Macs for work purposes and allowing employees to use your hardware refresh funding or hardware stipends on an excessively expensive competitor's product. The whole situation regarding banning iPods was ridiculous, and they were rightly mocked for doing so. Still, this scenario is about what Microsoft allows to be done with its own money, and I can't particularly demonize them for making this choice.

If Apple were a competitor to my products, I'd absolutely prevent employees from using company funds to purchase Macs. If we're a BYOD shop, with devices purchased with private money, then no problem...but I'm not helping out a rival, especially given the cost of Apple's hardware.

I do find it kind of interesting that they've waited this long to blatantly say it, though. Perhaps they're now starting to see Apple as a more viable competitor to their interests?