This is such an American attitude. By making out like this is an all or nothing situation, you actually make it an all or nothing situation when it doesn't need to be.

IMHO a mature workplace would permit someone to cross a line once or twice, and would in a good natured way pull them back onto the right side of that line. Instead of automatically making everything a life and death big deal, why not act like an adult and defuse the situation if possible?

This whole discussion is ignoring the difference between behaviour which is (perhaps) inappropriate in context and behaviour which amounts to sexual harassment, too. Another peculiarly American perception seems to be that any reference to anything of a sexual nature in any context can "harass" someone who hears it.

So are you suggesting that the guns used in the Olympics were developed independently from the guns used to kill things?

Underlying your post is an assumption that the person buying this device is sufficiently shallow, stupid, and lacking in perception that the way it is packaged actually alters their subsequent experience with it. Which might be true for people who buy phones etc. on the basis of image or "lifestyle" factors, but doesn't matter to people who buy things on the basis of what they actually do.

I had a Motorola phone which came in an amazing box - a crazy extruded metal lid which slid off to reveal the phone etc seated in a sort of display cabinet. The phone was still a piece of shit. OTOH I have a Sony phone now which came in a very boring white box, but the phone is a joy to use.

Or maybe the people you're talking about are the same ones who when given presents for Christmas as kids would play with the box and not the present?

As a few people have noted, the Kindle comes in amazingly simple, instantly disposable packaging. I don't think less of my Kindle because it didn't come in some kind of Russian doll box folded by ninjas like an ipad does. In fact it just confirms to me that what matters is what it does, not the box it came in.

Agreed - it's brilliant. Arrives safely, can't come open accidentally, yet when you want to open it you have a Kindle in your hands in about 4 seconds and a small amount of cardboard to throw away.

This should be the gold standard for all tech companies.

So if a judge went insane or committed some act of moral turpitude, there would be no power to remove him/her or prevent him/her from hearing a case?

That is the type of situation I'm talking about.

I know it's not something you're used to, assuming you're a US citizen, but it's actually just that NZ is a country where the rule of law operates, and this is an example of the system properly and impartially dealing with the issue. Judges in NZ (and Australia... and Britain) aren't elected and, by US standards, are not beholden to party politics. Furthermore, except in exceptional circumstances, no bureaucrat has the power to prevent a judge from hearing a matter.

Had he not recused himself, there would have been a risk of a successful appeal on the basis of bias.

Of course if the same judge had made a speech talking about how the US is New Zealand's best friend when it comes to intellectual property issues, you'd be squealing about his bias.

You need to add a couple more niche-specific acronyms. As things stand I could almost understand that sentence.

Actually, as with most situations where humans dump heaps of something somewhere without worrying about the consequences too much, the buildup of salt in the ocean potentially can have significant harmful effects on sea life.

This is a major issue near where I live at the moment - we have no water (driest state in the driest continent on Earth) so we are keen on desalination, but the planned desal plant may kill a unique local form of giant cuttlefish because we are going to pump heaps of salt into a gulf that doesn't flush out quickly:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-04-16/cuttlefish-at-risk-from-desalination-plant/2243198

I guess it'd like fish deciding that pumping a few percent of extra CO into the local atmosphere won't be a problem for us because the atmosphere is so big. At a certain point you don't want to be too near the outlet.

I don't know how much debugging type stuff you want to do, but you might enjoy using a web-based IDE like IDE One. You can use any language you want, and if I were you, I'd type my code in a text editor that allows for syntax highlighting, like Notepad++, which can be run without an install.

Personally, I don't think it's all that smart to try to out-Apple Apple. Apple's strength is ridiculously tight integration of hardware and software, perfected over a decade now. Microsoft's strength is that they are the default desktop/laptop O/S for pretty much everyone else.

If they try to copy Apple, they become the second best at tightly integrated hardware/software, instead of the best (in a commercial sense) at selling ubiquitous, flexible operating systems.

Put all that differently - why would I buy a Microsoft walled-garden laptop when I could just buy a macbook?

I buy Microsoft stuff because it comes on my flavour of hardware, I don't buy the hardware because I love Windows 7 so very much.

American exceptionalism is the problem I am referring to. More traditionally known as 'hubris'. There are some good plays about it, you should check them out. The Greeks had the concept nailed down about 2500 years ago.

Your government and many of your citizens operate on the basis that there are "Americans" and "others". You regard yourselves as special, privileged, the chosen people. You have failed to register that this is obviously not true, nor have you registered that your supposedly permanent hegemony of only a few years ago is already gone.

Once you decide that some are "more equal than others", you lose the ability to impartially assess any situation. The concepts essential to a just, democratic world become unworkable, because they rely on the opposite view, that no-one person or group should be more privileged than any other.

The GP's comment exemplifies the (majority) American mindset - murdering people is only problematic if it offends your constitution. Well, guess what? Fuck your constitution. It's problematic because it's fundamentally wrong, not because it offends some American document which you guys tend to ignore most of the time anyway.

Hence you cannot understand (a) your immense economic problems (b) your immense geopolitical problems or (c) your immense problems with groups of angry foreign men wanting to hurt you. None of it makes sense to you because you cannot see that you are not special, and therefore that there will be no automatic Hollywood ending to these dramas.

Bill Clinton made a speech towards the end of his presidency where he argued strongly that the US should strengthen international institutions and human rights standards as much as possible. His reasoning was that America's time in the sun wouldn't last forever, and that when some other power - China, for instance - was dominant, America would be grateful for strong and liberal democratic international governance. Sadly Bush II and Obama haven't heeded that warning, and have contributed to a world of unilateral murder and mayhem as a result. The precedent of the powerful being entitled to murder the weak instead of pursuing them according to law will have terrible consequences for all of us, I fear.

You don't think this might have happened already (the targeting, not the hell breaking loose)?

I hope this is a joke. In case it's not, I assume you agree that by parity of reasoning, other countries have the right to launch missiles into US territory to kill US citizens if they decide they are beyond the reach of those countries' domestic legal systems?

The fact that you are more concerned that your President is killing US citizens without charge or trial outside of a warzone than that your President is killing human beings without charge or trial outside of a warzone is at the heart of what is wrong with your country.

You have started down the path where arbitrary murder by the state is sometimes acceptable. You can still turn back, but you need to turn back right now, in relation to all human beings.

It will be interesting to see how the US reacts when, with its power in decline, China or India or Russia start killing civilians in other countries because they are on some "kill list" or other.

So you place no value whatsoever on the pure visual spectacle. You refer to theatre, which suggests that you are happy to have your stories conveyed to you by people standing around in an unchanging, brownish room talking to one another.

I'd say you're atypical, even amongst people into the arts. While I don't mind a decent play, the experience of watching a genuinely good movie cannot be replicated by a book or theatre production.

Do you avoid art galleries because you can stay at home and read descriptions of what's in the paintings?

Furthermore, you must be going to the wrong movies, because there are many, many movies which are "more than just spectacle, explosion and skin". Try avoiding "The Avengers" and go to something with some substance instead.

I must disagree about 3D, too. Used properly, it does add to the quality of the visual spectacle.