Do we have the right to post our political opinions anonymously? We sure do. Does a politician have a right to reveal who the anonymous posters are? He or she certainly does!

Compared to most inexpensive cell phones in Japan, the iPhone is a few steps backwards in terms of its feature set. I have a better feature set with my Toshiba W45T. The only advantages to the iPhone are the touch screen and its built-in Wifi, but that is not enough to make it seriously competitive here in Japan. Even more problematic it its price tag: the phone itself is over-priced, and the service plans are likewise a joke.

As Worf said, those more human-looking Klingons are a branch of the Klingon genome that other Klingons do not speak of... Still, they swing a mean batleth.

Cripes. This is old stuff. Ever since ITMS started, you couldn't register an account with it in the USA unless you had a USA issued credit card with a USA billing address. I life in Japan but all of my CC's are issued by USA banks, so Apple refuses me. Likewise, ITMS Japan refuses me because all of my CC's are issued by USA banks, not Japanese banks. So I don't buy downloaded music. Instead, I rent CDs from the Video/CD store which works out to about 30 cents a track.

I think it's a minor miracle that the print SF/F magazines are still making a go of it. They have always had a precarious fingerhold in the first place, compared to other publications. Nowadays, with major newspapers like The New York Times and Chicago Tribune having a tough go of it, I'm surprised that Asimov's, Analog, and F&SF are still managing print versions. Lately it's all moving online, which is where I expect to see the SF/F zines to eventually migrate.

So now /. will get the censor's swipe in Thailand, since these days just mentioning the King seems to set off the self-appointed royal honor watchdogs. Calling all tourists: take your cash to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Tourist capital flight is possibly the only thing that will get their attention.

Loser Pays, and loser goes to prison for patent fraud.

Psystar is starting to sound about Mac OSX a little like SCO sounded with Linux. This is definitely throwing in the kitchen sink. Next will be the toilet.

This "robotic" wife looks suspiciously like the "lifelike" sex dolls one can find advertised in the pages of Japanese comic books.

No, it's Welfare for the big labels.

So what. The Zune and the iPod are overrated and overpriced. So Obama should maybe start using an off brand. It will no doubt be just as good. I speak as someone who has two iPods and an iPhone.

You mean people still buy stuff on Amazon? I stopped buying stuff there when they dragooned small press POD publishers into using their in-house POD printing division to produce books.

As for music, not only have I stopped downloading any of it from any store because of DRM crap and other problems, I've stopped buying CDs. I'm music free, haven't bought or downloaded a new tune in over two years.

Next to go will be videos, cable, and DVD. Once you clear all of that shite from your consciousness, you really start to realize just how much of it IS shite, and what a waste of time it all is.

The weird thing here is that the cheapskates who buy the Psystar would never buy a Mac anyway and are too stupid to realize they should probably go for Ubuntu Linux. Anyone even remotely design conscious and concerned about ease of use would go for the Mac or for Windows. I don't think Apple's losing any money.