Mod parent up. The domain system was meant to be strictly hierarchical, with most entities registering domains at the third or even the fourth level.

The perversion of system into a quasi-flat namespace centered around second-level domains came about because the planned high-level directory service for the Internet never materialized. These days most people use search engines to do much the same thing, albeit at the cost of standardization and protocol / vendor independence.

Judging from Apple's page, all the gestures are the same as the ones used by the current MacBook Pro trackpad. Apple didn't even bother to change the preferences panel (screenshot). Apple's claim to fame is keeping things simple as possible for consumers, and adding gestures that aren't supported by any other Apple device would tend to run against that.

Seeing as Apple has never bothered to provide official Windows driver support for their peripherals, I wouldn't hold my breath on that, either. Somebody will probably rip the appropriate bits out of Boot Camp if and when they update it to support the pad, however (this has been done before for other Apple devices).

The auto refresh is there because the article is a "live blog" which received real-time updates as the press conference progressed. Now that the conference is over, Engadget appears to have forgotten to turn it off, but removing the &refresh=60 from the end of the URL string and reloading the page should fix it.

There is absolutely nothing to prevent the same checks from being applied to the signature gathering process. If all signatories provide their address along with their name, it is trivial to verify that they are indeed eligible citizens of the jurisdiction in which the petition is being circulated.

The agency responsible for verifying the signatures could even opt to contact a random sample of the signatories and confirm their participation, if they so chose. I would point out, however, that doing so goes beyond the measures taken to ensure the integrity of actual ballots. When I request an early ballot and vote by mail, the state has no way to confirm that the person who called for the ballot, filled it out and returned it was actually me.

The only practical reason for making petition signatures public is to allow them to be verified by any interested third party. The problem with this is that, for some people, "verification" involves breaking kneecaps. Why should we hold petitions to a higher standard than the elections that follow them?

Billcutus can stay; he's practically an institution at this point.

As for Jobs, I think an image of him done up in the fashion of Big Brother from the "1984" ad would be more fitting.

Apple's move to support HTML5 is commendable, but don't doubt for an instant that they also have an interest in breaking the back of Flash. Adobe has been less than stellar in supporting the Mac lately and Apple wants to be sure they aren't beholden to them in the future.

Apple's mindshare with casual users is tremendous. The big fight right now is not among Apple, Android, RIM, Nokia et al, but rather between Apple and Android. The latter two have traditionally targeted the business and prosumer markets and have mature offerings there. Android and the iPhone OS are both new, emerging platforms targeting home users, and in that market Apple's position is enviable. They may recently have slipped behind Android on total sales, but they still have the next gen iPhone coming down the pipe and all reports indicate that it will close the hardware gap that emerged with the release of the Nexus One.

Your argument that Apple's exclusion of Flash is based exclusively on concern about application quality is a little naive, I think. If applications developed with Adobe's tools are lower in quality than the native offerings, consumers will recognize that and opt not to use them. Saying that they will instead turn around and blame Apple for their shortcomings is a little twisted. Additional choices are a win for consumers here, the only one who stands to lose is Apple. Denying that their actions here are not motivated at least in part by unadulterated self-interest is disingenuous.

Apple wants to control the development platform because it locks developers into supporting only Apple's end user hardware, namely, the iPhone. Apple's tools do not effectively support cross platform development, so anyone who wants to make an app that runs on more than just the iPhone has to write substantial amounts of additional code to support the non-Apple devices. The result is many developers opting not to target devices other than the iPhone at all, which is good for Apple because users are now pressured to buy their hardware for the exclusive applications.

If Apple allows Adobe's development tools to be used, the distinction between Apple and non-Apple hardware is abstracted away, and there is no longer any reason for developers not to make their applications available on as many devices as possible. This invites competition that Apple naturally does not want.