
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.
[...] the secret ballot is such a terrible analogy for this petition that it's incredible anyone would bring it up if they have any clue whatsoever as to how secret ballots actually work, and how much effort is made to verify that people in secret ballot situations don't vote twice, and their identity matches who they say they are, and they are actually legally allowed to vote.
For all we know the names on this petition are "Donald Duck" repeated 100,000 times, or the names of closet gays (also known as Bible Believing Christians) and their minor children.
Publishing the names serves the good and useful purpose of validating that the signers are who they say they are, and that they are adults living in the State of Washington, as opposed to shills from out of state, minors, or fictional characters.
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.
The difficult we do today; the impossible takes a little longer.