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Riiiiiiiight.
Oh, so close…
John recently wrote a column in PC Magazine about the iPad 3, indicating that he isn’t sure what, other than a faster processor, could be in an iPad 4 and beyond. The next version of Mac OS X (called Mountain Lion) will drop Mac from the name and have features from iOS added to it. More iOS devices (iPads and iPhones) were sold last year than all Macs ever sold. All of this, someone suggested (argh! Can’t find the article right now), means that Apple will eventually drop the Mac altogether. Someone pointed out this is silly because despite all that, Macs comprise a smaller, but still significant percentage of revenue.
While desktop Macs should be around for a looong time (multiple monitors, anyone?), what about the Macbooks? There is still a need for many for a real keyboard which the iPad lacks without an external keyboard. And what about those needing multiple programs running at once on the screen in multiple windows? You need a notebook for that. Unless…
Take a future gen iPad with a quad-core processor. Then, as a separately purchased add-on for those who want it, Apple introduces a snap-on panel (the iPanel?) that has a keyboard plus USB and DisplayPort ports. Without the iPanel, the iPad works like a regular iPad. If the iPanel is attached, it works like a Macbook. Two current-day devices in one that makes the regular Macbook redundant. Sounds like a winner to me.
So Apple, when you come out with the iPanel, you know where to send the royalty checks! What? You’ve already patented this? Argh!
There’s probably (or will be) a drug for that.
Do you feel anxious if your cellphone isn’t nearby?
Does just the thought of losing your phone make your heart pound?
Do you keep an extra phone on hand, just in case your primary phone breaks?
Do you sometimes take it to bed with you?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you may be a nomophobe, and you are not alone.
Late last week Federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare introduced a bill to parliament that takes Australia one step closer to an R18+ classification for videogames. No sooner had the classification bill been introduced than the Coalition responded by calling for an inquiry into the bill. These are just the latest developments in a saga that’s been running for the best part of a decade.
…snip…
So why do we even need an R18+ classification for video games? Well as it stands, the highest rating that can be applied to a videogame in Australia is MA15+. Games with content exceeding the MA15+ definition must be “refused classification”. And any game that is refused classification cannot legally be sold or played in Australia (of course this doesn’t stop players ordering such games from overseas).In an increasingly sophisticated game market, Australia’s lack of an R18+ rating has led to a number of games being refused classification.
Same people stalling this were in favor of military action in Libya and want to bomb Iran. Seems violence is OK as long its REAL and the state doing it to you or to some desert wedding party. Idiots.
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Click pic to read about Canada’s now vanquished Captain Copyright
The universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have signed a deal with Access Copyright that allows for surveillance of faculty correspondence, unjustified restriction to copyrighted works and two million dollars in fees that will be passed along to students.
The agreement reached last month with the licensing agency includes provisions defining e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student and surveillance of academic staff email.
At least all we have to worry about is this.
Can’t fault them for wanting to provide a nutritious meal for kids, but I included the Poisoning America banner to reward the school for giving the kid chicken nuggets, the Agra-biz fake food of choice for school lunches.
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home. When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.
About time there were means testing on some government benefits, but what might this lead to?
This legislation should have been easy to draft because it is was just an extension of what had been agreed to, two months ago. But that’s not the case. H.R. 3630 is 386 pages long. The Bill includes some interesting things:
*The Keystone Pipe line is a “go”
*There is a new provision for eligibility for unemployment benefits. In the future, some states will require you to pee in a cup
*There is regulatory relief from the EPA on environmental standards set for boilers.
*The Bill calls for a one-year extension of the 100% “Bonus” tax depreciation allowance. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) set the price tag for this at $28 billion. This is a gift to American companies. I think it is a payoff to GE’s Jeff Immelt for all the “hard work” he has done for Obama.
*There are new restrictions on Tribal Grants (the “party pooper” rules):
*96 pages (a quarter of the total document) is committed to changes in the rules and laws relating to flood insurance.
*Another 144 pages are dedicated to the sale of new narrow and broadband licenses by the FCC.
*Section 1327, ENTERPRISE GUARANTEE FEES, discusses fees that will be set by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the future.
*The Bill provides a 100% tax on unemployment benefits for an individual making $750,000 or a couple making $1,500,000.
*There is language restricting the availability of food stamps
*Premiums on Medicare Part B and D will increase based on income
*Federal workers will pay a greater percent of their retirement benefits
Google has come under attack for violating users’ privacy and ignoring their wishes after admitting that it intentionally circumvented security settings in Apple’s Safari browser to track users on both desktop computers and iPhones.
A number of other advertisers exploited the loophole it had created to track those users too.
“Our data suggests that millions of users may have been affected,” Jonathan Mayer, the independent researcher at Stanford University who discovered the workaround by the search giant, told the Guardian.
…snip…
To get around Safari’s blocking, the Wall Street Journal explains, Google put code onto some of its ads served by DoubleClick’s servers at doubleclick.net to fool the Safari browser into thinking the user was interacting with DoubleClick.
But, the EFF notes: “That had the side effect of completely undoing all of Safari’s protections against doubleclick.net.”
That meant that other DoubleClick cookies, including the principal tracking one which Safari would normally block, were allowed.
“Like a balloon popped with a pinprick, all of Safari’s protections against DoubleClick were gone,” the EFF said.
A big deal? Has Google gone too far?
In a legal battle between music rights group SABAM and social networking site Netlog, the European Court of Justice delivered an unprecedented ruling today. The Court ruled that hosting sites can’t filter copyrighted content as that would violate the privacy of users and hinder freedom of information. The case at the highest European court has far-reaching consequences for many online services including cyberlockers and BitTorrent sites.
Similar bonds seized in arrest in 2009 at Malpensa Airport in Milan
Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said they seized a record $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that’s almost half of the U.S.’s public debt.
Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue,” he vowed, promising an end to the Bush administration’s high-profile raids on providers of medical pot, which is legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia.
But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multiagency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush’s record for medical-marijuana busts. “There’s no question that Obama’s the worst president on medical marijuana,” says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “He’s gone from first to worst.”
Pretty decent article. I had a quick squiz at DEA Position on Marijuana. Since they make a big deal about the startling revelation that there is absolutely NO positive medicinal value in SMOKING pot, its clear that by demonizing the delivery mechanism the administration is inviting the Big Pharmas to come in and replace the medical marijuana industry with ‘safe’ pot derivatives. WIN – WIN for both pharmaceutical and law enforcement industries.
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Bush’s Torture Program Began Ten Years Ago
by Andy Worthington, February 13, 2012Last month was the 10th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo, and as this year progresses it is appropriate to remember that there will be other grim 10-year anniversaries to note.
This week, one of those 10-year anniversaries passed almost unnoticed. On February 7, 2002, as Andrew Cohen noted in the Atlantic, in the only article marking the anniversary, (The Torture Memos)
President George W. Bush signed a brief memorandum titled “Humane Treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda Detainees” (PDF). The caption was a cruel irony, an Orwellian bit of business, because what the memo authorized and directed was the formal abandonment of America’s commitment to key provisions of the Geneva Convention. This was the day, a milestone on the road to Abu Ghraib: that marked our descent into torture — the day, many would still say, that we lost part of our soul.
That is no exaggeration. Depriving prisoners seized in wartime of the protections of the Geneva Conventions was a huge and unprecedented step, and thoroughly alarming. And yet, despite criticism from Secretary of State Colin Powell (PDF), the administration pushed forward remorselessly towards the creation of an America that practiced arbitrary detention and torture.
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