As a business, Apple has a right to fear that moving the assembly work from China to the United States will entail raising labor costs so high as to make the company less competitive and profitable. But for it to say that it has no obligation to help solve America’s problems is completely unacceptable. Good article: http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/opinion/prestowitz-apple-jobs/index.html

So, be warned. Smith isn’t done yet protecting the content industry from the business disruptions caused by the digitization of content and the Internet. And clearly when people protested, instead of hearing the voice of concerned citizens worried about the fragmentation of the Internet, he heard a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were talking about. http://gigaom.com/2012/04/02/lamar-smith-sopa-protesters-were-misinformed/

Today the GNOME project has released version 3.4 of its longstanding desktop environment. Available at http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.4/, the release notes for GNOME 3.4 paint a picture of polish and improvement across the board. I initially was quite impressed with GNOME 3.0, and the 3.2 version which followed provided even more evidence of polish, though there were warning signs I chose to ignore, hoping that in time the project would listen to its users and reverse course.

The article, on Stuxnet and its escape into the wild: But you now have it, and if you’re a computer whiz you can take it apart and you can say, ‘Oh, let’s change this over here, let’s change that over there.’ Now I’ve got a really sophisticated weapon. So thousands of people around the world have it and are playing with it. And if I’m right, the best cyberweapon the United States has ever developed, it then gave the world for free.

I don’t think this is going to do well among fans of the original, but then again there’s no accounting for bad taste. The trailer left me with the strong impression Quaid doesn’t even get his ass to Mars. And, Colin Farrel? Jessica Biel? I remember when attractive people used to be cast for movies… And another thing. How much fake plastic hype is too much? A teaser for a teaser trailer that’s not even on TV?

I don’t support racism but I wholeheartedly support everyone’s right to make offensive comments. It is tyranny to imprison anyone over a remark, no matter how offensive it may be. From the article: “A second year biology student at Swansea, Stacey was arrested after his comments on the social networking site were reported by other users.” The world has gone mad. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17515992

In a rare show of respect for its users, Facebook is directing prospective employers to consider the legality of soliciting a user’s network password or face possible legal action by the social networking giant itself. This is a most welcome position for them to take, as inspection and demands by interviewers to see the contents of a prospective employee are becoming rampant. This is a start - for Facebook to show true respect for its users they must refuse to collaborate with regimes around the world in acts of tyrrany, including handing the information of its users over to repressive governments so that they can be imprisoned, tortured and murdered.

Back in my day, things ran on only one server and they had five nines guaranteed. And that’s how we liked it. Now get off my lawn!

Continuous heuristic analysis of phone calls means the entire call, not just the background noise, will be run through remote computers. Given the desire of various agencies to scour all communications in real time for key words and elements, how can this be good for anyone? http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/03/21/google-wants-to-serve-you-ads-based-on-the-background-noise-of-your-phone-calls/

A good overview of what seems to be a new trend in Linux desktop development - “we know better, you’ll get used to it.” I’ve tried to like GNOME 3 but I’ve ultimately reverted to using WindowMaker (which, fortunately, has resumed development) and some supporting apps. Too many aspects of the desktop metaphor were thrown away by the GNOME project in a blind effort to emulate a union between the Mac and the iPad.