I have in my possession one of the most coveted items of the year, and certainly the most talked about of this day. Yes, that would be an iPhone. In Apple’s usual style of quiet elegance, the box sits there revealing little (as if there was much that has not already been revealed through months of slow leaks of rumors). It is nearly begging me to open it, much like its call beckoned me into the AT&T Mobility store earlier this evening despite my better judgment. I have it, but do I open it?
At first glance, one might think that the fight over whether to provide amnesty to “undocumenteds” is a fight between those who are selfish and greedy and those who care about people desperately wanting to improve their situations. In the aftermath of the failed Senate immigration bill, one might be tempted to ask why a nation that was built by immigrants seeking a better life should shut the door on people searching for the same thing? Unfortunately, this viewpoint makes the issue look deceptively simple: what if by granting amnesty we actually failed hopeful immigrants and present citizens alike?
As a writer, the only reason I ever got that first computer was because it was far more efficient than a typewriter, and certainly more readable than my own handwriting. The sheer volume of what I've turned out over the years would be impossible for me to manage on paper. Add to that all the stuff written by others that I wanted to save, and it boggles the mind. Even though most of what I've written is read by others online, I still have to produce paper copies from time to time. That means I have to translate my electronic files into readable paper copies. That first computer would have been nearly useless to me without the attached printer.
Apple did what every Mac user wondering if the company had lost its focus on the Mac wanted the company to do: it had the ever charismatic Steve Jobs focus on Mac OS X Leopard for almost all of his keynote in San Francisco, one of two major product launch events for the Cupertino-based company each year. But, when he did move off of the Mac, he unveiled Apple’s real offensive: the Safari web browser for Windows.
With the number of uninsured Americans and the costs of providing medical care to an aging country increasing, the issue of medical reform is settling in as a long-term key issue in the country’s national political dialogue. What does not seem to arise, unfortunately, is a serious attempt to take the free market sentiment of many Americans and put that to good use to drive down health care costs. Creating a massive government regulation system to force costs down is not the only way – or even a good way – to insure a future that allows all people affordable access to medical services.
The one thing that really fired up the development of the Internet as we know it today was e-mail. The protocols were designed back when the system itself was highly difficult to access, and security wasn't a significant issue. Since then, even your average household pet has heard of Internet security problems.
Archbishop Raymond Burke is not the type of man you would label as a conciliator. Since he came to St. Louis a few years ago, he has inflamed via his vocal opposition of politicians who support abortion, his suppression of a parish that ignored his orders and now his resignation from a charity board after it brought Sheryl Crow, a supporter of embryonic stem cell research, to play at a benefit concert. The common wisdom says he must be wrong, but is he really?
FreeBSD is very much a source-based system. The operating assumption of the architects of FreeBSD is that you will compile most things from the source code. The system is designed to work that way, and does it exceptionally well. The famous "Ports Collection" is rather unique in making a large number of packages available ready to build and seldom requires anything but a few commands in a terminal window. Having tried to build specialized applications on several different versions of Open Source operating systems, I can assure you that compiling on FreeBSD is about as easy as it gets.
On Good Friday, it is traditional to look at the narrative of that day approximately two thousand years ago when Jesus was crucified by the order of Pontius Pilate and then try to make sense of it. Jesus Himself offered an interpretation of His future suffering that appears in both Matthew and Luke; in it, He chooses to interpret His death and resurrection as “the sign of Jonah.” What could this possibly mean?