The new iPod touch has been disassembled and its components priced. The result shows that Apple is squeezing nearly 100% profit from sales of this music player, which seems to be a nasty habit with this company. There are a few abstract costs not included in the reverse-pricing figure, but I find this very interesting, especially as I struggle to justify the exorbitant price of a new MacBook Pro:
This guy really deserves some props for being the only one to hold up a filibuster of the new FISA bill. This bill would have given immunity to telecomm companies for committing illegal and unconstitutional infringements upon U.S. citizens’ privacy or helping government agencies do so.
Why weren’t more of our representatives – on either side of the aisle – adamant about protecting the Constitution in this case? Do the phone companies have so much power that everyone wanted to protect them more than the people of the U.S.? Where are the congresspeople who work for us (the people)?
This seems an issue that should have been dear to conservatives. I have always understood the Republican party to traditionally be the party to protect citizens’ privacy and curb government intervention in our lives. Where are the Republicans in fighting this injustice? If the perception of what happened in the Senate is accurate, then there was only one person, a Democrat (and without much help from the other Democrats, either), who kept this bill from being passed at this time. It’ll come around again in January.
You can likely guess what this simple freeware [for residential use, $20 license for commercial use] app does just from reading its name. The goal of The PC Decrapifier is to remove the trial “junkware” clogging up new computers purchased from major PC manufacturers. Makers such as Dell, HP and Sony make large sums of money on the back end of retail computer sales by installing trial or limited-functionality licenses of many programs on the new systems they sell.
According to a recent PC World article mentioned on The PC Decrapifier’s website, backlash from consumers is now strong enough for at least one of these PC makers to offer an opt-out option – though it appears a complicated process. PC World goes into further detail about this greedy behavior, noting that none but one of the companies involved would comment specifically except to say “it’s a feature!”
Well, I know exactly where they can put their features.
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The PC Decrapifier has enjoyed fairly steady development since its introduction. It removes a long list of common junkware. Please be careful and read the documentation if you decide to enlist its help in the fight to take back your new PC.
Okay/O.K. has an unexpectedly colorful history for such a simple word, springing so often from my lips and fingertips. It first appears in the northeast U.S. in the early-middle 19th century. Mostly the fault of journalists and politicians (surprise, surprise), and their wordplay antics, this word spread through our culture to eventually infect me and everyone I know.
According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, okay comes from “oll korrect,” a conscious misspelling of “all correct,” coined by Boston journalists in the late 19th century.
Consumer Reports’ Health Blog has begun publishing videos in a series they’re calling “Consumer Reports Adwatch” where they will tackle claims made by pharmaceutical ads. (At least, I believe it’s just pharmaceutical ads.) The first of these covers an advertisement for RLS, or “Restless Leg Syndrome”, that ridiculous sounding ailment that drug companies made up to make a buck right after they made up “Acid Reflux Disease.”
Now, before anyone flames me for scoffing at this nonsense, please note that I learned RLS is a real illness, though rare. It’s completely different from the nervous-energy-triggered, bouncing-leg behavior someone exhibited during every minute of every class period in highschool.
Acid Reflux may be real as well and not just symptoms of the crazy modern diet. (I doubt it.) But the ads by Megapharmacorp, Inc. are propaganda, cut and dry. I’m not being naïve. I will never quit expecting people to behave ethically and scrupulous. And in this country (USA), corporations are legally people, too (more so, even).
Termites have long baffled scientists as to their place in the natural world and their relationship with other insects. Although they are part of a large ’superorder’ that includes cockroaches, they were classified separately in a group called Isoptera .
This new research puts termites into the same group as cockroaches, (Blattodea). Termites are now classed as a new family of cockroaches called Termitidae . Isoptera is no longer valid.
Social insects
Termite diet, social behaviour and ecology are very different from their kitchen infesting cockroach counterparts. Confusingly also known as ‘white ants’, termites show many behavioural similarities with ants, wasps and bees as they are ’social’ insects. They produce offspring to carry out specialised tasks such as foraging, mound building, defence or reproduction.
DNA analysis
Dr Paul Eggleton, Daegan Inward and George Beccaloni carried out the most comprehensive DNA study to date . They studied 107 different species of termites, cockroaches and mantids, another group of animals thought to be closely related.
‘The key change in the termites’ evolution from their cockroach ancestors seems to be when they developed the ability to eat wood ,’ said Paul, Museum termite expert, ‘they gradually lost their characteristic egg case, and some of their offspring became sterile workers and soldiers’.
Changing appearance and behaviour
‘It may seem surprising that termites are actually social cockroaches since they look so different, but it is not unusual for animals to change in appearance as their behaviour evolves over time. Perhaps the most famous social insects, ants, evolved from solitary predatory wasps.’
Dr George Beccaloni, the Museum’s cockroach expert adds, ‘It is very rare that such a major change is proposed to how a group of animals is classified by biologists. If our findings are correct the textbooks will need to be rewritten.’
The paper Death of an order: a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches is published online in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Laura Ingram rarely buys anything new, but last spring the 58-year-old Oakland landlord sprang for 16 feet of new oak bookcases to line the walls of her backyard studio-office.
“There was no problem in the showroom, when I was standing there with huge stacks of shelves,” she said. “But when the shelves arrived, they provoked such a violent allergic reaction in me after delivery that the vendor had to come and get them the next day and put them on a loading dock for three weeks to off-gas.”
The bookcases came back, and Ingram paid a carpenter to install them and a helper to move 35 boxes of books. Still, her chest would hurt, her lips would swell, she’d get confused and feel as if she had the flu.
So the furniture sat in her yard for three more months while she waited for the chemical odor to dissipate. It didn’t. The vendor finally returned Ingram’s money and took the bookcases away.
“This was my attempt to spiff up my environment,” Ingram said. “Now, I’d be extremely wary and want every certificate in the world.”
The problem for Ingram and others who are growing increasingly sensitized to indoor air pollutants is that the certificate doesn’t exist, and the furniture industry resists the notion of labeling its wares. Consumers can read a list of the ingredients in their cornflakes and a summary of what nutrients they contain, but good luck trying to find out what’s in the new set of bedroom furniture we spend eight hours with every night.
The store owner concluded that it was some chemical in the lacquer that made Ingram sick. Lacquers can contain high levels of solvents that release volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that the American Lung Association reports can irritate eyes, skin and lungs and cause headaches, nausea and even liver and kidney damage.
Kirk Saunders, a finish specialist at EcoHome Improvement, guesses it was formaldehyde off-gassing from pressed wood. Emissions from urea formaldehyde - “which is really, really bad for you, and is so ubiquitous in an urban environment,” Saunders said - can cause cancer “and other adverse health effects,” according to the California Air Resources Board.
