Why is that? Right now, North Korea is a nice bargaining chip for China. The US doesn't want a direct conflict with China so cannot directly attack North Korea. When the time is right, China will reign in North Korea (for a time) in exchange for some concessions from the US. It is a poker game with an element of risk, but North Korea is a high face card in China's hand.
China tried reining them in 2 months ago, when they were getting ready to do the missile launch test. They still fired the missile, which is why China voted in favour of the current round of sanctions.
NK knows that China doesn't want US military presence on their borders, and that the US will not leave SK as long as NK is still a threat to the south. Thus, it's in NK's interest to be just annoying enough that SK still considers them a threat, but not annoying enough to trigger an attack. And yes, they are a credible threat to the south, with the amount of artillery they have embedded in the hills. They don't need nuclear weapons to do a lot of damage to the South, and are doing this for the attention.
As long as they don't do anything that would cause China to attack them, they're safe. (personally, I think that's how it's going to play out in the long run, btw... they'll piss China off enough that China attacks them, possibly with UN support, and then the US leaves SK). That means that they can ignore China's warnings and chidings all they want, as long as they don't actually do anything that directly affects China. Sadly, their current administration appears to be aware of this.
Interestingly enough, I was listening to a discussion on the radio this morning about Munchhausen syndrome, and can't help but wonder if NK's behaviour is a form of it.
As long as I can get e17 packages for it, I don't care what the default is. That's why my main laptop has been running Bodhi for almost 2 years now.... e17 isn't everybody's cup of tea, but when you want something with all the bling of a modern system, but as light/fast as Awesome, it's very difficult to beat e17. I'm under 400MB of RAM used right now, and have firefox open with multiple tabs and extensions (flash, lastpass, adblock plus, etc.) as well as xchat and gajim.:)
If somebody built a minimalist e17-basted distro that was based on Debian, or preferably Slackware, and didn't come with everything and their dog installed out of the box, I'd seriously consider installing it. Bodhi seems to be the closest, and to be fair it's the first Ubuntu-based distro I've ever installed that lasted more than a day, but I cut my teeth on Slackware and really prefer the way that they do things on that system.
*shrugs* they have a right to expect to be paid for their work, just as you have a right to decide that the price is too high. The problem is, if you decide the price is too high, most people don't take the ethical course of action and install something like Linux, they take the unethical course of action and pirate Windows.
That's why the activation exists. And I've never seen it fail with a legitimate key. I have seen it fail with an MSDN key, when I was testing something and reinstalled about 20 times in a week, but a 5 minute call to the phone number they put on the screen when the online activation fails fixed that.... They're just trying to protect their investment, which is their right as software devs.
Windows 8 *is* a steaming pile of donkey poop, however, and even *free* would be too expensive for me. My gaming machine will continue to run Win7 until my favourite games run on Steam/Linux (or when I'm bored enough of them that running on Wine won't be too much of a hassle), at which point it'll be reinstalled with the same version of Linux that's on my main laptop.
if he'd installed xubuntu to begin with, he wouldn't have needed to install xfce.... though he'd still need to uninstall the kitchen sink crap that comes bundled with it....
Depends on the phone... I agree that the "solutions" proposed in TFA are a colossal waste of bandwidth, but the problem of not getting a full day out of your cell phone is a real problem for some people, and it's not a problem that's limited to older phones with older battery technology..
Newer big screen phones especially tend to draw a *ton* of power just for the backlight. This is made worse in some cases when phones either don't have an automatic brightness adjustment or people turn it off (I've turned it off a couple of times because it gets crazy in some lighting conditions). Couple this with newer manycore processors that do use more power (it's not much, but it's enough to make a difference), and you have a problem. Especially if people are using their phones in areas where they don't have a strong cell signal, as the transmit power for their cellular signal needs to be increased. Finally, if they're doing a lot of apps that require the radio be on (such as downloading/streaming media over the Internet), it will seriously affect their battery life. It's great that you've never gotten less than a day out of your phone. I've gotten an entire weekend with several hours of Netflix out of mine (by turning it off when it wasn't being used to check e-mail/netflix... was on a camping trip and waking up 2h before everybody else). But give the same hardware to somebody with different usage habits, and they will not get the same life out of the phone.
Having a solar charger is a good idea, though. It wouldn't cost more than a spare battery, and most of them have batteries in them. Especially useful for long camping trips... I'll have one of them next time I go out for a prolonged trip, I think.:)
No, I appreciate that you want the fingerprint to be the password, but the problem with that is using the same password for every system. By using it to unlock a password database, you can have a different password everywhere while still having the same degree of security/ease.
Coupling the fingerprint with a password, however, is definitely a good idea.:)
A well established cryptosystem is already established and the crypto-token sits in the pocket of most europeans. Chip&Pin credit cards have the crypto inside to securely authenticate people, and most people in the western world have a credit card. The tokens are signed by the banks, and a rigid structure already exists to authenticate the users. a 15 euro reader (retail price) is all most westerners would need to buy to do this, if the retarded Americans would go to a chip&pin card instead of paying billions for credit card fraud
Chip & Pin is in the hands of most Canadians and has been for a long time as well... long enough that they're disabling the magnetic stripe readers in all of the country's ATM's, which they started doing earlier this month.
There's a problem with the Chip & Pin, though... that's the "easypay" option... http://usa.visa.com/merchants/payment_technologies/veps.html... The last Visa card my bank sent me had one of those in it, in addition to the Chip & Pin. Needless to say I called them and demanded they send me a credit card that didn't have an RFID in it which could be used to pay without a pin or signature, but most people wouldn't.
Quite honestly, and on topic (for a change), I'm not too sure I'd trust the security savvy of a company that thinks it's good security to combine a Chip & Pin system with an RFID payment system in the same card.... I certainly wouldn't hold it up as something to be emulated.
There is a device called a "telephone" You pick up a "receiver", and "dial" a series of numbers associated with the person or company you are trying to communicate with.
Your cell phone has a similar series of numbers associated to it, with which your service provider can locate your EMEI code (which is much more useful for remote killing your phone than the SIM card). Additionally, they can burn the EMEI so that it can't be activated on other providers (at least in most of the world). If you do not know your telephone number, then they can find it with your name, your account number, and many other pieces of information you can give them. Most cell providers have an option in their IVR to report a lost or stolen phone, too, with after-hours emergency support.
Having a password manager which can automatically fill in your passwords, and which is protected by a fingerprint, is quite doable with modern hardware, however. Many laptops now have fingerprint readers built into them, and USB devices are readily available.
In fact, software like that already exists... it's one of the options in the fingerprint software on my mother's laptop.
Farmers are a bad example... it's a business for them, and so something like a $4000 equipment fee would be tax deductible. Many farms, at least in Canada (which has a very similar situation with rural broadband) are actually equipped with broadband internet connections, though usually through cellular or satellite rather than cable/DSL.
However, folks who live on the outskirts of rural communities, where there may be a single DSLAM serving the whole town and where they are 6km away from it and can't get better than dialup are perhaps a better example. These folks can't get cable/DSL, because they're too far from the DSLAM and there's simply no cable infrastructure, but they can still get broadband connections either through Sat/Cellular/WiMax, or through radio broadband (if they're in an area that does radio LAN extensions), but they'd be looking at very high up front equipment costs that they can't tax deduct.
Any self-respecting court will look at the intent behind the law, not the word of the law. This is why we can compare the results from completely disparate legal systems in considering how to weigh in on a domestic law.... It is not a legal precedent, because as you point out the Italian and Belgian systems are different, but it is still a ruling on a law with the same basic purpose set in a country with the same basic values.
I don't understand why the submitter is taking such an offensive stance with their post
Pure sensationalism, nothing more. A rational headline wouldn't get clicks.
Though there may also be an element of feeling slighted that it wasn't included from the word Go. As you say, Bioware was one of the first game publishers to include same sex options in a wide variety of their games, including the original KOTOR games that TOR is based on. I was certainly surprised that queer options weren't in the game from the start, as that's something I've come to expect from Bioware.
iPhone 5 is what, around $200 with a 2-years contract in the USA? But these monthly fees are likely to be around $50 or more, so $200+(24x$50)=$1400 at the least. iPod touch 5th generation is $300. That's less than a quarter of the cost. There's free wi-fi everywhere in NYC so iPod touch + VoIP = free calls.
And if people are too stupid to include their monthly fees in the cost of their iPhone, too bad. You can't fix stupid.
You need to compare what you would pay otherwise for the service contract, rather than taking the entire cost of the monthly service. If you're actually in an area where it's feasible to go without an actual phone service, good for you. If you're not, then there's an inherent cost in having a cell phone, which needs to be considered. It's the difference in cost that's the issue.
Case in point, if you're already paying that $50/mo for another phone, and don't plan on switching to another carrier any time soon, then that service contract doesn't need to be considered beyond "what will it cost me to break the contract if a better deal comes along?" And even then, it's really more of a question of "how much do I stand to save if I cancel and go with this other plan, amortized over the period of the contract" than it is an actual base consideration. In that case, the relative cost of the phone is actually $200.
What I don't understand, however, is why people need to spend large amounts of money on the latest and greatest phone in the first place. When the phone is so expensive you need to sign your soul away for a prolonged contract in order to subsidize it, perhaps you should be considering alternative options. Smart phones do not have to be that expensive, and there's no reason you *need* the newest and greatest phone. You can get a Galaxy S2 for $300 at retail, and it's got plenty of grunt for just about everything you could throw at it. It's not the S3, but you really don't sacrifice much, and it's a significantly less expensive option, especially when you consider the obligations of the contract. For me, the freedom to go wherever I want is more important, and I am quite happy with my less expensive Android phone.
You don't buy something for your Macbook and expect it to run on your iPhone "because it's all Apple, look, it's similar"
iOS and OSX look completely different.
You don't buy something for Android and expect it to run on your Linux desktop "because it's all Linux underneath, right?"
I've never seen a Linux distro with an Android-like UI out of the box. The closest I've seen are the tablet UI's for KDE or Enlightenment e17, but neither of those are enabled out of the box, either, and it'd be difficult to mistake either one for Android even if they were.
You don't buy something for your Windows 8 desktop and expect it to run on your Windows tablet. IMHO, Microsoft has the advantage in that it's going to deliver a tablet with actually Windows 8 x86 capable of running those apps "grandma bought".
Oh wait. I can't make the same argument, here. The two UI's are virtually identical in this case.
That's your choice. My money will go to whoever offers me the best price for the specs I actually want. If that happens to include a touch screen, ok then. There's no reason I have to actually use it just because it's there.
By the time I'm ready to replace my current laptop, I will probably not have a choice about touch screen. At that time, I'll be looking for a 11.6" or 12.1" laptop with enough grunt to run e17, a browser, and my chat clients, which should be doable in a $200 netbook. (it's just about doable today, for $350)
There's also the matter of the screen wearing out. Even perfectly clean fingers are abrasive. People also frequently wear jewelry containing very hard materials on their fingers. Never mind a layer of glass you'd really want mono-crystaline diamond!
Cell phones seem to be doing ok... my phone's a year old and there's no wear visible on the screen at all, though there is some grease that I have to wipe off from time to time. Gorilla Glass is quite nice...:)
You're correct that the glass will eventually wear out, but the timelines that people usually keep a laptop are such that it's not likely to affect most of us. And those that it will affect, the screen's replaceable. There are also polymers that can be spread on the glass to restore a clear finish, but they'd adversely affect the effectiveness of the touch screen. That being said, if you're trying to keep a 5-year old laptop alive, you're probably not going to be all that worried about a touchscreen.
The problem with a gym membership is it takes a lot of willpower. Most people will see it as a chore or a task... I *have* to go to the gym and *exercise*. Ugh.
Walking/biking to work is what I'd suggest. Move to a place that's a few miles from work and start walking. Or if that's not feasible, move to a place that's 5-10 miles and ride your bike. Or if that's not feasible, get off the bus a few stops earlier, and walk the extra mile to go to work. It makes a huge difference, even though you're only getting an extra 20 minutes of exercise out of it.
Nonsense... if you're outside of reality, then reality is what's wrong!
I, for one, plan to buy one of these and write them a happy letter! (of course, I am not looking to improve the mechanics of my bike riding, only how stupid I look doing it)
The difference is that spelling and grammar are inherently important skills to be able to write clearly and effectively. You do *not* want to rely on spell check, and most good writers will turn spell check and grammar check off, at least in my experience. They'll catch mistakes on proofreading, and the more experienced writers tend to make fewer mistakes to begin with. It's specifically because of that that "speed writing" tests (as you put it) are actually useful at measuring how effective somebody is going to be. If they are able to communicate clearly, and effectively, and do it with a short period of time allotted (such that they can't proofread), then you have a pretty good measure of how efficient they will be at communicating when they do have the time given.
The same logic applies to speed coding, I expect. Though as other posters have pointed out, it could also be used specifically with the expectation that you're going to make mistakes, so that they can ask you how you would go about correcting any bugs that arise during the interview.
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Why is that? Right now, North Korea is a nice bargaining chip for China. The US doesn't want a direct conflict with China so cannot directly attack North Korea. When the time is right, China will reign in North Korea (for a time) in exchange for some concessions from the US. It is a poker game with an element of risk, but North Korea is a high face card in China's hand.
China tried reining them in 2 months ago, when they were getting ready to do the missile launch test. They still fired the missile, which is why China voted in favour of the current round of sanctions.
NK knows that China doesn't want US military presence on their borders, and that the US will not leave SK as long as NK is still a threat to the south. Thus, it's in NK's interest to be just annoying enough that SK still considers them a threat, but not annoying enough to trigger an attack. And yes, they are a credible threat to the south, with the amount of artillery they have embedded in the hills. They don't need nuclear weapons to do a lot of damage to the South, and are doing this for the attention.
As long as they don't do anything that would cause China to attack them, they're safe. (personally, I think that's how it's going to play out in the long run, btw... they'll piss China off enough that China attacks them, possibly with UN support, and then the US leaves SK). That means that they can ignore China's warnings and chidings all they want, as long as they don't actually do anything that directly affects China. Sadly, their current administration appears to be aware of this.
Interestingly enough, I was listening to a discussion on the radio this morning about Munchhausen syndrome, and can't help but wonder if NK's behaviour is a form of it.
As long as I can get e17 packages for it, I don't care what the default is. That's why my main laptop has been running Bodhi for almost 2 years now.... e17 isn't everybody's cup of tea, but when you want something with all the bling of a modern system, but as light/fast as Awesome, it's very difficult to beat e17. I'm under 400MB of RAM used right now, and have firefox open with multiple tabs and extensions (flash, lastpass, adblock plus, etc.) as well as xchat and gajim. :)
If somebody built a minimalist e17-basted distro that was based on Debian, or preferably Slackware, and didn't come with everything and their dog installed out of the box, I'd seriously consider installing it. Bodhi seems to be the closest, and to be fair it's the first Ubuntu-based distro I've ever installed that lasted more than a day, but I cut my teeth on Slackware and really prefer the way that they do things on that system.
*shrugs* they have a right to expect to be paid for their work, just as you have a right to decide that the price is too high. The problem is, if you decide the price is too high, most people don't take the ethical course of action and install something like Linux, they take the unethical course of action and pirate Windows.
That's why the activation exists. And I've never seen it fail with a legitimate key. I have seen it fail with an MSDN key, when I was testing something and reinstalled about 20 times in a week, but a 5 minute call to the phone number they put on the screen when the online activation fails fixed that.... They're just trying to protect their investment, which is their right as software devs.
Windows 8 *is* a steaming pile of donkey poop, however, and even *free* would be too expensive for me. My gaming machine will continue to run Win7 until my favourite games run on Steam/Linux (or when I'm bored enough of them that running on Wine won't be too much of a hassle), at which point it'll be reinstalled with the same version of Linux that's on my main laptop.
if he'd installed xubuntu to begin with, he wouldn't have needed to install xfce.... though he'd still need to uninstall the kitchen sink crap that comes bundled with it....
Because building a laptop from component parts is a pain in the ass?
Depends on the phone... I agree that the "solutions" proposed in TFA are a colossal waste of bandwidth, but the problem of not getting a full day out of your cell phone is a real problem for some people, and it's not a problem that's limited to older phones with older battery technology..
Newer big screen phones especially tend to draw a *ton* of power just for the backlight. This is made worse in some cases when phones either don't have an automatic brightness adjustment or people turn it off (I've turned it off a couple of times because it gets crazy in some lighting conditions). Couple this with newer manycore processors that do use more power (it's not much, but it's enough to make a difference), and you have a problem. Especially if people are using their phones in areas where they don't have a strong cell signal, as the transmit power for their cellular signal needs to be increased. Finally, if they're doing a lot of apps that require the radio be on (such as downloading/streaming media over the Internet), it will seriously affect their battery life. It's great that you've never gotten less than a day out of your phone. I've gotten an entire weekend with several hours of Netflix out of mine (by turning it off when it wasn't being used to check e-mail/netflix... was on a camping trip and waking up 2h before everybody else). But give the same hardware to somebody with different usage habits, and they will not get the same life out of the phone.
Having a solar charger is a good idea, though. It wouldn't cost more than a spare battery, and most of them have batteries in them. Especially useful for long camping trips... I'll have one of them next time I go out for a prolonged trip, I think. :)
Been on #ubuntu lately?
No, I appreciate that you want the fingerprint to be the password, but the problem with that is using the same password for every system. By using it to unlock a password database, you can have a different password everywhere while still having the same degree of security/ease.
Coupling the fingerprint with a password, however, is definitely a good idea. :)
A well established cryptosystem is already established and the crypto-token sits in the pocket of most europeans. Chip&Pin credit cards have the crypto inside to securely authenticate people, and most people in the western world have a credit card. The tokens are signed by the banks, and a rigid structure already exists to authenticate the users. a 15 euro reader (retail price) is all most westerners would need to buy to do this, if the retarded Americans would go to a chip&pin card instead of paying billions for credit card fraud
Chip & Pin is in the hands of most Canadians and has been for a long time as well... long enough that they're disabling the magnetic stripe readers in all of the country's ATM's, which they started doing earlier this month.
There's a problem with the Chip & Pin, though... that's the "easypay" option... http://usa.visa.com/merchants/payment_technologies/veps.html ... The last Visa card my bank sent me had one of those in it, in addition to the Chip & Pin. Needless to say I called them and demanded they send me a credit card that didn't have an RFID in it which could be used to pay without a pin or signature, but most people wouldn't.
Quite honestly, and on topic (for a change), I'm not too sure I'd trust the security savvy of a company that thinks it's good security to combine a Chip & Pin system with an RFID payment system in the same card.... I certainly wouldn't hold it up as something to be emulated.
There is a device called a "telephone" You pick up a "receiver", and "dial" a series of numbers associated with the person or company you are trying to communicate with.
Your cell phone has a similar series of numbers associated to it, with which your service provider can locate your EMEI code (which is much more useful for remote killing your phone than the SIM card). Additionally, they can burn the EMEI so that it can't be activated on other providers (at least in most of the world). If you do not know your telephone number, then they can find it with your name, your account number, and many other pieces of information you can give them. Most cell providers have an option in their IVR to report a lost or stolen phone, too, with after-hours emergency support.
Having a password manager which can automatically fill in your passwords, and which is protected by a fingerprint, is quite doable with modern hardware, however. Many laptops now have fingerprint readers built into them, and USB devices are readily available.
In fact, software like that already exists... it's one of the options in the fingerprint software on my mother's laptop.
Sure they do... but you have to keep recasting it every few rounds because it expires.
That list is incomplete. We need to know what is lower than namecalling so that we know how to reply to this post. ;)
Farmers are a bad example... it's a business for them, and so something like a $4000 equipment fee would be tax deductible. Many farms, at least in Canada (which has a very similar situation with rural broadband) are actually equipped with broadband internet connections, though usually through cellular or satellite rather than cable/DSL.
However, folks who live on the outskirts of rural communities, where there may be a single DSLAM serving the whole town and where they are 6km away from it and can't get better than dialup are perhaps a better example. These folks can't get cable/DSL, because they're too far from the DSLAM and there's simply no cable infrastructure, but they can still get broadband connections either through Sat/Cellular/WiMax, or through radio broadband (if they're in an area that does radio LAN extensions), but they'd be looking at very high up front equipment costs that they can't tax deduct.
Any self-respecting court will look at the intent behind the law, not the word of the law. This is why we can compare the results from completely disparate legal systems in considering how to weigh in on a domestic law.... It is not a legal precedent, because as you point out the Italian and Belgian systems are different, but it is still a ruling on a law with the same basic purpose set in a country with the same basic values.
I don't understand why the submitter is taking such an offensive stance with their post
Pure sensationalism, nothing more. A rational headline wouldn't get clicks.
Though there may also be an element of feeling slighted that it wasn't included from the word Go. As you say, Bioware was one of the first game publishers to include same sex options in a wide variety of their games, including the original KOTOR games that TOR is based on. I was certainly surprised that queer options weren't in the game from the start, as that's something I've come to expect from Bioware.
iPhone 5 is what, around $200 with a 2-years contract in the USA? But these monthly fees are likely to be around $50 or more, so $200+(24x$50)=$1400 at the least.
iPod touch 5th generation is $300. That's less than a quarter of the cost. There's free wi-fi everywhere in NYC so iPod touch + VoIP = free calls.
And if people are too stupid to include their monthly fees in the cost of their iPhone, too bad. You can't fix stupid.
You need to compare what you would pay otherwise for the service contract, rather than taking the entire cost of the monthly service. If you're actually in an area where it's feasible to go without an actual phone service, good for you. If you're not, then there's an inherent cost in having a cell phone, which needs to be considered. It's the difference in cost that's the issue.
Case in point, if you're already paying that $50/mo for another phone, and don't plan on switching to another carrier any time soon, then that service contract doesn't need to be considered beyond "what will it cost me to break the contract if a better deal comes along?" And even then, it's really more of a question of "how much do I stand to save if I cancel and go with this other plan, amortized over the period of the contract" than it is an actual base consideration. In that case, the relative cost of the phone is actually $200.
What I don't understand, however, is why people need to spend large amounts of money on the latest and greatest phone in the first place. When the phone is so expensive you need to sign your soul away for a prolonged contract in order to subsidize it, perhaps you should be considering alternative options. Smart phones do not have to be that expensive, and there's no reason you *need* the newest and greatest phone. You can get a Galaxy S2 for $300 at retail, and it's got plenty of grunt for just about everything you could throw at it. It's not the S3, but you really don't sacrifice much, and it's a significantly less expensive option, especially when you consider the obligations of the contract. For me, the freedom to go wherever I want is more important, and I am quite happy with my less expensive Android phone.
Yes, actually.
You don't buy something for your Macbook and expect it to run on your iPhone "because it's all Apple, look, it's similar"
iOS and OSX look completely different.
You don't buy something for Android and expect it to run on your Linux desktop "because it's all Linux underneath, right?"
I've never seen a Linux distro with an Android-like UI out of the box. The closest I've seen are the tablet UI's for KDE or Enlightenment e17, but neither of those are enabled out of the box, either, and it'd be difficult to mistake either one for Android even if they were.
You don't buy something for your Windows 8 desktop and expect it to run on your Windows tablet. IMHO, Microsoft has the advantage in that it's going to deliver a tablet with actually Windows 8 x86 capable of running those apps "grandma bought".
Oh wait. I can't make the same argument, here. The two UI's are virtually identical in this case.
You're not thinking like a user.
That's your choice. My money will go to whoever offers me the best price for the specs I actually want. If that happens to include a touch screen, ok then. There's no reason I have to actually use it just because it's there.
By the time I'm ready to replace my current laptop, I will probably not have a choice about touch screen. At that time, I'll be looking for a 11.6" or 12.1" laptop with enough grunt to run e17, a browser, and my chat clients, which should be doable in a $200 netbook. (it's just about doable today, for $350)
There's also the matter of the screen wearing out. Even perfectly clean fingers are abrasive. People also frequently wear jewelry containing very hard materials on their fingers. Never mind a layer of glass you'd really want mono-crystaline diamond!
Cell phones seem to be doing ok... my phone's a year old and there's no wear visible on the screen at all, though there is some grease that I have to wipe off from time to time. Gorilla Glass is quite nice... :)
You're correct that the glass will eventually wear out, but the timelines that people usually keep a laptop are such that it's not likely to affect most of us. And those that it will affect, the screen's replaceable. There are also polymers that can be spread on the glass to restore a clear finish, but they'd adversely affect the effectiveness of the touch screen. That being said, if you're trying to keep a 5-year old laptop alive, you're probably not going to be all that worried about a touchscreen.
The problem with a gym membership is it takes a lot of willpower. Most people will see it as a chore or a task... I *have* to go to the gym and *exercise*. Ugh.
Walking/biking to work is what I'd suggest. Move to a place that's a few miles from work and start walking. Or if that's not feasible, move to a place that's 5-10 miles and ride your bike. Or if that's not feasible, get off the bus a few stops earlier, and walk the extra mile to go to work. It makes a huge difference, even though you're only getting an extra 20 minutes of exercise out of it.
Nonsense... if you're outside of reality, then reality is what's wrong!
I, for one, plan to buy one of these and write them a happy letter! (of course, I am not looking to improve the mechanics of my bike riding, only how stupid I look doing it)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... I certainly wouldn't spend that kind of money on it.
Also, it doesn't look *too* dissimilar from some of the Antec cases you can get for less than 1/5 of that price.
The difference is that spelling and grammar are inherently important skills to be able to write clearly and effectively. You do *not* want to rely on spell check, and most good writers will turn spell check and grammar check off, at least in my experience. They'll catch mistakes on proofreading, and the more experienced writers tend to make fewer mistakes to begin with. It's specifically because of that that "speed writing" tests (as you put it) are actually useful at measuring how effective somebody is going to be. If they are able to communicate clearly, and effectively, and do it with a short period of time allotted (such that they can't proofread), then you have a pretty good measure of how efficient they will be at communicating when they do have the time given.
The same logic applies to speed coding, I expect. Though as other posters have pointed out, it could also be used specifically with the expectation that you're going to make mistakes, so that they can ask you how you would go about correcting any bugs that arise during the interview.