You don't carry around your political affiliation on your shirt collar, so cops are just as likely to beat up conservatives as leftists, which is why more and more people are freaking out about police power and abuse of it.
You think it's more now than at other times? I think it's at a high level on places like slashdot (again, highly linked to leftist political orientation) but I doubt public trust in police is lower than historically, and probably higher than at some times in the last decade. I have no numbers or anything to support this though.
I think you're somewhat confused here--can you cite the law you're talking about that allows police to "beat the shit out anyone who stands to close to them"?
Secondly, I don't see pizza delivery statistics explicitly in your link, but you've inadvertently stumbled upon a smart point. Being a pizza delivery guy IS a very dangerous job. If people are willing to risk jail time by robbing / killing pizza workers (all for the max gain of a pizza or two and < $100 cash) I'm sure you can imagine what people (many of whom, as we've seen here have a loathing of authority figures) do elsewhere. Pizza delivery guys aren't asked to run into a house where people are screaming, enforce laws, breakup fights, etc.
I personally would allow pizza delivery workers to open carry, btw.
Surely if some crazy dude "stands too close" to a regular citizen, they should deserve protection as well
Hi jeko, thanks for the thoughtful response. I'm not a LEO and don't directly work with many most of the time, but I do work connected with a number of CJ folks. There are many stories to be told, some good, some bad. My thoughts to some of your comments:
What an Officer of the Law is supposed to be, is a wonderful thing.
I guess? A LEO is a LEO. They are there to deal with the kind of people you and I shouldn't have to deal with, and hope never to deal with! I don't know if they're supposed to be wonderful or not. They're people, just like everybody else.
What they have allowed themselves to become, as an institution, breaks my heart. I listen to them in their own words over at the forums on "Officer.com," and the constant stream of comments about "dumb-ass sheeple," how the civilians can go frack themselves because "I'M GOING HOME TONIGHT," and the non-stop jokes they make about how they abused the badge and broke the law for their own amusement makes me ill.
No offense, but if you look at ANY internet message board, I think you come away appalled at humanity. Some computer/engineer-type friends of mine who are a bit less on the geek spectrum read slashdot every now and then just to get a kick out of the comments. I don't think any insular group has any idea how ludicrous they sound to outsiders (and I bet I could pick 10 examples from this article in about 60 seconds if I had to). I would suspect any LEO dumb enough to post that stuff online is, well, dumb. As you said elsewhere in your posts, cops like to talk...sometime's it's just talk. When it's more, that's a problem.
He trusted me with this horrible story. And I can't look him in the eye any more, because I know that not only did he let a child's murderer walk, but he actually helped that filth escape justice. Which makes him an accomplice in the murder of a child.
If there's any reality to this story, it's horrible and involves multiple LEOs who should be punished. A colleague of mine who used to work in the NYPD and ended fairly high up said that one of the biggest problems with working in law enforcement is that (as I've said elsewhere) -- cops are people just like everybody else, they are asked to do things that most people are not asked to do and hope never to do, and like everybody else, sometimes nerves take over. In the Diallou case for instance, how the hell do four officers shoot over *40* times at an unarmed civilian? Well, Diallo did not listen to the cops, he made sudden moves, one officer thought he was going for a gun and shouted "gun", another officer fires, one officer falls, thinking he had been hit, the other officers fire more. 41 shots can happen in a matter of a seconds. Heartsbeats. Nobody--NOBODY--is going to argue that the Diallou case isn't absolutely horrible, but when you look at, neither is it obviously a case of ill-intent, bad officers picking on a black dude, or powerhungry pigs going on a shooting spree.
Your problem is that I'm not the only guy with a story like this. Consider the audience on this board. We're a bunch of pretty mild geeks -- and even a bunch of engineers can't stand the police any more.
I think it's much simpler than that. Throughout the last 50 years the left has had a severe problem with police, military, etc. Slashdot is a rather leftist place and it's not surprising.
You problem isn't a bunch of "cop haters," Moridineas. Your problem is that the police have made their reputation, and are justly suffering for it.
Everybody hears about the abuse cases--and rightfully so! It's like catholic priests. How many catholic priests DON'T molest children? The vast majority. How many catholic priests spend their entire lives serving their community, helping people, and being put in positions where people intimately trust them--without doing anything illegal? Again, the vast majority. Yet the institution of catholic pries
Thank you, that substantively changes my analysis of the situation, though I do wish there was something NOT written by Watts available. The choking being made up is very troubling and I hope that officer is punished is that was indeed a false claim.
You need to catch up on the story. The choking thing was shown to be a complete fabrication on cross-examination. The only thing that he was convicted of was not getting back into his car immediately.
Law enforcement officers put themselves into situations that you or I hopefully NEVER have to be in. Every traffic stop is a potential bullet in the face (which while rare, DOES happen). LEOs are not above the law, but they deserve special protections due to the situations they are forced to be in. You can deliberately miss the point and argue semantics but the point of this statute is clear--to protect officers from people who are potentially dangerous and acting in unpredictable fashions.
You may not realize this, but some people completely lose all rationality when the blue uniforms come around. Read the slashdot articles and comments here for some vitriol and hate.
That is exactly what they should do. When the SAS was deployed to Northern Ireland, they were specifically told that if they shot someone who didn't turn out to have a gun, they would have no defence against a murder conviction. You should assume that somoene does not have a knife or gun until it becomes apparent that they actually do.
Which has what relevance here? Nobody was shot, and I have not even read about guns being drawn? When faced with a belligerent person who did not respond to orders at the border crossing, the border guard took control of the situation in a completely non-lethal way. Having seen no pictures of Watts, I don't even know how much of a beating he took, but it certainly seems like there was 0 threat to his life or health?
"Standing too close to an officer" is a crime? OK, that's about the walking definition of a bad law.
No, your statement is rather a perfect example of not thinking things through. Standing too close to an officer is clearly not by necessity a crime. However if it is done in a threatening manner...
What was Watts' crime? He asked the officers what they were doing.
That may be Watts' claim or your interpretation, but the charges for which he was convinced were assaulting/resisting/obstructing an officer, including both refusing to obey directions (get back in the car) and later choking an officer. This obviously does not jive with what Watts' claimed, though I found his original summary and the nauseating prose linked to in the article totally totally unsympathetic. I guess there was no video of the border crossing...I was hoping it would come out so the truth would be readily apparent.
Peter Watts is a geek scifi writer. Judging from his photos, he weighs about 160. My wife could smack him around. He's about as threatening as a tuna sandwich.
Irrelevant. If you are a border officer and somebody refuses to get back in their car and is acting belligerent (which it is claimed he was), nobody is going to assume that there is no knife, gun, etc present. Law enforcement officers simple don't have the luxury of letting people do whatever the heck they want in controlled environments--ie, a border crossing. This was not in a public sidewalk, a park, or your house, it was at a border crossing.
But somehow, these law enforcement officers felt they needed to beat him senseless, leave his blood all over the pavement, and then mace him for good measure when honestly, a wedgie probably would have been overkill.
Too bad I've never seen any pictures. Have you? I'm rather amazed that after Watt was beaten and left in jail that none of his friends took even a camera phone picture of him? I would have thought that would have been quite a rallying cry for online protestors.
Regardless--if Watts' version of the story is true, this story is a travesty. If the border officer's version is true, then (imho) Watts deserved it and I have no sympathy for him. The truth and appropriate reaction probably falls somewhere in between.
There are more 17 year old black people in prison than in college.
Idiot statistic--I and the majority of my friends/acquaintances entered college at age 18, not 17.
1 in 9 black males are in prison
A truly damning statistic for the black community.
Prison labour produces 100% all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet proof vests, id tags, and other items of uniform
93% of domestic produced paints, 36% of home appliances and 21% of office furniture. This allows the US to compete with Mexican labour - because the workers cannot refuse to work for 25 cents per hour. "
citation needed.
Lastly, I'm not going to do this for you as it would take awhile and I doubt I'll even get a response, but if you're really interested in this topic beyond your believed preconceptions, look up the rates for forced hospitalization (ie, insane asylums) in other countries (ie, Western Europe). I read a LR article several years ago that had a collection of numbers. When you combine the number of people serving forced time in mental institutions and criminal institutions, the numbers between the US and Europe look very different. The US still has more incarcerations, but the number is much closer.
You can certainly make arguments against the US system and it definitely has its flaws, but as usual, hysteria and dumb statistics don't really achieve much,
Interesting claims, given that things like World of Warcraft, instant messenger, voip, doom, and even BitTorrent don't run over "the web" by these semantics. BitTorrent is facilitated by torrent files most frequently downloaded over the web... A lot of people clock a lot of time on the internet in ways that is not "the web."
Really is shocking to me to see so many people even on a site like slashdot clearly not understand the difference, or try to minimize it. Then again, I guess colloquially the web is tcp/ip, ssh, ftp, bittorent, dns, http and html (etc) all together so perhaps it's not so surprising.
Exactly, I think this is what Spun misunderstands. These left-wing bands complaining (eg Heart/Barracuda) when Barracuda was played at Palin rallies is no different from when Sam Moore demanded that Obama stopped using Hold On, I'm Comin. You can't control who plays your song, or who listens to your song.
If a political campaign (as in the case of this story) uses a song in a paid ad, that's a very different case. One can't just conflate these widely disparate examples and come across with a "REPUBLICANS ARE DIRTTY LYING THEIVESS ZOMG!!" conclusion (as a 10 second google finds examples on both sides of the aisle),
I personally find this area tricky and troubling ground. There's so much creativity on Youtube and elsewhere that can just be totally SQUASHED by law. As mentioned in the summary, Downfall is a great example, but in general--music videos, remixes, etc... I think it would be a sad world if we lost all of that.
Sadly, how it works should always be more important - but in this day and age, in most markets (cars, computers, and so on) that is not the case. Another prime example are the people who would buy a Toshiba piece of shit over a Thinkpad because of the looks - even though the Thinkpads have always been more reliable and better built. Yes, there are those who made that purchasing decision based on price, but (having worked in retail at CompUSA) there were numerous people who, having the money to spend, stil chose the Toshiba because of how it looked.
To be fair, price and appearance are about the only factors that the "average" consumer can figure out when buying laptops. Things like "quality of build," "reputation," or part quality aren't easily discernable.
Heck, when I go into a CompUSA/TigerDirect wherever and look at laptops, unless I've read reviews lately, I feel pretty helpless (and rarely stmble across a salesperson like you who actually knows their stuff)...
Really? Are you advocating a criminal-victim right of confidentiality or something? As a criminal, I have the right to privacy of my crimes?
I get the core of what you're saying--vigilantism can be bad--but I see absolutely nothing wrong in this case. The police (and other shows like America's Most Wanted) regularly share far more information about ongoing cases than is on this webpage. It's a neat little mashup sure, but that's all. Who knows if more victims will come forward after recognizing something in the description, or a friend/acquaintance of the rapist realizes something is going on, etc?
If something is right or wrong, then it is right or wrong even if the person with egg on their face is somebody you hate.
To put it differently, just because you have some visceral hatred for Apple doesn't negate what is correct. If it's ethical to return lost/stolen property when you are able to, then it's the ethical thing to do it.
I wonder if they'll even have HSPA full implemented on this one (no iPhone does uploads faster than 384kb/s)?
Is this true? I have the speedtest app and was looking through past results and I have two 3g results that are higher than that number, the highest being 613 kbps.
Could be a glitch or something I guess, as most of the other 3g results have upload speeds of about 250-300kbps.
No, your post--if I'm parsing it correct--is completely wrong. Apple does not make it "impossible to publish other points of view." They control ONE vector if entry for content onto the iPhone--that is, native iPhone apps. Anybody can write a HTML5 app (see google), a Webapp (see first generation iphone apps), or of course, publishing using webpages which are universally acceptable.
The fact that cellphone companies choose a 2-year contract is utterly irrelevant to Apple's controls. I'm afraid you have completely and utterly missed the point.
My caring about this issue is completely non-existent due to the fact that even IF by some pedantic definition and argument about what "censorship" is (and arriving at a meaning that is not relevant to the common usage), Apple has simply chosen to not stock a product.
If the artist's works were also available online, or on a site for pay, and Apple blocked access to his site, THEN I would view that as censorship.
Declining to carry a product? Yeah, you may not like it, and it certainly is Apple censoring what they carry, but it is not Apple censoring YOU, so, big deal.
I do too, I agree those would be awesome (and hopefully coming in iPhone 4.0). My point was just to disagree with the GP who claimed that background apps WOULDN'T typically take much battery because they don't draw to the screen.
I know it's slashdot and asking to RTFA is too much, so... "When subjects received TMS to a brain region near the right TPJ, their judgments were nearly identical to those of people who received no TMS at all."
App Store is a seriously controlled environment and they already impose strict guidelines for developers. How does an idle application even eat up more battery? It's not like your RAM needs more power if it's used a little bit more. The background app doesn't need to do any drawing and is usually on pause (unless it needs to do certain tasks in the background, and then it makes sense).
Really, are you joking? The vast majority of apps that would work well as backgrounded apps are network connected apps. Things like IM clients, GPS tracking, etc. When you're looking at a cellphone, "drawing" is hardly the biggest power draw, think about 3g, turning the antenna on and constantly transmitting, and using GPS. Big drains.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't carry around your political affiliation on your shirt collar, so cops are just as likely to beat up conservatives as leftists, which is why more and more people are freaking out about police power and abuse of it.
You think it's more now than at other times? I think it's at a high level on places like slashdot (again, highly linked to leftist political orientation) but I doubt public trust in police is lower than historically, and probably higher than at some times in the last decade. I have no numbers or anything to support this though.
I think you're somewhat confused here--can you cite the law you're talking about that allows police to "beat the shit out anyone who stands to close to them"?
Secondly, I don't see pizza delivery statistics explicitly in your link, but you've inadvertently stumbled upon a smart point. Being a pizza delivery guy IS a very dangerous job. If people are willing to risk jail time by robbing / killing pizza workers (all for the max gain of a pizza or two and < $100 cash) I'm sure you can imagine what people (many of whom, as we've seen here have a loathing of authority figures) do elsewhere. Pizza delivery guys aren't asked to run into a house where people are screaming, enforce laws, breakup fights, etc.
I personally would allow pizza delivery workers to open carry, btw.
Surely if some crazy dude "stands too close" to a regular citizen, they should deserve protection as well
I think you might want to google that one...
Hi jeko, thanks for the thoughtful response. I'm not a LEO and don't directly work with many most of the time, but I do work connected with a number of CJ folks. There are many stories to be told, some good, some bad. My thoughts to some of your comments:
What an Officer of the Law is supposed to be, is a wonderful thing.
I guess? A LEO is a LEO. They are there to deal with the kind of people you and I shouldn't have to deal with, and hope never to deal with! I don't know if they're supposed to be wonderful or not. They're people, just like everybody else.
What they have allowed themselves to become, as an institution, breaks my heart. I listen to them in their own words over at the forums on "Officer.com," and the constant stream of comments about "dumb-ass sheeple," how the civilians can go frack themselves because "I'M GOING HOME TONIGHT," and the non-stop jokes they make about how they abused the badge and broke the law for their own amusement makes me ill.
No offense, but if you look at ANY internet message board, I think you come away appalled at humanity. Some computer/engineer-type friends of mine who are a bit less on the geek spectrum read slashdot every now and then just to get a kick out of the comments. I don't think any insular group has any idea how ludicrous they sound to outsiders (and I bet I could pick 10 examples from this article in about 60 seconds if I had to). I would suspect any LEO dumb enough to post that stuff online is, well, dumb. As you said elsewhere in your posts, cops like to talk...sometime's it's just talk. When it's more, that's a problem.
He trusted me with this horrible story. And I can't look him in the eye any more, because I know that not only did he let a child's murderer walk, but he actually helped that filth escape justice. Which makes him an accomplice in the murder of a child.
If there's any reality to this story, it's horrible and involves multiple LEOs who should be punished. A colleague of mine who used to work in the NYPD and ended fairly high up said that one of the biggest problems with working in law enforcement is that (as I've said elsewhere) -- cops are people just like everybody else, they are asked to do things that most people are not asked to do and hope never to do, and like everybody else, sometimes nerves take over. In the Diallou case for instance, how the hell do four officers shoot over *40* times at an unarmed civilian? Well, Diallo did not listen to the cops, he made sudden moves, one officer thought he was going for a gun and shouted "gun", another officer fires, one officer falls, thinking he had been hit, the other officers fire more. 41 shots can happen in a matter of a seconds. Heartsbeats. Nobody--NOBODY--is going to argue that the Diallou case isn't absolutely horrible, but when you look at, neither is it obviously a case of ill-intent, bad officers picking on a black dude, or powerhungry pigs going on a shooting spree.
Your problem is that I'm not the only guy with a story like this. Consider the audience on this board. We're a bunch of pretty mild geeks -- and even a bunch of engineers can't stand the police any more.
I think it's much simpler than that. Throughout the last 50 years the left has had a severe problem with police, military, etc. Slashdot is a rather leftist place and it's not surprising.
You problem isn't a bunch of "cop haters," Moridineas. Your problem is that the police have made their reputation, and are justly suffering for it.
Everybody hears about the abuse cases--and rightfully so! It's like catholic priests. How many catholic priests DON'T molest children? The vast majority. How many catholic priests spend their entire lives serving their community, helping people, and being put in positions where people intimately trust them--without doing anything illegal? Again, the vast majority. Yet the institution of catholic pries
Thank you, that substantively changes my analysis of the situation, though I do wish there was something NOT written by Watts available. The choking being made up is very troubling and I hope that officer is punished is that was indeed a false claim.
You need to catch up on the story. The choking thing was shown to be a complete fabrication on cross-examination. The only thing that he was convicted of was not getting back into his car immediately.
Apparently I do, where is this discussed?
Law enforcement officers put themselves into situations that you or I hopefully NEVER have to be in. Every traffic stop is a potential bullet in the face (which while rare, DOES happen). LEOs are not above the law, but they deserve special protections due to the situations they are forced to be in. You can deliberately miss the point and argue semantics but the point of this statute is clear--to protect officers from people who are potentially dangerous and acting in unpredictable fashions.
You may not realize this, but some people completely lose all rationality when the blue uniforms come around. Read the slashdot articles and comments here for some vitriol and hate.
I am going off of the url linked in the story: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/03/19/watts-convicted.html, which says verbatim what I said (assaulting/resisting/obstructing)
Where's the further information? I must be missing something as you and one other mentioned stuff I can't find?
That is exactly what they should do. When the SAS was deployed to Northern Ireland, they were specifically told that if they shot someone who didn't turn out to have a gun, they would have no defence against a murder conviction. You should assume that somoene does not have a knife or gun until it becomes apparent that they actually do.
Which has what relevance here? Nobody was shot, and I have not even read about guns being drawn? When faced with a belligerent person who did not respond to orders at the border crossing, the border guard took control of the situation in a completely non-lethal way. Having seen no pictures of Watts, I don't even know how much of a beating he took, but it certainly seems like there was 0 threat to his life or health?
"Standing too close to an officer" is a crime? OK, that's about the walking definition of a bad law.
No, your statement is rather a perfect example of not thinking things through. Standing too close to an officer is clearly not by necessity a crime. However if it is done in a threatening manner...
What was Watts' crime? He asked the officers what they were doing.
That may be Watts' claim or your interpretation, but the charges for which he was convinced were assaulting/resisting/obstructing an officer, including both refusing to obey directions (get back in the car) and later choking an officer. This obviously does not jive with what Watts' claimed, though I found his original summary and the nauseating prose linked to in the article totally totally unsympathetic. I guess there was no video of the border crossing...I was hoping it would come out so the truth would be readily apparent.
Peter Watts is a geek scifi writer. Judging from his photos, he weighs about 160. My wife could smack him around. He's about as threatening as a tuna sandwich.
Irrelevant. If you are a border officer and somebody refuses to get back in their car and is acting belligerent (which it is claimed he was), nobody is going to assume that there is no knife, gun, etc present. Law enforcement officers simple don't have the luxury of letting people do whatever the heck they want in controlled environments--ie, a border crossing. This was not in a public sidewalk, a park, or your house, it was at a border crossing.
But somehow, these law enforcement officers felt they needed to beat him senseless, leave his blood all over the pavement, and then mace him for good measure when honestly, a wedgie probably would have been overkill.
Too bad I've never seen any pictures. Have you? I'm rather amazed that after Watt was beaten and left in jail that none of his friends took even a camera phone picture of him? I would have thought that would have been quite a rallying cry for online protestors.
Regardless--if Watts' version of the story is true, this story is a travesty. If the border officer's version is true, then (imho) Watts deserved it and I have no sympathy for him. The truth and appropriate reaction probably falls somewhere in between.
There are more 17 year old black people in prison than in college.
Idiot statistic--I and the majority of my friends/acquaintances entered college at age 18, not 17.
1 in 9 black males are in prison
A truly damning statistic for the black community.
Prison labour produces 100% all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet proof vests, id tags, and other items of uniform
93% of domestic produced paints, 36% of home appliances and 21% of office furniture. This allows the US to compete with Mexican labour - because the workers cannot refuse to work for 25 cents per hour. "
citation needed.
Lastly, I'm not going to do this for you as it would take awhile and I doubt I'll even get a response, but if you're really interested in this topic beyond your believed preconceptions, look up the rates for forced hospitalization (ie, insane asylums) in other countries (ie, Western Europe). I read a LR article several years ago that had a collection of numbers. When you combine the number of people serving forced time in mental institutions and criminal institutions, the numbers between the US and Europe look very different. The US still has more incarcerations, but the number is much closer.
You can certainly make arguments against the US system and it definitely has its flaws, but as usual, hysteria and dumb statistics don't really achieve much,
Interesting claims, given that things like World of Warcraft, instant messenger, voip, doom, and even BitTorrent don't run over "the web" by these semantics. BitTorrent is facilitated by torrent files most frequently downloaded over the web... A lot of people clock a lot of time on the internet in ways that is not "the web."
Really is shocking to me to see so many people even on a site like slashdot clearly not understand the difference, or try to minimize it. Then again, I guess colloquially the web is tcp/ip, ssh, ftp, bittorent, dns, http and html (etc) all together so perhaps it's not so surprising.
Exactly, I think this is what Spun misunderstands. These left-wing bands complaining (eg Heart/Barracuda) when Barracuda was played at Palin rallies is no different from when Sam Moore demanded that Obama stopped using Hold On, I'm Comin. You can't control who plays your song, or who listens to your song.
If a political campaign (as in the case of this story) uses a song in a paid ad, that's a very different case. One can't just conflate these widely disparate examples and come across with a "REPUBLICANS ARE DIRTTY LYING THEIVESS ZOMG!!" conclusion (as a 10 second google finds examples on both sides of the aisle),
I personally find this area tricky and troubling ground. There's so much creativity on Youtube and elsewhere that can just be totally SQUASHED by law. As mentioned in the summary, Downfall is a great example, but in general--music videos, remixes, etc... I think it would be a sad world if we lost all of that.
Before I write a possibly longer post, are you really, REALLY saying that "Democrats don't infringe copyright" ?
Sadly, how it works should always be more important - but in this day and age, in most markets (cars, computers, and so on) that is not the case. Another prime example are the people who would buy a Toshiba piece of shit over a Thinkpad because of the looks - even though the Thinkpads have always been more reliable and better built. Yes, there are those who made that purchasing decision based on price, but (having worked in retail at CompUSA) there were numerous people who, having the money to spend, stil chose the Toshiba because of how it looked.
To be fair, price and appearance are about the only factors that the "average" consumer can figure out when buying laptops. Things like "quality of build," "reputation," or part quality aren't easily discernable.
Heck, when I go into a CompUSA/TigerDirect wherever and look at laptops, unless I've read reviews lately, I feel pretty helpless (and rarely stmble across a salesperson like you who actually knows their stuff)...
Really? Are you advocating a criminal-victim right of confidentiality or something? As a criminal, I have the right to privacy of my crimes?
I get the core of what you're saying--vigilantism can be bad--but I see absolutely nothing wrong in this case. The police (and other shows like America's Most Wanted) regularly share far more information about ongoing cases than is on this webpage. It's a neat little mashup sure, but that's all. Who knows if more victims will come forward after recognizing something in the description, or a friend/acquaintance of the rapist realizes something is going on, etc?
If something is right or wrong, then it is right or wrong even if the person with egg on their face is somebody you hate.
To put it differently, just because you have some visceral hatred for Apple doesn't negate what is correct. If it's ethical to return lost/stolen property when you are able to, then it's the ethical thing to do it.
I wonder if they'll even have HSPA full implemented on this one (no iPhone does uploads faster than 384kb/s)?
Is this true? I have the speedtest app and was looking through past results and I have two 3g results that are higher than that number, the highest being 613 kbps.
Could be a glitch or something I guess, as most of the other 3g results have upload speeds of about 250-300kbps.
No, your post--if I'm parsing it correct--is completely wrong. Apple does not make it "impossible to publish other points of view." They control ONE vector if entry for content onto the iPhone--that is, native iPhone apps. Anybody can write a HTML5 app (see google), a Webapp (see first generation iphone apps), or of course, publishing using webpages which are universally acceptable.
The fact that cellphone companies choose a 2-year contract is utterly irrelevant to Apple's controls. I'm afraid you have completely and utterly missed the point.
Ahh, you're definitely correct, I think I misunderstood what the GP was saying.
My caring about this issue is completely non-existent due to the fact that even IF by some pedantic definition and argument about what "censorship" is (and arriving at a meaning that is not relevant to the common usage), Apple has simply chosen to not stock a product.
If the artist's works were also available online, or on a site for pay, and Apple blocked access to his site, THEN I would view that as censorship.
Declining to carry a product? Yeah, you may not like it, and it certainly is Apple censoring what they carry, but it is not Apple censoring YOU, so, big deal.
They're not even tar-like. They're just directories with a .app extension.
% ls -l | grep iTunes
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Dec 13 11:52 iTunes.app
I do too, I agree those would be awesome (and hopefully coming in iPhone 4.0). My point was just to disagree with the GP who claimed that background apps WOULDN'T typically take much battery because they don't draw to the screen.
I know it's slashdot and asking to RTFA is too much, so... "When subjects received TMS to a brain region near the right TPJ, their judgments were nearly identical to those of people who received no TMS at all."
Wow, RTFA. Heck, read the other slashdot comments, they highlighted exactly some of the questions that were asked.
App Store is a seriously controlled environment and they already impose strict guidelines for developers. How does an idle application even eat up more battery? It's not like your RAM needs more power if it's used a little bit more. The background app doesn't need to do any drawing and is usually on pause (unless it needs to do certain tasks in the background, and then it makes sense).
Really, are you joking? The vast majority of apps that would work well as backgrounded apps are network connected apps. Things like IM clients, GPS tracking, etc. When you're looking at a cellphone, "drawing" is hardly the biggest power draw, think about 3g, turning the antenna on and constantly transmitting, and using GPS. Big drains.