I like watching douchebags over-react and inconvenience everyone around them. I hope more and more people pull stunts like this.
Who was inconvenienced? Hell, I haven't seen any mention of the terminal being shutdown, which nowadays most airports seem to do if you accidentally take nail clippers past security.
Lack of common sense should not, in a sane society, involve worrying about whether your LED shirt looks like a bomb. She was also at the airport to pick somebody up. She did not try to get through a security checkpoint, nor was she attempting to conceal the LEDs. Both of these things should have made a sensible security person think twice as to her possible danger level. Simply verifying that she did not have the breadboard attached to explosives should have been sufficient to confirm her lack of explosive potential.
When an employee asked about the device, she "walked away without responding" according to the article. At that point, it would negligent for them to ignore her as a potential threat. It would be one thing if she was assaulted, tazed, shot, etc., but they arrested her without incident and later released her on bail once they verified that there was no real threat.
Video of the shirt can be seen here, so decide for yourself. All I see are LEDs, a battery, and a breadboard. There seem to be varying reports on the 'putty' she was reported to be carrying, but even so I'd have a difficult time imagining that a 9V battery and some LEDs are going to set off C4, which requires a large shockwave in order to set it off due to its high degree of stability.
And to a law enforcement officer, all they saw was a strange looking device that could potentially be harmful and a subject who wouldn't respond to their questions. I think Boston law enforcement was totally retarded about the ATHF incident, but I don't fault them for this one. While it's obvious what the proto board is for anyone who took EE101, it's definitely not obvious for someone who isn't tech inclined. They arrested her at gunpoint, which I don't anyone would think is unreasonable given an unresponsive subject potentially carrying a bomb.
On the other side of the issue is Edwards, whose campaign says: "Patent litigation reforms that may encourage innovation in some industries may hinder innovation in others," including alternative energy.
Not surprising from someone who made his money as an ambulance chaser. Luckily, it doesn't look like he stands a chance at this point.
CS falls somewhere in between engineering and pure mathematics. If they are taking engineers and mathematicians, I see no reason why CS wouldn't also work.
Don't try to play this off as an inventor nobly accepting risk and forging onwards in the name of progress. This is about someone trying to show off and nearly killing himself because he was too stupid to factor in all sorts of safety concerns. Yes, this man has proven himself to be an excellent engineer, but that does not absolve him from acting like a total moron while riding his invention. Riding any bike without a helmet is plain stupid. Attempting to do a burnout on a powerful drag bike without a full-face helmet, leathers, and room for runoff is completely retarded. (Squid!) Besides, what the hell does doing a burnout prove? I could do a burnout on bikes that can barely do the 1/4 mile in twice the time of that electric bike. The power required is actually pretty minimal.
When talking about his riding, this guy is no better than some asshole doing a stand-up wheelie in the middle of traffic on the freeway. Praise him for his engineering skills, but at the same time condemn him for his utter lack of riding skills and common sense.
I'm writing this on a four year old G4 Tibook that continues to run and run and run...
They're probably selling them to people with 6 or 7 year old Macs. Getting 6-7 years of useful life out of a Mac is quite common. This is a testament to how well OS X has supported older hardware. (Let's see Vista on a 7 year old machine.) I'm much in the same boat as you; I've got a 4 year old PowerMac G5 and a 3 year old AlBook. As much as the geek in me would love to find an excuse to get a shiny new toy, both machines still serve my needs quite well.
There must be constant challenge
on
Failing Our Geniuses
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Although I'm not close to the level of the kids in the article, I was always in the advanced classes throughout my K-12 days. For example, I was three years ahead in math. Even being so advanced, I always had a very easy time, and I got excellent grades. And this was all at very good schools in the Bay Area, where I had plenty of classmates who went to Cal, Stanford, Ivy Leagues, etc.
But then it all changed when I got to college.
I went off to college, and I got my ass kicked. Royally. This was a concept that was totally foreign to me. I wasn't prepared to learn stuff that didn't come to me instantly. I had no work ethic. I ended up flunking multiple classes my first semester freshman year. While I had the intelligence to succeed in college, years of skating through classes had lowered my expectations and made me overconfident. I ended up graduating just fine and I've got a nice job, but throughout my time in college I didn't come close to my potential because I had gotten so accustomed to taking the easy way out.
Looking back on it, there came a point when I was no longer challenged in middle school and high school. As soon as I hit the farthest that the school would advance me, I stagnated. The problem was that I was always judge against my age group peers. If you're three years ahead and still at the top of the class, most people think that it's a great job. But it's not. You can learn a hell of a lot, both academically and socially, by being pushed beyond your comfort zone. Without a constant challenge, there is much less incentive to keep pushing yourself. Regardless of intelligence level, be it special ed to gifted, our focus on education needs to be identifying and providing difficult but attainable goals for all students. Having one standard for everyone is inevitably going to fail people at one or both ends of the curve.
I understand where these people are coming from. Emoticons have no use outside of 13 year olds instant messaging. Anyone else using them needs to grow up.;)
Using a super advanced statistical technique I like to call "mod 2", I'm afraid it's a statistical certainty that Star Trek XI is going to suck. Sorry, try again with XII.
After RTFA, it sounds to me like this guy has found info that suggests Apple will turn the iPod Nano into... an updated iPod Nano. So there is a new casing coming down the supply chain and a patent for a "multifunctional" device. To me that sounds like Apple is going to update the Nano to incorporate some of the gee-whiz iPhone UI features while leaving their high margin, incredibly popular iPhone unchallenged, but saying that doesn't get your name in the papers.
Go away. You ruin what little closed world experience exists in these games as it is by allowing people to cheat their way up.
While I'm happy you feel the need to roll around in large wads of money, I don't feel the need to become beholden to you when you drive up market costs so much that everyone is forced to buy from you. The companies are only there because there is a demand for their services. As long as there is demand, there will always be real money trading. Unless a company like Blizzard finds a way to eliminate the demand (by redesigning their game) or by eliminating the ability to trade in-game assets for real money (all but impossible), there will always be people who will conduct such trades, be it through a large company or in an individualized black market of sorts.
It seems they realize that given their lack of in game presence, they have no way of creating a totally secure system. They also make another smart move and guarantee that the individual who puts up the real currency (the buyer) will never be defrauded. However, as a seller, I still don't see why I should trust them. If someone buys gold and claims it was never sent, does the company plan on reimbursing the seller? It seems they wouldn't unless their claim of having no in-game presence is a lie. The only other option is to take the next seller that comes along and reroute the new sellers gold to the original, defrauded seller. In this case, the company would have to take the hit and lose some real world cash.
The company could force people to make small trades while building up some sort of a trust rating. This wouldn't solve the problem completely, but it would lessen the number and size of trades they have to eat. However, I can imagine this being very tedious if, say, you only plan on using the service once to get 5000g for your epic flying mount.
What happens if I make a delivery but the buyer claims otherwise?
We anticipate this scenario being extremely uncommon, particularly since Sparter uses state-of-the-art technology to root out fraud and to create a clean and safe marketplace. However, in the rare event of alleged buyer-fraud, we provide a dispute mechanism process to help you resolve the situation.
I had the same question and found this on their FAQ. It all sounds like a bunch of marketing BS to me. So my question is, what assurances or explanations can you give, technical or otherwise, that there actually is a plan to deal with this situation. Right now, there is no reason I would have to trust them.
In its article, the Courier-Journal quoted its executive editor, Bennie Ivory, as saying, "It's clearly a First Amendment issue. This is part of the evolution of how we present the news to our readers. It's what we did during the Orange Bowl. It's what we did during the NCAA basketball tournament. It's what we do."
This isn't a First Amendment issue in any way, shape, or form. This is an organization not letting an individual participate because he will not abide by their rules. You can kick people out of private events basically at whim, as long as it's not on the grounds of race, religion, sex, etc. This guy was given a press pass (ie he didn't even pay to get in!), and he got kicked out for doing something they didn't like.
That said, it's tough to say whether this was a bad move or not. In one way, this blogger is competing with the radio/tv broadcasts. On the other hand, it's some no-name newspaper that probably takes very little attention away, and kicking him out is only going to generate bad press.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Windows Safari fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of Windows Safari (public beta 3) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to render a 17 kbyte html page. 20 minutes. At home, on my blueberry iMac running Chimera, which by all standards should be a lot slower than Safari, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this render, Office will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various versions of Windows Safari, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen Windows Safari run faster than its Mac/Gecko counterpart, despite Windows Safari's faster rendering engine. Netscape 4.76 runs faster than this KHTML-derived browser at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Windows Safari is a superior browser.
Windows Safari addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Windows Safari over other faster, cheaper, more stable browsers.
Last I checked, MacTheRipper was RIPPING software, and not SHRINKING software. Which means if you put in a 9 GB DVD, you'll get a 9GB image file which you can't burn to a 4.5 GB DVD-R. If it's new functionality added in a recent version, I might have missed it.
Sorry, my mistake. Still, I would contend that there are very few areas where you cannot find freeware for your needs. Even back before OS X, the Mac developer community has a strong history of producing quality freeware.
I complain about Apple selling a system with 512 MB RAM when it knows that it's just not enough to do the heavy lifting the OS provides. A $600 computer might be underpowered on the Windows/Intel side, but at least the system OEM integrator is not the same guy who designs the OS.
Furthermore, I'm not complaining about the MacMini lacking a more powerful graphics card. I complain about the MacMini having a graphics card that takes away from the system ram when the RAM is already tapped out, and I complain that throughout Mac's entire product line, there's no option for robust graphics cards, and if you want one, the only way you can do so is by getting the MacPro - because that's the only Mac with the type of expandability once seen in the "PowerMac" line - since discontinued.
IT'S A $600 COMPUTER! It's not meant to do "heavy lifting." 512 MB of RAM is more than enough for web browsing, running iTunes, and playing around with iPhoto. You know, all the kinds of things you would expect someone to use such a computer for. If you need more than that, don't order the barebones, bottom-end system.
As for the graphics cards, each model is consistent with what you would expect. In their bottom-end machines, the Mac Minis have crappy shared memory GPUs. In the mid-level iMacs, you have dedicated memory graphics cards that can't be replaced. In the top end Mac Pros, you have awesome graphics cards and full expansion capabilities. The overwhelming majority of people that buy iMacs and Mac Minis don't care about the graphics card. If you need to be replacing and upgrading pieces, you get a Mac Pro. Sure, there is a market for people who want a cheap, upgradeable Mac Pro, but it doesn't make any business sense for Apple to bother with it. Most of those people will realize that the Mac Pros are excellent, long-lasting machines. I've got a 4 year old G5 PowerMac, and it's showing no signs of slowing down.
I have never had a problem with a lack of freeware for the Mac. There are a couple pieces of shareware I have paid for because I like the software and want to support the developer, but that was never a matter of functionality. The only other piece of software I have paid for is Apple Remote Desktop, and that could be replaced by VNC, ssh, and shell scripting if necessary. He mentions that he can't find any DVD shrinking software. He must have not looked very hard, as I know Mac the Ripper is just one of many free programs that do just that.
Yes, you do have to pay for MS Office and Photoshop, but no shit. You have to pay for these on Windows as well. He states that the free options like Abiword lack all the features necessary, but that's going to be true of any Office or PS knockoff. So not only do you have the option to buy Office and PS (just like on Windows, and unavailable for Linux), but you have a number of free alternatives, most of which aren't any harder to install on OS X than on Linux.
All told, the author is either ignorant of or biased against Macs. He complains about the Mac Mini lacking a more powerful graphics card and more RAM, but he fails to point out that it's a $600 entry level machine. He also complains about OS X not running on non-Apple hardware. That's a business argument for another day (and one that he would have a hard time winning), but it shouldn't be relevant to a technical review.
The new policy was put in place after a January 2003 broadcast of the Golden Globes awards show by NBC when U2 lead singer Bono said an expletive before the word "brilliant." The FCC said the "F-word" in any context "inherently has a sexual connotation" and can trigger enforcement.
...
In a statement, Martin said: "It is the New York court, not the commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word `f---' does not invoke a sexual connotation."
So he thinks that every form of the versatile word "fuck" is inherently sexual. I keep wondering, is he fucking serious? That's a fucking ridiculous stance to take! If he is in charge of censoring our airwaves, things have gotten pretty fucked up.
Meanwhile, every tech place I know can't hire fast enough. The good candidates are getting soaked up by the market fast. Wasn't there a stat recently that computer people are in higher demand than during the tech boom? But maybe its just a localized phenomena where I live.
From what I can tell, this is true, as my company (in Silicon Valley) can't hire engineers fast enough either. However, these aren't "tech jobs" per se. To mean, that means engineers and maybe IT, but the blurb makes it sound like any job at a company that is somewhat related to technology counts as a "tech job". Dell and Circuit City don't have any engineers, and I would bet that few, if any, of those Motorola layoffs are going to their engineers. (Don't forget Motorola is friggin huge.)
If you've got an EE or CS degree, this is nothing to worry about.
Slashdot Mirror
I like watching douchebags over-react and inconvenience everyone around them. I hope more and more people pull stunts like this.
Who was inconvenienced? Hell, I haven't seen any mention of the terminal being shutdown, which nowadays most airports seem to do if you accidentally take nail clippers past security.
Lack of common sense should not, in a sane society, involve worrying about whether your LED shirt looks like a bomb. She was also at the airport to pick somebody up. She did not try to get through a security checkpoint, nor was she attempting to conceal the LEDs. Both of these things should have made a sensible security person think twice as to her possible danger level. Simply verifying that she did not have the breadboard attached to explosives should have been sufficient to confirm her lack of explosive potential.
When an employee asked about the device, she "walked away without responding" according to the article. At that point, it would negligent for them to ignore her as a potential threat. It would be one thing if she was assaulted, tazed, shot, etc., but they arrested her without incident and later released her on bail once they verified that there was no real threat.
Video of the shirt can be seen here, so decide for yourself. All I see are LEDs, a battery, and a breadboard. There seem to be varying reports on the 'putty' she was reported to be carrying, but even so I'd have a difficult time imagining that a 9V battery and some LEDs are going to set off C4, which requires a large shockwave in order to set it off due to its high degree of stability.
And to a law enforcement officer, all they saw was a strange looking device that could potentially be harmful and a subject who wouldn't respond to their questions. I think Boston law enforcement was totally retarded about the ATHF incident, but I don't fault them for this one. While it's obvious what the proto board is for anyone who took EE101, it's definitely not obvious for someone who isn't tech inclined. They arrested her at gunpoint, which I don't anyone would think is unreasonable given an unresponsive subject potentially carrying a bomb.
On the other side of the issue is Edwards, whose campaign says: "Patent litigation reforms that may encourage innovation in some industries may hinder innovation in others," including alternative energy.
Not surprising from someone who made his money as an ambulance chaser. Luckily, it doesn't look like he stands a chance at this point.
CS falls somewhere in between engineering and pure mathematics. If they are taking engineers and mathematicians, I see no reason why CS wouldn't also work.
Neither the dignity,grace nor charisma of a nice U.S. made V-twin was displayed.
:P
Kinda fitting.
Nor did it display an oil leak.
Just remember folks, 95% of all Harleys are still on the road. The other 5% actually made it home!
Don't try to play this off as an inventor nobly accepting risk and forging onwards in the name of progress. This is about someone trying to show off and nearly killing himself because he was too stupid to factor in all sorts of safety concerns. Yes, this man has proven himself to be an excellent engineer, but that does not absolve him from acting like a total moron while riding his invention. Riding any bike without a helmet is plain stupid. Attempting to do a burnout on a powerful drag bike without a full-face helmet, leathers, and room for runoff is completely retarded. (Squid!) Besides, what the hell does doing a burnout prove? I could do a burnout on bikes that can barely do the 1/4 mile in twice the time of that electric bike. The power required is actually pretty minimal.
When talking about his riding, this guy is no better than some asshole doing a stand-up wheelie in the middle of traffic on the freeway. Praise him for his engineering skills, but at the same time condemn him for his utter lack of riding skills and common sense.
Who are the selling them to?
I'm writing this on a four year old G4 Tibook that continues to run and run and run...
They're probably selling them to people with 6 or 7 year old Macs. Getting 6-7 years of useful life out of a Mac is quite common. This is a testament to how well OS X has supported older hardware. (Let's see Vista on a 7 year old machine.) I'm much in the same boat as you; I've got a 4 year old PowerMac G5 and a 3 year old AlBook. As much as the geek in me would love to find an excuse to get a shiny new toy, both machines still serve my needs quite well.
Although I'm not close to the level of the kids in the article, I was always in the advanced classes throughout my K-12 days. For example, I was three years ahead in math. Even being so advanced, I always had a very easy time, and I got excellent grades. And this was all at very good schools in the Bay Area, where I had plenty of classmates who went to Cal, Stanford, Ivy Leagues, etc.
But then it all changed when I got to college.
I went off to college, and I got my ass kicked. Royally. This was a concept that was totally foreign to me. I wasn't prepared to learn stuff that didn't come to me instantly. I had no work ethic. I ended up flunking multiple classes my first semester freshman year. While I had the intelligence to succeed in college, years of skating through classes had lowered my expectations and made me overconfident. I ended up graduating just fine and I've got a nice job, but throughout my time in college I didn't come close to my potential because I had gotten so accustomed to taking the easy way out.
Looking back on it, there came a point when I was no longer challenged in middle school and high school. As soon as I hit the farthest that the school would advance me, I stagnated. The problem was that I was always judge against my age group peers. If you're three years ahead and still at the top of the class, most people think that it's a great job. But it's not. You can learn a hell of a lot, both academically and socially, by being pushed beyond your comfort zone. Without a constant challenge, there is much less incentive to keep pushing yourself. Regardless of intelligence level, be it special ed to gifted, our focus on education needs to be identifying and providing difficult but attainable goals for all students. Having one standard for everyone is inevitably going to fail people at one or both ends of the curve.
If this isn't global warming, I don't care.
That isn't global warming, that's a single data point.
That sound you hear is every scientist repeatedly banging their head against a brick wall.
Must... resist... expansion...
Mustn't... resubscribe...
I understand where these people are coming from. Emoticons have no use outside of 13 year olds instant messaging. Anyone else using them needs to grow up. ;)
In my heart, I hope this movie doesn't suck...
Using a super advanced statistical technique I like to call "mod 2", I'm afraid it's a statistical certainty that Star Trek XI is going to suck. Sorry, try again with XII.
After RTFA, it sounds to me like this guy has found info that suggests Apple will turn the iPod Nano into... an updated iPod Nano. So there is a new casing coming down the supply chain and a patent for a "multifunctional" device. To me that sounds like Apple is going to update the Nano to incorporate some of the gee-whiz iPhone UI features while leaving their high margin, incredibly popular iPhone unchallenged, but saying that doesn't get your name in the papers.
While I'm happy you feel the need to roll around in large wads of money, I don't feel the need to become beholden to you when you drive up market costs so much that everyone is forced to buy from you. The companies are only there because there is a demand for their services. As long as there is demand, there will always be real money trading. Unless a company like Blizzard finds a way to eliminate the demand (by redesigning their game) or by eliminating the ability to trade in-game assets for real money (all but impossible), there will always be people who will conduct such trades, be it through a large company or in an individualized black market of sorts.
It seems they realize that given their lack of in game presence, they have no way of creating a totally secure system. They also make another smart move and guarantee that the individual who puts up the real currency (the buyer) will never be defrauded. However, as a seller, I still don't see why I should trust them. If someone buys gold and claims it was never sent, does the company plan on reimbursing the seller? It seems they wouldn't unless their claim of having no in-game presence is a lie. The only other option is to take the next seller that comes along and reroute the new sellers gold to the original, defrauded seller. In this case, the company would have to take the hit and lose some real world cash.
The company could force people to make small trades while building up some sort of a trust rating. This wouldn't solve the problem completely, but it would lessen the number and size of trades they have to eat. However, I can imagine this being very tedious if, say, you only plan on using the service once to get 5000g for your epic flying mount.
I had the same question and found this on their FAQ. It all sounds like a bunch of marketing BS to me. So my question is, what assurances or explanations can you give, technical or otherwise, that there actually is a plan to deal with this situation. Right now, there is no reason I would have to trust them.
no SDK, no wifi, one carrier, no killer app, DOA
You forgot "Lame."
This isn't a First Amendment issue in any way, shape, or form. This is an organization not letting an individual participate because he will not abide by their rules. You can kick people out of private events basically at whim, as long as it's not on the grounds of race, religion, sex, etc. This guy was given a press pass (ie he didn't even pay to get in!), and he got kicked out for doing something they didn't like.
That said, it's tough to say whether this was a bad move or not. In one way, this blogger is competing with the radio/tv broadcasts. On the other hand, it's some no-name newspaper that probably takes very little attention away, and kicking him out is only going to generate bad press.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Windows Safari fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of Windows Safari (public beta 3) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to render a 17 kbyte html page. 20 minutes. At home, on my blueberry iMac running Chimera, which by all standards should be a lot slower than Safari, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this render, Office will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various versions of Windows Safari, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen Windows Safari run faster than its Mac/Gecko counterpart, despite Windows Safari's faster rendering engine. Netscape 4.76 runs faster than this KHTML-derived browser at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Windows Safari is a superior browser.
Windows Safari addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Windows Safari over other faster, cheaper, more stable browsers.
Last I checked, MacTheRipper was RIPPING software, and not SHRINKING software. Which means if you put in a 9 GB DVD, you'll get a 9GB image file which you can't burn to a 4.5 GB DVD-R. If it's new functionality added in a recent version, I might have missed it.
Sorry, my mistake. Still, I would contend that there are very few areas where you cannot find freeware for your needs. Even back before OS X, the Mac developer community has a strong history of producing quality freeware.
I complain about Apple selling a system with 512 MB RAM when it knows that it's just not enough to do the heavy lifting the OS provides. A $600 computer might be underpowered on the Windows/Intel side, but at least the system OEM integrator is not the same guy who designs the OS.
Furthermore, I'm not complaining about the MacMini lacking a more powerful graphics card. I complain about the MacMini having a graphics card that takes away from the system ram when the RAM is already tapped out, and I complain that throughout Mac's entire product line, there's no option for robust graphics cards, and if you want one, the only way you can do so is by getting the MacPro - because that's the only Mac with the type of expandability once seen in the "PowerMac" line - since discontinued.
IT'S A $600 COMPUTER! It's not meant to do "heavy lifting." 512 MB of RAM is more than enough for web browsing, running iTunes, and playing around with iPhoto. You know, all the kinds of things you would expect someone to use such a computer for. If you need more than that, don't order the barebones, bottom-end system.
As for the graphics cards, each model is consistent with what you would expect. In their bottom-end machines, the Mac Minis have crappy shared memory GPUs. In the mid-level iMacs, you have dedicated memory graphics cards that can't be replaced. In the top end Mac Pros, you have awesome graphics cards and full expansion capabilities. The overwhelming majority of people that buy iMacs and Mac Minis don't care about the graphics card. If you need to be replacing and upgrading pieces, you get a Mac Pro. Sure, there is a market for people who want a cheap, upgradeable Mac Pro, but it doesn't make any business sense for Apple to bother with it. Most of those people will realize that the Mac Pros are excellent, long-lasting machines. I've got a 4 year old G5 PowerMac, and it's showing no signs of slowing down.
I have never had a problem with a lack of freeware for the Mac. There are a couple pieces of shareware I have paid for because I like the software and want to support the developer, but that was never a matter of functionality. The only other piece of software I have paid for is Apple Remote Desktop, and that could be replaced by VNC, ssh, and shell scripting if necessary. He mentions that he can't find any DVD shrinking software. He must have not looked very hard, as I know Mac the Ripper is just one of many free programs that do just that.
Yes, you do have to pay for MS Office and Photoshop, but no shit. You have to pay for these on Windows as well. He states that the free options like Abiword lack all the features necessary, but that's going to be true of any Office or PS knockoff. So not only do you have the option to buy Office and PS (just like on Windows, and unavailable for Linux), but you have a number of free alternatives, most of which aren't any harder to install on OS X than on Linux.
All told, the author is either ignorant of or biased against Macs. He complains about the Mac Mini lacking a more powerful graphics card and more RAM, but he fails to point out that it's a $600 entry level machine. He also complains about OS X not running on non-Apple hardware. That's a business argument for another day (and one that he would have a hard time winning), but it shouldn't be relevant to a technical review.
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_6063897
So he thinks that every form of the versatile word "fuck" is inherently sexual. I keep wondering, is he fucking serious? That's a fucking ridiculous stance to take! If he is in charge of censoring our airwaves, things have gotten pretty fucked up.
From what I can tell, this is true, as my company (in Silicon Valley) can't hire engineers fast enough either. However, these aren't "tech jobs" per se. To mean, that means engineers and maybe IT, but the blurb makes it sound like any job at a company that is somewhat related to technology counts as a "tech job". Dell and Circuit City don't have any engineers, and I would bet that few, if any, of those Motorola layoffs are going to their engineers. (Don't forget Motorola is friggin huge.)
If you've got an EE or CS degree, this is nothing to worry about.
Polished games and excellent Mac support makes for many happy Mac gamers.