In other words, they must PAY MONEY to someone (who can later testify against them) for a CD and then figure out how to use it, instead of simply going to the library and using the free, anonymous web access therein.
Any burglar with the sophistication to go to the airport, record license number, then lookup the associated addresses for prospective targets is plenty savvy enough to just get a copy of the CD (which requires no skill to use). It's not like they are worried about illegal copyright infringement with making as many copies as they want.
It isn't a hypothetical problem. "Hypothetical" means "doesn't currently exist".
Please reference any case of a burglar looking up someone's license plate number of a random car at the airport and using the address as a target for burglary.
Your hypothetical use of this information is not really very useful for casing a house. Just because one person who lives somewhere has their car at the airport does not mean a house is empty, and any sophisticated burglar would do better to just stake out a neighborhood.
You seem to believe that this information should not be public. There are reasonable arguments for that. However, this information is public. It is just inconvenient because a select group of people have the right to sell it. They don't ask names, and you can mail order the CD to a post office box, or grab it from a warez site. My argument is that since this information is public, it makes sense for it to be convenient. If it should not be public, then we should not rely upon the fact that it is inconvenient to deter it from being used by criminals.
But, the only thing that will happend, is that every damn ISP adds a clause to their TOS saying that they're free to do whatever they want with your information, including giving your address to a known spammer.
In many states that does not matter. The TOS agreement will not take precedence over state privacy laws that require any business to disclose to you any instance in which they hand over your personal information to a third party and in some cases need approval beforehand (note in some states I think this has to be on a case by case basis, you can't sign something that says you can hand it over to anyone anytime.) It's crazy how sometimes privacy laws actually, you know, protect people's privacy.
am I missing something here, or does EyeTV replicate everything that TiVO offers? Why would someone buy TiVo over EyeTV?
EyeTV is missing a number of features. First, you need a mac to interface with and control it. Next it does not have the concept of season passes. Third, it does not record suggestions in it's spare space. Fourth the UI is not quite as nice.
On the other hand, EyeTV has no DRM, a built in editor, burns VCDs and DVDs, has no monthly fee for scheduling, is much easier for hard drive upgrades, and can be used to rip your existing video collection.
I bought an EyeTV a year or so and am delighted with it. There are still some TiVo features I'd like, but all in all I prefer having control and easy archiving.
It would make it trivial for them to drive around the long-term parking lots at airports to see who isn't at home, and then find out where "home" is.
Did you even read my post? They can already do that. Right now they just need to give a lawyer his cut of a couple hundred bucks for the database on CD. The answer to the hypothetical problem you mention is to make the database private, if that sort of thing becomes a problem. Barring that, I see no reason to not make it cheaper. Or do you really think a couple hundred bucks should be what decides who is trustworthy and who is not?
Funny how the/. crowd gets all foaming at the mouth when privacy issues concern them personally, but when it's somebody else's privacy, "information wants to be free!"
I don't have any problem with individuals collecting publicly available information about me. I do have a problem with the government or commercial enterprises collecting personal information about me, especially when it is connected to supposedly private information, like my credit card info and social security number. If commercial enterprises want to publish publicly available information, that is fine. If they even want to send me spam and junk mail, that is fine too. If they try to disguise the spam and junk mail as non-commercial mail, well that is deceitful and unethical.
I don't see how that makes me a hypocrite, and if you do, maybe you should look the word up in a dictionary.
Every major religion recognizes that there was a man Jesus of Nazareth who lived about 2000 years ago in the land now known as Israel.
I think you might have a lot of trouble backing this up. Some major religious are not hierarchical and do not have a authoritative figure or body to make such declarations on their behalf. Even in religious organizations that do have such a structure, I doubt anything other than christianity recognizes your fact in the religion itself (which was how your statement was worded).
Aside from that you make a some good points. Don't be too hard on the original poster for being ignorant about christianity. Most evangelists I have spoken to who are trying to convert me seem to have never even read the bible and don't know what I'm talking about when I mention parts I remember from when I read it long ago.
If in the last year Google received suggestions for other numbers to be searched, they do not seem to be implemented today... Lic Plate #'s, are not likely to be included.
License plate number lookup would actually be a very nice feature. At least in the state where I live you have to be one of about a hundred registered lawyers or a law enforcement agent to search the license plate database, but those individuals are willing to provide a lookup to anyone without any questions asked for about $75. Also, at least one of those people has downloaded the entire database and sells it on CD. There is really no reason for people to have to pay for this information, other than it makes a few people some money. I'd love to see google buy the CD every year and add it to a database.
WordPerfect Office - seriouly. Does anyone use this anymore? Anyone? Bueller?
Get a clue. Wordperfect is standard in almost every law office in the U.S. Word has never taken it's market share there because it does not support all of the legal templates. That is a lot of users who will all sue your ass.
You're right, many graphics on the Konfabulator site make is slow *if* you're on a slow connection.
You misunderstand me. I gave up on Konfabulator because it was too slow, not because the web site was too slow. Content is king and the Konfabulator product was just not useful enough and was a huge resource hog when I tried it out. Their website loads acceptably. (Only just acceptably, it took a second or two to load the first page and I have most of a T1 to myself right now.)
That's been fixed for a while. F8 is Konfabulator's friend now, and they stay out of the way.
There is a problem with Konfabulator's marketing exposed by your comment. I did not know Konfabulator had fixed that problem either. I tossed it early on, because it was just not good enough, or useful enough. Now it is probably better in a number of ways, but I am certainly not motivated to download it again and try it out again. The demo expired in a month and for people like me who often test out new usability applications that means within the first few months of it being offered. The developers should have had a longer beta release available to anyone. As it is a lot of us gave up on it, when we were asked to pay because at the time it was not worth it, and I'd wager most of us never went back to see if Konfabulator ever became useful. Maybe they just could not afford it. Too bad guys, better luck next time.
This is the ideal situation for an open source project. Big companies who use the software all pay developers to add features that they need or want. It results in more development, more developers with experience, and ultimately makes the software better. Now, if we can just get a dozen more major companies to each hire a developer.
Nope. They are both implementations of the same idea though. Mac OS 7, and several other older systems used "mini apps" and these are just the same thing re-implemented. Apple's version (Dashboard) has a few advantages since it is integrated into the OS more fully, ships with tiger by default (larger user base) and supposedly is easier to create widgets for (HTML and javascript just like web apps). Konfabulator beat them to market by a good margin, but when I tried it was pretty resource hungry. I imagine the Konfabulator guys are looking for a new project right about now. It is hard to sell a app that competes with one included with the OS, and is arguably inferior.
I don't happen to care much for Konfabulator, but there are nearly 1,000 widgets for it.
There were not 1000 when I first tried using it. 50 Maybe 100. And very few of them did anything I was not already doing with a stand alone application or was faster just to look up with my web browser.
Er, yeah. They both work the same way and do the same thing.
Hopefully not, or I'll not use dashboard. Konfabulator was eating half of one of my cpus and a good chunk of memory while sitting idle, with only a few widgets installed. Also, there is something to be said for calling it up and hiding all other applications with a single command, then reversing the process with the same command. The same thing could probably be done with a konfabulator and a script, but I'm a lazy, lazy man.
It's $129, Sonny Jim.
Not really. With an educational discount it is $69. And I am not paying $69 for dashboard. I'm paying $69 for improved Cisco VPN support and spotlight. Dashboard, Automater, etc. are things I would probably not buy, but sure don't mind trying out for free.
Basically, I tried Konfabulator, but found it unacceptably slow. Many friends of mine tried it, and according to their reports, it did not get much better. I did not see the value proposition in either money or system resources to running it. I'm hoping that Dashboard (for no extra money I was not already spending) and an as yet unknown system resources cost, will provide a better value. I will find out in a few weeks.
What is your problem with Dashboard Widgets? It has a pretty decent site, including most of your bullet points. The only way they fall down is that their front page is devoted to news, and you have to click to get to the gallery (or showcase as they call it). This also seems to be one of the few sites with quite a few widgets already up and available. You claim their preview icons are too small. They are 128x128 which is plenty large on my monitor and larger than most of the images on the Konfabulator site, even with the background image they add to all of theirs. You also complain that they don't have previews for all of them, which is a valid complaint.
Your love for the Konfabulator site, however, is misguided. I found it unintuitive. Their was no text link for more information on the widgets, only two unlabeled graphics, neither of which had an alt tag set. There is also a "More Widgets" button for each widget which, until I clicked it, I had no idea would take me to more widgets by the same author. Sorry, but if you're looking for an expertly designed web site, the Konfabulator site should not be your example.
I gave up on Konfabulator because it was just too dog slow. Hopefully dashboard will not have the same problem.
I tried Konfabulator, as did a number of people I know. For me I stopped using it because it was a hog, and just slowed down my machine too much. The lack of compelling/really useful widgets was a problem. A friend of mine summed it up with, "When the demo expired and I had to consider paying for it, I had already stopped using it, so I just deleted it." That was basically it for a lot of us. It just was not very useful. Dashboard looks to be more so. And it is free, so even if I only book a flight once a year, or look up a phone number in the yellow pages once a week, there is no reason not to have it.
I read and review material in PDF format, create PDF documents from LaTeX including images and diagrams saved as PDFs, and I don't use a single Adobe product.
If you are making documents for public use, you might want to start using the Adobe readers for compatibility testing. They have some odd bugs in older versions. There is nothing quite like sending a document to a client only to find that their version of Acrobat reader omits all the letter c's in the document. (Yes, that was a real world example.)
It also usually requires that the publisher know that the source of information is violating the law by disclosing it, essentially making the publisher a party to a crime.
Has anyone suggested otherwise in this case? Actually I believe the wording is slightly more open, and includes cases where the publisher should know what they are publishing is a trade secret. In any case, a mac rumors site run by a ivy leaguer almost certainly knows that what they are publishing is a trade secret.
The judge did not tell them they couldn't publish the information. The judge can't tell them that. They never signed an NDA with Apple, and every once in awhile, the first ammendment actually means something in this country.
Actually, the UTSA does restrict the freedom of speech and has been upheld as constitutional thus far. As have slander, liable, copyright, trademark, military secrets, etc. laws. Apple has just never sought an injunction, although one would almost certainly be awarded. I think it is because Apple does not actually mind rumors sites. It does however, mind employees breaking their NDA's
For this to kill TV, (or even groovily coexist as an alternative) it would require current producers of worthwhile content (e.g. battlestar galactica rather than survivor) to be willing to publish their content by these means.
Were copyright terms reasonable, this would be a great way to publish collections of works that have entered the public domain. As it is, this could still be a good forum for playing the few old movies and films that are now public. Add on to that, some cheaply produced, but interesting talk shows, fun fad shows made in some guy's basement (think southpark, strongbad, etc.), and all the college and highschool b-grade movie productions and I can see people tuning in. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sick of the content out there these days. I watch about 3 shows regularly and would not bother with those if my PVR did not grab them so I could skip the 33%-45% of them that is commerials. As it is I throw away 75% of the Simpsons episodes I record simply because they have already been played in the last 2 years and I have a copy archived.
This particular case, it is highly doubtful that Apple lost any money at all.
I don't have a link to get by the subscription but the Wall St. Journal disagrees with you and reported Apple's stock down several points as a result. In any case, the bloggers violated the UTSA and being a journalist does not protect you from answering a subpoena issued by the courts with regard to the case. Reparations are not a question until the facts have been established.
I guess I missed the part "except in the case of trade secrets" when I read the First Amendment.
So you think trade secret laws violate the first amendment and should be removed? I can understand that. Do you also think people should be able to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater? How about lie about what their products do? Slander and liable? Copyright infringement of songs? Most instances of fraud? Leaking the launch codes for our nuclear weapons to the Chinese?
All of the the above are restrictions on freedom of speech. Most people agree that the above laws are just and reasonable restrictions on free speech. In this particular case Apple did not even try to restrict free speech. They just sued for reparation after the fact without asking for any future restraints. If you break the law don't expect freedom of speech to absolve you of criminal responsibility for your actions.
Alternately I suppose you would not mind if someone published full page ads in your local newspaper saying that you are a pedophile. After all while it is illegal, it is also protected by the first amendment, right?
So my point is bloggers are journalists and we need not disclose our source of information according to the first ammendment
According to federal laws, it does not matter if you are a journalist or not. According to most state's laws revealing what you know, or can reasonably be expected to know is a trade secret is illegal (again it does not matter if you are a journalist.) There are also state laws that say if you are a journalist (a term somewhat narrowly defined) then you do not have to reveal your sources and are protected from the trade secret laws if you are revealing a crime, government corruption, or something of great benefit to the public interest (especially a health concern).
The bloggers were treated just like journalists in this case. Federal laws don't care if you are a journalist and the relevant state laws not only don't apply to bloggers, but don't apply to revealing the technical details of someone's new products.
If bloggers are journalists or not was and is a non-issue.
In general, american workers are not unmotivated or incompetent. The fact that SOME are doesn't mean that all are, or even most.
My statement was that a significant number of American employees are not dedicated due to their workplace environment and treatment. This was in comparison to some other countries, although not all of them. The original poster stated "There is nothing lacking in the skill, talent and dedication of American employees." He is wrong. American employees in general are not dedicated and there are real and valid reasons for that.
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In other words, they must PAY MONEY to someone (who can later testify against them) for a CD and then figure out how to use it, instead of simply going to the library and using the free, anonymous web access therein.
Any burglar with the sophistication to go to the airport, record license number, then lookup the associated addresses for prospective targets is plenty savvy enough to just get a copy of the CD (which requires no skill to use). It's not like they are worried about illegal copyright infringement with making as many copies as they want.
It isn't a hypothetical problem. "Hypothetical" means "doesn't currently exist".
Please reference any case of a burglar looking up someone's license plate number of a random car at the airport and using the address as a target for burglary.
Your hypothetical use of this information is not really very useful for casing a house. Just because one person who lives somewhere has their car at the airport does not mean a house is empty, and any sophisticated burglar would do better to just stake out a neighborhood.
You seem to believe that this information should not be public. There are reasonable arguments for that. However, this information is public. It is just inconvenient because a select group of people have the right to sell it. They don't ask names, and you can mail order the CD to a post office box, or grab it from a warez site. My argument is that since this information is public, it makes sense for it to be convenient. If it should not be public, then we should not rely upon the fact that it is inconvenient to deter it from being used by criminals.
Do you know if EyeTV is able to record HD tv off unencrypted cable channels?
I don't know. Probably, but you should ask Elgato. They were very prompt about answering the one e-mail I sent to support.
But, the only thing that will happend, is that every damn ISP adds a clause to their TOS saying that they're free to do whatever they want with your information, including giving your address to a known spammer.
In many states that does not matter. The TOS agreement will not take precedence over state privacy laws that require any business to disclose to you any instance in which they hand over your personal information to a third party and in some cases need approval beforehand (note in some states I think this has to be on a case by case basis, you can't sign something that says you can hand it over to anyone anytime.) It's crazy how sometimes privacy laws actually, you know, protect people's privacy.
am I missing something here, or does EyeTV replicate everything that TiVO offers? Why would someone buy TiVo over EyeTV?
EyeTV is missing a number of features. First, you need a mac to interface with and control it. Next it does not have the concept of season passes. Third, it does not record suggestions in it's spare space. Fourth the UI is not quite as nice.
On the other hand, EyeTV has no DRM, a built in editor, burns VCDs and DVDs, has no monthly fee for scheduling, is much easier for hard drive upgrades, and can be used to rip your existing video collection.
I bought an EyeTV a year or so and am delighted with it. There are still some TiVo features I'd like, but all in all I prefer having control and easy archiving.
It would make it trivial for them to drive around the long-term parking lots at airports to see who isn't at home, and then find out where "home" is.
Did you even read my post? They can already do that. Right now they just need to give a lawyer his cut of a couple hundred bucks for the database on CD. The answer to the hypothetical problem you mention is to make the database private, if that sort of thing becomes a problem. Barring that, I see no reason to not make it cheaper. Or do you really think a couple hundred bucks should be what decides who is trustworthy and who is not?
Funny how the /. crowd gets all foaming at the mouth when privacy issues concern them personally, but when it's somebody else's privacy, "information wants to be free!"
I don't have any problem with individuals collecting publicly available information about me. I do have a problem with the government or commercial enterprises collecting personal information about me, especially when it is connected to supposedly private information, like my credit card info and social security number. If commercial enterprises want to publish publicly available information, that is fine. If they even want to send me spam and junk mail, that is fine too. If they try to disguise the spam and junk mail as non-commercial mail, well that is deceitful and unethical.
I don't see how that makes me a hypocrite, and if you do, maybe you should look the word up in a dictionary.
Every major religion recognizes that there was a man Jesus of Nazareth who lived about 2000 years ago in the land now known as Israel.
I think you might have a lot of trouble backing this up. Some major religious are not hierarchical and do not have a authoritative figure or body to make such declarations on their behalf. Even in religious organizations that do have such a structure, I doubt anything other than christianity recognizes your fact in the religion itself (which was how your statement was worded).
Aside from that you make a some good points. Don't be too hard on the original poster for being ignorant about christianity. Most evangelists I have spoken to who are trying to convert me seem to have never even read the bible and don't know what I'm talking about when I mention parts I remember from when I read it long ago.
If in the last year Google received suggestions for other numbers to be searched, they do not seem to be implemented today... Lic Plate #'s, are not likely to be included.
License plate number lookup would actually be a very nice feature. At least in the state where I live you have to be one of about a hundred registered lawyers or a law enforcement agent to search the license plate database, but those individuals are willing to provide a lookup to anyone without any questions asked for about $75. Also, at least one of those people has downloaded the entire database and sells it on CD. There is really no reason for people to have to pay for this information, other than it makes a few people some money. I'd love to see google buy the CD every year and add it to a database.
WordPerfect Office - seriouly. Does anyone use this anymore? Anyone? Bueller?
Get a clue. Wordperfect is standard in almost every law office in the U.S. Word has never taken it's market share there because it does not support all of the legal templates. That is a lot of users who will all sue your ass.
You're right, many graphics on the Konfabulator site make is slow *if* you're on a slow connection.
You misunderstand me. I gave up on Konfabulator because it was too slow, not because the web site was too slow. Content is king and the Konfabulator product was just not useful enough and was a huge resource hog when I tried it out. Their website loads acceptably. (Only just acceptably, it took a second or two to load the first page and I have most of a T1 to myself right now.)
That's been fixed for a while. F8 is Konfabulator's friend now, and they stay out of the way.
There is a problem with Konfabulator's marketing exposed by your comment. I did not know Konfabulator had fixed that problem either. I tossed it early on, because it was just not good enough, or useful enough. Now it is probably better in a number of ways, but I am certainly not motivated to download it again and try it out again. The demo expired in a month and for people like me who often test out new usability applications that means within the first few months of it being offered. The developers should have had a longer beta release available to anyone. As it is a lot of us gave up on it, when we were asked to pay because at the time it was not worth it, and I'd wager most of us never went back to see if Konfabulator ever became useful. Maybe they just could not afford it. Too bad guys, better luck next time.
This is the ideal situation for an open source project. Big companies who use the software all pay developers to add features that they need or want. It results in more development, more developers with experience, and ultimately makes the software better. Now, if we can just get a dozen more major companies to each hire a developer.
Isn't Dashboard just Konfabulator?
Nope. They are both implementations of the same idea though. Mac OS 7, and several other older systems used "mini apps" and these are just the same thing re-implemented. Apple's version (Dashboard) has a few advantages since it is integrated into the OS more fully, ships with tiger by default (larger user base) and supposedly is easier to create widgets for (HTML and javascript just like web apps). Konfabulator beat them to market by a good margin, but when I tried it was pretty resource hungry. I imagine the Konfabulator guys are looking for a new project right about now. It is hard to sell a app that competes with one included with the OS, and is arguably inferior.
I don't happen to care much for Konfabulator, but there are nearly 1,000 widgets for it.
There were not 1000 when I first tried using it. 50 Maybe 100. And very few of them did anything I was not already doing with a stand alone application or was faster just to look up with my web browser.
Er, yeah. They both work the same way and do the same thing.
Hopefully not, or I'll not use dashboard. Konfabulator was eating half of one of my cpus and a good chunk of memory while sitting idle, with only a few widgets installed. Also, there is something to be said for calling it up and hiding all other applications with a single command, then reversing the process with the same command. The same thing could probably be done with a konfabulator and a script, but I'm a lazy, lazy man.
It's $129, Sonny Jim.
Not really. With an educational discount it is $69. And I am not paying $69 for dashboard. I'm paying $69 for improved Cisco VPN support and spotlight. Dashboard, Automater, etc. are things I would probably not buy, but sure don't mind trying out for free.
Basically, I tried Konfabulator, but found it unacceptably slow. Many friends of mine tried it, and according to their reports, it did not get much better. I did not see the value proposition in either money or system resources to running it. I'm hoping that Dashboard (for no extra money I was not already spending) and an as yet unknown system resources cost, will provide a better value. I will find out in a few weeks.
What is your problem with Dashboard Widgets? It has a pretty decent site, including most of your bullet points. The only way they fall down is that their front page is devoted to news, and you have to click to get to the gallery (or showcase as they call it). This also seems to be one of the few sites with quite a few widgets already up and available. You claim their preview icons are too small. They are 128x128 which is plenty large on my monitor and larger than most of the images on the Konfabulator site, even with the background image they add to all of theirs. You also complain that they don't have previews for all of them, which is a valid complaint.
Your love for the Konfabulator site, however, is misguided. I found it unintuitive. Their was no text link for more information on the widgets, only two unlabeled graphics, neither of which had an alt tag set. There is also a "More Widgets" button for each widget which, until I clicked it, I had no idea would take me to more widgets by the same author. Sorry, but if you're looking for an expertly designed web site, the Konfabulator site should not be your example.
I gave up on Konfabulator because it was just too dog slow. Hopefully dashboard will not have the same problem.
I tried Konfabulator, as did a number of people I know. For me I stopped using it because it was a hog, and just slowed down my machine too much. The lack of compelling/really useful widgets was a problem. A friend of mine summed it up with, "When the demo expired and I had to consider paying for it, I had already stopped using it, so I just deleted it." That was basically it for a lot of us. It just was not very useful. Dashboard looks to be more so. And it is free, so even if I only book a flight once a year, or look up a phone number in the yellow pages once a week, there is no reason not to have it.
Thanks, the spell checker can only save me 70% of the time, and on days like this I sure don't trust my brain with the other 30%.
I read and review material in PDF format, create PDF documents from LaTeX including images and diagrams saved as PDFs, and I don't use a single Adobe product.
If you are making documents for public use, you might want to start using the Adobe readers for compatibility testing. They have some odd bugs in older versions. There is nothing quite like sending a document to a client only to find that their version of Acrobat reader omits all the letter c's in the document. (Yes, that was a real world example.)
It also usually requires that the publisher know that the source of information is violating the law by disclosing it, essentially making the publisher a party to a crime.
Has anyone suggested otherwise in this case? Actually I believe the wording is slightly more open, and includes cases where the publisher should know what they are publishing is a trade secret. In any case, a mac rumors site run by a ivy leaguer almost certainly knows that what they are publishing is a trade secret.
The judge did not tell them they couldn't publish the information. The judge can't tell them that. They never signed an NDA with Apple, and every once in awhile, the first ammendment actually means something in this country.
Actually, the UTSA does restrict the freedom of speech and has been upheld as constitutional thus far. As have slander, liable, copyright, trademark, military secrets, etc. laws. Apple has just never sought an injunction, although one would almost certainly be awarded. I think it is because Apple does not actually mind rumors sites. It does however, mind employees breaking their NDA's
For this to kill TV, (or even groovily coexist as an alternative) it would require current producers of worthwhile content (e.g. battlestar galactica rather than survivor) to be willing to publish their content by these means.
Were copyright terms reasonable, this would be a great way to publish collections of works that have entered the public domain. As it is, this could still be a good forum for playing the few old movies and films that are now public. Add on to that, some cheaply produced, but interesting talk shows, fun fad shows made in some guy's basement (think southpark, strongbad, etc.), and all the college and highschool b-grade movie productions and I can see people tuning in. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sick of the content out there these days. I watch about 3 shows regularly and would not bother with those if my PVR did not grab them so I could skip the 33%-45% of them that is commerials. As it is I throw away 75% of the Simpsons episodes I record simply because they have already been played in the last 2 years and I have a copy archived.
This particular case, it is highly doubtful that Apple lost any money at all.
I don't have a link to get by the subscription but the Wall St. Journal disagrees with you and reported Apple's stock down several points as a result. In any case, the bloggers violated the UTSA and being a journalist does not protect you from answering a subpoena issued by the courts with regard to the case. Reparations are not a question until the facts have been established.
I guess I missed the part "except in the case of trade secrets" when I read the First Amendment.
So you think trade secret laws violate the first amendment and should be removed? I can understand that. Do you also think people should be able to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater? How about lie about what their products do? Slander and liable? Copyright infringement of songs? Most instances of fraud? Leaking the launch codes for our nuclear weapons to the Chinese?
All of the the above are restrictions on freedom of speech. Most people agree that the above laws are just and reasonable restrictions on free speech. In this particular case Apple did not even try to restrict free speech. They just sued for reparation after the fact without asking for any future restraints. If you break the law don't expect freedom of speech to absolve you of criminal responsibility for your actions.
Alternately I suppose you would not mind if someone published full page ads in your local newspaper saying that you are a pedophile. After all while it is illegal, it is also protected by the first amendment, right?
So my point is bloggers are journalists and we need not disclose our source of information according to the first ammendment
According to federal laws, it does not matter if you are a journalist or not. According to most state's laws revealing what you know, or can reasonably be expected to know is a trade secret is illegal (again it does not matter if you are a journalist.) There are also state laws that say if you are a journalist (a term somewhat narrowly defined) then you do not have to reveal your sources and are protected from the trade secret laws if you are revealing a crime, government corruption, or something of great benefit to the public interest (especially a health concern).
The bloggers were treated just like journalists in this case. Federal laws don't care if you are a journalist and the relevant state laws not only don't apply to bloggers, but don't apply to revealing the technical details of someone's new products.
If bloggers are journalists or not was and is a non-issue.
In general, american workers are not unmotivated or incompetent. The fact that SOME are doesn't mean that all are, or even most.
My statement was that a significant number of American employees are not dedicated due to their workplace environment and treatment. This was in comparison to some other countries, although not all of them. The original poster stated "There is nothing lacking in the skill, talent and dedication of American employees." He is wrong. American employees in general are not dedicated and there are real and valid reasons for that.