This would only make sense if the Chinese system was the only one available. So are policy-makers in China seriously considering removing US and Euro GPS satellites?
...Talk about moving from a cold to hot war in instants.

Seems foolish, yet why would they develop their own system with an encrypted channel (having their own system makes sense, it's the latter that's interesting).

Wow. Sixteen-year-old boys with TASERs and and batons with authority over each other. What could possibly go wrong?

Wanted to drop a quick note saying I'm in awe of CraftedResistance's Beijing Olympic rings graphic linked to above. Kudos to the designers!

On the bright side, he wasn't over 40. Because that? Would have been wrong.

RCoder - "tarnish" in a sense of diluting or confusing people, in a legal sense, not in a derogatory way.

I don't have problems with her existing, playing or promoting under the "Lennon" name.

It raises my hackles that she wants to register that name as a trademark. ESPECIALLY since she's adopting the "poor me attacked by awful, AWEful lawyers. Haters. HATERZZZ!"

So yeah, thumbs down on this. At least this legal part of her complaint.

The best part I like about this VNR is one of the tell-tale signs of the approaching apocalypse is, if the CD consists of a "dream compilation" of songs you'd never see, run screaming from the merchant.

That is, the RIAA is telling you, "If it's something that you'd actually be HAPPY to pay for, it's not from us."

Sigh.

Xeni, Cory, et al. -

How does hosting a program on ITMS work? Can you tell Apple to make it region-free, essentially? Is this the default? If the IP holders (you) give permission for your show to be available everywhere, then ITMS should make it available everywhere, right?

If this isn't an administrative problem, and you can't make your program available in the way you'd like, that'd be an interesting boingboing article. Or, alternately, covering the steps it took you to manage the waters would be interesting as well. :)

Gareth -

For all of your complaints about ITMS and Apple (a for-profit company that manages to do some fairly community-enriching stuff), I'm struck by how hostile your BBC is, when it is a not-for-profit corporation. Discriminating based on country, horrendously ugly copy protection, in spite of ALL its content being the result of public monies, hostility to Mac and Linux, and the rest.

Fix that for us, won't you? Since you're funding it, after all.

It's a damned sad day when an American for-profit company somehow manages to do better than a British non-profit (not snarky, really, I'm disappointed how poorly BBC is managing the tech currents).

Aww, geez. A great lady, an inspired author and a very well-grounded person just made a horrible oops.

I hope that she pulls back from everything, takes a deep breath, and realizes that reference materials are, in fact, fair game.

And, from a business standpoint, anything that adds to the Potterology universe increases the value of her series - gives it legs.

Finally, even if she's coming out with her own reference tome (and I hope that it's HUGELY expansive), there's enough room in the market for both. In fact they'll probably help each others' sales. Even if they didn't, hers would crush a third party's book, if one was to look at it that way.

LOVE Jo Rowling, I'm sure she'll come to her senses.

Dang. Here I was waiting for the new Ecstasy Pez dispensers to come out with such rapt anticipation that I completely forgot to pick up the GHB Aqua Dots.

BOY, mom's gonna be a-n-g-r-y...

Mighty ballsy of Arnold to admit what we already know. Outside of a minuscule group of Just Say No dead-enders, everyone knows weed ain't that big a thing.

Would have been impressed if Arnold DID anything about it, being governor and all. Pardons, sentence reductions, fighting to further decriminalize it, lobbying the evil Feds to, say, pick on terrorists and baby-killers rather than terminally ill cancer patients.

Guess that's the difference between screen heroes and real life ones.

While this should be expected, not an exception, for Presidential candidates to not grant retroactive immunity of vast, unknown crimes, it's very heartening that Obama did so.

Yet another reason to prefer him over that other leading Dem candidate...

You know, if al-Queda used these rifles, I'll bet Bush *never* would have gotten Congressional authorization to invade Iraq....

Good article, Taylor. Thanks!

I can see some of the points made, especially w/ the low-level GPU APIs. Yet it seems that, if that's what Valve is aiming for, they want to make their games available to the bleeding edge of PC gamers, at the top 10% of framerates, etc. Else they'll pick up their marbles and go home.

I think that, in this day and age of fast CPUs and decent (not overwhelmingly god-head fast, but good) GPUs for Mac, they'd be able to handle quite a lot. Perhaps have to toggle off some of the high end stuff every so often in the game. Especially for something like TF2 or FTF. It's be SO awesome if Valve did so. They'd be loved by the Mac millions! :)

Thanks again for that link. Nice one!

But what does that mean? We've got all the highend graphic hardware, the OS is less of a freakshow than developing for Windows or the consoles. Beyond that, they're not screwing APPLE, they're screwing Mac USERS.

And, note that literally EVERY single other developer brings their stuff over to OS X. Or, back in the day, have MacSoft do it for them. So it's not like it's impossible. It seems their statement doesn't coincide with the above facts, tho I'm not a game programmer.

Would love to see them change their mind. That's all. They'd be welcomed with open arms. :D

Haven't played TF2, or TFF (Team Fortress Forever, another excellent TF mod that is getting rave reviews (both iterations of TF are worthwhile, of course). But a Team Fortress Classic fan from way back.

SO jealous (I'm a Mac guy and Valve is an Apple haterz). You guys have fun, huh? Valve, if you're reading this SUPPORT THE MAC. JEEZUS GAWD Almighty.

Words can't describe how happy I am that not only one excellent TF mod is available, but two. Awesome for you guys!

Can't wait until the tyke turns five, so his parents can bake him a Battle Royale cake.

Cap -

Oh gawd, that's right. I must have blanked out the sensation of the tentacles clutching the sides of my teeth. (clutching head between my hands, dropping head to my knees and shivering slightly as the memory returns).

And yes. Octopi ARE wonderful, inquisitive animals. Remarkable.

It sucks being a carnivore at times. Let's also try to remember that more neatly packaged, yet glorious fish species are being over-harvested. And that changes we're doing to the environment eclipse the harm we do by fishing by many hundredfold. Reduce your footprint and convince others to do as well. You'll be doing a lot more good than by targetting this one culinary idiosyncracy. :D

I've had the appetizer, both in Seoul and in the States.

It's typically served on a (writhing) platter, drizzled with sesame oil, with chili sauce, soy sauce, salt & pepper on the side.

Making it even more - err - unique is that Koreans use metal chopsticks. Which give much better purchase to tentacles than wood ones.

Typical salaryman situation (I was there when I was an ad exec). It was a "let's freak out the Blond American" late night drinking situation. Most of the guys were native S Koreans, older, conservative, numbering about eight. There were two Korean-Americans (smart, vivacious women who were play-acting being 50s women for the crowd) and me. Just to set the situation up.

Parenthetically, I've travelled all over SE Asia, for extended periods of time (no hotels - eww!), generally ending up staying w/ friends that live there. Basically as a guest, living local. This entails accepting things we're unused to here, including eating some pretty oozy, twitchy, raw stuff. I've also been in Europe and greater Asia, where they also have oozy stuff.

So, in this case, it was the wrong whiteboy to be challenging to eat.

It's odd. Tastes like slightly fishy, crunchy gelatin. Not much flavor. Ever had octopus sushi? Like that only snappier, gooeyer and less flavor. If only your sushi gripped your chopsticks, binding them together, then clenched in a ball, then snapped against your cheek on its way to your mouth. Then once inside an explosion of squirming, tentacled-sucking, sesame-oiled salty chili cephalopodness. The sensation of chomping something between your molars that's fighting back is - err - unique. Kind of like a roller-coaster in your mouth.

Ate more than enough to assage the other people around the table. Actually wasn't too bad after the initial novelty. Tasteless, which is the real regret. (I've had live baby shrimp while in northern Thailand which is REALLY good, making up for its volatility - this was more kenetic but less flavorful)

What really made the event, though, was when one of my friends (a Sailor Moon appearing, Korean-American, perky, wholesome looking young woman) watched the Men doing Manly things. And without a word, scooped up several tentacles and deftly quaffed them. Took a whiskey shot, then did it again. The conservative Korean salarymen were shocked, still, silent, mouths literally agape. I started laughing and then so did they and she was the hero of the night.

(Afterward, she was SO annoyed at the whole group of men pushing her into the '50s role, but hey, business).

It's not something I'd do often. But it's not as bad as one would think. And it's something that's a part of their culture. If you're there as a guest, you owe them respect. They certainly give it to you when you're there - turnabout is fair.

Of course, this only applies within ethical limits. But they're young octopi, which spawn literally many hundreds per birth. Most would be ravaged by fish anyway. I feel much guiltier eating the tuna, the swordfish, the shark, the lobster that many of you probably blithely consume without a second thought. Well, I would if I ate them anymore. Which I don't. So let's not point fingers, okay? :)