Three Things

First off, this article.

India losing it’s competitive edge? In the short term, sure. Weak infrastructure, unprepared and inefficient government. So if you needed your reason to go back to shouts of ‘USA, USA!’, there you have it. Just don’t count on it to last too much longer. All those H1B students returning home from US graduate schools will invest in the infrastructure, which will in turn bring more students home, and so on. Unless we did the intelligent thing and kept them here, but I so often forget the harsh realities of this post-9/11 world.

Second, this one.

I have no real problem with the content of the article, but as I was reading it I couldn’t help but feel like it was written by a third-grader. I understand that the new wave of online journalism enables anyone anywhere to become a ‘legitimate’ source for news and opinions, but we shouldn’t let that come at the cost of intelligent writing and thought-provoking articles. Poor writing leads to poor credibility, good writing lends credibility. In an age of wikis & blogs where unsubstantiated rumors and unverified sources pass as fact, determining a sense of credibility is key.

Finally, this.

Apple has finally grown tired of Psystar’s antics and filed suit. It will be interesting to see how well a vague EULA stands up in a legal court, but I wouldn’t have too much hope in Psystar making it out alive. Am I surprised? No, not in the least. Apple sued NYC for using a clip-art apple on it’s environmental campaign, of course they’re going to sue someone blatently selling non-Apple Mac-clones. My hope? Enough people got their hands on one to figure out how to reverse engineer the EFI emulation they’ve been using and get the osx86 success rate even higher. After quite a bit of tinkering, I have OSX Leopard running on an HP Tablet PC – and yes, the tablet works, pressure sensitivity and all. Is it perfect? Of course not – Leopard isn’t meant for an SSE2 processor, which is where most of the problems arise. But it is pretty cool? I think so. I’d like to try it on my desktop (SSE3 capable) sometime soon, but I need a large external harddrive, since the possibility of destroying everything on it is very real.

Also, I will meet the Chinese kids tomorrow night for dinner and tour the high school with them on Friday. I bought them some cheap plastic lead-covered novelties as a welcoming gift, to show them what we hold dear in this country. USA! USA!