As the video pointed out, only about half of government officials in Hong Kong are directly elected by the population. For the remainder, there is little pressure or incentive to get anything done in this regard.
I'm not entirely sure, but he may have taken exception to the following from your piece:
>Of course, you and I know that the latter is just a general form of the former, but somebody whose educational attainments have qualified them to sit behind a desk stamping passports doesn’t.
I wish I had screencapped it, but at one point I found myself in the middle of the screen, watching four swarm-like quadrants of fellow ships (top-left, top-right, bottom-left and bottom-right) all moving in relative unison. Anytime a swarm started to get close to me, I would inch away for a few seconds before the swarm turned back. I was able to stay in this middle, peaceful area for an extremely long time before random stray fire eventually finished me off.
Admittedly I know nothing of the regulations surrounding such a proposal, but what of some sort of revenue sharing? Donating to the project guarantees you a share in the village's revenue, where your cut is relative to your investment size? I fully understand how crazy of an idea this must sound.
It would be interesting to see a Kickstarter project devoted to this. It would need to get big fast (Friday deadline to submit an offer), and would need both the $440,000 minimum to purchase the village and ample money on top of that for renovation. It might be a hard sell for people who have no desire or ability to relocate to the village, but I am sure smarter folk than I could think of some sort of angle to generate attention to the project. Perhaps?
>Interestingly enough, Jobs himself was also considered for knighthood by the Queen of the United Kingdom, but the proposal was blocked by a former Prime Minister because Jobs declined to speak at a Labour Party conference.
That's fascinating to me. As an American who has never paid much attention to British knighthood, I am not knowledgeable about the process for selecting whom becomes a British knight. Could someone with the requisite knowledge perhaps elucidate on whether or not ostensibly petty politics get in the way of these things with regularity?
It seems absolutely absurd that someone who is being considered for knighthood could be denied of that because of something as minuscule as declining to speak at a party conference.
I would imagine that the Washington DC Metro area (DC, Northern Virginia, Maryland) has a reasonably sized proportion of that "(Rest of the) United States" total. The startup scene, and tech scene in general (largely thanks to defense contractors), are quite active here.
It would be helpful if you could enumerate the ways in which his/her statement was naive. It seems to be a relatively logical conclusion that being told or influenced not to say something is restrictive of innate freedom of speech, no matter how seemingly innocuous a reasoning established social or cultural norms are (ie. don't criticize the recently deceased, it's tactless).
>I know a lot of you don’t understand why I can’t disclose all conflicts of interest. The answer is that if I did, not that many people would want to talk to me in the direct, honest way that I prefer. As a reader you must remain aware of the inherent bias in everything you read, and form your own opinions accordingly.
So at first he admits that he cannot disclose all conflicts of interest, then states that, as readers, his audience must remain aware of his inherent bias. How are we to remain aware of the nature of these biases if all conflicts are not disclosed? And, in turn, how are we to trust anything that he writes when it is known that he has a) biases and conflicts and that b) he will not disclose all of the?
I understand that everyone has biases and conflicts of interest, that they are impossible to avoid and that it is highly impractical to disclose each and every one. But it seems intriguing, to me, to caution us to "be aware" while also telling us that he will not give us the information require for full awareness.
I cannot really help this inescapable feeling that the new design is somewhat obnoxious. It's just... there's something about the design that I just cannot get past. This will only serve to further decrease my already declining viewership.
tl;dr: Arrington discusses how he (and others who break news) usually first contact the subject of a news piece before publishing the story in order to inform them, get their side, or whatever else. Arrington says he apologized to the CEO of AdMeld for not doing that earlier this month. He then says that some CEOs he just does not trust, however, and will thus forgo the call. He then mentions Caterina Fake (of Hunch) as an example and proceeds to detail how he had the scoop on her departure from Hunch but refused to post it without contacting her first because of their pre-existing relationship. He then mentions that on two separate occasions he tried to warn Caterina of an impending news story only for her to then blog about the story herself and out-scoop him. He then calls her a liar about the entire affair and says he still will not explain what really happened because it's not his business. But then says that with Caterina, and others that he no longer trusts, he will break news stories on them without warning.
Edit: Initially mistakenly worded the part about the CEO of AdMeld. Corrected with thanks to the comment below pointing out the mistake.
Could have something to do with the fact that you can be shot from quite a bit greater distance than you can be stabbed with a knife, hit with a hammer, struck with a steel bar or cut with a broken bottle.
Leave it to an executive of the MAFIAA (Michael O'Leary) to contort basic civic principles to slander anyone who stands up against their ridiculous, rights-trouncing mode of operation.
Regardless of whether or not it is feasible to have 6,000 patent examiners perform this process, it still seems remarkably subjective: a given patent examiner, with all of his/her individual strengths, weaknesses, imperfections and idiosyncrasies, determines if s/he alone can solve the proposed problem and, if not, essentially says, "Aw shucks, this is patentable!"
And to me that is one of the many problems with (software) patents: it relies on an inherently biased, subjective process to determine whether this objective, rigorous piece of thought is worthy of a monopoly.
I think this will smack of the Streisand Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) over time. Facebook trying to call attention to privacy concerns over Google will, inevitably, as this piece exemplifies, call attention to their own privacy concerns. And the stigma of this hypocritical stance will also call attention to the overall maturity and sensibility of Facebook, as well.
Then again, the kind of people who are most likely to be affected by this entire affair are also the kind of people who already know this information about both companies. So maybe this will have little overall effect?