Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 394 Editor's Choice: 41
-
If you didn't see this coming
[Read the article: If you care about your rights, don't buy an iPhone]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]you were pretty foolish. And there is nothing evil or draconian about it.
It's hard enough for a company to support it's own hardware and software, let alone having to take into account interaction with hacks generated by boy geniuses working out of their basements.
You might argue that Apple should have provided unlocking software, but you would be wrong. Providers lock the phones, and providers unloock them. Apple has no say in that.
Holy shit, I just defended Apple. I better get inside before it starts raining frogs.
-
Thoughts
[Read the article: Turn out the lights, Michigan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]AT&T didn't grow too big and collapse of their own weight. Seimens and Ericsson financed the MCI lawsuit that led to the breakup, because they were unable to sell phone switches in North America when AT&T bought only from themselves. You can't say that a company that brought us the highest quality, least expensive phone service we've ever had while generating enormous profits failed in any way except not paying enough lawyers.
I don't know about recent history, but I always thought of Michigan as the ultimate welfare state and I think that has led to many of their problems. I traveled there with a native about 25 years ago, during the previous Very Hard Times for the Auto Industry. No time limit for unemployment benefits, very large checks for people who weren't working. I met a man who bought a sailboat in the middle of an 18 month period of unemployment. Not an environment that is condusive to change. But once you got out of Detroit (is there an uglier city in America?) it was incredibly beautiful.
The UAW has changed quite a bit, but they were one of the last bastions of communism in American industry. Record profits that should have gone to investors who supported the companies or into R&D were instead soaked up by the next outrageous union contract, so no new products and no new capital. Chrysler set some kind of record by basically building the same 2 cars with different body styles, and only those 2 cars, for 15 years, and was just as bankrupt on the day Lee left as they were the day he got there as a result. A full day's pay just for clocking in, payment for delivery of cars that are picked up at the factory, guaranteed raises and promotions with no regard for performance. Pay attention, because teachers get the same deal and we all know what schools are like now.
I don't think anything is really going to change there until everyone born in Michigan leaves and is replaced by someone from somewhere else. Entitlement cultures die hard.
-
What's it about?
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know about Brothers and Sisters, because I undertook a vow to never watch Norma Rae in any vehicle again. I think if she were to sit down and watch everything she had ever done she would realize that the best she has ever been on screen was in Smokey and the Bandit, which would cause her to have an apocalyptic emotional breakdown worthy of any of the over wrought, over acted characters she has cursed us with in the last 20 years.
But Brotherhood and Dexter I do get, and I do watch. Those are all about control. Michael's absolute intolerance for anything that violates his not-as-fucked-up-as-you-might-think-at-first-glance moral code makes him one of the most fascinating characters on film or television. Tommy is trying to control his world through the system he believes in, and failing miserably - his only real successes come when he adopts the practices of those he is trying to fight, which leads him to self destructive epiphanies and his rift with Judd. I can easily see him reaching the White House as he tries to control more and more of the world around him just so he can have 3 square blocks that are exactly as he wants them, only to kill himself in the Oval Office when he realizes that he will never control enough to ensure even that much. Eileen is too weak to try to get what she wants by controlling everything (or anything) around her, so she carves out a little niche where everything is as she likes it for a while and hides it carefully. And Rose shows us that certain women are going to attempt to impose their will on the world using emotional blackmail and sexuality (!!!) well into their 70's and possibly beyond, but it's all our fault because she is stuck in a world where the only real man around is her oldest son.
And Dexter is Monk without the whining, cuteness, and sight gags. This is OCD taken to the Nth degree, where the things he can't control through strict attention to detail are killed in elaborate rituals where the most terrifying aspect of all is their incredible neatness. He didn't want to rid the world of the Ice Truck Killer, probably the most evil person he had ever encountered, even before discovering who he was. He worshipped him, saw someone with the same perspective and needs as himself, someone who could help him make the world a more orderly place - or more correctly someone that he could help, because one of the things that makes this character so fascinating is his underlying submissive nature. Dexter is a subby looking for someone to dominate him the way his father did, to the point where he is literally turning his oh so passive girlfriend into a bionic version of herself so he will have someone with an intact moral compass who is capable of bossing him around.
But the thing I like best about all of these people is that none of them would tolerate Sally Field in their world, or that chick from Grey's Anatomy. That makes them all alright in my book.