Couldn't you just line a ziplock bag with a couple layers of tinfoil? Also, when you put your phone in there it cuts off its WiFi, cellular connection, and 3g/4g, which means your phone is useless while it's in there. You might as well just take the battery out when you don't want to be tracked and save yourself $400.
I used to work in a flavor company. "Natural" strawberry flavor also uses an ingredient extracted from rotten eggs. It has to have at least some of what it says it is (like strawberry extract) to be called what it is, but this can be like one drop in a barrel. Also, if you add even the smallest amount of natural flavor to an artificial flavor, you can call it "Natural and Artificial."
Basically, the artificial flavors are really cheap, so people try to avoid the natural stuff when customers don't care.
But on that note, there are some good ingredients, since some flavors are too hard to create unless you use the real stuff (like black tea -- you just overbrew it to make a concentrate).
We're ruling out that the ring effects people around it. I don't think we were ever told whether the eagles could resist its evil. Also, Frodo had to leave the company before this plan would have worked, since he started to realize the ring was corrupting the people around him.
The more likely case is that the Chinese regime is trying to silence microbloggers. They've been the only real voice of what's going on there with all the recent political turmoil, and there are media outside of China who are picking up what they're saying.
I was going to get an iPad a while back. Basically, unless you're doing basic Web browsing or just playing games, you need a keyboard to do any real work on a tablet. Also, they're light, but still not much different than a MacBook Air - and they're not much cheaper. Tablets still just seem like a novelty to me - toys for gaming and watching movies.
If you want a serious tablet though, check out the Modbooks. They're regular Mac notebooks hacked to use touchscreens. They're good if you do art on your notebook, since you can basically draw on the screen, you get all the features of a full-fledged notebook, and they were around long before the iPad.
Graphics taking a backseat to the story would be awesome. I think indie games are showing that gamers don't care too much about graphics as long as the gameplay/story are good.
Well said. I'm a journalist and photographer by trade. Any work I'm commissioned to do, I charge for. Anything I do for fun I release under Creative Commons for anyone to use.
We need to make a living, of course, but if you hold onto everything, it will die with you. Whereas in the public domain, your work becomes immortal.