Oh, yes. You are right. Most of us have poked our heads back in the sand.

My husband and I often consider the pros and cons of losing individual cities. Which would have the biggest impact? West Coast or East Coast or Middle America? Seattle? San Francisco? Maybe Dallas. Or Indianapolis. Boston? Nashville? Which city's loss would have the biggest impact?

I suppose where the wake-up occurs doesn't matter. We will lose a city. And we will wake up.

Thank you for your post.

The main drift of Mr. Van Der Leun's article is that he thinks it's a clear possibility that the Bush administration, in despair over the lack of sufficient support by the American people for a real war against militant Islam, is deliberately letting down our homeland defenses so as to allow another devasting terror attack in this country which would be the only way to rouse the American people to the effort that is required for true victory. I think that this is an overwrought fantasy, and of a very familiar type. It involves a leap from one arguably true thought, "Another terrorist attack would make the American people more serious about fighting terror," to a completely absurd paranoid conspiracy theory, "The administration is therefore deliberately opening America to another attack."

This is the way conspiracy thinking always operates. The theorist notices that some party seems to have gained something from some event, e.g., Bush gained support and strength from 9/11. He therefore concludes that Bush _caused_ 9/11. Examples of the same kind of thing can be multiplied. Here's one I heard once. The rise of Nazism ultimately led to the conquest of Eastern Europe by Communist Russia. Therefore the Rothschilds (who in this scenario are both capitalists and Communists) deliberately helped Hitler come to power, knowing that that would bring a war between Germany and the Soviet Union, which the Soviet Union would win, leading to the Communist domination of Europe. The type of psyche that spins forth theories like this imagines that all history, in all its contingency and unpredictability, is actually completely controllable, and in fact, SOMEONE IS ACTUALLY CONTROLLING IT OR CAN CONTROL IT.

This type of thinking does not lead to any useful insights about the world. It is a detour from reality.

There are many detours in the world. Some even lead back to the main road.

He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.

Help! Did you include help tags in your applications? (I'd be lost without them.) Also, be sure to take extra time to develop your other help files. The Apple Help Viewer supports HTML, QuickTime, and also AppleScript. Take advantage of it! There isn't anything I hate more than going to the Help menu and finding there isn't any help.

This is the first thing your users see, and probably the single most important visible part of your application. It is the first chance you have at making an impression and the best chance to help establish your brand.

User Assistance. This is helping the user with the proper "next step" when performing a task. Less guesswork for the user on what to do next makes for a better experience.

So far in these articles, I have only dipped a toe or two into Aqua's pool. I have covered basic aspects of building an Aqua-compliant application, including the building of photo-illustrative/3D application icons. Now it's time to address other components of our Mac OS X application.

Due to the positioning of the Dock, remember that when you build an application, you have to be sure that new document window sizes and positions do not violate the Dock's space. Dock is temperamental and Dock loves his space. If you default to a window size that expands behind the dock, users will have a difficult time reaching the navigation and resize areas at the bottom of the screen. I can personally say that more than once I have been rather peeved that I couldn't get to an area of the window to resize because the default window settings always pop up behind the Dock. In addition, the new Dock in 10.1 will allow users to position their Dock location on either side of the screen as well.

This is the first thing your users see, and probably the single most important visible part of your application. It is the first chance you have at making an impression and the best chance to help establish your brand.

User Assistance. This is helping the user with the proper "next step" when performing a task. Less guesswork for the user on what to do next makes for a better experience.

Adopt Sheets. I really like the use of Sheets in OS X. The use of Sheets lets me know which window my dialogue belongs to without hijacking my system.

The simple fact is that, when all other factors are equal, where will consumers spend their money? I believe that in the long run, the best looking, easiest-to-use applications will also be the most successful. I think that's why Apple encourages developers to write programs that are 100 percent Aqua-compliant.

At WWDC, I listened to Apple representatives make some excellent points about taking the time to build a 100%-compliant Aqua application, and I think all developers need to look beyond the code and listen to what the folks at Apple have to say