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For almost five years now, the neighborhood a quarter of a mile away from me has been able to enjoy cable internet from our local, and only, provider. Meanwhile, I've had to settle for second rate brodband from DirecWAY (now Hughes Net), and now I get my broadband from a local small business that transmits via radio waves. Neither of these alternatives are even half the speed of the cable internet that others enjoy. I may get 1,600 kbps down, while my cousin with cable gets 10,000 kbps down. I called the cable company since our land butts up against the neighborhood that gets cable and they said it would cost around $8,000 to run cable a quarter of a mile. The government makes it so that no other cable competitors can enter the area, and there is no initiative for the current company to get my business unless I drop a ton of money. It's time to start getting some competition into the cable internet industries. It's time to deregulate the industry. It's time to have more than one cable provider in any given area. It's time to end this government enforced anti-competitive activity. Rates will drop, and more people will be able to enjoy truly high-speed internet.

Verizon has just finally won the battle to bring FiOS to my county ... the government was kissing Comcast's butt for years and kept making stupid excuses.

I agree with you 100%. It's not really government enforced per-se, it's simply that government has not approved for the opening of the market. Right now the cable companies enjoy a monopoly in the areas they control, although there are a few areas of overlap. They have achieved and maintained this goal by convincing the FCC that since THEY have sunk all of the money into building and continuously upgrading their systems and infrastructure in their areas that no one else should be allowed to come in an use their infrastructure. So far, this has worked. This is somewhat true with the phone companies as well. Where I live we have SBC/AT&T, but a few miles away it's Verizon. Now, I can NOT get Verizon as my home service, but I can get MCI or several other smaller providers. That makes no sense at all.

I see what you're saying, but it's still ridiculous that it's allowed to go on. The last rationale I heard for it being this way was that the government didn't want cable running everywhere, but I don't know how true that is.

Admittedly it's a bit apocryphal and I should really do the research before continuing to talk about this stuff.

You DON'T NEED this update to run Windows 7 on a Mac in Boot Camp. This update is more or less targeted at newer Macs that already shipped with Snow Leopard that are experiencing problems installing 7. (see link)

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/windows-classic-linux-other-os/174668-windows-7-27-imac-black-screen.html

Windows 7 installed on Boot Camp 2.0 in Leopard also works fine.

 
  ...more ways people post crap before doing any research.

Just for your own information...

sync issues:

http://mashable.com/2009/11/09/iphone-windows-7-sync/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330485-263.html
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/intel-responds-on-iphone-sync-issues/
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/ipod-iphone-software-apps/139937-i-have-mind-boggling-iphone-3g-sync-problem.html
http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/97665

Random shutdowns/decreased battery life:

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2009/09/iphone-os-31-problems-random-shutdown-poor-battery-life-bricked-iphone-slow-performance.html
http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/16/iphone-31-bugs-random-freeze-shut/
http://iphone-chat.org/31-random-shutdown-and-battery-death-iphone-3g-65401/
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/iphone-therefore-iblog/2009/09/iphone-shutdown.html

As far as overheating/burning/asploading, it isn't a widespread problem...but...well...I'll just let the 103 million results speek for themselves:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS354US354&q=iphone+fire

Ok. You really seem to be confusing US based companies with US companies who manufacturer their products in the US

Yes, they drive Fords in Europe. They were also built in Europe. Ford has manufacturing plants in Belgium, France, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turnkey, and the UK.
Windows may have been designed here, but the actual physical products are made in China. Again, MS isn't cranking out Windows CDs and manuals in Redmond.
iPods are manufactured on contract to Inventec Appliances based in Taipai, Taiwan. iPods are physically assembled by Inventec (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. in Shanghai, China.
Cows and corn I will give you - food is still one of the rare commodities we still do some exporting with.

If you really believe that the US is an exporting powerhouse, think again. Around WWII, we were by far the leading exporting country in the world. We have moved to the #1 biggest importing country in the world.

So sure, continue if you want. You are 1 for 4 so far.

Or use an Apple notebook. Their products are constantly bursting into flames and exploding.

A few comments:

First and foremost, if you haven't seen it already, check out the mod someone did to the dock to make it "rainbow glass". (The rainbow effect might not be your thing, but you can use slight variations of what they did to change it to any color of "tinted glass" you like, making it much easier to see.)

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=516253&posted=1

If you want a non-transparent top menu bar, see here:

http://www.manytricks.com/blog/?id=10

I agree on Time Machine.... It's very cool, overall, but needs a little more work. (For example, Apple's solution to incompatibilities with their Aperture application is to exclude Aperture's photo database from your backups. Great... so if I'm a pro photographer, Time Machine can't even back up the most important data on my whole system for me?) It also needs a fix (supposedly coming soon) to allow using a shared disk off an Apple Airport Extreme router.

Because blogs are a way to reach audiences that are not reached through traditional marketing outlets

Yeah, because Apple has a real problem "reaching audiences." I mean, who ever heard of an iPod? They seem to think that TV commercials and word-of-mouth alone will sell the things.

they increase the amount of feedback you receive from your customers, and they provide a way to mine your user base for ideas.

If only there were some website where Apple could gather user opinions and feedback.

-- Brian Boyko
-- Professional Blogger.

It shows.

if you are part of a linux community, you get help faster, friendlier and for free. and you after giving advice to others have even a good conscience of being helpful! ... but for the average "i-do-not-want-to-learn-but-it-must-just-work" user, you are perfectly right!

The Macintosh has a "community" as well. Most minority platforms do. Heck, there are even some places where Windows users can go to get advice. (Usually having to do with viruses and spyware, but still....)

Apple User Groups
http://www.macfixit.com/
http://www.macintouch.com/
http://www.macosx.com/
http://www.mac-forums.com/
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=78

And then there are the comp.sys.mac.* newsgroups, and others.