Slashdot Mirror
Think Secret's Nick dePlume Revealed
Nick dePlume has a name, after all. Apple filed a lawsuit against the pseudonymous founder and editor of Think Secret, who correctly predicted two just-announced Apple products and has been the subject of several cease-and-desist letters from Apple in the past; dePlume's identity has now been revealed. Reader willibeast writes "The Harvard Crimson reports that 'Apple Computer, Inc. is suing a Harvard undergraduate who runs a popular Mac information website for disclosing details about unreleased Apple products, including two unveiled at this week's Macworld conference. Nineteen-year-old Nicholas M. Ciarelli '08, known on the internet as Nick dePlume, has run the site, thinksecret.com, since age 13.'"
It's one of the reasons that I detest Apple as a company and vowed never to give them one dime of my money no matter what.
People like to criticize Microsoft, but MS very rarely (if ever) uses lawsuits as weapons. Apple's historic behavior makes Microsoft look like a piker. The only reason no one really cares is because Apple has such a low marketshare anyway.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
a Commie license that forces developers to give away the fruits of their labour
Although the rest of your post is genuinely amusing (too funny to be a troll), I've got to partially agree with this one.
No one has the right to say that anyone else has a moral obligation to open-source their work. A while back, there was a poll that asked which company should contribute more to open source. The only correct answer was a post that said "Missing option: YOU." To say that someone else should give their work away for free, for the supposed public good, is extremely conceited.
I would venture to say that very few Slashdotters who support open source are doing it because they would like to improve on others' work and give it to the community. Most just don't want to pay for software, myself included. I'm not accusing open-source developers; those must be so genuinely interested in their work that they don't even want profit from it. I would also guess that many companies who support open-source don't really expect the freedom to be used fully (think of free software + pay support companies) or care more for the public image.
I don't think anybody really wants the public good for its own sake. They happen to be the part of the public that will receive the most good.
(okay, this is way offtopic. I'm going to leave now and finish reading Atlas Shrugged.)
What Apple should be doing is be "cool" like they used to be. I had respect for apple for a little while (the darwin thing). Now apple is in the ranks of SCO. Time to buy one of the iPod killers from HP or Sony and leave these "litigious bastards" behind. It's no big deal, We have IBM as the new cool.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.