Thawte does have a free email certificate. This allows a community verfication network to validate and certify users in a very real way. Since the identities are traceable via digital signature to the real world sender, this could allow for MTAs to allow though the Thawte certified email automatically. That could become an alternative in some scenarios, especially if popularized in conjunction with GPG/PGP style signing. Add these authorities as "root-level" authorities that are always trusted.
Again the obscurity and technical level puts these at a disadvantage without a more thorough presence in popular consciousness.
Flip the bit to PR. Imagine the black eye that Fortune,/. or a dozen other (especially say, the Register) would try to convey if the offspring actually DID get seen using these products. Heck that would probably spin into another 20 cents off the stock on Wall Street. Ballmer can't win this one. Well, he could if the Redmond Juggernaut could put out a superior product and consumer-friendly offering and..... ok, maybe he can't win this one.
I'm afraid I need to disagree. When the CRTC put the Telcos and Cable Companies at each other's throats through deregulation a number of years ago, both became full common carriers as far as incumbents. If you have the plant in the ground (twisted pair, Coax, fiber) you're the incumbent, and need to provide access to other ILECs and resellers and providers. The aspect of the fine line you outline on #1 is exactly where the CRTC is still moving the guidelines around, and that is the primary opportunity to actually have a chance at this.
As for the DOCSIS, I subscribe to Shaw Digital Phone, and it uses the DOCSIS system, so should I also be paying this "new" premium, or is it built into my fees, or what? They claim it is over a SEPARATE segment of the bandwidth spectrum on the coax, for trouble-free service. If Vonage is being charged a premium, I would like to know if they are getting the access to this segment that Shaw claims as well. If they are simply over the main cable modem (which I believe they are given what I've read on their service) the fee is a bogus rider that will offer them next to no benefit. Same goes of course for their customers.
As for point 3, I've had pretty good and consistent performance for downstream bandwidth, so I don't know how Shaw can argue that. Outside of my personal experience, the fee I and others pay for the cable internet service is what is to provide a high-quality service. There isn't an additional fee in that agreement for the type of traffic.
If this two-tier nonsense continues, it may even allow the resellers a vector in by having "unregulated" bandwidth provisioned on the plant, and THEY can argue that their traffic is theirs with equal priority to all the general traffic, and market it thus. Shaw is very clever and occasionally can be just asses to the customers (trust me, if Telus hadn't screwed up even worse, I wouldn't be all on Shaw) but the CRTC and the ISPs are gradually getting the things straightened out.
But heck, that's just my opinion from working for a major ISP for a while. YMMV and IANACRTCD (I am not a CRTC Doofus)
So the US can impose tariffs to it's NAFTA partners when they disagree with how the production is done and whether it is "unfair", but when the effect is only at a citizen/employee level, there is no recourse, and ultimately US foreign policy AND protectionist levels and boundaries is set on behalf of big business.
Take care in the argument that even if we assume the DMCA abortion didn't exist and that there was simply pure copyright, you may then do whatever you wish with your software and hardware within your own premises for your own person. Note that you may *not* redistribute or share significant or indeed much beyond a minor piece, of any copyrighted work, including the compiled code and source code of the software. The distribution of the modified software constitutes copyright infringement, and is plainly illegal in a large number of jurisdictions as the product and software is copyrighted by Apple Computer.
If you did the hack yourself, or followed a nice faq, or possibly applied a diff (this may contain large portions of the code, so that's a bit questionable in some diff formats) then you can go ahead and supercharge your BMW as it were. You get no support, and you may *NOT* redistribute the version you have enhanced.
So minus the high-horses of freedom, beer and civil liberties, copyright law has been upheld for a long while, and indeed is a big piece that protects the GNU code and other free software, so I should hope the moral preachers in these threads are looking at their hypocrisy while they rant.
The spectrum I can see to some degree, but I'm curious as to why it isn't shut down in pieces. There's a LOT of bandwidth in there, and you can trim the broadcast spectrum a chunk of channels at a time without causing a bit pile of chaos. This is to launch the digital TV market with larger mass, which is just commercial interest. That will cause it to take longer for the market to become efficient and competitive in theory. In practice, it's just more channels and features for junk programming.:-)
Why is this being legislated? Broadcast could represent a major opportunity as a niche system. All that infrastructure will just be junked? There's a lot of legs left in those transmitters and in the analog network. Economically, this doesn't make any sense.
Add to that the landfill mess this looks to cause. That's a LOT of analog TVs that go to essentially worthless in very short order. We're already dealing with too much computer waste going into the landfills, and now the US is going to legislate putting a very large pile of still functioning and capable televisions in there all at once?
Brilliant. Special interest groups at work again in the legislature it would seem.
In a previous position, our ISP set up a half million mailbox system scalable upwards to multiple millions. The outline above is exactly on the mark, although I would add that we had inbound proxy directors as the mailboxes were spread across various redundant server pairs.
Additionally, look into using an LDAP system for the user admin and settings, not the internal databases most email servers use. If the system is externalized, that lookup is offloaded, the admin on the users is much easier and many different systems can be configured to take the load from it without overhauling the user accounts.
In a previous position, our ISP set up a half million mailbox system scalable upwards to multiple millions. The outline above is exactly on the mark, although I would add that we had inbound proxy directors as the mailboxes were spread across various redundant server pairs.
Additionally, look into using an LDAP system for the user admin and settings, not the internal databases most email servers use. If the system is externalized, that lookup is offloaded, the admin on the users is much easier and many different systems can be configured to take the load from it without overhauling the user accounts.
I agree that you only have to respect the letter, but take note that the interpretation of the courts often takes your intent into account when you appear before them.
It doesn't apply to all lawyers or judges, but I got stuffed into a jury for a tax evasion trial in Canada, and the judge, when instructing us, made it very clear that we needed to infer the intent from the statements of the defendant and from the evidence to determine whether the non-payment of the tax and attribution of the value was done intentionally or whether the valuations were legitimate. In the opinion of the jury, they were not, and the intent was to defraud the people of Canada by evading payment of taxes.
At least from that very limited experience, it's not taken kindly to if it appears like you are attempting to evade the law or manipulate the interpretation to your own advantage to an excessive degree. If you're ever up on that sort of charge, and you're going to argue the letter of the law, you'd better hope for a great lawyer and trial by judge alone.:-)
I believe I didn't make my point clear when I changed to the book. I was no longer referring to an individual photo in that case, but to the book copyright located at the very start in the majority of cases, with the catalog and Library of Congress info as well as publication bits and notes. That copyright is held in a rather, well, obscure place in realtion to the work, and that's where I draw the parallel with the HTML source.
I can see how I wasn't very clear on the distinguishing points, as I was dealing more with the attribution mode and not with an image in the specific. The magazine analogy you make is actually quite valid in my personal opinion, and that's the level of attribution I would feel is in the spirit of the law, both for copyright and creative commons. It's attributed there, in conjunction with the work itself. Very obvious. Kind of like a GPL license agreement coming up in a license dialog at install. It's obvious, even if you don't read it in detail.
I see your point. I look at it from the intent point of view again. Choosing a 1 pt font is essentially looking to make the attribution unreadable on the main page. From the view source point of view, it was more looking at the copyright notice on the whole book, where the copyright is noted at the very beginning on the "legalese" page with the Library of Congress, publication and other legal and cataloging bits.
It's that sort of attitude that spawns the two billion lawyers running rampant throughout the world. There is a general principle, even in law, about intent and whether it is reasonable to expect that a one point font conveys the source to the audience and viewers. I'd put pretty good odds that a jury would say that it doesn't, and that 95% of the people looking at it would say that sort of attribution is being an ass.
The law is intended to be used and interpreted by reasonably people. Unfortunately, reasonable is subjective, so theres going to be disagreement. But if you respect the author, the work, and the spirit and intent of the law, I think the "trouble" of contacting someone should at least be attempted. You are using a work that is copyrighted in total in the case of the image. In classic copyright law, you need written permission to do that. So fine, don't use the CC, and see how it's so much easier to follow classic copyright law. Then you might agree that Dvorak is being a bit narrow-minded on this. Or at least, he's not acting like a reasonable and respecting individual. Not that he usually does in the articles, but that's his style in his writing.
Perhaps if you actually looked into it rather than knee-jerk looking to prove it wrong, you'd find that Cosmos-1 is ONLY powered by the solar sails after orbit insertion. No hydrazine corrective thrusters, no other propellant capabilities. The tips on the Mariner series aided in studying the solar wind environment, but they did not assist in propulsion or stabilization to any measurable extent.
This is the first spacecraft propelled completely by solar wind.
I find it kind of hard to understand how the idea of Open Source, which is use it and adjust it as you will, is around the free flow of information, ideas and implementation. It appears that the process of patch, port and publish is broken, and yet Mr. Drepper takes issue with which platforms he feels are "worthy". He OK'd PPC, x86, and even ARM, but drops other microcontroller and microprocessors like the M68K, PA-RISC, etc.
So basically, while Red Hat and others have often vaunted the idea that Open Source can save you from your vendor if they orphan your machine (hmm... PA-RISC looks like it fits, as does M68K), now Ulrich says that those cause too many problems and shouldn't even be supported. So we'll be open and free and without proprietary hardware allegiences as long as we like the platforms.
The sad part is he uses the GCC model and sequence as one of the talking points, and that team and process was so badly flawed and restrictive that it has forked a number of times over the years to varying degrees. Which I think is good, as it was groups of developers trying to move forward in various ways when the process broke.
I'd venture here that in some cases, IF the main development team is OK with supporting as a tier-1 platform a new architecture or operating system, then by all means let them do so, and if that puts a few bumps in the road, that development community has to judge if the additional time, effort and coordination is worth it. Otherwise, there are a number of secondary-platform models as well. OS X has fink which has some dedicated crews modifying the trees with compliant (usually) patches that get things working on OS X and Darwin. At one point, the GNU tools didn't work on Linux well, only Solaris/SunOS and other variants.
Let the developers allocate their time where they want to. If Ulrich thinks it's wasting his time, then don't contribute to those projects if the majority of the developers think it's worthwhile.
Then the rant of his attacks Sun and says it should be dropped due to proprietary considerations. Except that the world changed when he was buried in Linux, and Solaris is open source, the chip itself is to an open specification (not so with Intel chips OR bios). The GCC platform spawned on those machines, and with Sun catering to educational institutes, his compiler wouldn't be here either, as it would probably be evolving at the speed of Hurd.
Unfortunately for him, I'm not one of the violent minorities, but then any generalization will miss a few. I use Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and even a bit of Solaris here and there. Each platform has strengths and weaknesses. Save us from the tyranny of the plain, simple vanilla majority that would paint the world a non-offensive and uniform beige.
Welcome to "we don't know because we haven't tried much else as we've been stuck in that mode since the crew at Xerox first spawned it into the world".
While I'm not a die-hard fan of Raskin, I'm very happy that he's pounding out working examples of alternate approaches, and getting some attention. If enough ideas are flowing between enough people, it's very likely we'll hit on something truly revolutionary and useful in the exchanges.
One cannot simply hear the answer, for the answer is inside you waiting for you to quiet your mind so that it may rise to the surface. To achieve this, meditate upon the forgotten reference that was and is a part of the unseen aspect of the article. Meditate upon the vista of this.
You might wish to look again. OpenOffice is native on Linux and Windows, and NeoOffice/J on Mac is actually fairly polished. Using some Java widgets and Mac bindings, about the only downside is a bit of a slower startup time, but there's no "Open X Windows, start OpenOffice, click on the file I just got in the email as a word Doc" BS anymore.
*sigh* There is actually an obtuse sense to it, and I think going back to the "generation flag" with "Java 5" is actually quite sensible. If you look at the numbering conventions for Java and the reasoning (marketspeak) for the namechange it has some sense to it.
The major version number denotes a backward compatibility change that in all likelihood the Java navigators have realized probably will never happen. So market via the second number, which is meant to denote an inability to run that version on older VMs and you're set with a much better reflection of the evolution of the platform. The third number is for bugfixes and minor API enhancements. 1.1.8 should run on a 1.1.2 VM for instance, but 1.2 will not necessarily run on a 1.1.8 VM.
It's not that obvious, and they CAN win it. Apple has gone to great lengths to not actively associate the Apple name with iTMS, iTunes and iPod. They have done a great deal to try and get those brands to stand on their own and not leverage the Apple brand in the identity. Now it's also obvious to most people with a functioning brain stem that Apple owns them all and runs them all, but the point is the trademark infringement.
For that matter, who associates Apple with the Beatles? The Beatles brands stands on its own as well. I think the whole issue is a load of crap, and Apple has reasonably and legitimately upheld its part of the agreement. It's not the Apple Music Store, the Apple iTunes Music store or anything like that.
Wishful thinking is the way Stallman has always approached solutions, and does so in his Java trap article. Getting more software written in Java with a greater demand on the platform and wider popularity is probably the easiest way to get more hackers working on teh GNU Classpath and related projects including the GNU Java Compiler.
Computer science builds on itself, and on the work of others, both free and non-free. For years, Stallman's stuff only ran on Sun, as he pointed out. For years, many of us waited eagerly for the first HURD implementations. Good thing a pragmatist by the name of Torvalds came along and WROTE one rather than endlessly redesigning it.
Results breed demand breed developer interest. Cygwin arose at least in part due to Unix programmers working on Windows and wanting the strength of their environment to be there. Demand and need.
Interesting that Apple is the only ones leading the way into new markets in a convincing way with the iPod.
As more people play with Cocoa, there's a good chance developers will like it enough to write software for it. It's a very solid environment. That plus all the Unix goodness under it with Fink and Darwinports, and even in this Windows-world, I'm thinking.... there a few million potential customers on Mac, and they are loyal and spend money for quality. If I get $10 of of every 10th customer....
As this drifts off topic, I suggest looking at Darwin, which is all the guts of Mac OS/X. You pay for the pretty face, but the engine is free if you want it. Corporations make money for shareholders in the case of public corporations. Let me know when your home stereo system gives you control of the hardware and software it is running internally. So you can mod the idiotic station name display on the tuner.
The puritans are running amok outside of reality again.
Wandering through the link of iRiver nordic, and looking at the Swedish site, the 20 GB player (no colour screen, 20 GB, older generation) is 5.495 Kr, which translates into $985.90 Canadian Loonies at today's exchange rate, or $765 US bucks for our southern neighbours.
I may not have a math degree, but if the low end iRiver is more than the 40 Gig iPod, I really don't understand "cheaper".
Of course, the Swedish price may not hold and may be artificially high at this point, but that's the only info I have to go on to gauge price. The built-in FM tuner is kind of cool. Looks like a freaking gadget hell though. The iPod is designed a lot nicer IMHO.
That is a key point. The Innovator's Dilemma outlines this pretty darned well as a market out-evolves the customer's needs.
On the flip side of the speed, in which it's always nicer to be faster, betting on IBM as the supplier will make a huge difference. Motorola (until now when it's almost too late) has never been very serious about their chip business. IBM holds some of the most innovative patents on chip fab currently on the cutting edge. Apple is in line with one of the serious competitors to Intel, and on top of that IBM is banking on the PowerPC line themselves, thus it's one of the better bets Apple has placed on a supplier in some time.
Slashdot Mirror
Again the obscurity and technical level puts these at a disadvantage without a more thorough presence in popular consciousness.
Flip the bit to PR. Imagine the black eye that Fortune, /. or a dozen other (especially say, the Register) would try to convey if the offspring actually DID get seen using these products. Heck that would probably spin into another 20 cents off the stock on Wall Street. Ballmer can't win this one. Well, he could if the Redmond Juggernaut could put out a superior product and consumer-friendly offering and..... ok, maybe he can't win this one.
As for the DOCSIS, I subscribe to Shaw Digital Phone, and it uses the DOCSIS system, so should I also be paying this "new" premium, or is it built into my fees, or what? They claim it is over a SEPARATE segment of the bandwidth spectrum on the coax, for trouble-free service. If Vonage is being charged a premium, I would like to know if they are getting the access to this segment that Shaw claims as well. If they are simply over the main cable modem (which I believe they are given what I've read on their service) the fee is a bogus rider that will offer them next to no benefit. Same goes of course for their customers.
As for point 3, I've had pretty good and consistent performance for downstream bandwidth, so I don't know how Shaw can argue that. Outside of my personal experience, the fee I and others pay for the cable internet service is what is to provide a high-quality service. There isn't an additional fee in that agreement for the type of traffic.
If this two-tier nonsense continues, it may even allow the resellers a vector in by having "unregulated" bandwidth provisioned on the plant, and THEY can argue that their traffic is theirs with equal priority to all the general traffic, and market it thus. Shaw is very clever and occasionally can be just asses to the customers (trust me, if Telus hadn't screwed up even worse, I wouldn't be all on Shaw) but the CRTC and the ISPs are gradually getting the things straightened out.
But heck, that's just my opinion from working for a major ISP for a while. YMMV and IANACRTCD (I am not a CRTC Doofus)
Looks like nothing is changing.
If you did the hack yourself, or followed a nice faq, or possibly applied a diff (this may contain large portions of the code, so that's a bit questionable in some diff formats) then you can go ahead and supercharge your BMW as it were. You get no support, and you may *NOT* redistribute the version you have enhanced.
So minus the high-horses of freedom, beer and civil liberties, copyright law has been upheld for a long while, and indeed is a big piece that protects the GNU code and other free software, so I should hope the moral preachers in these threads are looking at their hypocrisy while they rant.
The spectrum I can see to some degree, but I'm curious as to why it isn't shut down in pieces. There's a LOT of bandwidth in there, and you can trim the broadcast spectrum a chunk of channels at a time without causing a bit pile of chaos. This is to launch the digital TV market with larger mass, which is just commercial interest. That will cause it to take longer for the market to become efficient and competitive in theory. In practice, it's just more channels and features for junk programming. :-)
Add to that the landfill mess this looks to cause. That's a LOT of analog TVs that go to essentially worthless in very short order. We're already dealing with too much computer waste going into the landfills, and now the US is going to legislate putting a very large pile of still functioning and capable televisions in there all at once?
Brilliant. Special interest groups at work again in the legislature it would seem.
In a previous position, our ISP set up a half million mailbox system scalable upwards to multiple millions. The outline above is exactly on the mark, although I would add that we had inbound proxy directors as the mailboxes were spread across various redundant server pairs.
Additionally, look into using an LDAP system for the user admin and settings, not the internal databases most email servers use. If the system is externalized, that lookup is offloaded, the admin on the users is much easier and many different systems can be configured to take the load from it without overhauling the user accounts.
In a previous position, our ISP set up a half million mailbox system scalable upwards to multiple millions. The outline above is exactly on the mark, although I would add that we had inbound proxy directors as the mailboxes were spread across various redundant server pairs. Additionally, look into using an LDAP system for the user admin and settings, not the internal databases most email servers use. If the system is externalized, that lookup is offloaded, the admin on the users is much easier and many different systems can be configured to take the load from it without overhauling the user accounts.
It doesn't apply to all lawyers or judges, but I got stuffed into a jury for a tax evasion trial in Canada, and the judge, when instructing us, made it very clear that we needed to infer the intent from the statements of the defendant and from the evidence to determine whether the non-payment of the tax and attribution of the value was done intentionally or whether the valuations were legitimate. In the opinion of the jury, they were not, and the intent was to defraud the people of Canada by evading payment of taxes.
At least from that very limited experience, it's not taken kindly to if it appears like you are attempting to evade the law or manipulate the interpretation to your own advantage to an excessive degree. If you're ever up on that sort of charge, and you're going to argue the letter of the law, you'd better hope for a great lawyer and trial by judge alone. :-)
I can see how I wasn't very clear on the distinguishing points, as I was dealing more with the attribution mode and not with an image in the specific. The magazine analogy you make is actually quite valid in my personal opinion, and that's the level of attribution I would feel is in the spirit of the law, both for copyright and creative commons. It's attributed there, in conjunction with the work itself. Very obvious. Kind of like a GPL license agreement coming up in a license dialog at install. It's obvious, even if you don't read it in detail.
From a technical point of view, I would agree completely with you. I would note in both cases however that it should be a copyright attribution, and permission under classic copyright would be required of the general form: "This image create by John Smith, © 2005, used with permission". That's classic copyright compliance as I understand it, IANAL as is probably obvious. ;-)
The HTML source is a lot more interesting, as it is there, easy to read, and viewable if you look for it. I would point out that the copyright notice on a book is just inside the front cover, and not slathered over every page, so it is quite legitimate in my opinion, as it's where it can reasonably be expected to be. Much like a book, people aren't going to see the © without knowing where to look or doing a very thorough search.
The law is intended to be used and interpreted by reasonably people. Unfortunately, reasonable is subjective, so theres going to be disagreement. But if you respect the author, the work, and the spirit and intent of the law, I think the "trouble" of contacting someone should at least be attempted. You are using a work that is copyrighted in total in the case of the image. In classic copyright law, you need written permission to do that. So fine, don't use the CC, and see how it's so much easier to follow classic copyright law. Then you might agree that Dvorak is being a bit narrow-minded on this. Or at least, he's not acting like a reasonable and respecting individual. Not that he usually does in the articles, but that's his style in his writing.
This is the first spacecraft propelled completely by solar wind.
So basically, while Red Hat and others have often vaunted the idea that Open Source can save you from your vendor if they orphan your machine (hmm... PA-RISC looks like it fits, as does M68K), now Ulrich says that those cause too many problems and shouldn't even be supported. So we'll be open and free and without proprietary hardware allegiences as long as we like the platforms.
The sad part is he uses the GCC model and sequence as one of the talking points, and that team and process was so badly flawed and restrictive that it has forked a number of times over the years to varying degrees. Which I think is good, as it was groups of developers trying to move forward in various ways when the process broke.
I'd venture here that in some cases, IF the main development team is OK with supporting as a tier-1 platform a new architecture or operating system, then by all means let them do so, and if that puts a few bumps in the road, that development community has to judge if the additional time, effort and coordination is worth it. Otherwise, there are a number of secondary-platform models as well. OS X has fink which has some dedicated crews modifying the trees with compliant (usually) patches that get things working on OS X and Darwin. At one point, the GNU tools didn't work on Linux well, only Solaris/SunOS and other variants.
Let the developers allocate their time where they want to. If Ulrich thinks it's wasting his time, then don't contribute to those projects if the majority of the developers think it's worthwhile.
Then the rant of his attacks Sun and says it should be dropped due to proprietary considerations. Except that the world changed when he was buried in Linux, and Solaris is open source, the chip itself is to an open specification (not so with Intel chips OR bios). The GCC platform spawned on those machines, and with Sun catering to educational institutes, his compiler wouldn't be here either, as it would probably be evolving at the speed of Hurd.
Unfortunately for him, I'm not one of the violent minorities, but then any generalization will miss a few. I use Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and even a bit of Solaris here and there. Each platform has strengths and weaknesses. Save us from the tyranny of the plain, simple vanilla majority that would paint the world a non-offensive and uniform beige.
While I'm not a die-hard fan of Raskin, I'm very happy that he's pounding out working examples of alternate approaches, and getting some attention. If enough ideas are flowing between enough people, it's very likely we'll hit on something truly revolutionary and useful in the exchanges.
One cannot simply hear the answer, for the answer is inside you waiting for you to quiet your mind so that it may rise to the surface. To achieve this, meditate upon the forgotten reference that was and is a part of the unseen aspect of the article. Meditate upon the vista of this.
Worth a look. Works quite well.
The major version number denotes a backward compatibility change that in all likelihood the Java navigators have realized probably will never happen. So market via the second number, which is meant to denote an inability to run that version on older VMs and you're set with a much better reflection of the evolution of the platform. The third number is for bugfixes and minor API enhancements. 1.1.8 should run on a 1.1.2 VM for instance, but 1.2 will not necessarily run on a 1.1.8 VM.
For that matter, who associates Apple with the Beatles? The Beatles brands stands on its own as well. I think the whole issue is a load of crap, and Apple has reasonably and legitimately upheld its part of the agreement. It's not the Apple Music Store, the Apple iTunes Music store or anything like that.
Wishful thinking is the way Stallman has always approached solutions, and does so in his Java trap article. Getting more software written in Java with a greater demand on the platform and wider popularity is probably the easiest way to get more hackers working on teh GNU Classpath and related projects including the GNU Java Compiler. Computer science builds on itself, and on the work of others, both free and non-free. For years, Stallman's stuff only ran on Sun, as he pointed out. For years, many of us waited eagerly for the first HURD implementations. Good thing a pragmatist by the name of Torvalds came along and WROTE one rather than endlessly redesigning it. Results breed demand breed developer interest. Cygwin arose at least in part due to Unix programmers working on Windows and wanting the strength of their environment to be there. Demand and need.
Apple Liks
Interesting that Apple is the only ones leading the way into new markets in a convincing way with the iPod.
As more people play with Cocoa, there's a good chance developers will like it enough to write software for it. It's a very solid environment. That plus all the Unix goodness under it with Fink and Darwinports, and even in this Windows-world, I'm thinking.... there a few million potential customers on Mac, and they are loyal and spend money for quality. If I get $10 of of every 10th customer....
The puritans are running amok outside of reality again.
I may not have a math degree, but if the low end iRiver is more than the 40 Gig iPod, I really don't understand "cheaper".
Of course, the Swedish price may not hold and may be artificially high at this point, but that's the only info I have to go on to gauge price. The built-in FM tuner is kind of cool. Looks like a freaking gadget hell though. The iPod is designed a lot nicer IMHO.
On the flip side of the speed, in which it's always nicer to be faster, betting on IBM as the supplier will make a huge difference. Motorola (until now when it's almost too late) has never been very serious about their chip business. IBM holds some of the most innovative patents on chip fab currently on the cutting edge. Apple is in line with one of the serious competitors to Intel, and on top of that IBM is banking on the PowerPC line themselves, thus it's one of the better bets Apple has placed on a supplier in some time.