But with Assange not being a US citizen they don't have much to throw at him, so it has been receiving no publicity (yet). When/if that case does hit the CNN/FOX news cycle, at that point the Brits would have some pretext to rendition him.
The UK authorities have nothing to act on until then.
Karl Rove and Co. seem to think that shaming him with the Swedish accusations is the best way to proceed for now; he is even advising the Swedes on this matter according to one government official.
If an extradition to Sweden were somehow to go ahead, I believe an abduction is in the cards so that the US military can try to lump him in with Bradley Manning as a co-conspirator. (Remember, you're only a "conspiracy theorist" if your suspects are rich and powerful members and hangers-on of the US establishment... otherwise, suspicion is passionately encouraged.)
I suppose "ideological opponents" would be persons supporting a military rampage through many countries in the Middle East. You know, that little thing.
in this matter. Rove was internationally infamous, so it can't be a simple case of foreign political blindness on the Swedes' part.
Every policy or alignment is subject to change with each new generation and Sweden is no exception. In fact they have a recent history of supporting US Neocon adventurism including illegal renditions of asylum-seekers to Egypt.
The focus has shifted fundamentally to the goals of the project, to the goals of individuals. In particular, Julian Assange.
Are you blind? Look at this entire thread and the news reports from the last couple days. The only ones having their intentions questioned are the states that are threatening Assange with imprisonment.
And 'martyr'? That doesn't work in the West. Have you seen Tim DeChristopher in the news or even in blogs much lately? No? Didn't think so...
You do have a couple good points, but you're being hysterical in your overall thrust.
Its a troll because it comes from the MO and mindset of ignoring and even promoting the West's press transgressions, where the bad intentions come mainly from capital and the officeholders say, "how high?"
Less advanced countries have to do without the "freedom" that corporate plutocracy provides. Then again, maybe it isn't so much freedom as it is cover.
particularly the ones with Cherry switches (browns and blues). I was surprised how much I liked the Cherry blues.
In the end I decided to start with something cheap and bought a used Dell AT101, which uses Alps black mechanical switches, and I'm quite pleased. It has just the right amount of click and clack, and the actuation point feels much more definite than the Cherry Browns.
The only thing I would change about the keys on the Dell is the amount of wobble they have (its mediocre in this respect). The main thing I would change about the keyboard as a whole is to make it a compact or 'tenkeyless' layout instead of the bog standard one. The keyboard also doesn't look funny like a lot of the Asian branded mech keyboards (Filco, et al); even though I want compactness, having a bit of a border around the whole thing makes it nicer to look at. The Dell extends backward about 3 in. which I like a lot.
If I were to get a unit with Cherry keys, I would probably go with a Cherry branded one. Even though they are less solid than some of the Asian brands, I got the impression the keys are mounted and housed such that they at least sound better than the other brands with the "keys on a bare hunk of metal" construction. Otherwise, I'd choose a keyboard like this: http://trulyergonomic.com/
I was already well aware what IBM spring keyboards were like, having used them a lot back in the 90s - I like them but not for long periods of time due to the key resistance and the noise level.
The wealthy have already looted the country after cajoling us into reducing our entire social contract down to one aspect: Money (the piles of it that they're sitting on).
You have to find a workable way to get that money back, or else they'll take it with them when they go. If its done incorrectly (assuming there is a decent way, short of shifting the entire nation's value system toward the political sphere), then virtually all of the 'trust' between people and ability to convincingly motivate them go flying out the window. At that point you are left printing up new bales of currency that the rest of the world's bankers will wrinkle their noses at.
Then again, we can simply tax them and take that new Globalized police state that was used to help the wealthy loot and control, and turn it against them so that tax collection (like Predator strikes) becomes an inevitability. It might work...
My definition of fraud is broader: Fraud can also be lying or concealing to gain in status or reputation, and it especially holds if your profession has a mandate to serve the public interest (i.e. to keep the public informed, which strongly implies sticking to the truth).
FOX News had won the 'right' to knowingly lie in news broadcasts. The court case involved reporters who were told to lie about rBGH hormone in the production of milk; when they refused to lie on Monsanto's behalf, they were fired.
The OS should do one thing, provide services to programs.
An opinion you will only encounter on/. and Linux sites.
A UI is a type of interface, which is a "contract" for consistent interaction. What you are saying is that consistency should only be a goal when coding for other programmers (users don't need or deserve it). There is no contract between the programmer and users. The problem is, you can't even give an inconsistent product away for free -- people won't take it, and in threads like this one I find that knowledge to be extremely gratifying.
Most of GNOME2's history was a slow, almost agonizing crawl up from a crash-prone and feature-truncated state.
I haven't looked at KDE recently, but I enjoyed v3.x until it was left behind for 4.x which was so bad that I had to leave it.
Maybe DE projects by themselves have outlived their usefulness. Ubuntu is pressing ahead with Unity, I think with the idea that a DE should be native to a particular OS. If that is so, then they are moving closer to Windows and OS X architecturally and organizationally; they would be able to achieve levels of vertical integration that a typical PC user expects.
* Unix or *nix are built around the concept of getting work done _away_ from superuser privileges.
* The points of distributing software for *nix platforms tend to be few and secured. Even a Mac user tends to understand that the prospect of downloading small utilities and games from sources that don't start from Apple.com, Macupdate.com or versiontracker.com seems to "smell bad". With Windows, a culture has developed that software can be expected to come from just about anywhere (and bizarrely, at just about any time, which I think is a holdover from when Active-X was in vogue).
* Different implementations, so binary compatibility is iffy or nonexistent (compatibility is more at the API level)
* My theory: The inner workings of most *nix systems are easier to lookup and are better understood by the power users and admins who run and service them -- It is more difficult to hide malware in such an environment.
To me, the level of cleanliness of a Windows system seems like a big, ongoing guessing game: This is particularly true given that the norm for operating Windows, even in a malware emergency, is to depend on the services of the installed, running, _infected_ system and users are often encouraged to download antivirus tools using the infected system to get rid of the existing malware (so the success rates of removal are lowered and the user ends up with a bogged-down or broken system). To the Windows culture, booting and tooling around with a secure ROM image to remedy problems is odd if not alien, and some of the live CD images (like Kaspersky) that do exist for use on a Windows system are actually Linux-based.
I'm not claiming that the above are always better to have for a computer, but they are almost always better for security. Apple seems to have (with OS X) the best mix of security culture and security features; If Apple switched to a Linux-distro model for software distribution tomorrow, I believe it would hurt OS X's appeal immensely even though it might gain slightly in security. Actually, with 10.8 they are adding one of Window's few strengths to OS X, which is to do some enforcement based on code signatures.
First, anyone with "vistapwns" as their handle should be regarded as having zero cred, geek or otherwise...
Getting to the point: CD-ROMs were quite popular in OS 9 days and it scarcely made any difference in virus propagation on the old platform. Apple transitioned away from floppies years earlier than PC mfgs did.
The fact remains: When Apple switched to Unix, malware that propagates automatically (viruses) became rare curiosities that functioned for any length of time only in test environments. That resurgence of viruses on Macs, long awaited by pro-MS trolls who copiously dump their BS on stories like this, never materialized.
Unix is not magic, but it raises the bar significantly for malware authors. OTOH, Microsoft continued running on their "the worse it is, the better" MO for _many_ years longer than they should have, and that malign neglect was the single biggest mistake that allowed online crime syndicates to become entrenched and highly resourceful to the degree they are today.
When I read the summary I thought "what would compete with guns would be pr0n".
Re:Desktops were also locked down under
on
Linux 3.5 Released
·
· Score: 0
The last straw for me was at the point where Linux could be said to work with virtually all power management hardware on laptops. And it *still* didn't compete with Windows in terms of battery life or the ability to suspend and resume properly. Suspend is also important on desktops because they are relatively power-hungry: As of 2 years ago, the ability to properly resume a desktop was crap.
So I got another Mac and relegated Linux to use on servers (and then Apple started acting like the Devil, but I digress).
Re:Desktops were also locked down under
on
Linux 3.5 Released
·
· Score: 0
Linux pretty much kicks ass if you're an engineer though, because all of the things that make it horrible for end users give you enough access to pick your project apart down to assembly.
That can't be denied... but then "Linux" is a concept an engineer can readily grasp: It's a kernel, usually with the GNU userland and toolchain, and with a whole mess of options at a higher level than that.
The thing is, there's no good reason why messy Linux and something (like Android) that is better-defined and grasped by a consumer can't both coexist in the desktop market. IMO, the "Linux" moniker sets up a raft of expectations that are incorrect for the desktop market. I think its no mistake that Android is not billed as "Android Linux", and thank goodness.
Re:Desktops were also locked down under
on
Linux 3.5 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It's got nothing to do with politics, people with different preferences just happen to build different things.
Politics are about group preferences and group identity. It's got a heck of a lot to do with politics: There's no rational reason to offer standardized frameworks under an SDK for mobile, but avoid doing so for desktops. One of the irrational reasons behind the disparity is that the hacker and sysadmin culture view PCs as immediate kin to web servers hardware and regard any standardization or vertical integration in the stack that caters primarily to "luser" needs as a threat to their freedom and efficiency.
The overall 'distro' mindset causes each and every initiative to become hamstrung with idiotic assumptions, such as:
- Each application should be broken down into between 2 - 20 different pieces and scattered around one's hard drive.
- Changes for most system components are handled in exactly the same way and with the same priorities as high-level applications, and apps get to make dependency demands on the inner workings of the system. There is no clear distinction between system and apps for anything being updated, added or removed.
- Anything other than the kernel = "application", and this type of system-hacker nomenclature must be observed by everyone or they will be ridiculed as 'n00b'. The result is a kind of blindness to real issues that arise around interactions between apps and system.
- System coders > App coders, so we will just get Miguel and some of the ol' gang to whip up some applications that will put Microsoft and Adobe to shame (i.e. we'll draw from the pool of Linux system enthusiasts to write user-facing apps instead of creating a feature-stable environment with an SDK to attract both newbies, and experienced app coders who are only newbie to 'our' system). But the reality is that the particular hacker culture and general feature-instability act as a corrosive acid against the kind of userbase and developer community that a personal computer needs.
- More than 10 people like to manage their PC software within a paradigm designed for servers.
- Fewer GUI admin tools are better b/c people will just want to hit the CLI anyway. Avoid the GUI when describing solutions, even WRT office/productivity if possible.
- A myriad different admin tools for basic network connectivity are OK because people want 'choice' (esp. when they call up tech support for their ISP or application and the technician can't figure out what specific steps to tell the user).
- Each year, desktop users must learn to recognize "Linux" by the current and past iterations of the 4 or 5 desktop environments that are officially supported by each distro.
- App developers like to design their apps for a disembodied desktop environment, instead of viewing the OS layers underneath as equally accessible tools. They also like testing their app in several other desktop environments to ensure that it "plays well" with them.
- App devs love having to test and package on multiple distros, and they look forward to having many camps of distro maintainers telling them about app "bugs" that mean you have to help them fix the same issue in their systems over and over again for a number of years. They also love having maintainers pepper and berate them over wacky compile switches, setting defaults, patches, etc. and they way they like to refer to app devs as "upstream" instead of "author", as if "Linux" coding automatically entailed some sort of demotion.
- If one is an ISV (distributing a proprietary app as 3rd party), devs love being regarded as an oddball instead of the norm, and love being reminded constantly that so many of the compatibility issues with (untargetted) distros they keep having to read about could be automatically resolved if, gosh, the author would only release their app as open source so they could be merged with repository nirvana.
- App devs love hearing they should leave behind all the PC stuff and
the politics of old school Unix hackers. It is the kind of politics that keeps distros from really standardizing on a GUI, and also results in oddities like the Linux Foundation having an SDK for mobile, but none for desktop. Likewise, Android has an SDK but Ubuntu (and all the other desktop distros) do not.
I see signs all over the place that there are many businesses and individuals who repair laptops with success. I do so myself. Over time this activity will drop off for Apple products, and Apple's customers will be at the mercy of Apple alone to conduct any repairs or recycling. Think about it, because if you're out of warranty I think they'll have an offer you can't refuse: They can keep your slightly broken device and throw you a stingy Apple store discount on an iPod, or they can send it back to you never to be repaired, or they can soak you for repair costs.
This is going to make many techies furious, because we are barred from considering avenues for repair that used to be open to us, and we usually have a pretty good idea of what's wrong when we send kit in for repair...
So when Apple starts jiving about the need to spend $700 or more for what looks like a broken fan, or ribbon cable, or a header needing a reflow... and the only alternative is to surrender that $1600 unit for recycling in exchange for a 10% off iPod coupon, well, I think you see where this is going.
What Apple is trying to do is obliterate a hardware service ecosystem that will henceforth thrive only for non-Apple products. It is an extremely unnatural thing to do for any high-priced consumer electronics, and I'm sure many current Apple customers will over time decide not to spring $$$$ for kit that is glued together like a $2 AM radio.
Slashdot Mirror
I should have said the UK authorities have nothing else to act on until then.
But with Assange not being a US citizen they don't have much to throw at him, so it has been receiving no publicity (yet). When/if that case does hit the CNN/FOX news cycle, at that point the Brits would have some pretext to rendition him.
The UK authorities have nothing to act on until then.
Karl Rove and Co. seem to think that shaming him with the Swedish accusations is the best way to proceed for now; he is even advising the Swedes on this matter according to one government official.
If an extradition to Sweden were somehow to go ahead, I believe an abduction is in the cards so that the US military can try to lump him in with Bradley Manning as a co-conspirator. (Remember, you're only a "conspiracy theorist" if your suspects are rich and powerful members and hangers-on of the US establishment... otherwise, suspicion is passionately encouraged.)
This is hilarious.
I suppose "ideological opponents" would be persons supporting a military rampage through many countries in the Middle East. You know, that little thing.
Just because Assange runs/ran Wikileaks, doesn't mean he should be able to act with impunity in other aspects of his life.
That's an interesting choice of words and phrasing. Do you feel that his work with Wikileaks makes him guilty?
in this matter. Rove was internationally infamous, so it can't be a simple case of foreign political blindness on the Swedes' part.
Every policy or alignment is subject to change with each new generation and Sweden is no exception. In fact they have a recent history of supporting US Neocon adventurism including illegal renditions of asylum-seekers to Egypt.
The focus has shifted fundamentally to the goals of the project, to the goals of individuals. In particular, Julian Assange.
Are you blind? Look at this entire thread and the news reports from the last couple days. The only ones having their intentions questioned are the states that are threatening Assange with imprisonment.
And 'martyr'? That doesn't work in the West. Have you seen Tim DeChristopher in the news or even in blogs much lately? No? Didn't think so...
You do have a couple good points, but you're being hysterical in your overall thrust.
Its a troll because it comes from the MO and mindset of ignoring and even promoting the West's press transgressions, where the bad intentions come mainly from capital and the officeholders say, "how high?"
Less advanced countries have to do without the "freedom" that corporate plutocracy provides. Then again, maybe it isn't so much freedom as it is cover.
particularly the ones with Cherry switches (browns and blues). I was surprised how much I liked the Cherry blues.
In the end I decided to start with something cheap and bought a used Dell AT101, which uses Alps black mechanical switches, and I'm quite pleased. It has just the right amount of click and clack, and the actuation point feels much more definite than the Cherry Browns.
The only thing I would change about the keys on the Dell is the amount of wobble they have (its mediocre in this respect). The main thing I would change about the keyboard as a whole is to make it a compact or 'tenkeyless' layout instead of the bog standard one. The keyboard also doesn't look funny like a lot of the Asian branded mech keyboards (Filco, et al); even though I want compactness, having a bit of a border around the whole thing makes it nicer to look at. The Dell extends backward about 3 in. which I like a lot.
If I were to get a unit with Cherry keys, I would probably go with a Cherry branded one. Even though they are less solid than some of the Asian brands, I got the impression the keys are mounted and housed such that they at least sound better than the other brands with the "keys on a bare hunk of metal" construction. Otherwise, I'd choose a keyboard like this: http://trulyergonomic.com/
I was already well aware what IBM spring keyboards were like, having used them a lot back in the 90s - I like them but not for long periods of time due to the key resistance and the noise level.
The wealthy have already looted the country after cajoling us into reducing our entire social contract down to one aspect: Money (the piles of it that they're sitting on).
You have to find a workable way to get that money back, or else they'll take it with them when they go. If its done incorrectly (assuming there is a decent way, short of shifting the entire nation's value system toward the political sphere), then virtually all of the 'trust' between people and ability to convincingly motivate them go flying out the window. At that point you are left printing up new bales of currency that the rest of the world's bankers will wrinkle their noses at.
Then again, we can simply tax them and take that new Globalized police state that was used to help the wealthy loot and control, and turn it against them so that tax collection (like Predator strikes) becomes an inevitability. It might work...
My definition of fraud is broader: Fraud can also be lying or concealing to gain in status or reputation, and it especially holds if your profession has a mandate to serve the public interest (i.e. to keep the public informed, which strongly implies sticking to the truth).
The 'right' to lie in US news: http://ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_files/fox_news_gets_okay_to_misinform_public.html
FOX News had won the 'right' to knowingly lie in news broadcasts. The court case involved reporters who were told to lie about rBGH hormone in the production of milk; when they refused to lie on Monsanto's behalf, they were fired.
http://foxnewsboycott.com/resources/fox-can-lie-lawsuit/
The OS should do one thing, provide services to programs.
An opinion you will only encounter on /. and Linux sites.
A UI is a type of interface, which is a "contract" for consistent interaction. What you are saying is that consistency should only be a goal when coding for other programmers (users don't need or deserve it). There is no contract between the programmer and users. The problem is, you can't even give an inconsistent product away for free -- people won't take it, and in threads like this one I find that knowledge to be extremely gratifying.
Most of GNOME2's history was a slow, almost agonizing crawl up from a crash-prone and feature-truncated state.
I haven't looked at KDE recently, but I enjoyed v3.x until it was left behind for 4.x which was so bad that I had to leave it.
Maybe DE projects by themselves have outlived their usefulness. Ubuntu is pressing ahead with Unity, I think with the idea that a DE should be native to a particular OS. If that is so, then they are moving closer to Windows and OS X architecturally and organizationally; they would be able to achieve levels of vertical integration that a typical PC user expects.
* Unix or *nix are built around the concept of getting work done _away_ from superuser privileges.
* The points of distributing software for *nix platforms tend to be few and secured. Even a Mac user tends to understand that the prospect of downloading small utilities and games from sources that don't start from Apple.com, Macupdate.com or versiontracker.com seems to "smell bad". With Windows, a culture has developed that software can be expected to come from just about anywhere (and bizarrely, at just about any time, which I think is a holdover from when Active-X was in vogue).
* Different implementations, so binary compatibility is iffy or nonexistent (compatibility is more at the API level)
* My theory: The inner workings of most *nix systems are easier to lookup and are better understood by the power users and admins who run and service them -- It is more difficult to hide malware in such an environment.
To me, the level of cleanliness of a Windows system seems like a big, ongoing guessing game: This is particularly true given that the norm for operating Windows, even in a malware emergency, is to depend on the services of the installed, running, _infected_ system and users are often encouraged to download antivirus tools using the infected system to get rid of the existing malware (so the success rates of removal are lowered and the user ends up with a bogged-down or broken system). To the Windows culture, booting and tooling around with a secure ROM image to remedy problems is odd if not alien, and some of the live CD images (like Kaspersky) that do exist for use on a Windows system are actually Linux-based.
I'm not claiming that the above are always better to have for a computer, but they are almost always better for security. Apple seems to have (with OS X) the best mix of security culture and security features; If Apple switched to a Linux-distro model for software distribution tomorrow, I believe it would hurt OS X's appeal immensely even though it might gain slightly in security. Actually, with 10.8 they are adding one of Window's few strengths to OS X, which is to do some enforcement based on code signatures.
First, anyone with "vistapwns" as their handle should be regarded as having zero cred, geek or otherwise...
Getting to the point: CD-ROMs were quite popular in OS 9 days and it scarcely made any difference in virus propagation on the old platform. Apple transitioned away from floppies years earlier than PC mfgs did.
The fact remains: When Apple switched to Unix, malware that propagates automatically (viruses) became rare curiosities that functioned for any length of time only in test environments. That resurgence of viruses on Macs, long awaited by pro-MS trolls who copiously dump their BS on stories like this, never materialized.
Unix is not magic, but it raises the bar significantly for malware authors. OTOH, Microsoft continued running on their "the worse it is, the better" MO for _many_ years longer than they should have, and that malign neglect was the single biggest mistake that allowed online crime syndicates to become entrenched and highly resourceful to the degree they are today.
Google cache:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FacnfUNs3KIJ:www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/biography/10069.wss+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
...anymore.
When I read the summary I thought "what would compete with guns would be pr0n".
The last straw for me was at the point where Linux could be said to work with virtually all power management hardware on laptops. And it *still* didn't compete with Windows in terms of battery life or the ability to suspend and resume properly. Suspend is also important on desktops because they are relatively power-hungry: As of 2 years ago, the ability to properly resume a desktop was crap.
So I got another Mac and relegated Linux to use on servers (and then Apple started acting like the Devil, but I digress).
Linux pretty much kicks ass if you're an engineer though, because all of the things that make it horrible for end users give you enough access to pick your project apart down to assembly.
That can't be denied... but then "Linux" is a concept an engineer can readily grasp: It's a kernel, usually with the GNU userland and toolchain, and with a whole mess of options at a higher level than that.
The thing is, there's no good reason why messy Linux and something (like Android) that is better-defined and grasped by a consumer can't both coexist in the desktop market. IMO, the "Linux" moniker sets up a raft of expectations that are incorrect for the desktop market. I think its no mistake that Android is not billed as "Android Linux", and thank goodness.
It's got nothing to do with politics, people with different preferences just happen to build different things.
Politics are about group preferences and group identity. It's got a heck of a lot to do with politics: There's no rational reason to offer standardized frameworks under an SDK for mobile, but avoid doing so for desktops. One of the irrational reasons behind the disparity is that the hacker and sysadmin culture view PCs as immediate kin to web servers hardware and regard any standardization or vertical integration in the stack that caters primarily to "luser" needs as a threat to their freedom and efficiency.
The overall 'distro' mindset causes each and every initiative to become hamstrung with idiotic assumptions, such as:
- Each application should be broken down into between 2 - 20 different pieces and scattered around one's hard drive.
- Changes for most system components are handled in exactly the same way and with the same priorities as high-level applications, and apps get to make dependency demands on the inner workings of the system. There is no clear distinction between system and apps for anything being updated, added or removed.
- Anything other than the kernel = "application", and this type of system-hacker nomenclature must be observed by everyone or they will be ridiculed as 'n00b'. The result is a kind of blindness to real issues that arise around interactions between apps and system.
- System coders > App coders, so we will just get Miguel and some of the ol' gang to whip up some applications that will put Microsoft and Adobe to shame (i.e. we'll draw from the pool of Linux system enthusiasts to write user-facing apps instead of creating a feature-stable environment with an SDK to attract both newbies, and experienced app coders who are only newbie to 'our' system). But the reality is that the particular hacker culture and general feature-instability act as a corrosive acid against the kind of userbase and developer community that a personal computer needs.
- More than 10 people like to manage their PC software within a paradigm designed for servers.
- Fewer GUI admin tools are better b/c people will just want to hit the CLI anyway. Avoid the GUI when describing solutions, even WRT office/productivity if possible.
- A myriad different admin tools for basic network connectivity are OK because people want 'choice' (esp. when they call up tech support for their ISP or application and the technician can't figure out what specific steps to tell the user).
- Each year, desktop users must learn to recognize "Linux" by the current and past iterations of the 4 or 5 desktop environments that are officially supported by each distro.
- App developers like to design their apps for a disembodied desktop environment, instead of viewing the OS layers underneath as equally accessible tools. They also like testing their app in several other desktop environments to ensure that it "plays well" with them.
- App devs love having to test and package on multiple distros, and they look forward to having many camps of distro maintainers telling them about app "bugs" that mean you have to help them fix the same issue in their systems over and over again for a number of years. They also love having maintainers pepper and berate them over wacky compile switches, setting defaults, patches, etc. and they way they like to refer to app devs as "upstream" instead of "author", as if "Linux" coding automatically entailed some sort of demotion.
- If one is an ISV (distributing a proprietary app as 3rd party), devs love being regarded as an oddball instead of the norm, and love being reminded constantly that so many of the compatibility issues with (untargetted) distros they keep having to read about could be automatically resolved if, gosh, the author would only release their app as open source so they could be merged with repository nirvana.
- App devs love hearing they should leave behind all the PC stuff and
the politics of old school Unix hackers. It is the kind of politics that keeps distros from really standardizing on a GUI, and also results in oddities like the Linux Foundation having an SDK for mobile, but none for desktop. Likewise, Android has an SDK but Ubuntu (and all the other desktop distros) do not.
"The Real CSI" on PBS' Frontline program.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzymPoQs9nE
I see signs all over the place that there are many businesses and individuals who repair laptops with success. I do so myself. Over time this activity will drop off for Apple products, and Apple's customers will be at the mercy of Apple alone to conduct any repairs or recycling. Think about it, because if you're out of warranty I think they'll have an offer you can't refuse: They can keep your slightly broken device and throw you a stingy Apple store discount on an iPod, or they can send it back to you never to be repaired, or they can soak you for repair costs.
This is going to make many techies furious, because we are barred from considering avenues for repair that used to be open to us, and we usually have a pretty good idea of what's wrong when we send kit in for repair...
So when Apple starts jiving about the need to spend $700 or more for what looks like a broken fan, or ribbon cable, or a header needing a reflow... and the only alternative is to surrender that $1600 unit for recycling in exchange for a 10% off iPod coupon, well, I think you see where this is going.
What Apple is trying to do is obliterate a hardware service ecosystem that will henceforth thrive only for non-Apple products. It is an extremely unnatural thing to do for any high-priced consumer electronics, and I'm sure many current Apple customers will over time decide not to spring $$$$ for kit that is glued together like a $2 AM radio.