Because WalMart is rarely the lowest price in an area. They only claim they are...especially when you take into consideration instant/mail-in rebates. They simply can't beat those prices...but even on much simpler products like new release DVDs, they are often $4 or $5 over the lowest priced competitor...
Haha...that's rich...Sun support is second to none...not when they route me to India when I have a SYSTEM DOWN problem and the guy that is obviously reading from a script is hard to understand (some of the guys over there don't even try...I was sitting there for over an hour with this guy and he had to repeat the same thing at least 3 times in some places...just so I could understand him)...poor english speaking tech support (reading from a script) is not what you want when a production box is down!!! Yea, they finally end up routing me to some place where I can understand the guy and he actually understands the hardware...
There's good Indian tech support and then there's Sun's...and you've heard the phrase "one bad apple spoils the bunch"...well, at least 1 time out of 5 when I call Sun, I get someone in India...and more than half the time when I talk to someone in India they are hard to understand, don't understand the topic they are helping me with, and usually end up making matters worse...just so I can be handed off to a tech that actually knows what they are doing...
So, while the on-site hardware support and the Canada/US Tech Support (in general) is ok, their Indian operations are seriously lacking...which reflects badly on the whole company...and is one reason why we will probably be getting rid of our Sparc boxes in the next few years...Dell's x86 tech support is never hard to understand and never makes matters worse...
Well, that quote is kind of hard to pinpoint the exact intent...
Did he mean that it would be the last "physical" storage technology...meaning that everything would be stored on the network somewhere? Not likely...companies wouldn't allow it...and it would have to be "stored" somewhere...unless he thinks we will start using our brains for storage or something...
Did he mean it would be the last magnetic/optical storage technology??? Maybe...that would of course mean that harddrives would still be around...that technology hasn't really changed since the first harddrives were mass produced...it's become better, there have been advances in the technology itself...but it's pretty much the same concepts...
Or, does he mean that it will be the last portable storage technology to actually spin in the drive...maybe...this is probably closer to what he means...flash drives are becoming very popular...not to mention, anyone with an iPod is carrying a little mass storage device (up to 80GB now)...but for flash or some other technology to replace the "spinning disk" technology we currently use, prices for flash media will have to come down dramatically...
Yea, I know the kind of guy you're talking about...there's always a group of people that resist change. The one thing you can pretty much say is that film is set to become something like black & white photography is today...in the not too distant future, you will either use digital or your work will be defined by the fact that you don't...one thing you can be sure of, if he has written off digital completely, then there's not much kewl toys in his future...
This article talks about the problem many photographers are now having...for many (like myself) digital has made it cheaper amd easier than maintaining a professional darkroom (Kodak in my case)...
I got rid of the equipment before I got my digital camera, but it just became too expensive with the cost of chemicals, photo paper, bulbs, etc...not to mention it takes up way too much room...
Now, professional photographers (the ones in the phonebook) can probably afford their own digital photolab...and many of them still use large format (which is higher quality than digital right now)...Medium format digitals have just begun to appear...but the "backyard" photographer can't afford that and so the choice you are left with is to print them yourself (with a photo printer) or trust someone like Walmart/CVS to print them for you...
Yea, but was your washing machine filled with gasoline, battery acid, antifreeze, raw sewage, lead, river silt, industrial detergents, salt, oil, chlorine, and about anything else you can think of that exists in the average Wal-Mart/Target/etc??? My guess is that it wasn't...that may mean that it will take an accidental dive into the local swimming pool/ocean, but it doesn't have a very good chance of surviving in flood waters...
Why not just save your "important" data on a drive mounted in a removable IDE drive bay. If you ever need to take everything, you just shut down the machine and take the drive... Yes, this may be a little heavier than a USB flash drive... You could build a set of cron jobs (like I have) to back up your important directories to the removable drive on a nightly basis...
"Documents and Settings" for a Windoze box "/var/mail" for Linux User directories under Linux Bookmarks, Mail Client directories (Thunderbird, Evolution, etc), IM directories (GAIM, Trillian, Google Talk, etc)
This would probably be preferable to say an external USB/Firewire drive, because it would be much faster for standard operations and would be connected until you took it with you...not to mention, there's more you can do for a damaged harddisk than a damaged USB flash drive...hard drives are sealed...most flash drives are not...there's a whole industry built on recovery of harddisks...not so on flash drives (not yet...it's probably coming)...
Or better yet, why not use one of the GMail Filesystem. This would certainly be more likely to survive...you wouldn't need to "grab" anything...all you would need is a machine with web access...keep something like 7-zip for Windows, GPG (or what ever you used to encrypt the data), and the GFS software for Windoze and Linux...you wouldn't really even need the archives, just a "draft" message with links to the files/projects. You could use another online filesystem and mirror the accounts (don't use software raid, just use 2 devices), so you could always recover the data if you lost access to one account.
But then again, what ever happened to the idea of keeping a safety deposit box in another city??? You can get to it once you are "safe"...not to mention that the authenticity of "scanned" copies of documents would be questioned because of Photoshop/Gimp...with a safety deposit box, you could have notarized, physical copies...Many of the things you list are things that you really don't need at home and generally wouldn't mind driving to get when/if the need arises (SSN, wills, Birth Certificates, Tax Returns, negatives of family photos, etc)...which would make a much more difficult situation easier for you (knowing that your important personal documents were safe)...who wants to worry if the only scan of their birth certificate was going to survive when they themselves are in danger...not me...
If you DO go with the USB Key idea, then don't trust any of the "built-in" security schemes and use your own encryption and buy 2 and use software RAID to mirror the drives. That way the data could be rebuilt if either one fails...you could each carry one of them as well...in case something happened to the other one...also beware of the pitfalls of flash memory (limited number of writes comes to mind right away)...
Any idea of saving hardware is moot if you're thinking of a flood in a major city (like NYC), because even waterproof hardware would be destroyed by all of the chemicals that would be floating in the water...
My only complaint about the Jumpdrive Secure is that it's too "fat" for most internal USB slots...so you need to plug it into an extension cable or hub on most machines...the "sport" and some of the other rebranded Lexars (like the "Impact" drives) don't have this problem...otherwise, I agree, it's a fairly solid drive...the problem is the "fatness" of the drive puts undue pressure on the USB connector which will eventually break.
First off, count me as one that hasn't heard much about this client (I knew it existed, but never actually tested it or reccomended it)...and I'm an e-mail server admin...
Now, as to what will actually happen to the source code...
It's pretty obvious that the source code to this app is probably their biggest asset...there are obviously still folks that use the app and I would say that the real reason they won't open source the app is that they really think that someone will eventually purchase it...who, I don't know...I would say Novell, but they already own Evolution...maybe RedHat or Mandrakesoft...Not to mention that the bank would be stupid to allow them to release freely what is likely to be their biggest asset (their source).
Now, if (as I suspect) this app has been sitting in obscurity for years, maybe it just needs to die...I mean, who would pay $40 (with shiping) for a mail client when there are so many free or cheap alteratives...
I love seeing these kinds of stories...You see, I work as an *NIX admin and I've seen my share of bad admins (I've also had to fix their work)...they simply make bad/uneducated decisions. There is really a breed of Windoze admin that has in their brain that since they can install an Exchange or IIS server that they can do anything with a computer and especially *NIX (Solaris, AIX, BSD, Linux, PHP, Perl, Sendmail, Apache, etc)...
They end up causing more problems than they were worth, but they pull the wool over the eyes of whoever hired them and after months/years of bad admin work, they leave the place much worse for wear. This breed of admin has no experience building from source, operating from the command line, or modifying a config file...on top of this their backups are generally poorly done or non-existant...
This is where those of us that know what we are actually doing come in. Our pay goes up and the day is saved. Our employers see the value in a good admin and make comments to others about how well our systems are running...
Education and Govt both pay poorly when compared to their private sector jobs...which really means they arent as demanding, but because the IT departments tend to be smaller, you get a good opportunity to try out new technlogies...the biggest drawback from both of these are low pay and yearly audits...
For some, they would rather make $40k/yr and be happy and fairly secure than make $80k/yr with a job they hate...
To get a job that you wont eventually hate you honestly have to be willing to accept lower pay or lack of freedom, or both...
Since there isn't a single word for Lloyds of London, "bank" was the closest I could come to...it's not really a company...and it doesnt really fit in with other insurers because, as you mention, they will insure things other insurers will not...it's really a society, but it's not even that, it's more like a market...kind of like the stock market, but instead of stocks they are dealing in insurance policies...but as I said, it's not even that...
As for someone insuring you in a communist country, I'm sure they charged a heafty premium for the policy and I'm sure many insurance companies would question why you even needed to take your vehicle into a communist country...most people would have simply called a cab or rented a vehicle or even caught a ride with friends...I'm not questioning your reasons for wanting to do this, just pointing out how unusual it is...
This is the same bank that has a history of selling unusual insurance policies to anyone with the money...
Someone probably got freaked out at a major company and asked them how much it would cost to insure them against litigation...this is par for course in the insurance industry...it's just making news because it's OSS we're talking bout now.
File this in the same place as a "Happiness Policy" insuring against "Worry Lines" on a model's face (from previous link)...
I'm pretty sure they will be cautious in the way they word this.
They wouldn't want to say insure you against something like DeCSS (or so they would claim)...they are betting that the insurance they are selling will never be needed or they wouldn't offer it...that's why the whole idea of life insurance has seemed kind of odd/ironic to me...I mean I see the need for it, but essentially you are betting that you're going to die tomorrow and the life insurance company is betting that you're going to live...
I'm sure the standard insurance contract will spell out exactly what is insured...probably the Linux kernel, Apache, MySQL, Perl, PHP (as mentioned in the article), probably Sendmail, maybe Samba, probably Firefox, OpenSSH, a standard set of GNU utilities (probably even spells out things like ggrep, gawk, gsed, vim, etc)...I doubt they would be insuring everything that was listed under the GPL, LGPL, and every other GPL-like license...it's just not smart...
I figure the "test" would be done on someone who was pronounced dead, or better yet, an organ donor...You donate your body to science...ok...we're just using your whole body...what are you gonna do? Sue em for bringing you back to life?:) Maybe even simply begin testing it in a less litigous country...
Its no stretch to say that the only win2k installs left out there are being used either on servers (why are you using a browser on a server??? Or even better yet, why are you using Windoze on a server???:)
The other group (ans these are the ones Im talking about) are those that for one reason or another belive that win2k is the best Windoze OS (better than XP, better than 2003)...most of these will state stability as their reason for using win2k...others will say that XP has too much bloat and/or eye candy. What M$ is banking on is that these users will switch to a new version of Windoze (XP or 2003)...but what is keeping these users from switching to a Linux distro?
It pretty safe to say that the majority of these users will be looking for office support and not exactly games support...if the argument is that Lotus Notes doesnt work or I need M$ Office, you can always buy a copy of Crossover Office for $40.00...much cheaper than even an upgrade to XP/2003.
And for most Windoze apps, you dont even need to purchase Crossover Office...all you need is a script like This one.
They have played this move before, but this time it could come back to bite them.
Why not tie wifi access to a number printed on the receipts...I am sure there is a POS system out there that can print up a random serial number from a database...make it valid for the like a whole hour.
All you would have to do is enter your code via a browser...If they wanted a new code, they would have to buy a new cup of coffee every hour or so...some hotels already have something similar for wifi access from rooms.
If EB/GameStop doesn't have what you're looking for at the price you want, try a pawn shop...especially one that is located close to a college. College students will often sell perfectly good games for beer money. And in the case of older games, most are willing to deal...they are mostly localy owned and are not bound to corporate policy on pricing. You will have to own a modded console to play import games, but most of these shops sell modded systems and/or know someone local that can do the modifications to a vanilla box.
There are other places that sell old/obscure games...we have a local import games/anime rental shop that sells games and videos based on their age...want something that's new...you pay almost full price...want something that's old, get a discount...want something even older...get an even steeper discount.
It's not really the "tin foil" hat mentality. It's actually supply and demand...they are creating demand by limiting the supply.
And especially with Apple in the position they are right now, it is in their best interest to fire up all of the "Mac Addicts". Like it or not, Apple has risen to the point where it is because of the popularity of the iPod. The kind of buzz they have created resulted from Apple's manipulation of the product's image as an "elite" device as much as it has from its technical superiority.
This is the same way that Sony creates demand for a new console by limiting its availability around christmas.
You only have 30 days from the rental date to return it for their "restocking fee"...so, if you kept it for months on end as you suggest, you've simply bought the movie...
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Because WalMart is rarely the lowest price in an area. They only claim they are...especially when you take into consideration instant/mail-in rebates. They simply can't beat those prices...but even on much simpler products like new release DVDs, they are often $4 or $5 over the lowest priced competitor...
Haha...that's rich...Sun support is second to none...not when they route me to India when I have a SYSTEM DOWN problem and the guy that is obviously reading from a script is hard to understand (some of the guys over there don't even try...I was sitting there for over an hour with this guy and he had to repeat the same thing at least 3 times in some places...just so I could understand him)...poor english speaking tech support (reading from a script) is not what you want when a production box is down!!! Yea, they finally end up routing me to some place where I can understand the guy and he actually understands the hardware...
There's good Indian tech support and then there's Sun's...and you've heard the phrase "one bad apple spoils the bunch"...well, at least 1 time out of 5 when I call Sun, I get someone in India...and more than half the time when I talk to someone in India they are hard to understand, don't understand the topic they are helping me with, and usually end up making matters worse...just so I can be handed off to a tech that actually knows what they are doing...
So, while the on-site hardware support and the Canada/US Tech Support (in general) is ok, their Indian operations are seriously lacking...which reflects badly on the whole company...and is one reason why we will probably be getting rid of our Sparc boxes in the next few years...Dell's x86 tech support is never hard to understand and never makes matters worse...
Well, that quote is kind of hard to pinpoint the exact intent...
Did he mean that it would be the last "physical" storage technology...meaning that everything would be stored on the network somewhere? Not likely...companies wouldn't allow it...and it would have to be "stored" somewhere...unless he thinks we will start using our brains for storage or something...
Did he mean it would be the last magnetic/optical storage technology??? Maybe...that would of course mean that harddrives would still be around...that technology hasn't really changed since the first harddrives were mass produced...it's become better, there have been advances in the technology itself...but it's pretty much the same concepts...
Or, does he mean that it will be the last portable storage technology to actually spin in the drive...maybe...this is probably closer to what he means...flash drives are becoming very popular...not to mention, anyone with an iPod is carrying a little mass storage device (up to 80GB now)...but for flash or some other technology to replace the "spinning disk" technology we currently use, prices for flash media will have to come down dramatically...
Yea, I know the kind of guy you're talking about...there's always a group of people that resist change. The one thing you can pretty much say is that film is set to become something like black & white photography is today...in the not too distant future, you will either use digital or your work will be defined by the fact that you don't...one thing you can be sure of, if he has written off digital completely, then there's not much kewl toys in his future...
This article talks about the problem many photographers are now having...for many (like myself) digital has made it cheaper amd easier than maintaining a professional darkroom (Kodak in my case)...
I got rid of the equipment before I got my digital camera, but it just became too expensive with the cost of chemicals, photo paper, bulbs, etc...not to mention it takes up way too much room...
Now, professional photographers (the ones in the phonebook) can probably afford their own digital photolab...and many of them still use large format (which is higher quality than digital right now)...Medium format digitals have just begun to appear...but the "backyard" photographer can't afford that and so the choice you are left with is to print them yourself (with a photo printer) or trust someone like Walmart/CVS to print them for you...
Yea, but was your washing machine filled with gasoline, battery acid, antifreeze, raw sewage, lead, river silt, industrial detergents, salt, oil, chlorine, and about anything else you can think of that exists in the average Wal-Mart/Target/etc??? My guess is that it wasn't...that may mean that it will take an accidental dive into the local swimming pool/ocean, but it doesn't have a very good chance of surviving in flood waters...
Why not just save your "important" data on a drive mounted in a removable IDE drive bay. If you ever need to take everything, you just shut down the machine and take the drive... Yes, this may be a little heavier than a USB flash drive... You could build a set of cron jobs (like I have) to back up your important directories to the removable drive on a nightly basis...
"Documents and Settings" for a Windoze box
"/var/mail" for Linux
User directories under Linux
Bookmarks, Mail Client directories (Thunderbird, Evolution, etc), IM directories (GAIM, Trillian, Google Talk, etc)
This would probably be preferable to say an external USB/Firewire drive, because it would be much faster for standard operations and would be connected until you took it with you...not to mention, there's more you can do for a damaged harddisk than a damaged USB flash drive...hard drives are sealed...most flash drives are not...there's a whole industry built on recovery of harddisks...not so on flash drives (not yet...it's probably coming)...
Or better yet, why not use one of the GMail Filesystem. This would certainly be more likely to survive...you wouldn't need to "grab" anything...all you would need is a machine with web access...keep something like 7-zip for Windows, GPG (or what ever you used to encrypt the data), and the GFS software for Windoze and Linux...you wouldn't really even need the archives, just a "draft" message with links to the files/projects. You could use another online filesystem and mirror the accounts (don't use software raid, just use 2 devices), so you could always recover the data if you lost access to one account.
But then again, what ever happened to the idea of keeping a safety deposit box in another city??? You can get to it once you are "safe"...not to mention that the authenticity of "scanned" copies of documents would be questioned because of Photoshop/Gimp...with a safety deposit box, you could have notarized, physical copies...Many of the things you list are things that you really don't need at home and generally wouldn't mind driving to get when/if the need arises (SSN, wills, Birth Certificates, Tax Returns, negatives of family photos, etc)...which would make a much more difficult situation easier for you (knowing that your important personal documents were safe)...who wants to worry if the only scan of their birth certificate was going to survive when they themselves are in danger...not me...
If you DO go with the USB Key idea, then don't trust any of the "built-in" security schemes and use your own encryption and buy 2 and use software RAID to mirror the drives. That way the data could be rebuilt if either one fails...you could each carry one of them as well...in case something happened to the other one...also beware of the pitfalls of flash memory (limited number of writes comes to mind right away)...
Any idea of saving hardware is moot if you're thinking of a flood in a major city (like NYC), because even waterproof hardware would be destroyed by all of the chemicals that would be floating in the water...
My only complaint about the Jumpdrive Secure is that it's too "fat" for most internal USB slots...so you need to plug it into an extension cable or hub on most machines...the "sport" and some of the other rebranded Lexars (like the "Impact" drives) don't have this problem...otherwise, I agree, it's a fairly solid drive...the problem is the "fatness" of the drive puts undue pressure on the USB connector which will eventually break.
First off, count me as one that hasn't heard much about this client (I knew it existed, but never actually tested it or reccomended it)...and I'm an e-mail server admin...
Now, as to what will actually happen to the source code...
It's pretty obvious that the source code to this app is probably their biggest asset...there are obviously still folks that use the app and I would say that the real reason they won't open source the app is that they really think that someone will eventually purchase it...who, I don't know...I would say Novell, but they already own Evolution...maybe RedHat or Mandrakesoft...Not to mention that the bank would be stupid to allow them to release freely what is likely to be their biggest asset (their source).
Now, if (as I suspect) this app has been sitting in obscurity for years, maybe it just needs to die...I mean, who would pay $40 (with shiping) for a mail client when there are so many free or cheap alteratives...
I love seeing these kinds of stories...You see, I work as an *NIX admin and I've seen my share of bad admins (I've also had to fix their work)...they simply make bad/uneducated decisions. There is really a breed of Windoze admin that has in their brain that since they can install an Exchange or IIS server that they can do anything with a computer and especially *NIX (Solaris, AIX, BSD, Linux, PHP, Perl, Sendmail, Apache, etc)...
They end up causing more problems than they were worth, but they pull the wool over the eyes of whoever hired them and after months/years of bad admin work, they leave the place much worse for wear. This breed of admin has no experience building from source, operating from the command line, or modifying a config file...on top of this their backups are generally poorly done or non-existant...
This is where those of us that know what we are actually doing come in. Our pay goes up and the day is saved. Our employers see the value in a good admin and make comments to others about how well our systems are running...
Education and Government.
Education and Govt both pay poorly when compared to their private sector jobs...which really means they arent as demanding, but because the IT departments tend to be smaller, you get a good opportunity to try out new technlogies...the biggest drawback from both of these are low pay and yearly audits...
For some, they would rather make $40k/yr and be happy and fairly secure than make $80k/yr with a job they hate...
To get a job that you wont eventually hate you honestly have to be willing to accept lower pay or lack of freedom, or both...
MySQL is best used when you need speed, compatability, and reliabilty.
MySQL supports load balancing, PostgreSQL doesn't.
MySQL supports multiple table formats, PostgreSQL doesn't.
MySQL stays faster on larger databases than PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL is best used when you want more features at the expense of everything listed above...
The choice is really a case-by-case question.
These are confirmed by this table.
With MySQL 5.0 close to a "stable" release, all of this will go out the window as MySQL will gain many of the features of PostgreSQL.
Since there isn't a single word for Lloyds of London, "bank" was the closest I could come to...it's not really a company...and it doesnt really fit in with other insurers because, as you mention, they will insure things other insurers will not...it's really a society, but it's not even that, it's more like a market...kind of like the stock market, but instead of stocks they are dealing in insurance policies...but as I said, it's not even that...
As for someone insuring you in a communist country, I'm sure they charged a heafty premium for the policy and I'm sure many insurance companies would question why you even needed to take your vehicle into a communist country...most people would have simply called a cab or rented a vehicle or even caught a ride with friends...I'm not questioning your reasons for wanting to do this, just pointing out how unusual it is...
This is the same bank that has a history of selling unusual insurance policies to anyone with the money...
Someone probably got freaked out at a major company and asked them how much it would cost to insure them against litigation...this is par for course in the insurance industry...it's just making news because it's OSS we're talking bout now.
File this in the same place as a "Happiness Policy" insuring against "Worry Lines" on a model's face (from previous link)...
I'm pretty sure they will be cautious in the way they word this.
They wouldn't want to say insure you against something like DeCSS (or so they would claim)...they are betting that the insurance they are selling will never be needed or they wouldn't offer it...that's why the whole idea of life insurance has seemed kind of odd/ironic to me...I mean I see the need for it, but essentially you are betting that you're going to die tomorrow and the life insurance company is betting that you're going to live...
I'm sure the standard insurance contract will spell out exactly what is insured...probably the Linux kernel, Apache, MySQL, Perl, PHP (as mentioned in the article), probably Sendmail, maybe Samba, probably Firefox, OpenSSH, a standard set of GNU utilities (probably even spells out things like ggrep, gawk, gsed, vim, etc)...I doubt they would be insuring everything that was listed under the GPL, LGPL, and every other GPL-like license...it's just not smart...
Not if they call this guy...
I figure the "test" would be done on someone who was pronounced dead, or better yet, an organ donor...You donate your body to science...ok...we're just using your whole body...what are you gonna do? Sue em for bringing you back to life? :) Maybe even simply begin testing it in a less litigous country...
What distro were you using?
Its no stretch to say that the only win2k installs left out there are being used either on servers (why are you using a browser on a server??? Or even better yet, why are you using Windoze on a server??? :)
The other group (ans these are the ones Im talking about) are those that for one reason or another belive that win2k is the best Windoze OS (better than XP, better than 2003)...most of these will state stability as their reason for using win2k...others will say that XP has too much bloat and/or eye candy. What M$ is banking on is that these users will switch to a new version of Windoze (XP or 2003)...but what is keeping these users from switching to a Linux distro?
It pretty safe to say that the majority of these users will be looking for office support and not exactly games support...if the argument is that Lotus Notes doesnt work or I need M$ Office, you can always buy a copy of Crossover Office for $40.00...much cheaper than even an upgrade to XP/2003.
And for most Windoze apps, you dont even need to purchase Crossover Office...all you need is a script like This one.
They have played this move before, but this time it could come back to bite them.
Why not tie wifi access to a number printed on the receipts...I am sure there is a POS system out there that can print up a random serial number from a database...make it valid for the like a whole hour.
All you would have to do is enter your code via a browser...If they wanted a new code, they would have to buy a new cup of coffee every hour or so...some hotels already have something similar for wifi access from rooms.
If EB/GameStop doesn't have what you're looking for at the price you want, try a pawn shop...especially one that is located close to a college. College students will often sell perfectly good games for beer money. And in the case of older games, most are willing to deal...they are mostly localy owned and are not bound to corporate policy on pricing. You will have to own a modded console to play import games, but most of these shops sell modded systems and/or know someone local that can do the modifications to a vanilla box.
There are other places that sell old/obscure games...we have a local import games/anime rental shop that sells games and videos based on their age...want something that's new...you pay almost full price...want something that's old, get a discount...want something even older...get an even steeper discount.
It's not really the "tin foil" hat mentality. It's actually supply and demand...they are creating demand by limiting the supply.
And especially with Apple in the position they are right now, it is in their best interest to fire up all of the "Mac Addicts". Like it or not, Apple has risen to the point where it is because of the popularity of the iPod. The kind of buzz they have created resulted from Apple's manipulation of the product's image as an "elite" device as much as it has from its technical superiority.
This is the same way that Sony creates demand for a new console by limiting its availability around christmas.
Lets see, who got the "mistaken" copies???
/. another time)...
Apple "fans" who will love the ego boost it gives them among their fellow Mac-Addicts and further fuels the elitist attitude of SOME Mac users...
This gets an otherwise minor release another item in the news (it shows up on
Even if it WAS a slip-up, Apple will still be none the worse for it...
Is this the same Computer Associates that was caught up in the whole SCO Linux license thing?
I'm not saying that he doesn't have a point, but what I am suggesting is that he might not have the Linux community's best interest in mind...
You only have 30 days from the rental date to return it for their "restocking fee"...so, if you kept it for months on end as you suggest, you've simply bought the movie...