I worked retail for a long time, including an Apple Store. I cannot remember the policies at Apple when I was working there, but most places will not take a verbal approval code.
If the person on the other end of the phone (generally you get to them by calling the 800 number on the back of the card) has the ability to run the transaction, they have the ability to clear whatever prevented the card from going through the first time. They would have to - they have to clear the hurdle before they can run the transaction themselves.
So policy at most places is that the telephone operator clears the issue (usually it is a daily spending limit that card issuers never mention) and then the store runs the card again. There was no procedure for manually entering a verbal approval code.
My memory of Apple Retail (this was '04-'06), however, is that they had almost every contingency covered. The POS machines all had USB modems attached so that in case the Internet went down at the store, credit cards could still be processed. We even had the old CH-CHUNK imprint devices when everything went pear-shaped. I do seem to remember having the ability to enter a manual authorization code for a credit card transaction. It is Apple Retail - there are supposed to be no hurdles keeping a Specialist from keeping a customer happy.
Credit Cards With Intelligence? The Battelle Memorial Institute is studying the feasibility of a credit card with a built-in micro-processor. Such a card has already been developed in Europe, and will soon be tested. It is expected that intelligent credit cards will provide added security without requiring large computer networks.
Everyone who shopped at Target last fall saw how well that was implemented here in the U.S.
Where is the '-1, Factually Incorrect' mod when you need it?
1) Yes, all Apple devices now prompt for an AppleID when you first turn them on. There is a 'Skip' button that you apparently completely missed, though. It is not a hidden button.
2) Apparently you were unable to do a simple Google search to figure out how to create an iTunes Store account without a credit card. Apple has posted directions.
Or does reality not fit with the bad image you want to have of Apple?
Nothing annoys me more than trying to find news about something local and finding that the online local news source has covered their front page with (inter-)national news.
If your small-town newspaper has a website, remember that it is competing with CNN.com, BBC.com, nytimes.com, and everything else. Chances are you not going to do better international news than the "big boys". You are going to be carrying the same AP story as everyone else.
So where can you compete? The local news that CNN, et al, are not going to carry. Do not make your readers search your site just to get the local coverage they are looking for.
Places like WickedLocal.com (in Massachusetts) have it figured out, probably because most Massachusetts local newspapers did *not* figure it out. Patch.com is trying to do this on a bigger scale.
A lot of people are talking about NAS devices and so on, but they all come back to "filesharing" as the software portion of their solution.
I use Plex to serve out media and love it. Transcodes a Blue-Ray rip to my iPad. I hit pause and bring the movie up on my television and start where I left off. You can run the server on a Windows machine, a Mac, or even some NAS devices.
I can be on the road and bring up any movie I have.
Client-wise they have iOS, OS X, Windows, and Android.
I think you might be off by a factor of 10. I was definitely reading Slashdot for a while (month or so?) before signing up for an account, but I am not sure I remember a time before accounts. Maybe 1500 people signed up once accounts were created?
If I were at my home machine I could definitely figure out when Slashdot sent my "Welcome" message, but it was probably October of 1998.
The amount of time I spend on Slashdot has definitely decreased over the years, but I still load the homepage 2-3 times a day.
ObTopic: I agree with a previous poster, that Slashdot's comment system is the worst, except for all of the other ones. I do not post nearly as often as I used to, but for getting a relatively informed take on tech stories? Slashdot is hard to beat. I still read 3-4 stories a day. This is probably down from my maximum back in the early 2000s.
I do agree that Slashdot (and similar comment websites) tend to have a major issue of groupthink. It seems that to have a reasonable discussion on the Internet you not only need a niche subject matter, but also a well-done comment and moderation system. The downside is that both of these requirements tend to encourage groupthink.
My biggest pet peeve with Slashdot is that there is no "-1, Factually Incorrect" moderation. When I have moderation points I frequently have to use "Overrated" to fill that niche.
There are not a lot of times, but I have seen a comment that is simply wrong be moderated up (oftentimes a groupthink assumption that turns out to be incorrect).
I find the moderation system one of the best on the Internet. I wish when people had moderation Slashdot would ignore their preferences and instead show comments at "-1, Newest First" to avoid older, higher moderated comments from simply getting moderated even higher at the expense of newer comments that have not had a chance to get moderated up.
But that is just me.
And you should listen to me because I have a four-digit UID, damnit! And get off my lawn!
I am another extremely happy customer of pair.com I have been using them for about ten years now and think I have seen a total of about ten minutes of downtime for my server in that time.
Good thing the xServe is not built for the "I need maximum performance in a 1U box", then.
An xServe, with OS X Server, is designed primarily for small businesses to get rid of their IT department by replacing their expensive IT guys and yearly MS CALs with an xServe and maybe one OS X tech. Generally a company with 1,000+ employees will not be using it, so the need for > 48GB RAM or multiple TBs stuffed into a 1U box really is not there.
Or are we just working with the "bigger numbers are better" argument?
I have no idea how far back the stolen data goes, but I was a student at Cornell in the mid-90's. I can assure you that Cornell does not have my current email address (my university address expired after I left), and they do not have my current mailing address, either - I never receive mailed solicitations for money.
On their FAQ page, they assure everyone that they contacted everyone who had their data stolen via email or USPS. I am not saying that I was necessarily one of the victims here, but I am sure that there are other people in the 45,000 for whom that is true.
The very last PowerBooks were sold October 2005 - January 2006. Not only that, but Apple announced the transition on 6 June 2005, or almost exactly four years ago.
If your PowerBook just expired its three year AppleCare, you must have bought your PowerBook *just* before the release of the MacBook Pros, and most certainly after Apple announced the transition.
Four years is a very long time for notebook computers. Apple gave you four years of full support after announcing they were planning on EOL PowerPC machines.
As far as security patches go, Apple continues to release updates and security patches for the previous generation OS. For example, with the release of Snow Leopard, support will cease for Tiger (OS X 10.4). Apple just last month released a security patch for Tiger (PPC). In addition, I believe all of the updates released recently for the various iLife products run on Tiger/PPC.
This means you should expect continued patches for your Leopard/PPC machine for at least the lifespan of Snow Leopard.
What confuses me most about your comment is your mention of a classroom of machines running MacOS 8. This proves that Apple software (and hardware) continues to be useful long after it has been EOL'd, but somehow your PowerBook will cease to be useful the minute Snow Leopard is released and is unavailable on your PowerBook?
I up and moved to St. Thomas, USVI because I wanted to stay closer to the East Coast. I moved for the exact reason you mention - why not? Moved down without a job and two days later had an interview and two days after that started working.
I worked afterschool at a private school. Job was 3pm-6pm on weekdays. I could walk there, and the pay covered my (expensive) rent and basic groceries/laundry/etc. I was not living high on the hog, but was paying the bills.
All in all I stayed on island for a year. It was really nice, but being far from everyone gets to you (it is a long flight just to Miami, much less any further inland) and you can only go sit on the beach with a few hundred tourists so often. The resident population is very divided - very low income and very high income, with little middle class. A lot that fall into the low-to-middle class tend to be highly transitory. After I had been there for over six months I almost became an "old timer" on the island.
I am glad I did it, but unless I came into a good amount of money I am not sure I would move back.
I am not sure what your nationality is, but a lot of Caribbean islands "belong" to various European countries. May not be difficult for you to move there.
I had considered wanting a camera with a GPS built-in, but there are so many times that it would not be worth it - any indoor shot, for example. Seems like a waste of upfront cost and battery life.
Instead I will use the GPS I already have, the camera I already have, and any one of a few different programs that will compare time stamps between the two devices and add the corresponding EXIF data automatically.
I use Sprint and was about 250m from the Washington Monument. While I had full bars the entire morning, texts were hit or miss - sometimes they went through, othertimes they did not. Calling was impossible. I tried calling twice and neither ever actually got through.
A friend with AT&T was able to get texting to work, but was not able to call nor to send a picture message.
All in all? I would not say they "survived".
Only in the sense that I can use my Sprint phone today, I suppose.
If I click on "Inbox" (first line above), I see all messages in all the Inboxes in all three accounts. If I want to just see the Inbox for Account1, I can click on that instead (second line).
Thunderbird and others seem to be convinced that everyone wants to break up everything based on accounts. Does anyone know the UI reasoning for this?
The cities involved are Union City, CA, Dallas and Lubbock, TX, Nashville and Chattanooga, TN, Springfield, MO.
As others have pointed out, if the government were truly interested in safety and not revenue, they would put up signs well ahead of the intersections. They would do the same with speed cameras - find where people are driving to fast for conditions (with accident data to back it up), put up a speed camera and then put up a sign.5 miles beforehand warning of the speed camera.
Of course, if safety were actually a reasonable cause for speeding, we would have speed limits actually based around the 85th percentile and other statistically proven safe policies.
Instead we have the police using tickets as a revenue source.
The site is obviously pretty Slashdotted at this point, so I was not able to download some of the Mosaic versions he links to.
Since I already have a copy of NCSA Mosaic copyrighted 1-27-1994, I decided to fire that up and load the page.
A screenshot of mosaic.mcom.com that I was finally able to load. It had issues with some of the.gif files on the page. I am not sure if that is de to the client or if the transfer timed out from the load.
This is Mosaic v1.0.3 under System 7.6.1, running in BasiliskII.
Strange timing. Just last night I started playing around with some gopher servers, so I fired up Basilisk and downloaded TurboGopher. I got my first access to Usenet feeds in about 1992, and was able to get more online in the fall of 1993. Gopher, FTP, and email were huge. I remember downloading Mosaic sometime in early spring of 1994 and playing around with it.
Why does Slashdot not have a "-1; Factually Incorrect" mod when you need one?
You, sir, are incorrect. ClamAV is indeed *included* with OS X Server, but it is most certainly not "running by default". It is used as part of the mail server. It is an option you can turn on in the mail server settings, and it automatically checks email for viruses (SpamAssassin is also included) if activated.
This is because people use OS X Server to serve non-Macintosh clients, including Windows machines.
It does not check every file on the machine. It is meant to protect clients it is serving, not to protect the OS X Server itself.
My lord that game seemed like a marketing strategy to sell more 2600 controllers.
My sister and I learned the best way for us to play that game - sitting on the floor, with the controller being held between the soles of our feet (one foot on the right side, one on the left), leaving hands free to move that controller back and forth like no one's business.
For some reason I also really got the timing for the pole vault down pretty well. I think my score on that would almost match the scores on the rest of the events combined.
Wow, is there anyway to hook a 2600 style controller up to my Mac? I need to get my fix! I do not think my Logitech Precision is up to the task!
The iPod is designed to be synced with just one computer. That is the nature of the iTunes sync component and the iPod itself. I have never heard of this bidirectional sync "optional plug-in" the original poster was referring to. Also - I have been bidirectionally syncing devices (Palm, PDAs, phones, etc.) for years now, and have supported people who have done the same. One thing I have learned? Bidirectional syncing will delete information given enough information and enough time. It will break eventually. Restore from backups, erase a device, and resync. Annoying, but it is a fact of life when doing syncing. On the other hand I have never had issues with one-way syncing. So maybe Apple just made that decision to make things easier with less support needs.
So Apple gives clear directions for moving your music library from computer to computer, even using your iPod.
The only reason Apple impose this artificial limitation on customers is at the behest of their real customers - the RIAA, et al.
Yes, it is simply that black and white. A company either screws their customers or does everything for them.
Have you no idea of balance? A company says "Hey, we can do more for our customers (and therefore sell more product) if we make these small concessions to other big companies?"
For example - "Hey, if we include DRM on our music store, then get so big that we have enough power to push the distribution companies into allowing us to sell non-DRM music, that will be to the long-term benefit of our customer (with the benefit being that we will sell even MORE music."
No, according to you the company should never bend slightly, and instead should never give in, even if it is to the detriment of both the company and its customers.
Wow, that took some research to figure out what in the world you were talking about.
You do not want "two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes", you are talking about bidirectional iPod syncing in iTunes. That is to say if there is a song on an iPod that is not in the iTunes Library, iTunes would copy the song from the iPod onto the computer.
That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss.
Huh? I still have my (still functional) 2nd. Generation iPod. I have been syncing iPods with iTunes for a long time and I can assure you that "feature" was never in iTunes.
Apple has to walk a fine line with the recording industry, and cannot do anything too blatant to piss off the record labels.
Having my friend walk over with his 160GB iPod and give me his entire music collection, facilitated by Apple themselves? Yeah, I can see some issues with that.
There are plenty of very capable third-party programs out there that do exactly what you are talking about (Senuti being the big one on the Mac right now). They do what you are talking about, and Apple does not get into trouble for it. I do not see the issue here.
And please stop saying it was functionality that was dropped from iTunes. It was never there.
"Fly-by-wire" does not mean the computer is flying the airplane.
Wikipedia link for the accident. There is some controversy surrounding the cause of the crash, but the plane was certainly not being flown by a computer at the time of the crash as the voice-over would have you believe.
[Short story: It was a combination of the airplane giving the pilot incorrect information about altitude, the pilot not paying attention to other cues letting him know something was wrong, and the plane not responding correctly when the pilot opened the throttle. Of course the plane was not designed to fly that low and at that speed, so...]
True, this is an indication of the computer not giving correct information, but this is proof that even with a human as a fail-safe, the accidents will still occur.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked retail for a long time, including an Apple Store. I cannot remember the policies at Apple when I was working there, but most places will not take a verbal approval code.
If the person on the other end of the phone (generally you get to them by calling the 800 number on the back of the card) has the ability to run the transaction, they have the ability to clear whatever prevented the card from going through the first time. They would have to - they have to clear the hurdle before they can run the transaction themselves.
So policy at most places is that the telephone operator clears the issue (usually it is a daily spending limit that card issuers never mention) and then the store runs the card again. There was no procedure for manually entering a verbal approval code.
My memory of Apple Retail (this was '04-'06), however, is that they had almost every contingency covered. The POS machines all had USB modems attached so that in case the Internet went down at the store, credit cards could still be processed. We even had the old CH-CHUNK imprint devices when everything went pear-shaped. I do seem to remember having the ability to enter a manual authorization code for a credit card transaction. It is Apple Retail - there are supposed to be no hurdles keeping a Specialist from keeping a customer happy.
From page 212:
Everyone who shopped at Target last fall saw how well that was implemented here in the U.S.
Where is the '-1, Factually Incorrect' mod when you need it?
1) Yes, all Apple devices now prompt for an AppleID when you first turn them on. There is a 'Skip' button that you apparently completely missed, though. It is not a hidden button.
2) Apparently you were unable to do a simple Google search to figure out how to create an iTunes Store account without a credit card. Apple has posted directions.
Or does reality not fit with the bad image you want to have of Apple?
Nothing annoys me more than trying to find news about something local and finding that the online local news source has covered their front page with (inter-)national news.
If your small-town newspaper has a website, remember that it is competing with CNN.com, BBC.com, nytimes.com, and everything else. Chances are you not going to do better international news than the "big boys". You are going to be carrying the same AP story as everyone else.
So where can you compete? The local news that CNN, et al, are not going to carry. Do not make your readers search your site just to get the local coverage they are looking for.
Places like WickedLocal.com (in Massachusetts) have it figured out, probably because most Massachusetts local newspapers did *not* figure it out. Patch.com is trying to do this on a bigger scale.
A lot of people are talking about NAS devices and so on, but they all come back to "filesharing" as the software portion of their solution.
I use Plex to serve out media and love it. Transcodes a Blue-Ray rip to my iPad. I hit pause and bring the movie up on my television and start where I left off. You can run the server on a Windows machine, a Mac, or even some NAS devices.
I can be on the road and bring up any movie I have.
Client-wise they have iOS, OS X, Windows, and Android.
I think you might be off by a factor of 10. I was definitely reading Slashdot for a while (month or so?) before signing up for an account, but I am not sure I remember a time before accounts. Maybe 1500 people signed up once accounts were created?
If I were at my home machine I could definitely figure out when Slashdot sent my "Welcome" message, but it was probably October of 1998.
The amount of time I spend on Slashdot has definitely decreased over the years, but I still load the homepage 2-3 times a day.
Happy 15th, Slashdot!
Damn newbies...
ObTopic: I agree with a previous poster, that Slashdot's comment system is the worst, except for all of the other ones. I do not post nearly as often as I used to, but for getting a relatively informed take on tech stories? Slashdot is hard to beat. I still read 3-4 stories a day. This is probably down from my maximum back in the early 2000s.
I do agree that Slashdot (and similar comment websites) tend to have a major issue of groupthink. It seems that to have a reasonable discussion on the Internet you not only need a niche subject matter, but also a well-done comment and moderation system. The downside is that both of these requirements tend to encourage groupthink.
Oh, and get off of my lawn!
My biggest pet peeve with Slashdot is that there is no "-1, Factually Incorrect" moderation. When I have moderation points I frequently have to use "Overrated" to fill that niche.
There are not a lot of times, but I have seen a comment that is simply wrong be moderated up (oftentimes a groupthink assumption that turns out to be incorrect).
I find the moderation system one of the best on the Internet. I wish when people had moderation Slashdot would ignore their preferences and instead show comments at "-1, Newest First" to avoid older, higher moderated comments from simply getting moderated even higher at the expense of newer comments that have not had a chance to get moderated up.
But that is just me.
And you should listen to me because I have a four-digit UID, damnit! And get off my lawn!
I am another extremely happy customer of pair.com I have been using them for about ten years now and think I have seen a total of about ten minutes of downtime for my server in that time.
Good thing the xServe is not built for the "I need maximum performance in a 1U box", then.
An xServe, with OS X Server, is designed primarily for small businesses to get rid of their IT department by replacing their expensive IT guys and yearly MS CALs with an xServe and maybe one OS X tech. Generally a company with 1,000+ employees will not be using it, so the need for > 48GB RAM or multiple TBs stuffed into a 1U box really is not there.
Or are we just working with the "bigger numbers are better" argument?
I have no idea how far back the stolen data goes, but I was a student at Cornell in the mid-90's. I can assure you that Cornell does not have my current email address (my university address expired after I left), and they do not have my current mailing address, either - I never receive mailed solicitations for money.
On their FAQ page, they assure everyone that they contacted everyone who had their data stolen via email or USPS. I am not saying that I was necessarily one of the victims here, but I am sure that there are other people in the 45,000 for whom that is true.
The very last PowerBooks were sold October 2005 - January 2006. Not only that, but Apple announced the transition on 6 June 2005, or almost exactly four years ago.
If your PowerBook just expired its three year AppleCare, you must have bought your PowerBook *just* before the release of the MacBook Pros, and most certainly after Apple announced the transition.
Four years is a very long time for notebook computers. Apple gave you four years of full support after announcing they were planning on EOL PowerPC machines.
As far as security patches go, Apple continues to release updates and security patches for the previous generation OS. For example, with the release of Snow Leopard, support will cease for Tiger (OS X 10.4). Apple just last month released a security patch for Tiger (PPC). In addition, I believe all of the updates released recently for the various iLife products run on Tiger/PPC.
This means you should expect continued patches for your Leopard/PPC machine for at least the lifespan of Snow Leopard.
What confuses me most about your comment is your mention of a classroom of machines running MacOS 8. This proves that Apple software (and hardware) continues to be useful long after it has been EOL'd, but somehow your PowerBook will cease to be useful the minute Snow Leopard is released and is unavailable on your PowerBook?
I up and moved to St. Thomas, USVI because I wanted to stay closer to the East Coast. I moved for the exact reason you mention - why not? Moved down without a job and two days later had an interview and two days after that started working.
I worked afterschool at a private school. Job was 3pm-6pm on weekdays. I could walk there, and the pay covered my (expensive) rent and basic groceries/laundry/etc. I was not living high on the hog, but was paying the bills.
All in all I stayed on island for a year. It was really nice, but being far from everyone gets to you (it is a long flight just to Miami, much less any further inland) and you can only go sit on the beach with a few hundred tourists so often. The resident population is very divided - very low income and very high income, with little middle class. A lot that fall into the low-to-middle class tend to be highly transitory. After I had been there for over six months I almost became an "old timer" on the island.
I am glad I did it, but unless I came into a good amount of money I am not sure I would move back.
I am not sure what your nationality is, but a lot of Caribbean islands "belong" to various European countries. May not be difficult for you to move there.
Yeah, this page listing all of the security patches in every Apple update must surely not exist. You know, complete with links to knowledge base articles containing links to the CVE-IDs patched by that particular patch.
Posts like yours are the reason that Slashdot needs a "-1, Factually Incorrect" moderation.
I agree that Apple should have patched this a long time ago, but your argument that Apple does not care about security is just plan asinine.
I had considered wanting a camera with a GPS built-in, but there are so many times that it would not be worth it - any indoor shot, for example. Seems like a waste of upfront cost and battery life.
Instead I will use the GPS I already have, the camera I already have, and any one of a few different programs that will compare time stamps between the two devices and add the corresponding EXIF data automatically.
Right now I am using GPSPhotoLinker for OS X.
I use Sprint and was about 250m from the Washington Monument. While I had full bars the entire morning, texts were hit or miss - sometimes they went through, othertimes they did not. Calling was impossible. I tried calling twice and neither ever actually got through.
A friend with AT&T was able to get texting to work, but was not able to call nor to send a picture message.
All in all? I would not say they "survived".
Only in the sense that I can use my Sprint phone today, I suppose.
The Marine One replacement, the VH-71, saw its budget more than double and face enormous delays.
One can only image what will happen to the Air Force One budget.
And they still do not seem to have grasped the concept of the global Inbox. Mail.app is about the only program I have seen that does it how I want it:
Inbox
>Account1
>Account2
>Account3
Sent
>Account1
>Account2
>Account3
Trash
>Account1
>Account2
>Account3
If I click on "Inbox" (first line above), I see all messages in all the Inboxes in all three accounts. If I want to just see the Inbox for Account1, I can click on that instead (second line).
Thunderbird and others seem to be convinced that everyone wants to break up everything based on accounts. Does anyone know the UI reasoning for this?
A link to the original article. Techdirt links to a Leftlanenews site that in turn links to the original article.
.5 miles beforehand warning of the speed camera.
The cities involved are Union City, CA, Dallas and Lubbock, TX, Nashville and Chattanooga, TN, Springfield, MO.
As others have pointed out, if the government were truly interested in safety and not revenue, they would put up signs well ahead of the intersections. They would do the same with speed cameras - find where people are driving to fast for conditions (with accident data to back it up), put up a speed camera and then put up a sign
Of course, if safety were actually a reasonable cause for speeding, we would have speed limits actually based around the 85th percentile and other statistically proven safe policies.
Instead we have the police using tickets as a revenue source.
The site is obviously pretty Slashdotted at this point, so I was not able to download some of the Mosaic versions he links to.
.gif files on the page. I am not sure if that is de to the client or if the transfer timed out from the load.
Since I already have a copy of NCSA Mosaic copyrighted 1-27-1994, I decided to fire that up and load the page.
A screenshot of mosaic.mcom.com that I was finally able to load. It had issues with some of the
This is Mosaic v1.0.3 under System 7.6.1, running in BasiliskII.
Strange timing. Just last night I started playing around with some gopher servers, so I fired up Basilisk and downloaded TurboGopher. I got my first access to Usenet feeds in about 1992, and was able to get more online in the fall of 1993. Gopher, FTP, and email were huge. I remember downloading Mosaic sometime in early spring of 1994 and playing around with it.
Ahh, the memories...
Why does Slashdot not have a "-1; Factually Incorrect" mod when you need one?
You, sir, are incorrect. ClamAV is indeed *included* with OS X Server, but it is most certainly not "running by default". It is used as part of the mail server. It is an option you can turn on in the mail server settings, and it automatically checks email for viruses (SpamAssassin is also included) if activated.
This is because people use OS X Server to serve non-Macintosh clients, including Windows machines.
It does not check every file on the machine. It is meant to protect clients it is serving, not to protect the OS X Server itself.
My lord that game seemed like a marketing strategy to sell more 2600 controllers.
My sister and I learned the best way for us to play that game - sitting on the floor, with the controller being held between the soles of our feet (one foot on the right side, one on the left), leaving hands free to move that controller back and forth like no one's business.
For some reason I also really got the timing for the pole vault down pretty well. I think my score on that would almost match the scores on the rest of the events combined.
Wow, is there anyway to hook a 2600 style controller up to my Mac? I need to get my fix! I do not think my Logitech Precision is up to the task!
How to use your iPod to move your music to a new computer. Instructions for moving music from computer to computer. Using an iPod.
Directions from Apple. With screenshots.
The iPod is designed to be synced with just one computer. That is the nature of the iTunes sync component and the iPod itself. I have never heard of this bidirectional sync "optional plug-in" the original poster was referring to. Also - I have been bidirectionally syncing devices (Palm, PDAs, phones, etc.) for years now, and have supported people who have done the same. One thing I have learned? Bidirectional syncing will delete information given enough information and enough time. It will break eventually. Restore from backups, erase a device, and resync. Annoying, but it is a fact of life when doing syncing. On the other hand I have never had issues with one-way syncing. So maybe Apple just made that decision to make things easier with less support needs.
So Apple gives clear directions for moving your music library from computer to computer, even using your iPod.
The only reason Apple impose this artificial limitation on customers is at the behest of their real customers - the RIAA, et al.
Yes, it is simply that black and white. A company either screws their customers or does everything for them.
Have you no idea of balance? A company says "Hey, we can do more for our customers (and therefore sell more product) if we make these small concessions to other big companies?"
For example - "Hey, if we include DRM on our music store, then get so big that we have enough power to push the distribution companies into allowing us to sell non-DRM music, that will be to the long-term benefit of our customer (with the benefit being that we will sell even MORE music."
No, according to you the company should never bend slightly, and instead should never give in, even if it is to the detriment of both the company and its customers.
Wow, that took some research to figure out what in the world you were talking about.
You do not want "two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes", you are talking about bidirectional iPod syncing in iTunes. That is to say if there is a song on an iPod that is not in the iTunes Library, iTunes would copy the song from the iPod onto the computer.
That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss.
Huh? I still have my (still functional) 2nd. Generation iPod. I have been syncing iPods with iTunes for a long time and I can assure you that "feature" was never in iTunes.
Apple has to walk a fine line with the recording industry, and cannot do anything too blatant to piss off the record labels.
Having my friend walk over with his 160GB iPod and give me his entire music collection, facilitated by Apple themselves? Yeah, I can see some issues with that.
There are plenty of very capable third-party programs out there that do exactly what you are talking about (Senuti being the big one on the Mac right now). They do what you are talking about, and Apple does not get into trouble for it. I do not see the issue here.
And please stop saying it was functionality that was dropped from iTunes. It was never there.
"Fly-by-wire" does not mean the computer is flying the airplane.
Wikipedia link for the accident. There is some controversy surrounding the cause of the crash, but the plane was certainly not being flown by a computer at the time of the crash as the voice-over would have you believe.
[Short story: It was a combination of the airplane giving the pilot incorrect information about altitude, the pilot not paying attention to other cues letting him know something was wrong, and the plane not responding correctly when the pilot opened the throttle. Of course the plane was not designed to fly that low and at that speed, so...]
True, this is an indication of the computer not giving correct information, but this is proof that even with a human as a fail-safe, the accidents will still occur.