It is cheaper. An entire album is 9.99 on iTS, DRM or DRM-free. That's around 25-100% cheaper than the equivalent album in the stores.
Alternatively you can save even more money by buying just the tracks you want. As the tracks you choose not to buy still cost money to produce, that's not bad.
Given the material cost of a typical CD including packaging is unlikely to be more than a dollar, with the $14+ overhead being used to pay for retail (still present), marketing (still necessary), and the production costs of the original work (still necessary) I think that's pretty good deal.
If you're British, you may be aware of an organization called the National Health Service, a group that provides (some) free health services via a compulsory overburdened insurance scheme although its competence and ability to deliver is often questioned.
Well, in America, such a concept is thought of as communist. It's considered important that things like incompetently provided healthcare are provided by free market means. Hence the HMO. HMOs are basically privatized, competing, versions of the National Health Service. Each insurance company competes to provide the worst service with the highest hidden (or not so hidden) charges.
I hope that helps.
Re:Now there's the Slashdot I know and love!
on
Jack Valenti, Dead at 85
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· Score: 3, Informative
He lobbied for a law so wide ranging that it made it a criminal offense, as in jail time, for making an unauthorized DVD player, just because if someone's capable of making a DVD player, they're also capable of making something that could copy DVDs. And if someone can copy a DVD, they can also potentially distribute unauthorized copies. Something that was already illegal.
The guy was at best a shortsighted raving lunatic.
How are you going to determine when to give them a warning (and what constitutes their first "official" warning) without going through the justice system to determine what they were guilty of in the first place?
I'm fully prepared to accept the punishments should be less harsh and that a child should not be exposed to a court system aimed at adults, but not prosecuted at all? That just doesn't make any sense. That's like some over-the-top law and order enthusiast arguing that "Criminals don't deserve justice". It's a contradiction in concepts.
Well, being Secretary Agriculture involves regulating an industry that shovels a lot of bullshit and makes huge amounts of money in the process. So yeah, I'm not sure why he'd be Hollywood's supremo either...;)
Network related errors are frequently of the cryptic error number variety in Mac OS X. I always thought it was a tad weird, here's this operating system where so much effort is put into making it user friendly, and then in one particular area there's skimping on the messages.
In Jaguar, which I use on one old Beige G3, you also always get a numeric message if you try to unpack a.dmg that requires a more recent OS.
If you want to see how stupid telephone pricing is, compare POTS (that's your usual analog service) to ISDN, in the US. ISDN is expensive, POTS isn't.
Why? Because once upon a time ISDN was seen as a premium product and POTS wasn't. But actually, ISDN is in some respects cheaper, especially when you compare it to two POTS lines. ISDN is essentially a direct digital connection to the exchange, whereas POTS requires all kinds of tricks to work. And with two line POTS, you're talking about requiring twice the infrastructure, compared to ISDN.
POTS is a consumer product. DSL is a consumer product. T1 isn't, and ISDN is too obscure for the telcos to even bother marketing it. So T1 and ISDN end up costing rather more than they should.
Windows 1.0 was previewed around 1983, and released in 1985. Supposedly this patent was initially filed in 1987 and granted in 1991. So MSFT would almost certainly prevail in any patent lawsuit covering Cardfile.
Not every case of "not defending your patent" would count as laches, for example, if the patenter had only just discovered Apple was using the technology covered by the patent, it's hard to see how Apple could prove laches are in any way relevent.
Further, according to the article you link to, laches do not get Apple off the hook, they just reduce the amount in damages the patenter can claim.
A successful defense of laches will find the court denying the request for equitable relief. However, even if equitable relief is not available, the party may still have an action at law if the statute of limitations has not run out.
So, even if laches provdes to be a valid defense, Apple may not have to pay damages, but would most likely still be forced to choose between dropping the technology, or paying royalties on it.
Windows 1.0 (possibly later versions, I didn't have a lot of exposure to Windows versions 2.x and 3.0) had a "database" app called "Card file", IIRC, that worked in the way you're describing.
The Z80 added some significant instructions, including some SIMD stuff that predates later solutions like Altivec by decades.
FWIW, we're talking about the Spectrum here as the Z80 based machine. It had memory mapped graphics (I'm unaware of a Z80 based mass-market computer that didn't), and it didn't use an S100 bus. In terms of cheapness, the Spectrum was much cheaper than the Commodore 64. In terms of size, it was a fraction of the size. It too used DRAM. So I'm a little confused as to why you've made so many of the statements you have about the Z80.
It is true that the Z80 executed less instructions per clock cycle. But it was easier to program (more registers, fully 16 bit addressing), and could be clocked at four times the rate more than making up for the instructions-per-cycle deficit.
FWIW, the Spectrum in its most popular form had 48k of RAM. Resolution wasn't directly comparable to the C64: the C64's maximum highest was 320x192 (as opposed to 256x192 in the Spectrum), but that had the same "colour clash" issues as the Spectrum. In practice, C64 games tended to be 160x192, using four colours per 8x8 pixels.
(This should not be interpreted as meaning I have a strong view about which was "better". I never had either as a kid. I'm still in therapy over that.;-)
The average electronics shopper at Wal-mart is hardly representative of the general population.
I would suspect you're entirely wrong in that statement. And I would also suggest that Wal-mart both follows and sets the trends that the mainstream has when it comes to mass-market electronics.
This is the company that for many areas of the country is the nearest and easiest place to reach to obtain electronics, clothing, gardening supplies, and media. It's also got a reputation throughout the rest of the country of being the lowest cost, or close to lowest cost, outlet for all of the above.
Each model has its own key, as opposed to DVD CSS where each manufacturer has its own key.
While there are a lot more AACS keys than CSS keys, there certainly aren't the half billion or so necessary for every device to have its own key. I'm not even sure how you'd implement that, given the need to have an encrypted version of the volume key for every AACS device key on every disk...
If the average Joe shops at Wal*Mart, then they have a high likelihood of having an HD-TV, given those are the TVs Wal*Mart seems to be pushing when I go there.
There are SD-TVs for sale, but the range is dwindling. HD-TV seems also to be selling on the back of higher screen sizes, which are becoming increasingly popular. There are pretty much no SD-TVs available any more over 25".
And the "average Joe" has spent 10x more for higher quality in the past, it wasn't that long ago that DVD took off, in a world where VHS players weren't significantly more expensive than DVD players are today. Couple that with the idea that after spending $600-2,000 on an HDTV, a $200 High-def media player isn't going to seem either expensive, or a frivolity...
As far as the other comments go: DVD-Audio and SACD failed really because the music industry never went with either. SACD should have been a shoe-in, it's completely CD compatible, and has higher quality on SACD players, but the industry never saw the point. The quality, from their point of view, was high enough with CD. With most music being listened to on portable devices, the idea of improving the media production values just to get a superficially higher quality for the 1% of people that (a) would notice, and (b) have equipment that's good enough to show the differences, was clearly not worth it.
Higher quality movies, on the other hand, are something the movie industry has opened itself up to, not least because the artists themselves see the value - they're making movies to be shown on giant "high resolution" (eg projected from 35-70mm film) widescreens, and right now the only way to see their works at home is chopped down to 720x480, using a non-native framerate, and interlacing. It's the audio equivalent of every piece of music being distributed using telephone quality audio technologies.
A year ago, I'd have said both formats were destined to fail to become mainstream, with one ultimately becoming the next Laserdisc, because of the lack of uptake of HD-TV. HD-TV however seems to be seriously taking off. Big, widescreen, and high resolution, and the prices are still coming down. Exactly what people want.
RMS is holding his own government to account. I'm not seeing the problem with that. And you're right, there are worse things he could be protesting about, but the fact his own government is involved in this particular abuse is a very good reason for him to prioritize it.
Marketshare has a significant role in the success of a virus. If a virus is going to be rejected by 95% of the computers it hits, frequently (such as with e-mailed viruses) in some way that draws attention to the issue on the computers it fails, it's likely to be detected far earlier and stamped out than if it is rejected by only 5% of the computers.
In other words: One of the reasons its so difficult to write a virus for Mac OS X is that it would have immense difficulty finding other Macs to spread to.
There are a whole host of reasons why there aren't Mac viruses. I've touched on them in various posts and suffered the karma loss that goes with stating the obvious. Both Macs and Windows have had significant security holes and presumably continue to do so. The major reasons that help the Mac over the PC are the marketshare/inability for hackers to use a network effect, the unfamiliarity the existing virus writers have with the platform, and an easily understood UI that helps the user understand what it is they're doing (Most Mac users may be no more clueful, but they have a better understanding of what their computer is doing than most Windows users thanks to the UI.)
Well, this is why I said Mac OS 9, not merely "Mac OS" which covers a variety of platforms and obsolete ways of running viruses. By the 1999-2002 period, computers primarily communicated on networks, with CDs being the main alternative. In other words, you can compare the state of the world of Mac OS 9 (in terms of the environment it lived in, the clued-upiness of its users, the lessons learnt) to the world of Windows XP, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux, whereas the original Mac OS 1-4 lived in a relatively innocent time where users really had no experience of how bad third parties could be.
And, of course, the rise of the hard disk meant that there was more to lose with Mac OS 9 than there was with floppy-based early Mac OSes.
The central point ultimately is that by Mac OS 9, users were sufficiently clued up, and provided with a sufficiently transparent UI, that they knew where the dangers lay and could avoid them. This, coupled with the difficulty of getting a network effect going with 5% of the market (19 in 20 computers that received the virus would be immune, and their users would raise flags faster than the virus could spread), made it relatively immune.
And that's despite the fact that, under Mac OS 9, all a user had to do was download and expand a.sit file containing malware, and the malware would be installed from that moment. Even current Mac OS X has similar potential, though Mac OS X now prompts you before you run an application for the first time as a result of clicking on a file it's associated with.
(I tried posting this earlier, but it has disappeared for some reason, weird. Still, gives me the chance to fix some of the language...)
It wouldn't be but for the fact that there's a dubious assumption that Mac OS X is bulletproof (or close to it) because Windows machines are always being attacked, and, by-and-large, Macs and GNU/Linux are being left alone. The assumption is then combined with the false belief that Mac OS X and GNU/Linux distributions have less significant holes.
Windows machines suffer for a variety of reasons, but not really because they have more bugs. It's more the case that a combination of there being a lot of them out in the wild, most of which are "administered" by people who really aren't familiar with the system's internals, not helped by a poor UI which, after Mac OS X and GNOME 2.x, is easily a poor third in the user friendliness/transparent computing front.
It's worth noting that Mac OS 9, which had no security whatsoever, had almost no (or none? The point is I've never come across one) viruses or worms. Users were just more vigilant, and the operating system's transparency (the degree to which the way the system worked was obvious to the end user) meant end users had a better idea of the consequences of their actions. This is a lesson worth noting for those building systems like GNOME: making something secure and user friendly does not mean hiding how it works, it means exposing how it works using legitimate metaphors.
Contrary to myth, Mac OS X has vulnerabilities. If you want to know why it hasn't been the target of a concerted hacker attack, you have to look elsewhere than the "Windows is insecure by design, OS X and Unix isn't" stuff that's become the prevailing consensus. And while that remains the prevailing consensus, the fact Mac OS X (or GNU/Linux) has vulnerabilities will always be news.
It wouldn't be but for the fact that there's a dubious assumption that Mac OS X is bulletproof (or close to it) because Windows machines are always being attacked, and, by-and-large, Macs and GNU/Linux are being left alone. The assumption is based upon the false belief that Mac OS X and GNU/Linux distributions have less significant holes.
Windows machines suffer for a variety of reasons, but not really because they have more bugs. It's more the case that a combination of there being a lot of them out in the wild, most of which are "administered" by people who really aren't familiar with the system's internals, not helped by a poor UI which, after Mac OS X and GNOME 2.x, is easily a poor third in the user friendliness/transparent computing front.
It's worth noting that Mac OS 9, which had no security whatsoever, had almost (or none? The point is I've never come across one) no viruses or worms. Users were just more vigilant, and the operating system's transparency (the degree to which the way the system worked was obvious to the end user) meant end users had a better idea of the consequences of their actions. This is a lesson worth noting for those building systems like GNOME: making something secure and user friendly does not mean hiding how it works, it means exposing how it works using legitimate metaphors.
Contrary to myth, Mac OS X has vulnerabilities. If you want to know why it hasn't been the target of a concerted hacker attack, you have to look elsewhere than the "Windows is insecure by design, OS X and Unix isn't" stuff that's become the prevailing consensus. And while that remains the prevailing consensus, the fact Mac OS X (or GNU/Linux) has vulnerabilities will always be news.
I use a Mac and I'm 99% sure you can't upgrade from Jaguar to Panther, or from Panther to Tiger, (and will not be able to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard) by using the process the GP mentioned. Indeed, far from it being a "push a button and the upgrade automatically downloads" process, upgrading Mac OS X's major versions has always been "Enter your credit card number and wait for the CDs/DVDs to arrive, after which you'll do a from-the-ground-up OS install" thing.
You buy the hybrid device the GP was talking about. You get a pre-paid SIM card. If you're in the US, T-Mobile offers probably the best PAYG rate if you make your first top-up $100 (subsequent top-ups can be for $10 or so, and all top-ups last one year. Air-time 10c a minute.) You use the GSM side of the device when you're making "out of range of Wifi" calls, and your usual VoIP provider for when you have Wi-fi.
Then the outcome of this might actually work out for you. The most likely scenario right now is that Vonage will go under, followed by Verizon's patents being ruled invalid (which, presumably, will entail more lawsuits from Vonage's creditors.)
Sorry, I must use an analogy. My neighbor has a porch light. I regularly use it to find my way when walking at night. I have never seen any sign that tells me it is ok to use the excess light he generates.
Indeed not. But if you used the excess light to find your way into his house, find his computer, and start using it, you might have difficulty convincing anyone your actions were legitimate because the mere presense of a lightbulb that happened to spread light outside of his home's boundaries was some kind of advertisement saying "Hey kids, come and use my computer network!"
There is no doubt that using excess radiation from a WAP is not illegal. If you want to set up an array of lenses, and focus that microwave energy on, say, some frozen chicken, in an attempt to defrost it (taking many millennia, but what the hell) then go right ahead. Your decision however to transmit signals to manipulate his computer network equipment on his property is, however, out of bounds, and under most jurisdictions the lack of direct authorization to do so is enough to put you into legal hot water.
And quite honestly, I have no idea why people see this as a problem. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you're so sure that the neighbour doesn't care if you use their network, despite the absense of any direct authorization (signs in the yard, SSIDs of "PUBLIC" or "ALLWELCOME", etc) then you're not going to have any real problem asking him for permission are you?
I'm going to make a guess that most of the people who consider asking permission, and then decide not to, using the network anyway, do so because they know what the answer will be, and it's not the one that coincides with "Everyone else's network wants to be free".
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It is cheaper. An entire album is 9.99 on iTS, DRM or DRM-free. That's around 25-100% cheaper than the equivalent album in the stores.
Alternatively you can save even more money by buying just the tracks you want. As the tracks you choose not to buy still cost money to produce, that's not bad.
Given the material cost of a typical CD including packaging is unlikely to be more than a dollar, with the $14+ overhead being used to pay for retail (still present), marketing (still necessary), and the production costs of the original work (still necessary) I think that's pretty good deal.
If you're British, you may be aware of an organization called the National Health Service, a group that provides (some) free health services via a compulsory overburdened insurance scheme although its competence and ability to deliver is often questioned.
Well, in America, such a concept is thought of as communist. It's considered important that things like incompetently provided healthcare are provided by free market means. Hence the HMO. HMOs are basically privatized, competing, versions of the National Health Service. Each insurance company competes to provide the worst service with the highest hidden (or not so hidden) charges.
I hope that helps.
He lobbied for a law so wide ranging that it made it a criminal offense, as in jail time, for making an unauthorized DVD player, just because if someone's capable of making a DVD player, they're also capable of making something that could copy DVDs. And if someone can copy a DVD, they can also potentially distribute unauthorized copies. Something that was already illegal.
The guy was at best a shortsighted raving lunatic.
How are you going to determine when to give them a warning (and what constitutes their first "official" warning) without going through the justice system to determine what they were guilty of in the first place?
I'm fully prepared to accept the punishments should be less harsh and that a child should not be exposed to a court system aimed at adults, but not prosecuted at all? That just doesn't make any sense. That's like some over-the-top law and order enthusiast arguing that "Criminals don't deserve justice". It's a contradiction in concepts.
Well, being Secretary Agriculture involves regulating an industry that shovels a lot of bullshit and makes huge amounts of money in the process. So yeah, I'm not sure why he'd be Hollywood's supremo either... ;)
Network related errors are frequently of the cryptic error number variety in Mac OS X. I always thought it was a tad weird, here's this operating system where so much effort is put into making it user friendly, and then in one particular area there's skimping on the messages.
In Jaguar, which I use on one old Beige G3, you also always get a numeric message if you try to unpack a .dmg that requires a more recent OS.
Quite.
If you want to see how stupid telephone pricing is, compare POTS (that's your usual analog service) to ISDN, in the US. ISDN is expensive, POTS isn't.
Why? Because once upon a time ISDN was seen as a premium product and POTS wasn't. But actually, ISDN is in some respects cheaper, especially when you compare it to two POTS lines. ISDN is essentially a direct digital connection to the exchange, whereas POTS requires all kinds of tricks to work. And with two line POTS, you're talking about requiring twice the infrastructure, compared to ISDN.
POTS is a consumer product. DSL is a consumer product. T1 isn't, and ISDN is too obscure for the telcos to even bother marketing it. So T1 and ISDN end up costing rather more than they should.
Windows 1.0 was previewed around 1983, and released in 1985. Supposedly this patent was initially filed in 1987 and granted in 1991. So MSFT would almost certainly prevail in any patent lawsuit covering Cardfile.
Not every case of "not defending your patent" would count as laches, for example, if the patenter had only just discovered Apple was using the technology covered by the patent, it's hard to see how Apple could prove laches are in any way relevent.
Further, according to the article you link to, laches do not get Apple off the hook, they just reduce the amount in damages the patenter can claim.
So, even if laches provdes to be a valid defense, Apple may not have to pay damages, but would most likely still be forced to choose between dropping the technology, or paying royalties on it.
Windows 1.0 (possibly later versions, I didn't have a lot of exposure to Windows versions 2.x and 3.0) had a "database" app called "Card file", IIRC, that worked in the way you're describing.
The Z80 added some significant instructions, including some SIMD stuff that predates later solutions like Altivec by decades.
FWIW, we're talking about the Spectrum here as the Z80 based machine. It had memory mapped graphics (I'm unaware of a Z80 based mass-market computer that didn't), and it didn't use an S100 bus. In terms of cheapness, the Spectrum was much cheaper than the Commodore 64. In terms of size, it was a fraction of the size. It too used DRAM. So I'm a little confused as to why you've made so many of the statements you have about the Z80.
It is true that the Z80 executed less instructions per clock cycle. But it was easier to program (more registers, fully 16 bit addressing), and could be clocked at four times the rate more than making up for the instructions-per-cycle deficit.
FWIW, the Spectrum in its most popular form had 48k of RAM. Resolution wasn't directly comparable to the C64: the C64's maximum highest was 320x192 (as opposed to 256x192 in the Spectrum), but that had the same "colour clash" issues as the Spectrum. In practice, C64 games tended to be 160x192, using four colours per 8x8 pixels.
(This should not be interpreted as meaning I have a strong view about which was "better". I never had either as a kid. I'm still in therapy over that. ;-)
I would suspect you're entirely wrong in that statement. And I would also suggest that Wal-mart both follows and sets the trends that the mainstream has when it comes to mass-market electronics.
This is the company that for many areas of the country is the nearest and easiest place to reach to obtain electronics, clothing, gardening supplies, and media. It's also got a reputation throughout the rest of the country of being the lowest cost, or close to lowest cost, outlet for all of the above.
Each model has its own key, as opposed to DVD CSS where each manufacturer has its own key.
While there are a lot more AACS keys than CSS keys, there certainly aren't the half billion or so necessary for every device to have its own key. I'm not even sure how you'd implement that, given the need to have an encrypted version of the volume key for every AACS device key on every disk...
If the average Joe shops at Wal*Mart, then they have a high likelihood of having an HD-TV, given those are the TVs Wal*Mart seems to be pushing when I go there.
There are SD-TVs for sale, but the range is dwindling. HD-TV seems also to be selling on the back of higher screen sizes, which are becoming increasingly popular. There are pretty much no SD-TVs available any more over 25".
And the "average Joe" has spent 10x more for higher quality in the past, it wasn't that long ago that DVD took off, in a world where VHS players weren't significantly more expensive than DVD players are today. Couple that with the idea that after spending $600-2,000 on an HDTV, a $200 High-def media player isn't going to seem either expensive, or a frivolity...
As far as the other comments go: DVD-Audio and SACD failed really because the music industry never went with either. SACD should have been a shoe-in, it's completely CD compatible, and has higher quality on SACD players, but the industry never saw the point. The quality, from their point of view, was high enough with CD. With most music being listened to on portable devices, the idea of improving the media production values just to get a superficially higher quality for the 1% of people that (a) would notice, and (b) have equipment that's good enough to show the differences, was clearly not worth it.
Higher quality movies, on the other hand, are something the movie industry has opened itself up to, not least because the artists themselves see the value - they're making movies to be shown on giant "high resolution" (eg projected from 35-70mm film) widescreens, and right now the only way to see their works at home is chopped down to 720x480, using a non-native framerate, and interlacing. It's the audio equivalent of every piece of music being distributed using telephone quality audio technologies.
A year ago, I'd have said both formats were destined to fail to become mainstream, with one ultimately becoming the next Laserdisc, because of the lack of uptake of HD-TV. HD-TV however seems to be seriously taking off. Big, widescreen, and high resolution, and the prices are still coming down. Exactly what people want.
Yes, Wal-mart sells HDTVs.
I would imagine a similar proportion of Wal-mart's customers own HDTVs to the rest of the population.
RMS is holding his own government to account. I'm not seeing the problem with that. And you're right, there are worse things he could be protesting about, but the fact his own government is involved in this particular abuse is a very good reason for him to prioritize it.
Marketshare has a significant role in the success of a virus. If a virus is going to be rejected by 95% of the computers it hits, frequently (such as with e-mailed viruses) in some way that draws attention to the issue on the computers it fails, it's likely to be detected far earlier and stamped out than if it is rejected by only 5% of the computers.
In other words: One of the reasons its so difficult to write a virus for Mac OS X is that it would have immense difficulty finding other Macs to spread to.
There are a whole host of reasons why there aren't Mac viruses. I've touched on them in various posts and suffered the karma loss that goes with stating the obvious. Both Macs and Windows have had significant security holes and presumably continue to do so. The major reasons that help the Mac over the PC are the marketshare/inability for hackers to use a network effect, the unfamiliarity the existing virus writers have with the platform, and an easily understood UI that helps the user understand what it is they're doing (Most Mac users may be no more clueful, but they have a better understanding of what their computer is doing than most Windows users thanks to the UI.)
Well, this is why I said Mac OS 9, not merely "Mac OS" which covers a variety of platforms and obsolete ways of running viruses. By the 1999-2002 period, computers primarily communicated on networks, with CDs being the main alternative. In other words, you can compare the state of the world of Mac OS 9 (in terms of the environment it lived in, the clued-upiness of its users, the lessons learnt) to the world of Windows XP, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux, whereas the original Mac OS 1-4 lived in a relatively innocent time where users really had no experience of how bad third parties could be.
And, of course, the rise of the hard disk meant that there was more to lose with Mac OS 9 than there was with floppy-based early Mac OSes.
The central point ultimately is that by Mac OS 9, users were sufficiently clued up, and provided with a sufficiently transparent UI, that they knew where the dangers lay and could avoid them. This, coupled with the difficulty of getting a network effect going with 5% of the market (19 in 20 computers that received the virus would be immune, and their users would raise flags faster than the virus could spread), made it relatively immune.
And that's despite the fact that, under Mac OS 9, all a user had to do was download and expand a .sit file containing malware, and the malware would be installed from that moment. Even current Mac OS X has similar potential, though Mac OS X now prompts you before you run an application for the first time as a result of clicking on a file it's associated with.
(I tried posting this earlier, but it has disappeared for some reason, weird. Still, gives me the chance to fix some of the language...)
It wouldn't be but for the fact that there's a dubious assumption that Mac OS X is bulletproof (or close to it) because Windows machines are always being attacked, and, by-and-large, Macs and GNU/Linux are being left alone. The assumption is then combined with the false belief that Mac OS X and GNU/Linux distributions have less significant holes.
Windows machines suffer for a variety of reasons, but not really because they have more bugs. It's more the case that a combination of there being a lot of them out in the wild, most of which are "administered" by people who really aren't familiar with the system's internals, not helped by a poor UI which, after Mac OS X and GNOME 2.x, is easily a poor third in the user friendliness/transparent computing front.
It's worth noting that Mac OS 9, which had no security whatsoever, had almost no (or none? The point is I've never come across one) viruses or worms. Users were just more vigilant, and the operating system's transparency (the degree to which the way the system worked was obvious to the end user) meant end users had a better idea of the consequences of their actions. This is a lesson worth noting for those building systems like GNOME: making something secure and user friendly does not mean hiding how it works, it means exposing how it works using legitimate metaphors.
Contrary to myth, Mac OS X has vulnerabilities. If you want to know why it hasn't been the target of a concerted hacker attack, you have to look elsewhere than the "Windows is insecure by design, OS X and Unix isn't" stuff that's become the prevailing consensus. And while that remains the prevailing consensus, the fact Mac OS X (or GNU/Linux) has vulnerabilities will always be news.
It wouldn't be but for the fact that there's a dubious assumption that Mac OS X is bulletproof (or close to it) because Windows machines are always being attacked, and, by-and-large, Macs and GNU/Linux are being left alone. The assumption is based upon the false belief that Mac OS X and GNU/Linux distributions have less significant holes.
Windows machines suffer for a variety of reasons, but not really because they have more bugs. It's more the case that a combination of there being a lot of them out in the wild, most of which are "administered" by people who really aren't familiar with the system's internals, not helped by a poor UI which, after Mac OS X and GNOME 2.x, is easily a poor third in the user friendliness/transparent computing front.
It's worth noting that Mac OS 9, which had no security whatsoever, had almost (or none? The point is I've never come across one) no viruses or worms. Users were just more vigilant, and the operating system's transparency (the degree to which the way the system worked was obvious to the end user) meant end users had a better idea of the consequences of their actions. This is a lesson worth noting for those building systems like GNOME: making something secure and user friendly does not mean hiding how it works, it means exposing how it works using legitimate metaphors.
Contrary to myth, Mac OS X has vulnerabilities. If you want to know why it hasn't been the target of a concerted hacker attack, you have to look elsewhere than the "Windows is insecure by design, OS X and Unix isn't" stuff that's become the prevailing consensus. And while that remains the prevailing consensus, the fact Mac OS X (or GNU/Linux) has vulnerabilities will always be news.
I use a Mac and I'm 99% sure you can't upgrade from Jaguar to Panther, or from Panther to Tiger, (and will not be able to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard) by using the process the GP mentioned. Indeed, far from it being a "push a button and the upgrade automatically downloads" process, upgrading Mac OS X's major versions has always been "Enter your credit card number and wait for the CDs/DVDs to arrive, after which you'll do a from-the-ground-up OS install" thing.
Nokia makes and sells phones, not phone service.
You buy the hybrid device the GP was talking about. You get a pre-paid SIM card. If you're in the US, T-Mobile offers probably the best PAYG rate if you make your first top-up $100 (subsequent top-ups can be for $10 or so, and all top-ups last one year. Air-time 10c a minute.) You use the GSM side of the device when you're making "out of range of Wifi" calls, and your usual VoIP provider for when you have Wi-fi.
That's what you're asking for, correct?
Then the outcome of this might actually work out for you. The most likely scenario right now is that Vonage will go under, followed by Verizon's patents being ruled invalid (which, presumably, will entail more lawsuits from Vonage's creditors.)
Everybody wins! Woo-woohoo!
Indeed not. But if you used the excess light to find your way into his house, find his computer, and start using it, you might have difficulty convincing anyone your actions were legitimate because the mere presense of a lightbulb that happened to spread light outside of his home's boundaries was some kind of advertisement saying "Hey kids, come and use my computer network!"
There is no doubt that using excess radiation from a WAP is not illegal. If you want to set up an array of lenses, and focus that microwave energy on, say, some frozen chicken, in an attempt to defrost it (taking many millennia, but what the hell) then go right ahead. Your decision however to transmit signals to manipulate his computer network equipment on his property is, however, out of bounds, and under most jurisdictions the lack of direct authorization to do so is enough to put you into legal hot water.
And quite honestly, I have no idea why people see this as a problem. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you're so sure that the neighbour doesn't care if you use their network, despite the absense of any direct authorization (signs in the yard, SSIDs of "PUBLIC" or "ALLWELCOME", etc) then you're not going to have any real problem asking him for permission are you?
I'm going to make a guess that most of the people who consider asking permission, and then decide not to, using the network anyway, do so because they know what the answer will be, and it's not the one that coincides with "Everyone else's network wants to be free".