Perhaps you could supply some evidence? I won't, because it doesn't matter. I only know what the Intel guys told me at the time. Even if MS wrote the spec entirely on their own, I'm not sure how it's THEIR fault the manufacturers didn't follow it. I can assure you that HP (for example), read the spec and deliberately chose not to follow it because it involved learning a new pseudo-language and QA was a major PITA. ACPI in the early days was a mess for this reason.
"Microsoft was sent broken ASL from the manufacturers" makes no sense at all. You are suggesting that manufacturers sent ASL tables to Microsoft for them to compile into binaries, which get sent back to the manufacturer. This picture is utterly wrong. In the early days of ACPI, this is EXACTLY what happened. Microsoft would personally hand-tune the code they got from manufacturers because the manufacturers couldn't get it to work and threw up their hands. If you look at all the early Windows ACPI drivers they are all written by MS. This is why MS made their own compiler that was less stringent than the Intel compiler, so they wouldn't have to fix the broken crap they kept getting from the manufacturers. So here's the sequence of events:
1) ACPI specs and Intel compiler are released to manufacturers.
2) Manufacturers bitch that they can't compile their code because (in effect) their implementations are too buggy.
3) The submit their code to MS saying "fix it".
4) MS "fixes" the problem by writing a custom complier that ignores many of the errors. This allows manufactures to write much sloppier code.
Perhaps it's a lousy fix, but MS got tired of writing DSDT tables for the manufacturers. This was still a problem LAST YEAR, when I was doing support for Vista.
Microsoft and Intel produced compilers that the manufacturers download. Intel's compiler was written correctly, and gave error messages so that the manufacturers could correct the ASL source and recompile. Microsoft's compiler appears to have been designed to only flag faults that were significant to Microsoft's own OS, and I have supplied evidence that this may have been done on purpose, instigated at board level within Microsoft. Your conspiracy theory is not consistent with reality. How did MS force the manufacturers to use their compiler?
I would imagine that Apple used Intel's compiler as it would probably work for OSX. Its also very apparent that installing OS-X on non-apple approved hardware will result in exactly the same issues as Linux finds, specifically a series of hardware problems as Apple's AppleACPIPlatform driver trips over buggy DSDT tables. So, right here, you just validated everything I was saying. Your hatred of MS blinds you to the fact that this problem is clearly the result of buggy DSDT tables written BY THE MANUFACTURERS, not MS.
You will also have to supply evidence that manufacturers are moving to Microsoft's compiler, as my feeling (I cant find evidence either way) is that the big players are moving to iasl as they start offering Linux. I know IBM is. I don't think HP and Dell are. That's the "big players" right there. I know Compaq used the Microsoft ASL compiler, and clearly people stopped buying their kit for some reason. What? They're only the #1 PC vendor in the world.
If I have understood it right, with Tivo/ReplayTV, the guide info data is added to the analogue broadcast. Incorrect, the guide data is downloaded separately through a phone line or Ethernet (broadband internet). The only "permission" that is needed from the broadcasters is to allow them to send the guide data. The guide data is already provided in a standard format for the satellite providers.
You should also note that almost all electronics come from China anyways, so having 14% duty wouldn't have done anything to the price The EU has no duty on goods from EU companies doing manufacturing in China. So that Dutch Philips DVD Recorder has no duty, while the American Tivo has a 14% duty even though both are actually made in China. The US has standing WTO complaints about this.
To be also noted that VAT is included in all electronics. In many EU countries the VAT is higher for "foreign" goods, as above.
I've know several victims of domestic violence. Women often stay with abusive men because they can't get away, financially as well as spatially. They can't afford to leave, or realize that if they do, the abuser is likely to get even more pissed off, track them down, and really lay on a beating. So this woman has no friends, no family, no church, etc? Why isn't she asking these people to do something about her abuser? If his legs are broken he's not going to be tracking anyone down. She might be poor, but does she have $200 to save her life? That's how much a cheap gun costs at the pawn shop. Hell, pepper spray is $4 and pretty effective too. Pepper spray and a brick will take down anybody.
They can't afford to leave, This is what it's really about. Battered women tend to be stay at home moms (read: no job skills) and aren't very independent-minded in general. The notion of "taking care of themselves" is fundamentally more scary than the occasional fear of being beaten up, so they put up with it. They consciously ignore the people around them that tell them to leave the guy that's beating them up because they don't want to be alone.
When they do try to leave, they get no help from the state. Exactly right. Did you read the last paragraph of my post?
A friend of mine had left her abusive husband, he kept harassing her, she called for help - and rather than lock up the ex, they tried to take her kids. Because the police department are not her personal bodyguards. At some level, people have to take responsibility for their own safety. And that generally means dealing with abusive lovers yourself.
In the last election a lady in my preicinct filled in the mark for the wrong candidate. She then filled in the correct one, circled one of the two, and put an X next to it and proceeded to slide it into the scanner.... I had two 100 year old voters last election who could never could have figured that one out. I've worked at polling places too. You're defending stupidity. I don't care if the ballots of stupid people aren't counted. Elections are too heavily skewed towards old and stupid people anyway.
However, it's difficult for me to see how the optical ballots are better for stupid voters. In a hand-count system it would be MUCH more obvious to the voter where they had to put their mark, and if they put their mark in the wrong place they could easily tell they made an error and request a new ballot THEMSELVES. If despite the simplicity of the hand-counted ballots, they submit ambiguous ballots anyway, those ballots would be rejected.
Again, legitimate ERRORS are NOT the problem we're trying to solve because legitimate errors are NOT considered a serious problem in any of the balloting systems we're discussing. The much more serious problem we're attempting to address is vote tampering. If a measure to decrease vote tampering increases the likelihood of legitimate errors (I am not conceding the point that hand counting is truly less accurate) that's okay.
So why not support ID requirements for voting? Because these requirements have been proven NOT to reduce vote fraud or tampering, but they DO prevent a significant number of legitimate voters from voting because they lack the appropriate ID (they forgot to bring it to the polling place, etc.) The idea is usually put forward by Republicans who think illegal immigrants somehow make up a significant voting block.
I fail to see how taking something someone is giving away is "sucking at the capitalist teat". Just because capitalists made it originally, does not mean it's commercial now. Lots of companies contribute to Linux, that doesn't make Linux commercial.
This *IS* a class struggle in the sense that it's a non-commercial OS (Linux) vs. a corporate OS (Apple). As you said, Apple is "just being a company" i.e. capitalistic. They are making a business decision that hurts their users in the interest of making money. Apple, by supporting DRM in their operating system and products, is also encouraging it's use generally. Steve can rant all he likes about how much he dislikes DRM, actions speak louder than words. And iTunes is currently the biggest, and one of the most restrictive, DRM schemes out there.
BTW, Breaking DTrace for selected apps is not "good coding" by any stretch of the imagination.
What you want is called a "Load Balancer". I don't know of any software solutions off the top of my head, though you might look into Devil-Linux. However, I do know of a hardware solution, a load-balancing router like this one.
The point behind optical scan is that it is quick, low cost and still auditable. It's quick, but the system I propose is considerably cheaper. I disagree with the third point. Optical scan ballots, in practice, are only "audited" by the same scanning equipment used to count them initially. This does not really translate to "auditable" in my mind since equipment tampering is undetectable. The likelihood of observers being able to certify the reliability of the scanning equipment "on the spot" is very low. Voter suppression is the most serious issue in the USA, and as my system is extremely cheap and easy to use it will better serve poor, rural, and elderly areas that are underserved.
Hand counting is not quick, and human error can enter into that. Absolutely. But the errors are well understood and relatively easy to correct. Also, lots of eyes from observers (as you pointed out), makes errors less likely. And some percentage of errors is inevitable. Tampering is considered a more important problem than an honest miscount anyway.
Hand counting with lots of observers can be pretty time consuming in terms of man-hours. Yup. Counting ballots is labor intensive. It's going to take a lot of people and it's going to take time. Once that idea is firmly fixed in the mind it's possible to create tamper resistant balloting systems. It is the foolish attempt to make counting ballots EASIER that leads to corruption in the process. Counting ballots doesn't have to be easy, auditing and reliability are FAR more important.
Yup. If this guy really is an insider he's going out of his way to be vague about what really happened. He's also clearly no longer with MS, and left soon after the 360 launched, because he SPECULATES about changes made to the 360 2 years ago.
Optical scan ballots really aren't a dramatic improvement in reliability. In fact, the touchscreen systems replaced optical scan ballots in many locations.
Designing a reliable balloting system is really quite easy. The UN nailed it down decades ago:
1. Printed paper ballots wherein each ballot is marked by grease pencil or felt marker.
2. Ballots are folded and placed into a slot on top of a locked clear plastic box.
3. The boxes are guarded, transported to a central location, and then opened and the ballots are all hand-counted by volunteers in front of observers from all parties.
As I said previously the reason for Europe lacking devices like Tivo and ReplayTV was that nobody was going to implement proprietary standard with analogue TV I'm not sure what you're talking about. What "standard"? PAL was standard for decades and that's the only "standard" that Tivo/ReplayTV needed to implement. Having the Europeans upload guide data to Tivo/Replay seems relatively trivial to me.
Other reason like excessive import duties don't hold water as duties are very low or none at all, as stipulated by WTO treaties. The EU imposes a 14% duty on consumer electronics plus the VAT, which is higher for foreign goods. That's not "very low".
Phoenix were not involved in the 1.0 specifications. Phoenix was involved in the 1.0 spec, regardless of what that PDF says. Most of the work for ACPI was done by Intel and Phoenix.
Microsoft were not getting "broken DSDT tables" from manufacturers. Microsoft were shipping software that generated broken DSDT tables. Do you even know what a DSDT table is? It's a compiled table that describes the system. It's written in a custom language called ASL (ACPI Source Language) and is compiled into AML (ACPI Machine Language) by the compiler. Back in 1998 Microsoft was sent broken ASL from the manufacturers that would not compile unless they tweaked the compiler. If they DIDN'T tweak the compiler ACPI features would not work in Windows (just like they don't work in Linux). What the fuck were they supposed to do?
Nowadays, manufacturers just compile the DSDT tables themselves using MS' compiler, instead of Intel's, because it's EASIER. Once again, how is this the fault of Microsoft? The manufacturers certainly CAN write proper ASL source and they CAN compile them with the more stringent Intel compiler. The fact they the choose not to do so is NOT MICROSOFT'S FAULT. It certainly CAN be done, presumably Apple did this for MacOS.
I guess I'm saying that it's incumbent upon the Linux people to work around the problems in MS' compiler by re-implementing ACPI in Linux, make their own compiler, or convince the manufacturers to write proper ASL. Bitching about MS doesn't accomplish anything.
You can sell the resulting binaries - provided you give buyers access to the machine readable source. There is nothing that prevents you from selling GPL'ed software. You're right, my bad. However, in my scenario, the reseller WOULDN'T give buyers access to the source since he's trying to impersonate the MySQL corporation.
Sure the manufacturers are lazy, but it still remains that Microsoft lead the development of a hard to implement standard, and then supply substandard tools to aid the use of the standard. Intel and Phoenix lead the development, not Microsoft. MS wanted something a lot simpler as evidenced by their broken compiler.
Except Microsoft were unlikely to have been 'lazy' about producing a substandard compiler, but actively seeking to cause manufacturers to create hardware that did not play nice with non-Microsoft operating systems. You have no idea what you're talking about. If the manufacturers made PROPER DSDT tables they would work just fine with Microsoft's compiler. Microsoft tweaked their compiler to deal with all the broken DSDT tables they were getting from the manufacturers (particularly the the Taiwanese manufacturers), NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. That's a FACT.
Again: What the fuck were they supposed to do? They can't FORCE the manufacturers to write proper drivers. When they attempted to do so with signed drivers (the same thing Apple does), both the hardware vendors and their critics freaked claiming that MS was trying to "control the market". They're dammed if they do and dammed if they don't.
To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. I just remember Canadian and British viewers in the Tivo and ReplayTV forums bitching that they couldn't get guide info and the Tivo and ReplayTV reps saying that nobody would sell it to them. That, plus excessive import duties, seems to be the reason PVRs never took off in Europe.
Where do you get your information? It is legal to do that in the USA, as long as you adhere to the GPL. Though I suspect MySQL would have an extremely strong case for trademark infringement. I proposed that a company would obtain the GPL source code for MySQL, compile it, and then SELL the resulting binaries. That clearly is illegal, both a violation of the GPL and MySQL's trademarks.
It's worth noting that this is technically illegal in China too, it's just that these laws are really only enforced in the US and (to a lesser extent) Europe.
DV victims, on the other hand, tend to stay with those who abuse them. It's often the girlfriend/wife with black eyes that comes and bails out the abuser. If a database like the one proposed existed, then it could be used to pierce the facade that abusers put forth. And it could also help friends with suspicions to convince the woman the man is not as he presents himself. You're kidding me, right? The relationship between "abusers" and domestic violence "victims" is largely symbiotic.
First off, in the United States, domestic violence is defined as "when a man hits a woman or threatens to hit a woman". Oftentimes the violence is going both ways but women are only very rarely charged. The fact that the woman was trying to stab him at the time doesn't get the guy off.
Second, women do not need to be convinced "the man is not as he presents himself". They KNOW what he is (they felt his fists on their face, remember?) and on some level, they LIKE it. That's why they're with him. I have talked to many abused women and it's literally impossible to convince them through REASON that "their man" is an abuser. Usually it boils down to "Leave this guy or the state will take your kids." and thy get angry at the STATE.
My opinion, which people tend to reject as "extreme", is that men have a moral obligation to protect women. If you're a man and you know that one of your female friends is being abused you have a moral obligation to go to your friend's house, beat the shit out of the guy, throw him out of the house, and then tell him if you ever see him anywhere near your friend again you'll kill him. Don't ask your friend's permission, don't tell he you're coming over, and if your friend objects, ignore her. She's obviously too stupid to take care of herself and NEEDS you to do this for her. Check on your friend to make sure she isn't seeing this guy. If she is, kill him. No jury will convict you, the police (who HATE domestic abusers) won't even prosecute you.
The extremely poorly articulated point of the posting and article is that open source companies are often criticized because they face a serious issue other software companies do not. That issue is the re-use of their source code by other companies.
What is to keep another company, say NySQL Inc. from taking the source code to MySQL, compiling their own product, and then reselling it? Nothing. You might say "It's illegal!", but that's ONLY in the USA. I'd bet there are at least 3 companies in China reselling MySQL right now. Since they keep their source code release up to date, this means NySQL's product will always be up to date. And since NySQL has a bigger presence in China, Chinese customers will always go to them first.
Ever think there might be a causal relationship behind that complete lack of an attention span? What do you think the average attention span of a 3 year old is, exactly?
It is harder to develop backbone capacity than last mile capacity, and ISPs have a very limited amount of backbone capacity.
The hell it is. The government is paying the telcos billions to lay down fiber to the home (you don't actually think they paid themselves do you?) and billions more to build backbone infrastructure. Most of this money is pocketed by the telcos. Pretty much the sole reason most Americans in metro areas don't have 10Mb links is because of greed by the telcos. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the financials of these companies could tell you that. They spend more on marketing than they do on infrastructure. Some even spend more on executive bonuses than they do on infrastructure. I personally think they should be nationalized, but that's just me.
Microsoft isn't the fucking devil. You glossed over the key fact:
the manufacturer of the laptop supplies a dsdt table that does not follow the published standards for dsdt tables
In fact, this is the case with most manufacturers. Implementing ACPI correctly is hard work, and lazy Taiwanese developers don't want to bother to do the work. That's not Microsoft's fault. So they were faced with a dilemma: Have ACPI not work on most Windows systems, or tweak their compiler to work about the buggy code of the manufacturers. They chose the latter. All together now:
Buggy third-party drivers are not Microsoft's fault.
The idea was to make it thin and light. The MacBook Air is a subnotebook, and subnotebooks typically do not have optical drives built in with the goal of keeping the size, weight, and power requirements down.
The fundamental problem with DVD recording is that PVRs are WAY better and took off in the USA long before the DVD recorders became popular. To this day, I don't think you can get Tivo in Europe due to a lack of guide information. Yes, offloading the content from the Tivo/ReplayTV/other PVRs to a PC for burning is annoying, but I did it all the time. And the model of the future seems to be a "media center" PC on the back end in a closet or office, with a front end box (like a AppleTV or Xbox360) for the living room. This model seems to provide the "best of all worlds", with a quiet set-top box and sophisticated editing and management features on the back end. This model does have the problem of being very expensive.
I work across the street from Apple and I heard Apple employees talking about the "thinbook" (that's that they were calling it) at the coffee shop. Just because Apple has a reputation for stopping leaks, that doesn't mean Apple doesn't leak. iTunes leaked too.
surely we could so something similar with specialised running shoes/attachments? Absolutely, which is why we don't let runners compete with springs on their feet. Basically, this guy has replaced his lower legs with leaf springs. He would have even more of an advantage than the runners with springs on their feet because they're ADDING weight, he's subtracting it.
Slashdot Mirror
1) ACPI specs and Intel compiler are released to manufacturers.
2) Manufacturers bitch that they can't compile their code because (in effect) their implementations are too buggy.
3) The submit their code to MS saying "fix it".
4) MS "fixes" the problem by writing a custom complier that ignores many of the errors. This allows manufactures to write much sloppier code.
Perhaps it's a lousy fix, but MS got tired of writing DSDT tables for the manufacturers. This was still a problem LAST YEAR, when I was doing support for Vista. Microsoft and Intel produced compilers that the manufacturers download. Intel's compiler was written correctly, and gave error messages so that the manufacturers could correct the ASL source and recompile. Microsoft's compiler appears to have been designed to only flag faults that were significant to Microsoft's own OS, and I have supplied evidence that this may have been done on purpose, instigated at board level within Microsoft. Your conspiracy theory is not consistent with reality. How did MS force the manufacturers to use their compiler? I would imagine that Apple used Intel's compiler as it would probably work for OSX. Its also very apparent that installing OS-X on non-apple approved hardware will result in exactly the same issues as Linux finds, specifically a series of hardware problems as Apple's AppleACPIPlatform driver trips over buggy DSDT tables. So, right here, you just validated everything I was saying. Your hatred of MS blinds you to the fact that this problem is clearly the result of buggy DSDT tables written BY THE MANUFACTURERS, not MS. You will also have to supply evidence that manufacturers are moving to Microsoft's compiler, as my feeling (I cant find evidence either way) is that the big players are moving to iasl as they start offering Linux. I know IBM is. I don't think HP and Dell are. That's the "big players" right there. I know Compaq used the Microsoft ASL compiler, and clearly people stopped buying their kit for some reason. What? They're only the #1 PC vendor in the world.
However, it's difficult for me to see how the optical ballots are better for stupid voters. In a hand-count system it would be MUCH more obvious to the voter where they had to put their mark, and if they put their mark in the wrong place they could easily tell they made an error and request a new ballot THEMSELVES. If despite the simplicity of the hand-counted ballots, they submit ambiguous ballots anyway, those ballots would be rejected.
Again, legitimate ERRORS are NOT the problem we're trying to solve because legitimate errors are NOT considered a serious problem in any of the balloting systems we're discussing. The much more serious problem we're attempting to address is vote tampering. If a measure to decrease vote tampering increases the likelihood of legitimate errors (I am not conceding the point that hand counting is truly less accurate) that's okay.
So why not support ID requirements for voting? Because these requirements have been proven NOT to reduce vote fraud or tampering, but they DO prevent a significant number of legitimate voters from voting because they lack the appropriate ID (they forgot to bring it to the polling place, etc.) The idea is usually put forward by Republicans who think illegal immigrants somehow make up a significant voting block.
I fail to see how taking something someone is giving away is "sucking at the capitalist teat". Just because capitalists made it originally, does not mean it's commercial now. Lots of companies contribute to Linux, that doesn't make Linux commercial.
This *IS* a class struggle in the sense that it's a non-commercial OS (Linux) vs. a corporate OS (Apple). As you said, Apple is "just being a company" i.e. capitalistic. They are making a business decision that hurts their users in the interest of making money. Apple, by supporting DRM in their operating system and products, is also encouraging it's use generally. Steve can rant all he likes about how much he dislikes DRM, actions speak louder than words. And iTunes is currently the biggest, and one of the most restrictive, DRM schemes out there.
BTW, Breaking DTrace for selected apps is not "good coding" by any stretch of the imagination.
What you want is called a "Load Balancer". I don't know of any software solutions off the top of my head, though you might look into Devil-Linux. However, I do know of a hardware solution, a load-balancing router like this one.
Yup. If this guy really is an insider he's going out of his way to be vague about what really happened. He's also clearly no longer with MS, and left soon after the 360 launched, because he SPECULATES about changes made to the 360 2 years ago.
Optical scan ballots really aren't a dramatic improvement in reliability. In fact, the touchscreen systems replaced optical scan ballots in many locations.
Designing a reliable balloting system is really quite easy. The UN nailed it down decades ago:
1. Printed paper ballots wherein each ballot is marked by grease pencil or felt marker.
2. Ballots are folded and placed into a slot on top of a locked clear plastic box.
3. The boxes are guarded, transported to a central location, and then opened and the ballots are all hand-counted by volunteers in front of observers from all parties.
Nowadays, manufacturers just compile the DSDT tables themselves using MS' compiler, instead of Intel's, because it's EASIER. Once again, how is this the fault of Microsoft? The manufacturers certainly CAN write proper ASL source and they CAN compile them with the more stringent Intel compiler. The fact they the choose not to do so is NOT MICROSOFT'S FAULT. It certainly CAN be done, presumably Apple did this for MacOS.
I guess I'm saying that it's incumbent upon the Linux people to work around the problems in MS' compiler by re-implementing ACPI in Linux, make their own compiler, or convince the manufacturers to write proper ASL. Bitching about MS doesn't accomplish anything.
Again: What the fuck were they supposed to do? They can't FORCE the manufacturers to write proper drivers. When they attempted to do so with signed drivers (the same thing Apple does), both the hardware vendors and their critics freaked claiming that MS was trying to "control the market". They're dammed if they do and dammed if they don't.
To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. I just remember Canadian and British viewers in the Tivo and ReplayTV forums bitching that they couldn't get guide info and the Tivo and ReplayTV reps saying that nobody would sell it to them. That, plus excessive import duties, seems to be the reason PVRs never took off in Europe.
What's your theory?
It's worth noting that this is technically illegal in China too, it's just that these laws are really only enforced in the US and (to a lesser extent) Europe.
First off, in the United States, domestic violence is defined as "when a man hits a woman or threatens to hit a woman". Oftentimes the violence is going both ways but women are only very rarely charged. The fact that the woman was trying to stab him at the time doesn't get the guy off.
Second, women do not need to be convinced "the man is not as he presents himself". They KNOW what he is (they felt his fists on their face, remember?) and on some level, they LIKE it. That's why they're with him. I have talked to many abused women and it's literally impossible to convince them through REASON that "their man" is an abuser. Usually it boils down to "Leave this guy or the state will take your kids." and thy get angry at the STATE.
My opinion, which people tend to reject as "extreme", is that men have a moral obligation to protect women. If you're a man and you know that one of your female friends is being abused you have a moral obligation to go to your friend's house, beat the shit out of the guy, throw him out of the house, and then tell him if you ever see him anywhere near your friend again you'll kill him. Don't ask your friend's permission, don't tell he you're coming over, and if your friend objects, ignore her. She's obviously too stupid to take care of herself and NEEDS you to do this for her. Check on your friend to make sure she isn't seeing this guy. If she is, kill him. No jury will convict you, the police (who HATE domestic abusers) won't even prosecute you.
The extremely poorly articulated point of the posting and article is that open source companies are often criticized because they face a serious issue other software companies do not. That issue is the re-use of their source code by other companies.
What is to keep another company, say NySQL Inc. from taking the source code to MySQL, compiling their own product, and then reselling it? Nothing. You might say "It's illegal!", but that's ONLY in the USA. I'd bet there are at least 3 companies in China reselling MySQL right now. Since they keep their source code release up to date, this means NySQL's product will always be up to date. And since NySQL has a bigger presence in China, Chinese customers will always go to them first.
It is harder to develop backbone capacity than last mile capacity, and ISPs have a very limited amount of backbone capacity.
The hell it is. The government is paying the telcos billions to lay down fiber to the home (you don't actually think they paid themselves do you?) and billions more to build backbone infrastructure. Most of this money is pocketed by the telcos. Pretty much the sole reason most Americans in metro areas don't have 10Mb links is because of greed by the telcos. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the financials of these companies could tell you that. They spend more on marketing than they do on infrastructure. Some even spend more on executive bonuses than they do on infrastructure. I personally think they should be nationalized, but that's just me.
Microsoft isn't the fucking devil. You glossed over the key fact:
the manufacturer of the laptop supplies a dsdt table that does not follow the published standards for dsdt tables
In fact, this is the case with most manufacturers. Implementing ACPI correctly is hard work, and lazy Taiwanese developers don't want to bother to do the work. That's not Microsoft's fault. So they were faced with a dilemma: Have ACPI not work on most Windows systems, or tweak their compiler to work about the buggy code of the manufacturers. They chose the latter. All together now:
Buggy third-party drivers are not Microsoft's fault.
The idea was to make it thin and light. The MacBook Air is a subnotebook, and subnotebooks typically do not have optical drives built in with the goal of keeping the size, weight, and power requirements down.
The fundamental problem with DVD recording is that PVRs are WAY better and took off in the USA long before the DVD recorders became popular. To this day, I don't think you can get Tivo in Europe due to a lack of guide information. Yes, offloading the content from the Tivo/ReplayTV/other PVRs to a PC for burning is annoying, but I did it all the time. And the model of the future seems to be a "media center" PC on the back end in a closet or office, with a front end box (like a AppleTV or Xbox360) for the living room. This model seems to provide the "best of all worlds", with a quiet set-top box and sophisticated editing and management features on the back end. This model does have the problem of being very expensive.
I work across the street from Apple and I heard Apple employees talking about the "thinbook" (that's that they were calling it) at the coffee shop. Just because Apple has a reputation for stopping leaks, that doesn't mean Apple doesn't leak. iTunes leaked too.