" Then again, this country has a long, sordid history of things like "attractive nuisance laws" like the ones which make people who have pools in their yards put up all sorts of fences to keep kids out of their yard (rather than arresting the kids for trespassing)."
I think you're confused about the purpose of these laws. There is no point in arresting the dead child floating in your swimming pool.
"Why is Apple immune from the righteous wrath that they deserve for their business practices?"
I'd like you to point out an instance of their business practices that deserves "righteous wrath", as I can't think of one.
They don't get the same amount of crap that Microsoft does because on the evil scale Apple is '-1, A cursed ring that you cannot remove', whereas Microsoft is '-1000, Obliterates all life on the planet which it occupies'.
"Regardless of your stand on Network Neutrality, the fact of the matter is that what Comcast did was absolutely legal."
I don't think that has been established. Actively forging packets may qualify as an act of impersonation, which might be considered illegal. This may or may not be the case, but I suggest that the legality of what Comcast did is not yet a 'fact'.
"What is the convenience in having a folder automatically stuffed with files, downloaded without your say-so, exactly? Regardless of whether they can then be arbitrarily executed by a second program, or whether the user can execute them without a warning dialog popping up or not, etc. What, in your opinion, is convenient about it?"
If the alternative is that I have to start clicking 'Ok' for every file I want to download then I hope they don't fix it. Convenience is not having to click a confirmation button for everything I want to do.
On OS X at least, Safari pops a download dialog box and shows me what's going on. I can click a button to cancel the download. By default (in 10.5), files download to a 'Downloads' directory, not the desktop.
I've been hit by one of the naughty links that downloaded a pile of files and opened a bajillion URLs - once. I won't make that mistake again. I certainly don't need my OS harassing me about the possibility for the rest of my life.
"Even if the rivets had been perfect it would still have sunk. The design was such that once a big enough hole was made, i.e. weren't enough pumps to keep the water level down, the water filled to above the bulkheads and swamped the next cell, and onto the next."
One would expect that with stronger rivets the hole would have been smaller, in which case the pumps would have been able to keep up. Icebergs don't just punch nice round holes in the steel plate...
"Apple is able to dictate the price of song sales over the internet. It's a monopoly."
No they can't. There are plenty of places to buy songs on the Internet. Apple is not a monopoly.
Microsoft was able to use their power to force PC makers to buy Windows for all machines that they sold, whether Windows was installed on them or not. Microsoft is a monopoly.
"I certainly do. Having DRM directly benefits Apple. You're locked into the iPod."
An interesting idea, but it ignores the fact that the iTunes Music Store arrived *after* the iPod was already a run-away success. Apple didn't need DRM then, and they don't need it now. It is my belief that Apple will drop DRM like a hot potato as soon as the labels let them.
"Show me a single claim from Apple that says that. Just one will do."
He didn't make that claim. You might want to re-read what he actually wrote.
The greatest disappointment for me was that the iPhone was locked to AT&T. When I learned that I went out and bought my first T-Mobile phone. It doesn't matter that Apple never claimed carrier-independence - disappointment is disappointment. People have come to expect products designed for consumers from Apple, and when it doesn't happen people are rightly unhappy.
I've since received an iPhone as a gift. It's a wonderful device, everything I expect from Apple. The AT&T service is better than expected (a low hurdle, that).
" Verizon was able to guarantee 28Mbps with their current equipment to every customer if every house in the area was using FiOS and everyone was downloading at the same time."
To me that implies that the bottleneck will be upstream of the local loop. As the previous poster said, it's highly unlikely that Verizon has 28mbs * number of subscribers worth of bandwidth to the general Internet.
"> As Pine is not free software, time to move on to mutt or its next-gen friend, mutt-ng. No need to use a bloated GUI app to read mail.
I don't care if pine is free or not. It's served me for many, many years. I use it daily, and it works well. It's not a gui app, either, though I'm not sure you were implying that it was."
I'm not sure why, but throughout my years of using Pine and other email clients, I have come to realize that mutt users cannot express why mutt is any good without also denigrating Pine. It's almost as if they are an 'anti-pine' contingent and if Pine were to cease to exist, they would disappear in a puff of greasy black smoke.
"Yes, they can. So long as the apartment is private property and none of the lease provisions are illegal, they can place any restrictions they'd like onto them."
This is simply not true.
"They can ban satellite dishes"
Umn.. no, they can't.
Specifically:
"The rule (47 C.F.R. Section 1.4000) has been in effect since October 1996, and it prohibits restrictions that impair the installation, maintenance or use of antennas used to receive video programming. The rule applies to video antennas including direct-to-home satellite dishes that are less than one meter (39.37") in diameter (or of any size in Alaska), TV antennas, and wireless cable antennas. The rule prohibits most restrictions that: (1) unreasonably delay or prevent installation, maintenance or use; (2) unreasonably increase the cost of installation, maintenance or use; or (3) preclude reception of an acceptable quality signal.
Effective January 22, 1999, the Commission amended the rule so that it also applies to rental property where the renter has an exclusive use area, such as a balcony or patio.
On October 25, 2000, the Commission further amended the rule so that it applies to customer-end antennas that receive and transmit fixed wireless signals. This amendment became effective on May 25, 2001.
The rule applies to individuals who place antennas that meet size limitations on property that they own or rent and that is within their exclusive use or control, including condominium owners and cooperative owners, and tenants who have an area where they have exclusive use, such as a balcony or patio, in which to install the antenna. The rule applies to townhomes and manufactured homes, as well as to single family homes."
ie: a landlord *cannot* simply ban satellite dishes outright. Period.
-> The library doesn't update itself automatically...
Well, that is not the model. If you let iTunes to manage the library and drag files to iTunes to add them then there is no reason to 'update' the library - ever. Some people don't do it that way, but for most iTunes users an 'automatic Library update' would be a waste of cycles.
-> There's no concept of 'checking for existing entries on import'
Your iTunes works differently than mine. If I drag a file or folder to iTunes twice, absolutely nothing happens the second time. No duplicates.
"Even Shaw or Rogers (although I've never been a customer of the latter) at their worst beats most American cable internet/DSL companies..."
I'm sorry, this is wild fantasy. I work for a company that provides internet-based services. Our Shaw and Rogers customers might as well be on dial-up. If you don't look like a web brower, you are throttled - and fast.
Interested parties should note that the original M4V is of decent quality, however the MOV that people are referring to is not nearly as good. If you care about video quality, grab the original file (Quicktime will play it if you call it mp4).
"As a Canadian, this rule doesn't fit. We have more land mass than the US, 10% of the population, cheaper/faster internet, and it is more reliable."
I'm sorry, but I can't let this slide. Shaw and Rogers Cable (the two cable providers in Canada) have both implemented draconian on-the-fly bandwidth limiters which effectively nuke anything that isn't pure HTML/HTTP or 'approved'. Heaven forbid you run bittorrent, edonkey, or even commercial TCP-based software that they don't recognize - your throughput will fall thru the floor faster than you can spit.
Why do they do this? One can only guess.
Curious? Want references? Just type appropriate keywords at dslreports.com.
"Hertz, Armstrong and Marconi...it's HAM, not ham."
I'm sorry, but I've been involved in radio for over 30 years, and been a licensed ham for most of that, and I call bullshit.
It's impossible to prove a negative, but my oldest copy of QST is from 1943. It's right here in front of me. To the best of my ability to tell it does not have a single instance of 'HAM' in all caps.
Slashdot Mirror
" Then again, this country has a long, sordid history of things like "attractive nuisance laws" like the ones which make people who have pools in their yards put up all sorts of fences to keep kids out of their yard (rather than arresting the kids for trespassing)."
I think you're confused about the purpose of these laws. There is no point in arresting the dead child floating in your swimming pool.
A.
"Why is Apple immune from the righteous wrath that they deserve for their business practices?"
I'd like you to point out an instance of their business practices that deserves "righteous wrath", as I can't think of one.
They don't get the same amount of crap that Microsoft does because on the evil scale Apple is '-1, A cursed ring that you cannot remove', whereas Microsoft is '-1000, Obliterates all life on the planet which it occupies'.
A.
"Regardless of your stand on Network Neutrality, the fact of the matter is that what Comcast did was absolutely legal."
I don't think that has been established. Actively forging packets may qualify as an act of impersonation, which might be considered illegal. This may or may not be the case, but I suggest that the legality of what Comcast did is not yet a 'fact'.
A.
Nevermind. From Apple's web site:
"iPhone 3G is coming soon to an Apple Retail Store near you. Meet with a Specialist, ask questions, and get to know iPhone 3G firsthand."
A.
"the new iphone requires a contract to buy. you can't buy them from apple anymore."
Care to document this?
A.
I think the context of the discussion was defining what constitutes a terrorist attack.
But here I am, responding to an AC in a thread that was dead three days ago, so what do I know?
A.
"What is the convenience in having a folder automatically stuffed with files, downloaded without your say-so, exactly? Regardless of whether they can then be arbitrarily executed by a second program, or whether the user can execute them without a warning dialog popping up or not, etc. What, in your opinion, is convenient about it?"
If the alternative is that I have to start clicking 'Ok' for every file I want to download then I hope they don't fix it. Convenience is not having to click a confirmation button for everything I want to do.
On OS X at least, Safari pops a download dialog box and shows me what's going on. I can click a button to cancel the download. By default (in 10.5), files download to a 'Downloads' directory, not the desktop.
I've been hit by one of the naughty links that downloaded a pile of files and opened a bajillion URLs - once. I won't make that mistake again. I certainly don't need my OS harassing me about the possibility for the rest of my life.
A.
what part of "one of two things" did you not understand?
A.
"A terrorist attack would imply one of two things. A) Someone got harmed..."
I'm sorry, this gets modded Insightful? Come on. If I kick you in the ankle you've been 'harmed', but that doesn't make it a terrorist attack.
A.
"Even if the rivets had been perfect it would still have sunk. The design was such that once a big enough hole was made, i.e. weren't enough pumps to keep the water level down, the water filled to above the bulkheads and swamped the next cell, and onto the next."
One would expect that with stronger rivets the hole would have been smaller, in which case the pumps would have been able to keep up. Icebergs don't just punch nice round holes in the steel plate...
A.
"Apple is able to dictate the price of song sales over the internet. It's a monopoly."
No they can't. There are plenty of places to buy songs on the Internet. Apple is not a monopoly.
Microsoft was able to use their power to force PC makers to buy Windows for all machines that they sold, whether Windows was installed on them or not. Microsoft is a monopoly.
A.
"I certainly do. Having DRM directly benefits Apple. You're locked into the iPod."
An interesting idea, but it ignores the fact that the iTunes Music Store arrived *after* the iPod was already a run-away success. Apple didn't need DRM then, and they don't need it now. It is my belief that Apple will drop DRM like a hot potato as soon as the labels let them.
A.
"Show me a single claim from Apple that says that. Just one will do."
He didn't make that claim. You might want to re-read what he actually wrote.
The greatest disappointment for me was that the iPhone was locked to AT&T. When I learned that I went out and bought my first T-Mobile phone. It doesn't matter that Apple never claimed carrier-independence - disappointment is disappointment. People have come to expect products designed for consumers from Apple, and when it doesn't happen people are rightly unhappy.
I've since received an iPhone as a gift. It's a wonderful device, everything I expect from Apple. The AT&T service is better than expected (a low hurdle, that).
A.
" Verizon was able to guarantee 28Mbps with their current equipment to every customer if every house in the area was using FiOS and everyone was downloading at the same time."
To me that implies that the bottleneck will be upstream of the local loop. As the previous poster said, it's highly unlikely that Verizon has 28mbs * number of subscribers worth of bandwidth to the general Internet.
A.
"A lot of windows users downloaded iTunes because they bundled it with Quicktime"
that's got to be the funniest thing I read all day... I hope it was intentional.
A.
"> As Pine is not free software, time to move on to mutt or its next-gen friend, mutt-ng. No need to use a bloated GUI app to read mail.
I don't care if pine is free or not. It's served me for many, many years. I use it daily, and it works well. It's not a gui app, either, though I'm not sure you were implying that it was."
I'm not sure why, but throughout my years of using Pine and other email clients, I have come to realize that mutt users cannot express why mutt is any good without also denigrating Pine. It's almost as if they are an 'anti-pine' contingent and if Pine were to cease to exist, they would disappear in a puff of greasy black smoke.
A.
"Yes, they can. So long as the apartment is private property and none of the lease provisions are illegal, they can place any restrictions they'd like onto them."
This is simply not true.
"They can ban satellite dishes"
Umn.. no, they can't.
Specifically:
"The rule (47 C.F.R. Section 1.4000) has been in effect since October 1996, and it prohibits restrictions that impair the installation, maintenance or use of antennas used to receive video programming. The rule applies to video antennas including direct-to-home satellite dishes that are less than one meter (39.37") in diameter (or of any size in Alaska), TV antennas, and wireless cable antennas. The rule prohibits most restrictions that: (1) unreasonably delay or prevent installation, maintenance or use; (2) unreasonably increase the cost of installation, maintenance or use; or (3) preclude reception of an acceptable quality signal.
Effective January 22, 1999, the Commission amended the rule so that it also applies to rental property where the renter has an exclusive use area, such as a balcony or patio.
On October 25, 2000, the Commission further amended the rule so that it applies to customer-end antennas that receive and transmit fixed wireless signals. This amendment became effective on May 25, 2001.
The rule applies to individuals who place antennas that meet size limitations on property that they own or rent and that is within their exclusive use or control, including condominium owners and cooperative owners, and tenants who have an area where they have exclusive use, such as a balcony or patio, in which to install the antenna. The rule applies to townhomes and manufactured homes, as well as to single family homes."
ie: a landlord *cannot* simply ban satellite dishes outright. Period.
A.
-> The library doesn't update itself automatically...
Well, that is not the model. If you let iTunes to manage the library and drag files to iTunes to add them then there is no reason to 'update' the library - ever. Some people don't do it that way, but for most iTunes users an 'automatic Library update' would be a waste of cycles.
-> There's no concept of 'checking for existing entries on import'
Your iTunes works differently than mine. If I drag a file or folder to iTunes twice, absolutely nothing happens the second time. No duplicates.
A.
"Even Shaw or Rogers (although I've never been a customer of the latter) at their worst beats most American cable internet/DSL companies..."
I'm sorry, this is wild fantasy. I work for a company that provides internet-based services. Our Shaw and Rogers customers might as well be on dial-up. If you don't look like a web brower, you are throttled - and fast.
A.
Deadly Litter (c) 1964 by James White
(trolling for Karma)
A.
At the risk of nuking my friends at Omega into the ground,
http://www.omega.com/literature/posters/
A.
Interested parties should note that the original M4V is of decent quality, however the MOV that people are referring to is not nearly as good. If you care about video quality, grab the original file (Quicktime will play it if you call it mp4).
A.
"As a Canadian, this rule doesn't fit. We have more land mass than the US, 10% of the population, cheaper/faster internet, and it is more reliable."
I'm sorry, but I can't let this slide. Shaw and Rogers Cable (the two cable providers in Canada) have both implemented draconian on-the-fly bandwidth limiters which effectively nuke anything that isn't pure HTML/HTTP or 'approved'. Heaven forbid you run bittorrent, edonkey, or even commercial TCP-based software that they don't recognize - your throughput will fall thru the floor faster than you can spit.
Why do they do this? One can only guess.
Curious? Want references? Just type appropriate keywords at dslreports.com.
A.
"Hertz, Armstrong and Marconi...it's HAM, not ham."
I'm sorry, but I've been involved in radio for over 30 years, and been a licensed ham for most of that, and I call bullshit.
It's impossible to prove a negative, but my oldest copy of QST is from 1943. It's right here in front of me. To the best of my ability to tell it does not have a single instance of 'HAM' in all caps.
A.
"This seems like a similar idea to HAM Radio examinations"
A nit, but the 'ham' in ham radio is not an acronym, it isn't capitalized.
A.