Problem is, in today's world, everyone needs a jet to get to work. Do you know how to drive a jet? I sure don't. That leaves us with companies trying to sell "jets for the common man". I'd personally prefer a jet that flies itself, doesn't randomly run into mountains, has a 100% (not 99%!) effective antimissile system, and doesn't require me to know how to maintain the turbofan. But then it looks like these companies are in the business of selling parachutes, air bags, and duct tape. I just think their whole angle is wrong to begin with, and is never going to produce a "very good" solution.
("an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure")
It's not a question of being or not being totally effective, you can make that argument from any direction and arrive at the same answer. No product is 100% effective. It looks like this review was just saying that none of the products tested met their expectations.
So that either means that their expectations were unreasonable, or all the tested products stink.
Or a combination of the two. That's where my money is. Regardless of topic, security is best handled from the inside, where your footing is solid and attacks only come from one direction. Problem is, the inside is not secure. At that point you require extraordinary external security, which either means you need to be very good at it yourself, or you have to find someone that's top-notch to make up for the problem. It's no surprise that so many of these products didn't fair well, they're defending the castle while standing outside the walls. And since you're already starting out with a handicap and are going against experts and people motivated by money, if you want the job done right, you're best to do it yourself. The human element of unpredictability along with knowing what's safe and what's not safe is the best defense, not software. If you're a computer noob, there simply isn't a "very good" solution, as this review basically concludes.
I see lots of "me too" for airport express. I have one myself but I rarely use it for audio. It's my "make the ethernet jack wireless" tool in my laptop bag.
I tried to use it for halloween to play spooky music to outdoor speakers. It worked perfectly until I power cycled it 5 minutes before rounds started. It failed five attempts scattered through the evening to fix it. When I took it back inside after the night was done, it worked perfectly. Wouldn't be half as annoying if it hadn't done the exact same thing last year. So I think there are still some bugs to be worked out.
SECOND issue, possibly more important for OP, unless I am mistaken, you can only stream to one airport at a time? and must be at the source computer to change which express you are streaming to? is this going to be an issue? No way to say, send the music to all four sets of speakers scattered around the house at the same time is there?
But if you just want it to go to one or two other sets, and never at the same time, it looks like a very cheap and easy way to do it. But you would have to have an amp in each room, whereas if you ran wiring from say an amp in the basement you could save some expense, and maybe integrate a volume pad on the wall near the light switch for each room with speakers...
They removed the squeeze and pressing the scroll ball though so they reduced it from a four button to a two button mouse, and added multitouch.
Though afaik, only a small percentage of users used the expose functions of squeeze and center button for dashboard. So "nothing of value was lost" and all that. The ball became the entire top surface of the mouse, taking over scrolling AND adding multitouch gestures. I'm glad to see that ball go, it was a major point of failure - collected lint and typically stopped scrolling down (or at all) properly.
Though we have heard a few squeaky wheels over the loss of the squeeze for dashboard. I'm wondering if it has the sensors in it and they're just not configurable yet, does anyone know? Apple has apparently promised a vastly upgraded mouse control panel for 10.6.2 which among other things is supposed to bring expose (somehow) to the magic mouse. Does anyone know if this is possible with the magic mouse? Is the gesture system entirely handled by the firmware in the mouse, indicating it would have to be added by apple?
What I would personally like to see is either apple or someone else come up with a way to turn the magic mouse into a touchpad. Maybe even get a little "docking tray" to set it in, and use it like a touchpad on a laptop works. I know several people that prefer external touchpads on their desktop computers. (they're popular in register computers in businesses, especially automotive, where fingers are grubby and can foul mice in under a day)
that's actually not a bad idea. If you had say, a pair of these units per cable, one going down and one going up, then you could have the one going down beaming power to the one going up. They wouldn't meet in the middle though... you'd get little energy from the descending unit at the start and that's when you'd need the most for the ascending unit. So there's probably no practical way to make the ascender's power curve match the descender's, but it could boost it. It would be best to continue beaming power to the ascender even well after they'd passed on the cable because that's when the power available from the descender would be approaching its max.
That would at least lower the power requirement. The problem then is to see how much weight that adds to both units... can you make the addition of a second receiver panel plus the addition of a regenerative breaking system plus the addition of a laser assembly pass break-even? Even adding a single pound to the unit has got to have a severe affect on the total energy required to lift it.
The good news is the total energy requirement won't increase with the square of the weight of the unit as it does with rocket fuel, since when you add fuel, you have to lift that too.
I recall reading something about one of the female astronauts cutting off her long hair to a short cut because that small reduction in weight was going to save several thousand dollars in fuel for the shuttle launch.
I was thinking about the test and the first thing that came to mind is: ok they're beaming up radiation of some sort, probably more-or-less straight up, (since basing the power at the same spot the platform is tethered makes sense) and they're suspending it from a helicopter.... which would place the platform approximately directly between the beam generator and the heli...
so isn't this going to be a little bad for the heli / its crew?
The only way I see to avoid this would be to beam up the energy from somewhere other than at the anchor point. And that would have to substantially increase the difficulty of targeting the platform, since the distance between platform and beam source will increased if you move the beam source away from the anchor.
I suppose for actual "space elevator" applications the same thing will apply, only you'll be irradiating the floating counterweight or whatnot, and the destination.
do you know if those switches are "hot switches" that can handle repeated cutting in and out under power, like to turn a trouble light off by flipping the switch instead of pulling the power cord? My hair dryer power switch died so it's now set to always on, and I have to pull the cord to turn it off etc so the plug is getting a little arced up from the power surges. I know switches that aren't meant for that can have the same problem.
The EULA on my copy of Snow Leopard says I should only install it on an "Apple labled computer". They do helpfully supply two apple lables in the box for you to use.
I'm quite sure that Snow Leopard comes with an SLA (Software License Agreement) and not a EULA, and I'm also quite sure that the license doesn't mention "Apple labled [sic] computers". Read the license carefully. Apple stopped that joke.
I'm also quite sure that the license doesn't mention "Apple labled [sic] computers". Read the license carefully. Apple stopped that joke.
from the right side of the box (the outside),
"Contents DVD containing Mac OS X; printed and electronic documentation. Requirements Mac computer with an Intel processor * 1 GB of RAM * DVD drive for installation * 5 GB of available disk space * Some features have additional requirements; see www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html. Don't steal software. OpenCL requires a compatible graphics processor."
So they've gone from saying it's licensed for something, to being listed as a requirement. If you don't have what the manufacturer says is a requirement before the sale, and still buy it, then I don't have a lot of pity on you for having problems with it. (legal, technical, or otherwise) That's like buying a bluray player and getting pissed off because you can't watch movies because you don't own an HDMI-capable TV as stated as a requirement on the player's box.
It also says on the lower side,
"Important Use of this product is subject to acceptance of the software license agreement(s) included in this package. www.apple.com"
"The Family Pack Software License Agreement allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that household"
"A. Single Use License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you have purchased a Family Pack or Upgrade license for the Apple Software, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time."
The above text is also displayed when you boot the disc, and you need to click Agree to proceed with the installation. There are no provisions mentioned for return of the software if you don't accept the agreement, but it's there.
Please quit spreading that silly rumor / urban legend that Apple has done away with that requirement. Apple make their money selling hardware and services, NOT operating systems. Their operating system exists only to sell more hardware. They will never endorse installing their OS on someone else's hardware, it defeats the purpose of the OS - to sell their hardware.
if you REALLY wanted to copy and distro it, just buy it with three accounts. Do a simple compare and find the few words changed, and rebuild the original and distribute that instead.
This approach doesn't work for maps for several reasons, but would be ideal for books.
I've already seen this in action where watermarks are placed on digital software downloads. Just a matter of obtaining it from two different sources and comparing the two to find out where the watermark is. Then either remove it or change it to something else. One of these days they'll get smart and start signing it after they watermark it, but that's processor expensive so guessing they don't feel quite that motivated yet.
It is called Modern Warfare. Terrorism is a very big part of modern warfare. Terrorists that know you'll do anything to avoid civilian casualties pretty much have you under their thumb. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if the campaign involves making some hard decisions like getting a few civilians killed while taking out a pack of terrorists.
People need to quit saying they want a "realistic" game, but just remove all the real stuff that we don't exactly like. No, you want realism, here it is. deal with it.
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless?
Would have to assume they took off the headphones so they could hear each other as they discussed the computer app. I don't think there's a speaker in the cockpit from the tower.
Two questions come to mind:
1) what sort of urgency was placed on learning this new system? Were they being rushed? Did anyone suggest they hurry up and get each other up to speed on the app ("as soon as possible"/"whenever you get a chance"?) and they simply didn't have any personal time left to do it? (things like this tend to get pushed to be done on personal, rather than paid, time) 2) 110 miles in a jet? really? big detour? How long does it take a jet to travel 110 miles? This extended the flight what, a whole 15 minutes counting backtrack time? For a jet that's like a bus driver missing an exit and having to drive another 4 miles to the next cloverleaf and do a 180. Though it probably had a few more exaggerated side-effects, like passengers missing connecting flights (which happens too much anyway even when planes are on time) plus the cost of a few hundred pounds of fuel. But still, seems like its being overblown.
Do you really hear yourself? Apple could care less if Joe User comes in, buys OS X [apple.com] , and makes a hackintosh.
Actually, Apple has a big problem with that. Apple sells computers and iPods. Everything else they sell, including Mac OS X, is centered around selling more computers and iPods/iPhones. Some of it is arguably sold at a loss. (c'mon, snow leopard for $29? bundling OS X Server Unlimitedwith a mac mini for $999?)
So yes, they really do care about people building hackintoshes. Some may say they're taking too big of a step as it is to make it hard to do. I say they're being surprisingly lax about it. But then again part of Apple's image is trying to stay akin to Google's "do no evil", and they probably feel they're pushing it about as hard as they can get away with without doing significant damage to that.
The catch here is that Apple's Mac OS X license forbids installation on anything but a "Macintosh Brand Computer", hence when you install snow leopard you are violating its license. That's the main sticking point. Not that I like stupid tie-downs in licenses like that, but the law looks to be on Apple's side. Pystar themselves may not be violating the license, but they're blatantly assisting and encouraging their customers to do so. Should make for an entertaining battle...
It's not a fair comparison to look at those who pirated your software and then didn't buy it. It's unreasonable to expect people to keep tabs on the apps they've pirated and periodically review them to decide if they want to buy them or not.
True "try before you buy" software nags you periodically and gives you the reminder and easy option to purchase. THOSE are the people you need to be counting.
It's also an unbalanced comparison because the demographic of people that are able to pirate on the iphone etc is not all-inclusive in itself, and there's bound to be a lot of people that never downloaded it in the first place that WOULD have bought it after playing with it, but never had the opportunity to try it. I know I personally have spent several sessions on the app store looking for something specific, and unable to find one single demo of what I needed. (which, admittedly, was rather surprising!) And of the one time I ended up buying the only one that looked good, I've used it all of twice because it doesn't do what I need and I consider it wasted money. A month after that I found a new app that was free (not demo, free) that did exactly what I needed. So I'm not really thrilled over the idea of any app having no demo period.
If you don't have a demo, and you don't have a return policy, then you have no grounds to complain about piracy. Period.
a paper receipt that every voter can look at in real time and which then gets placed into a lock-box which can be independently observed with as much scrutiny as we're willing to pay for.
Reminds me of that cancelled election some months back where the election was cancelled because the president was overthrown, where a few days later they found ballot boxes prestuffed with ooodles of votes for the pres.
Paper trails are less reliable in the end than individuals being able to personally verify their vote.
But your point is well taken that the system would know if your receipt was for the dummy or the real vote. To rig such a protected election would require specifically only altering votes that the voter requested a dummy receipt for. (or elected to not print a receipt) I believe the vast majority of people would request a real receipt though, it's not like very many people are being coerced in voting. The simple existence of the dummy vote would suck the wind out of any big players trying to do that since it would reduce the risky venture's return to near zero, so I would expect well under 1% of the voting body to request a dummy receipt. (only those already under threat, which we HOPE is a small number!) The grand majority would get a true receipt, with the remainder not printing a receipt. Considering that, I'd amend my idea to not give the option to not print a receipt, since that would be a large enough body of fraud-vulnerable voters to make tampering worthwhile. If you don't want your receipt, throw it in the garbage can just outside the booth, since it's of absolutely no value to anyone besides someone trying to compile exit-poll estimates. Or better yet, a shredder.
and the reason is that DVD player was never installed at any point
FYI, DVD Player should have come in the Apps folder on the first machine you bought that shipped with a DVD-ROM drive. Apps are never deleted as part of the migration process so I think something else was involved.
Although, when you run install disks and do a clean (erase &) install, sometimes apps and drivers are not installed if not needed - you won't get the photobooth app or camera drivers when you install tiger on a mac mini for example. If you then cloned that hard drive to another mac that had a camera, you'd have to somehow reinstall those drivers and apps. The DVD player app is not installed in a clean install on a mac that doesn't have a DVD ROM drive. (but the drivers are installed)
BUT the point is valid. Everyone that has ever hawked centralized-server-drm says that they could never possibly go out of business. A few say they'll release a tool to unlock all the content if they go under. To my knowledge, no tool has ever been released in such a case, and there are over a dozen large examples of such companies going out of business or simply shutting down their activation servers, turning purchased content into useless bits.
"There oughtta be a law". That says DRM is only legal if the universal unlocker is kept in escrow somewhere (and kept updated) with terms to go public with it if they ch7,9,11,etc or simply shut off their servers.
The point here is it's impossible to give someone a provable receipt AND protect them from extortion at the same time. So they have the option to take home a receipt of their real vote, or of their dummy vote.
If they're worried of being coerced, they take home a dummy receipt and forfeit the ability to verify their real vote later, but can produce a receipt that can be used to get online and verify the vote they were "supposed to make". If they're only worried about ballot fraud, they take home a receipt to their real vote and check on it after the election to make sure your vote counted.
The result is that only the voter knows in their head whether their receipt is for the dummy or the real vote, making the receipt of no true accountability to anyone but the voter.
So any employer with two brain cells realizes that even forcing you to turn over your receipt really tells them nothing for certain as to how you voted. If your employer didn't demand you bring back a receipt, and so you printed a true receipt, and then later asks for it, tell them you didn't select to print a receipt, or you lost it.
And if enough people in say a single district all claim that their vote was changed or lost, then the auditors can move in and use the receipts voters volunteer to them to track the fraud down.
Slashdot Mirror
Unsecure infrastructure networks vulnerable to internet based attack.
Movie at 10.
Movie Postponed due to power failure.
one would assume that getting ssh working is part of the jailbreaking process.
But ya, if you enable ssh and leave the root pw as a default, you deserve a lot worse than a rickrolling...
People still have to learn how drive.
Problem is, in today's world, everyone needs a jet to get to work. Do you know how to drive a jet? I sure don't. That leaves us with companies trying to sell "jets for the common man". I'd personally prefer a jet that flies itself, doesn't randomly run into mountains, has a 100% (not 99%!) effective antimissile system, and doesn't require me to know how to maintain the turbofan. But then it looks like these companies are in the business of selling parachutes, air bags, and duct tape. I just think their whole angle is wrong to begin with, and is never going to produce a "very good" solution.
("an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure")
It's not a question of being or not being totally effective, you can make that argument from any direction and arrive at the same answer. No product is 100% effective. It looks like this review was just saying that none of the products tested met their expectations.
So that either means that their expectations were unreasonable, or all the tested products stink.
Or a combination of the two. That's where my money is. Regardless of topic, security is best handled from the inside, where your footing is solid and attacks only come from one direction. Problem is, the inside is not secure. At that point you require extraordinary external security, which either means you need to be very good at it yourself, or you have to find someone that's top-notch to make up for the problem. It's no surprise that so many of these products didn't fair well, they're defending the castle while standing outside the walls. And since you're already starting out with a handicap and are going against experts and people motivated by money, if you want the job done right, you're best to do it yourself. The human element of unpredictability along with knowing what's safe and what's not safe is the best defense, not software. If you're a computer noob, there simply isn't a "very good" solution, as this review basically concludes.
I see lots of "me too" for airport express. I have one myself but I rarely use it for audio. It's my "make the ethernet jack wireless" tool in my laptop bag.
I tried to use it for halloween to play spooky music to outdoor speakers. It worked perfectly until I power cycled it 5 minutes before rounds started. It failed five attempts scattered through the evening to fix it. When I took it back inside after the night was done, it worked perfectly. Wouldn't be half as annoying if it hadn't done the exact same thing last year. So I think there are still some bugs to be worked out.
SECOND issue, possibly more important for OP, unless I am mistaken, you can only stream to one airport at a time? and must be at the source computer to change which express you are streaming to? is this going to be an issue? No way to say, send the music to all four sets of speakers scattered around the house at the same time is there?
But if you just want it to go to one or two other sets, and never at the same time, it looks like a very cheap and easy way to do it. But you would have to have an amp in each room, whereas if you ran wiring from say an amp in the basement you could save some expense, and maybe integrate a volume pad on the wall near the light switch for each room with speakers...
Did Microsoft Borrow...
Microsoft borrows, everyone else steals?
I wonder if I can try that with the RIAA/BSA?
They removed the squeeze and pressing the scroll ball though so they reduced it from a four button to a two button mouse, and added multitouch.
Though afaik, only a small percentage of users used the expose functions of squeeze and center button for dashboard. So "nothing of value was lost" and all that. The ball became the entire top surface of the mouse, taking over scrolling AND adding multitouch gestures. I'm glad to see that ball go, it was a major point of failure - collected lint and typically stopped scrolling down (or at all) properly.
Though we have heard a few squeaky wheels over the loss of the squeeze for dashboard. I'm wondering if it has the sensors in it and they're just not configurable yet, does anyone know? Apple has apparently promised a vastly upgraded mouse control panel for 10.6.2 which among other things is supposed to bring expose (somehow) to the magic mouse. Does anyone know if this is possible with the magic mouse? Is the gesture system entirely handled by the firmware in the mouse, indicating it would have to be added by apple?
What I would personally like to see is either apple or someone else come up with a way to turn the magic mouse into a touchpad. Maybe even get a little "docking tray" to set it in, and use it like a touchpad on a laptop works. I know several people that prefer external touchpads on their desktop computers. (they're popular in register computers in businesses, especially automotive, where fingers are grubby and can foul mice in under a day)
Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.
Isn't the Register only about 3/4 of one notch above the Onion?
that's actually not a bad idea. If you had say, a pair of these units per cable, one going down and one going up, then you could have the one going down beaming power to the one going up. They wouldn't meet in the middle though... you'd get little energy from the descending unit at the start and that's when you'd need the most for the ascending unit. So there's probably no practical way to make the ascender's power curve match the descender's, but it could boost it. It would be best to continue beaming power to the ascender even well after they'd passed on the cable because that's when the power available from the descender would be approaching its max.
That would at least lower the power requirement. The problem then is to see how much weight that adds to both units... can you make the addition of a second receiver panel plus the addition of a regenerative breaking system plus the addition of a laser assembly pass break-even? Even adding a single pound to the unit has got to have a severe affect on the total energy required to lift it.
The good news is the total energy requirement won't increase with the square of the weight of the unit as it does with rocket fuel, since when you add fuel, you have to lift that too.
I recall reading something about one of the female astronauts cutting off her long hair to a short cut because that small reduction in weight was going to save several thousand dollars in fuel for the shuttle launch.
I was thinking about the test and the first thing that came to mind is: ok they're beaming up radiation of some sort, probably more-or-less straight up, (since basing the power at the same spot the platform is tethered makes sense) and they're suspending it from a helicopter.... which would place the platform approximately directly between the beam generator and the heli...
so isn't this going to be a little bad for the heli / its crew?
The only way I see to avoid this would be to beam up the energy from somewhere other than at the anchor point. And that would have to substantially increase the difficulty of targeting the platform, since the distance between platform and beam source will increased if you move the beam source away from the anchor.
I suppose for actual "space elevator" applications the same thing will apply, only you'll be irradiating the floating counterweight or whatnot, and the destination.
do you know if those switches are "hot switches" that can handle repeated cutting in and out under power, like to turn a trouble light off by flipping the switch instead of pulling the power cord? My hair dryer power switch died so it's now set to always on, and I have to pull the cord to turn it off etc so the plug is getting a little arced up from the power surges. I know switches that aren't meant for that can have the same problem.
he's not dead, he's ... he's just resting
The EULA on my copy of Snow Leopard says I should only install it on an "Apple labled computer". They do helpfully supply two apple lables in the box for you to use.
I'm quite sure that Snow Leopard comes with an SLA (Software License Agreement) and not a EULA, and I'm also quite sure that the license doesn't mention "Apple labled [sic] computers". Read the license carefully. Apple stopped that joke.
I'm also quite sure that the license doesn't mention "Apple labled [sic] computers". Read the license carefully. Apple stopped that joke.
from the right side of the box (the outside),
"Contents DVD containing Mac OS X; printed and electronic documentation. Requirements Mac computer with an Intel processor * 1 GB of RAM * DVD drive for installation * 5 GB of available disk space * Some features have additional requirements; see www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html. Don't steal software. OpenCL requires a compatible graphics processor."
So they've gone from saying it's licensed for something, to being listed as a requirement. If you don't have what the manufacturer says is a requirement before the sale, and still buy it, then I don't have a lot of pity on you for having problems with it. (legal, technical, or otherwise) That's like buying a bluray player and getting pissed off because you can't watch movies because you don't own an HDMI-capable TV as stated as a requirement on the player's box.
It also says on the lower side,
"Important Use of this product is subject to acceptance of the software license agreement(s) included in this package. www.apple.com"
Further, at http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC223?mco=MTAyNTQwMjU,
"The Family Pack Software License Agreement allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that household"
That's for the family pack and is easy to find. Harder to find online is the one for the single user license, at http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx106.pdf,
"A. Single Use License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you have purchased a Family Pack or Upgrade license for the Apple Software, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time."
The above text is also displayed when you boot the disc, and you need to click Agree to proceed with the installation. There are no provisions mentioned for return of the software if you don't accept the agreement, but it's there.
Please quit spreading that silly rumor / urban legend that Apple has done away with that requirement. Apple make their money selling hardware and services, NOT operating systems. Their operating system exists only to sell more hardware. They will never endorse installing their OS on someone else's hardware, it defeats the purpose of the OS - to sell their hardware.
if you REALLY wanted to copy and distro it, just buy it with three accounts. Do a simple compare and find the few words changed, and rebuild the original and distribute that instead.
This approach doesn't work for maps for several reasons, but would be ideal for books.
I've already seen this in action where watermarks are placed on digital software downloads. Just a matter of obtaining it from two different sources and comparing the two to find out where the watermark is. Then either remove it or change it to something else. One of these days they'll get smart and start signing it after they watermark it, but that's processor expensive so guessing they don't feel quite that motivated yet.
It is called Modern Warfare. Terrorism is a very big part of modern warfare. Terrorists that know you'll do anything to avoid civilian casualties pretty much have you under their thumb. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if the campaign involves making some hard decisions like getting a few civilians killed while taking out a pack of terrorists.
People need to quit saying they want a "realistic" game, but just remove all the real stuff that we don't exactly like. No, you want realism, here it is. deal with it.
I'll have gotten impatient and found it on BT.
oh ya, that's going to help sales....
brilliant. simply brilliant.
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless?
Would have to assume they took off the headphones so they could hear each other as they discussed the computer app. I don't think there's a speaker in the cockpit from the tower.
Two questions come to mind:
1) what sort of urgency was placed on learning this new system? Were they being rushed? Did anyone suggest they hurry up and get each other up to speed on the app ("as soon as possible"/"whenever you get a chance"?) and they simply didn't have any personal time left to do it? (things like this tend to get pushed to be done on personal, rather than paid, time)
2) 110 miles in a jet? really? big detour? How long does it take a jet to travel 110 miles? This extended the flight what, a whole 15 minutes counting backtrack time? For a jet that's like a bus driver missing an exit and having to drive another 4 miles to the next cloverleaf and do a 180. Though it probably had a few more exaggerated side-effects, like passengers missing connecting flights (which happens too much anyway even when planes are on time) plus the cost of a few hundred pounds of fuel. But still, seems like its being overblown.
In germany, they are null and void. Why?
Because the "buyer" had no chance to read it BEFORE he bought the software.
Aaaaand that's why it's printed on the outside of the Snow Leopard box.
Do you really hear yourself? Apple could care less if Joe User comes in, buys OS X [apple.com] , and makes a hackintosh.
Actually, Apple has a big problem with that. Apple sells computers and iPods. Everything else they sell, including Mac OS X, is centered around selling more computers and iPods/iPhones. Some of it is arguably sold at a loss. (c'mon, snow leopard for $29? bundling OS X Server Unlimited with a mac mini for $999?)
So yes, they really do care about people building hackintoshes. Some may say they're taking too big of a step as it is to make it hard to do. I say they're being surprisingly lax about it. But then again part of Apple's image is trying to stay akin to Google's "do no evil", and they probably feel they're pushing it about as hard as they can get away with without doing significant damage to that.
The catch here is that Apple's Mac OS X license forbids installation on anything but a "Macintosh Brand Computer", hence when you install snow leopard you are violating its license. That's the main sticking point. Not that I like stupid tie-downs in licenses like that, but the law looks to be on Apple's side. Pystar themselves may not be violating the license, but they're blatantly assisting and encouraging their customers to do so. Should make for an entertaining battle...
It's not a fair comparison to look at those who pirated your software and then didn't buy it. It's unreasonable to expect people to keep tabs on the apps they've pirated and periodically review them to decide if they want to buy them or not.
True "try before you buy" software nags you periodically and gives you the reminder and easy option to purchase. THOSE are the people you need to be counting.
It's also an unbalanced comparison because the demographic of people that are able to pirate on the iphone etc is not all-inclusive in itself, and there's bound to be a lot of people that never downloaded it in the first place that WOULD have bought it after playing with it, but never had the opportunity to try it. I know I personally have spent several sessions on the app store looking for something specific, and unable to find one single demo of what I needed. (which, admittedly, was rather surprising!) And of the one time I ended up buying the only one that looked good, I've used it all of twice because it doesn't do what I need and I consider it wasted money. A month after that I found a new app that was free (not demo, free) that did exactly what I needed. So I'm not really thrilled over the idea of any app having no demo period.
If you don't have a demo, and you don't have a return policy, then you have no grounds to complain about piracy. Period.
a paper receipt that every voter can look at in real time and which then gets placed into a lock-box which can be independently observed with as much scrutiny as we're willing to pay for.
Reminds me of that cancelled election some months back where the election was cancelled because the president was overthrown, where a few days later they found ballot boxes prestuffed with ooodles of votes for the pres.
Paper trails are less reliable in the end than individuals being able to personally verify their vote.
But your point is well taken that the system would know if your receipt was for the dummy or the real vote. To rig such a protected election would require specifically only altering votes that the voter requested a dummy receipt for. (or elected to not print a receipt) I believe the vast majority of people would request a real receipt though, it's not like very many people are being coerced in voting. The simple existence of the dummy vote would suck the wind out of any big players trying to do that since it would reduce the risky venture's return to near zero, so I would expect well under 1% of the voting body to request a dummy receipt. (only those already under threat, which we HOPE is a small number!) The grand majority would get a true receipt, with the remainder not printing a receipt. Considering that, I'd amend my idea to not give the option to not print a receipt, since that would be a large enough body of fraud-vulnerable voters to make tampering worthwhile. If you don't want your receipt, throw it in the garbage can just outside the booth, since it's of absolutely no value to anyone besides someone trying to compile exit-poll estimates. Or better yet, a shredder.
and the reason is that DVD player was never installed at any point
FYI, DVD Player should have come in the Apps folder on the first machine you bought that shipped with a DVD-ROM drive. Apps are never deleted as part of the migration process so I think something else was involved.
Although, when you run install disks and do a clean (erase &) install, sometimes apps and drivers are not installed if not needed - you won't get the photobooth app or camera drivers when you install tiger on a mac mini for example. If you then cloned that hard drive to another mac that had a camera, you'd have to somehow reinstall those drivers and apps. The DVD player app is not installed in a clean install on a mac that doesn't have a DVD ROM drive. (but the drivers are installed)
Or what if Disney itself goes out of business?
Highly unlikely.
BUT the point is valid. Everyone that has ever hawked centralized-server-drm says that they could never possibly go out of business. A few say they'll release a tool to unlock all the content if they go under. To my knowledge, no tool has ever been released in such a case, and there are over a dozen large examples of such companies going out of business or simply shutting down their activation servers, turning purchased content into useless bits.
"There oughtta be a law". That says DRM is only legal if the universal unlocker is kept in escrow somewhere (and kept updated) with terms to go public with it if they ch7,9,11,etc or simply shut off their servers.
The point here is it's impossible to give someone a provable receipt AND protect them from extortion at the same time. So they have the option to take home a receipt of their real vote, or of their dummy vote.
If they're worried of being coerced, they take home a dummy receipt and forfeit the ability to verify their real vote later, but can produce a receipt that can be used to get online and verify the vote they were "supposed to make". If they're only worried about ballot fraud, they take home a receipt to their real vote and check on it after the election to make sure your vote counted.
The result is that only the voter knows in their head whether their receipt is for the dummy or the real vote, making the receipt of no true accountability to anyone but the voter.
So any employer with two brain cells realizes that even forcing you to turn over your receipt really tells them nothing for certain as to how you voted. If your employer didn't demand you bring back a receipt, and so you printed a true receipt, and then later asks for it, tell them you didn't select to print a receipt, or you lost it.
And if enough people in say a single district all claim that their vote was changed or lost, then the auditors can move in and use the receipts voters volunteer to them to track the fraud down.