There is no reason you can't use it (asynchronously) like email or like a wiki page. The point is that you can go synchronous if you want to, but you certainly don't have to since the same context offers both modes of communication.
You're implying that cracked software could be evaluated by the 'tech crowd'. I've never seen a cracker release the source code for their cracks.
I have. Some crackers publish extensive instructions for decompiling software. And it's not like they change much, they'll flip a bit here, or a bit there. So if you have an original copy of the image they used, like the trial copy, or whatever, it's super easy to compare. Plus, it's not like you can't run some applications in sandboxie, or vmware, and use a firewall, a sniffer, filemon, and/or some other sysinternals diagnostics tools to see what's going on in the background.
You are essentially trusting a complete stranger
Not really. If I use (digitally signed) software from the same person for the last ten years, they're not really a stranger to me anymore. The same goes if a friend of mine trusts the same person for the last ten years, and if I trust my friend to vouch for that guy, then that guy no longer remains a complete stranger to me. This is probably the same way you'd hire a babysitter if you ever needed one. You'd ask your friends for the contact information of their long-time babysitter, and if they gave it to you, that babysitter would no longer be a complete stranger to you (also, their reputation would be on the line if anything went wrong with you, you'd be sure to tell your friend who made the original recommendation about it).
No, they said, they were going to release the Javascript for their web client (plus, it's not like you can't already take a peek at it right now with firebug).
It's just that their web client code is still a moving target at this very moment. And they did release a primitive console client at least (so third parties could get started in at least testing their own implementation of a wave server).
The fourth most visited website [mashable.com]is generally considered to be a major website, and it has dropped support for IE6.
The original phrase should be read as: "Youtube [according to mashable.com] is generally considered to be a major website, and it has dropped support for IE6."
Of course, this is all because Slashdot is fragmenting the web by rendering the same comments differently.
So, due to the inability to increase quality, we will increase quantity. And of course this will do no good.
What's the matter? Afraid to cut into your kids TV watching time? Speaking as someone who has been educated in France, I can tell you that American kids spend hardly anytime in school. This is crazy, considering the fact that most Americans once in the working World work so many hours and have so little vacation time compared to the rest of the World (it's really the opposite of what your kids go through in school).
Give your kids less vacation days, that would be a decent start. And give Obama a break. It's not because he's trying to increase quantity, that he's also not working on trying to increase *quality* as well. And please, don't reply to me saying that you didn't have a TV when growing up, or that you don't let your kids watch TV right now. If you are one of those people, congratulations! But let's be honest here. You guys are not the rule, you really are the exception.
Saturday Night Live is a commercial medium. The Obama poster was being sold for profit. But you don't see Sarah Palin or Obama suing either party. Public figures are fair game, whether it's for profit, or not for profit.
I don't use any of those to interact with my bank?
Good for you.
So all the banks in the World should just scrap their text/email banking alerts and their customer toll-free phone numbers just because one person, mainly you, don't use them.
May be, you should give your bank a call to let them know this.
I get my banking alerts by both. It's a notification system only, but read the article -- so is this private message twitter-functionality. It's not possible to issue orders from any of those mediums, it's only possible to receive pre-programmed notifications on them (and the pre-programming has to be done from the banking web site itself, not from twitter).
It helped out once when I had a gal friend whose ex-boyfriend was giving her grief - freaked her ex out to send messages that looked to him like they came from his phone: ("Just leave me alone...")
It sounds like it wasn't the ex-boyfriend that was doing the harassment, it was you and the girl. If the girl had really wanted to be left alone, she would have blocked the other person's phone calls, emails, and texts from ever reaching her in the first place, the last thing you would do is to try and find novel convoluted ways to contact them again.
And by the way, unless the girl had an history of breaking and entering his premises in a psycho-killer like fashion, I do not think that the ex-boyfriend was as "freaked out" as you say he was. Curiosity picked, sure. Freaked out, I certainly doubt it. That's another thing that doesn't add up. You do not try to pick the curiosity of someone, or create drama in the life of the same someone, you're trying to get rid of. If you do, you just know they're going to use this as the latest lame excuse/motivation to try to contact you (or argue with you) again.
Who knows? May be, you were totally selfless in this, and that was your true hidden objective all along -- to reunite the two love birds whatever it took. In that case, congratulations! What you did sounds like something that might have actually worked.
And a way to guarantee the results don't get lost Indiana-Jones style.
The reason those pictures got lost is well known. Buzz Aldrin was supposed to be the first Man to step on the moon. And it's only at the last minute that (for no apparent reason) Mission Control told him to let Neil Armstrong take his place and take all the glory that came with it. Both of them had cameras, and they both took pictures of each other, but Buzz Aldrin "accidentally" left his camera (with all the pictures of Neil Armstrong) on the moon.
Now, I'm sure you could think up of technical solutions for that problem, but I really don't think there is any amount of technical wizardry that can prevent a really bitter astronaut from finding a way to enact revenge on his partner by sabotaging something. And personally, I think we're really lucky that Buzz had the camera to take his frustration out on, in my opinion, he could have found something much more nefarious to do -- to his partner otherwise.
I was at a CompUSA. I asked one of the employees there if the computer cases all stacked on the very top of the shelf were all ATX. He didn't know what ATX meant, then he looked at the price labels and noticed that CUSA was written on each one of them, and so he said: "I'm not sure what CUSA means." So at that point, the more evil part of me took over, and I said: "Well, I'm pretty sure what CUSA means. It means CompUSA" and using my most condescending voice, I said "Thanks for trying anyway..."
On a side-note, I was at a Radio Shack more recently. I had done my research, or so I thought. I got in a technical disagreement with the salesman. I left the store thinking that the salesman was a complete idiot (and how Radio Shack had changed over the years), and when I got home and verified what the salesman said, it turned out he was right, and I was the complete idiot this time (so ignorance can certainly goes both ways).
And it's funny, the CUSA incident happened a long while ago, and I remember every detail, but the Radio Shack incident happened much more recently, but for some reason, I can't even remember what I wanted in that case (may be some cable or something). It's either the fact that cables don't make a memorable impression on me, or perhaps, much more likely that my memory is selective in the incidents I want to remember. The only thing I remember about Radio Shack is that I avoided going to that particular store, fearing to run into the same salesman, at least six months after the fact.
It's supposed to work directly from your phone camera. And if your phone is not directly supported, it should still work if you email the picture to: copy AT kipit . com
How far should the law allow a corporation to shut down a real person's life to correct the corporation's error?
It depends on the email address in question. If the email address "mistakenly entered" was Prince.Abdul@gmail.com, or President.Rasoolullah@gmail.com, or I.Love.U.Looong.time@gmail.com, then I'd shut down those email addresses temporarily just in case.
George W Bush could have learned a lesson or two from this bank. For a while, he was sending politically sensitive emails to Cheney using the whitehouse.org domain (to his displeasure, a domain name owned by a democrat).
Are you saying hands-down that a bank should refuse to loan me money for a new car? My current vehicle probably won't last another month. I *need* a car loan.
Do you really *need* a new car? Or do you need a used car? And do you really need to own that car? Or can you just get by with just leasing/borrowing/sharing one for now?
I won't mention public transportation, special ride sharing programs, moving closer to your workplace, switching jobs, or getting yourself a moped/bicycle. For all I know, you live in the snowy mountains some place, and you need a reliable car with 4 by 4 capabilities -- so you don't kill yourself the next time the road is icy.
And if that's the case, I apologize in advance, because I think you would be the exception -- not the rule. Most people do not *need* a new car. It's just that most people think they're entitled to a new (or an almost new) car just because they see their neighbors have one.
The Paris full-body turnstiles are especially difficult to get out of, but it doesn't mean people don't try. Several times, I've seen people pass two at a time, those turnstiles will usually sound an alarm, and what not, but they don't make them completely impassable, otherwise fat americans such as myself wouldn't be able to get through.
Also, I believe some metro tickets are heavily discounted for disabled people, the elderly, and cops, so if someone is using an heavily discounted metro ticket that a family member gave them, a turnstile wouldn't be able to stop them (unless there was also an inspector or a guard keeping an eye on the turnstile).
way to poke the bull in the eyes there - so he's not just violating license, he's probably causing back-end problems too. That was dumb.
If he's causing back-end problem, you don't have a lawyer send him a C&D, you have an engineer give him a call. Google has all the phone numbers of the developers who develop on their platform. Many times, a friendly phone call will work a thousand times better than sending a threatening letter.
The question is what will be the OS that can use the most software. Right now there are: IPhone OS which is very closed. Windows mobile also very closed and not sexy. Android which is open and has lots of backing by lot's of different builders. Many other smaller options. Moblin look very open too but.. when it will show up, Android should already available from every cellular providers.
Is this a joke? By far, Nokia is the largest provider of smartphones in the World (smartphones, not just regular cell phones).
Right now, Nokia and Windows Mobile are the two biggest paltforms "that can use the most software". Hands-down, they allow you to do the most stuff, and they give you the most flexibility than either the iPhone or Android. For instance, the iPhone doesn't allow you to run more than one app at a time (buggy Backgrounder utility excepted). I, on the other hand, routinely run at least five apps at the very same time on my Nokia phone (combining apps is the true killer application, on the road for instance, I wouldn't be able to get audio turn-by-turn direction, visual live traffic information, live information on where the cops are hiding, and live information on where I can get gas for cheap, because there isn't one single app that does do all these things perfectly. Google Maps does try, but it's not there yet). At home or anywhere else for that matter, without the power to run multiple apps at the same time, I also wouldn't be able to queue my favorite podcasts for current/later downloads, play last.fm/youtube/flash videos/music when I felt like it, play my audiobooks/music as I'm going to sleep, and maintain my presence on a dozen social networking sites and half a dozen Voice-over-IP sites at the same time (all still while having a perfectly functioning phone as well, that will mute itself and keep the states of my apps when my phone rings until it hangs up).
Right now, Android only allows you to run apps that are stored on its in-built memory (that's something between 100 or 200 MB). On the other hand, my Nokia allows me to run apps directly from my memory card (that's 8GB). Right now, I can turn my Nokia into anything, a wifi hotspot, an internet phone, a true video-teleconferencing phone, a video streaming server/player/recorder, a web server, a p2p client, a computer/TV remote-control, an exercise-coach/trainer/logger, a game player. You name it, I can basically do it. What's more, I can usually do it using a free app, and I certainly don't need to decide which apps are my favorites, and which are not, since I can run them all directly from my memory card.
And the only problem with either Nokia, or Windows Mobile, is that with the freedom they give you, and with the options they give developers, that they have no unifying interface (not even one single unifying development environment), so both developers and users are given a plethora of options -- at the expense of confusing the average smart-phone user (at least initially), but personally, I find that a small price to pay for actually being able to do the things I actually want to do with it (without voiding its warranty and without stopping its future updates).
Which is precisely the opposite of what you need in a healthy economy. You want people to consume so that production can increase.
Correction: This is precisely the opposite of how we judge and measure our economy as healthy. That measurement (devised after the Great Depression) was only a means to an end. It's not an end in itself (otherwise, we'd be burning down houses everywhere within our own country, but luckily not everyone takes that kind of measurement quite so literally).
Next time, please think before parroting what the advertisement-sponsored news media outlets are saying. Of course, that's what they're going to say, inciting consumption is one of their jobs. And they wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't say stuff like that.
Are these students not paying fees, and (were it to occur in most other countries) taxpayers paying also?
Don't worry, the taxpayers are paying. That's the entire point of donating to Universities and Non-profits. They get their (Federal Employee) Tax ID number, then they can off-set those in-kind donations on their taxes against their revenues from Ad-sense. Everybody does this. Google does it. Microsoft does it. Etc.
Schools get Google Apps for free (that is to say, they don't pay for the licenses) but it's the full-fledged Google Apps that normally costs $50/user/year. It's effectively the same as the enterprise version.
Except for the Service Level Agreement (SLA) of course. Also read the fine print, the Google Apps without the ads would be for enrolled students only.
The staff and alumni on the other hand (assuming the school has a US non-profit tax status, but not the Charity status) get the ads and the lower standard quota (which is not 25 GB, it's more like 6 GB or 9 GB -- I forget which).
Because using linux as an embedded OS was such a keenly revolutionary idea that no one else in the marketplace would ever consider the possibility on their own.
The VCs, the shareholders, and/or the media may not know. Most companies want to appear unique (even if they're not). So they'd prefer to generate an air of mystique around their software (than to admit, that the only thing they had to do was customize, or tweak some existing piece of well-known software).
This doesn't just happen to Linux. For instance, some companies may be reluctant to say they're using Visual Basic for Applications for instance. So they'll package their app in a binary, remove the splash screen, and do all sorts of things to hide the true origin of their app. Diebold was one such example, but there are many more others... Even Microsoft does that. Hell, even some open source projects do it to other open source projects. As long as the license allows it, and without necessarily explicitly saying it (but may be at least implying it), most companies/people will try to get the credit for other people's work, and try to appear as if they had some specialized knowledge/software that few other people have.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no reason you can't use it (asynchronously) like email or like a wiki page. The point is that you can go synchronous if you want to, but you certainly don't have to since the same context offers both modes of communication.
You're implying that cracked software could be evaluated by the 'tech crowd'. I've never seen a cracker release the source code for their cracks.
I have. Some crackers publish extensive instructions for decompiling software. And it's not like they change much, they'll flip a bit here, or a bit there. So if you have an original copy of the image they used, like the trial copy, or whatever, it's super easy to compare. Plus, it's not like you can't run some applications in sandboxie, or vmware, and use a firewall, a sniffer, filemon, and/or some other sysinternals diagnostics tools to see what's going on in the background.
You are essentially trusting a complete stranger
Not really. If I use (digitally signed) software from the same person for the last ten years, they're not really a stranger to me anymore. The same goes if a friend of mine trusts the same person for the last ten years, and if I trust my friend to vouch for that guy, then that guy no longer remains a complete stranger to me. This is probably the same way you'd hire a babysitter if you ever needed one. You'd ask your friends for the contact information of their long-time babysitter, and if they gave it to you, that babysitter would no longer be a complete stranger to you (also, their reputation would be on the line if anything went wrong with you, you'd be sure to tell your friend who made the original recommendation about it).
Yes - the solution is to be lucky enough to find a lawyer that's willing allow their bill to get up to $400,000 but settle for $240,000
When it's the opponent paying, you can be sure that all the legal expenses are padded to the max in anticipation of the judge lowering them.
No, they said, they were going to release the Javascript for their web client (plus, it's not like you can't already take a peek at it right now with firebug).
It's just that their web client code is still a moving target at this very moment. And they did release a primitive console client at least (so third parties could get started in at least testing their own implementation of a wave server).
The fourth most visited website [mashable.com]is generally considered to be a major website, and it has dropped support for IE6.
The original phrase should be read as: "Youtube [according to mashable.com] is generally considered to be a major website, and it has dropped support for IE6."
Of course, this is all because Slashdot is fragmenting the web by rendering the same comments differently.
So, due to the inability to increase quality, we will increase quantity. And of course this will do no good.
What's the matter? Afraid to cut into your kids TV watching time? Speaking as someone who has been educated in France, I can tell you that American kids spend hardly anytime in school. This is crazy, considering the fact that most Americans once in the working World work so many hours and have so little vacation time compared to the rest of the World (it's really the opposite of what your kids go through in school).
Give your kids less vacation days, that would be a decent start. And give Obama a break. It's not because he's trying to increase quantity, that he's also not working on trying to increase *quality* as well. And please, don't reply to me saying that you didn't have a TV when growing up, or that you don't let your kids watch TV right now. If you are one of those people, congratulations! But let's be honest here. You guys are not the rule, you really are the exception.
Saturday Night Live is a commercial medium. The Obama poster was being sold for profit. But you don't see Sarah Palin or Obama suing either party. Public figures are fair game, whether it's for profit, or not for profit.
I don't use any of those to interact with my bank?
Good for you.
So all the banks in the World should just scrap their text/email banking alerts and their customer toll-free phone numbers just because one person, mainly you, don't use them.
May be, you should give your bank a call to let them know this.
I get my banking alerts by both. It's a notification system only, but read the article -- so is this private message twitter-functionality. It's not possible to issue orders from any of those mediums, it's only possible to receive pre-programmed notifications on them (and the pre-programming has to be done from the banking web site itself, not from twitter).
It helped out once when I had a gal friend whose ex-boyfriend was giving her grief - freaked her ex out to send messages that looked to him like they came from his phone: ("Just leave me alone...")
It sounds like it wasn't the ex-boyfriend that was doing the harassment, it was you and the girl. If the girl had really wanted to be left alone, she would have blocked the other person's phone calls, emails, and texts from ever reaching her in the first place, the last thing you would do is to try and find novel convoluted ways to contact them again.
And by the way, unless the girl had an history of breaking and entering his premises in a psycho-killer like fashion, I do not think that the ex-boyfriend was as "freaked out" as you say he was. Curiosity picked, sure. Freaked out, I certainly doubt it. That's another thing that doesn't add up. You do not try to pick the curiosity of someone, or create drama in the life of the same someone, you're trying to get rid of. If you do, you just know they're going to use this as the latest lame excuse/motivation to try to contact you (or argue with you) again.
Who knows? May be, you were totally selfless in this, and that was your true hidden objective all along -- to reunite the two love birds whatever it took. In that case, congratulations! What you did sounds like something that might have actually worked.
And a way to guarantee the results don't get lost Indiana-Jones style.
The reason those pictures got lost is well known. Buzz Aldrin was supposed to be the first Man to step on the moon. And it's only at the last minute that (for no apparent reason) Mission Control told him to let Neil Armstrong take his place and take all the glory that came with it. Both of them had cameras, and they both took pictures of each other, but Buzz Aldrin "accidentally" left his camera (with all the pictures of Neil Armstrong) on the moon.
Now, I'm sure you could think up of technical solutions for that problem, but I really don't think there is any amount of technical wizardry that can prevent a really bitter astronaut from finding a way to enact revenge on his partner by sabotaging something. And personally, I think we're really lucky that Buzz had the camera to take his frustration out on, in my opinion, he could have found something much more nefarious to do -- to his partner otherwise.
I think you meant Starbucks.
I was at a CompUSA. I asked one of the employees there if the computer cases all stacked on the very top of the shelf were all ATX. He didn't know what ATX meant, then he looked at the price labels and noticed that CUSA was written on each one of them, and so he said: "I'm not sure what CUSA means." So at that point, the more evil part of me took over, and I said: "Well, I'm pretty sure what CUSA means. It means CompUSA" and using my most condescending voice, I said "Thanks for trying anyway..."
On a side-note, I was at a Radio Shack more recently. I had done my research, or so I thought. I got in a technical disagreement with the salesman. I left the store thinking that the salesman was a complete idiot (and how Radio Shack had changed over the years), and when I got home and verified what the salesman said, it turned out he was right, and I was the complete idiot this time (so ignorance can certainly goes both ways).
And it's funny, the CUSA incident happened a long while ago, and I remember every detail, but the Radio Shack incident happened much more recently, but for some reason, I can't even remember what I wanted in that case (may be some cable or something). It's either the fact that cables don't make a memorable impression on me, or perhaps, much more likely that my memory is selective in the incidents I want to remember. The only thing I remember about Radio Shack is that I avoided going to that particular store, fearing to run into the same salesman, at least six months after the fact.
So does email, text messaging, and the telephone. So what's your point?
Or if you have an extra DVD player lying around, you could just take it apart use that to make the macro lens
Have you tried qipit???
It's supposed to work directly from your phone camera. And if your phone is not directly supported, it should still work if you email the picture to: copy AT kipit . com
How far should the law allow a corporation to shut down a real person's life to correct the corporation's error?
It depends on the email address in question. If the email address "mistakenly entered" was Prince.Abdul@gmail.com, or President.Rasoolullah@gmail.com, or I.Love.U.Looong.time@gmail.com, then I'd shut down those email addresses temporarily just in case.
George W Bush could have learned a lesson or two from this bank. For a while, he was sending politically sensitive emails to Cheney using the whitehouse.org domain (to his displeasure, a domain name owned by a democrat).
Are you saying hands-down that a bank should refuse to loan me money for a new car? My current vehicle probably won't last another month. I *need* a car loan.
Do you really *need* a new car? Or do you need a used car? And do you really need to own that car? Or can you just get by with just leasing/borrowing/sharing one for now?
I won't mention public transportation, special ride sharing programs, moving closer to your workplace, switching jobs, or getting yourself a moped/bicycle. For all I know, you live in the snowy mountains some place, and you need a reliable car with 4 by 4 capabilities -- so you don't kill yourself the next time the road is icy.
And if that's the case, I apologize in advance, because I think you would be the exception -- not the rule. Most people do not *need* a new car. It's just that most people think they're entitled to a new (or an almost new) car just because they see their neighbors have one.
The Paris full-body turnstiles are especially difficult to get out of, but it doesn't mean people don't try. Several times, I've seen people pass two at a time, those turnstiles will usually sound an alarm, and what not, but they don't make them completely impassable, otherwise fat americans such as myself wouldn't be able to get through.
Also, I believe some metro tickets are heavily discounted for disabled people, the elderly, and cops, so if someone is using an heavily discounted metro ticket that a family member gave them, a turnstile wouldn't be able to stop them (unless there was also an inspector or a guard keeping an eye on the turnstile).
If he's causing back-end problem, you don't have a lawyer send him a C&D, you have an engineer give him a call. Google has all the phone numbers of the developers who develop on their platform. Many times, a friendly phone call will work a thousand times better than sending a threatening letter.
The question is what will be the OS that can use the most software. Right now there are: IPhone OS which is very closed. Windows mobile also very closed and not sexy. Android which is open and has lots of backing by lot's of different builders. Many other smaller options. Moblin look very open too but.. when it will show up, Android should already available from every cellular providers.
Is this a joke? By far, Nokia is the largest provider of smartphones in the World (smartphones, not just regular cell phones).
Right now, Nokia and Windows Mobile are the two biggest paltforms "that can use the most software". Hands-down, they allow you to do the most stuff, and they give you the most flexibility than either the iPhone or Android. For instance, the iPhone doesn't allow you to run more than one app at a time (buggy Backgrounder utility excepted). I, on the other hand, routinely run at least five apps at the very same time on my Nokia phone (combining apps is the true killer application, on the road for instance, I wouldn't be able to get audio turn-by-turn direction, visual live traffic information, live information on where the cops are hiding, and live information on where I can get gas for cheap, because there isn't one single app that does do all these things perfectly. Google Maps does try, but it's not there yet). At home or anywhere else for that matter, without the power to run multiple apps at the same time, I also wouldn't be able to queue my favorite podcasts for current/later downloads, play last.fm/youtube/flash videos/music when I felt like it, play my audiobooks/music as I'm going to sleep, and maintain my presence on a dozen social networking sites and half a dozen Voice-over-IP sites at the same time (all still while having a perfectly functioning phone as well, that will mute itself and keep the states of my apps when my phone rings until it hangs up).
Right now, Android only allows you to run apps that are stored on its in-built memory (that's something between 100 or 200 MB). On the other hand, my Nokia allows me to run apps directly from my memory card (that's 8GB). Right now, I can turn my Nokia into anything, a wifi hotspot, an internet phone, a true video-teleconferencing phone, a video streaming server/player/recorder, a web server, a p2p client, a computer/TV remote-control, an exercise-coach/trainer/logger, a game player. You name it, I can basically do it. What's more, I can usually do it using a free app, and I certainly don't need to decide which apps are my favorites, and which are not, since I can run them all directly from my memory card.
And the only problem with either Nokia, or Windows Mobile, is that with the freedom they give you, and with the options they give developers, that they have no unifying interface (not even one single unifying development environment), so both developers and users are given a plethora of options -- at the expense of confusing the average smart-phone user (at least initially), but personally, I find that a small price to pay for actually being able to do the things I actually want to do with it (without voiding its warranty and without stopping its future updates).
Which is precisely the opposite of what you need in a healthy economy. You want people to consume so that production can increase.
Correction: This is precisely the opposite of how we judge and measure our economy as healthy. That measurement (devised after the Great Depression) was only a means to an end. It's not an end in itself (otherwise, we'd be burning down houses everywhere within our own country, but luckily not everyone takes that kind of measurement quite so literally).
Next time, please think before parroting what the advertisement-sponsored news media outlets are saying. Of course, that's what they're going to say, inciting consumption is one of their jobs. And they wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't say stuff like that.
Are these students not paying fees, and (were it to occur in most other countries) taxpayers paying also?
Don't worry, the taxpayers are paying. That's the entire point of donating to Universities and Non-profits. They get their (Federal Employee) Tax ID number, then they can off-set those in-kind donations on their taxes against their revenues from Ad-sense. Everybody does this. Google does it. Microsoft does it. Etc.
Schools get Google Apps for free (that is to say, they don't pay for the licenses) but it's the full-fledged Google Apps that normally costs $50/user/year. It's effectively the same as the enterprise version.
Except for the Service Level Agreement (SLA) of course. Also read the fine print, the Google Apps without the ads would be for enrolled students only.
The staff and alumni on the other hand (assuming the school has a US non-profit tax status, but not the Charity status) get the ads and the lower standard quota (which is not 25 GB, it's more like 6 GB or 9 GB -- I forget which).
Because using linux as an embedded OS was such a keenly revolutionary idea that no one else in the marketplace would ever consider the possibility on their own.
The VCs, the shareholders, and/or the media may not know. Most companies want to appear unique (even if they're not). So they'd prefer to generate an air of mystique around their software (than to admit, that the only thing they had to do was customize, or tweak some existing piece of well-known software).
This doesn't just happen to Linux. For instance, some companies may be reluctant to say they're using Visual Basic for Applications for instance. So they'll package their app in a binary, remove the splash screen, and do all sorts of things to hide the true origin of their app. Diebold was one such example, but there are many more others... Even Microsoft does that. Hell, even some open source projects do it to other open source projects. As long as the license allows it, and without necessarily explicitly saying it (but may be at least implying it), most companies/people will try to get the credit for other people's work, and try to appear as if they had some specialized knowledge/software that few other people have.