of course Microsoft has no problem breaking non-compete clauses from California companies all the time. That's what much of the Google/Microsoft hate is from. Google being in California can't enforce Non-Competes on it's employees... and when Google swipes folks from Washington to California the non-compete is unenforceable.... Like every other company, Microsoft likes it's benefits one way but not the other.
but under "first to file" that actually doesn't matter. If you didn't FILE you'd have to prove the other party KNEW you invented the app... "failure to file" is not a defense to suddenly finding yourself in trouble for something you were already doing. So many patents are written as "black box" documents anyway. Now that the "working model" is done away with anybody can rationalize after they see something that looks like what they might have thought of.
Social programs only account for about 1/3 the money the government spends. Almost 1/3 of the money this year is being spent on the wars, and on interest on last year's wars. I did some searching on the Wikipedia last time this came up. The USA spends 10x what China spends on guns and bombs and we have 1/4 the population. So in real terms we spend 40x more money per person than any other country in the world (remember Russia is much smaller too).
Forget the 2-3 Trillion bailout... What JOBS have been created in the USA with the 4-6 Trillion being spent on the wars the last 10 years? Where's the increase in taxes to support the war? Where's jobs for the little people making war goods? And when the Troops finally do come back from war, most of them are immediately "downsized" as their companies couldn't afford to keep them, if the companies they worked for are even still open. what money do they have to spend? Is all this war spending going to create another "boomer" age of productivity when all the soldiers come home to contribute to society again? It's not like the Army Corps of Engineers lost a whole US city because they lacked funding to maintain public civil works?
But yeah, healthcare and social security is the big bad problem... sure...
don't forget, his senior military staff all wrote books about how "weak" he was because Clinton didn't use his executive power to send in bombing strikes (without asking Congress) and other operations until they nearly beat him over the head. Don't forget how Clinton was "weak" because he was in a National Guard unit defending the home so he didn't have to go to war. (hint, the average reservist now, has spent more time in Iraq than draftees or even enlistees did in Vietnam) Don't forget that the DoJ beat Clinton up to go to trial for a PERSONAL, CIVIL lawsuit while in office... something that hadn't been done in close to 100 years. (while Bushed allowed his VP to claim crazy immunity from oversight as a member of Congress and as a member of the Executive... we had a VP in more secret meetings that the President some days)
Tell the truth, Hillary knew her man was a dirty dog... so did Jackie Kennedy. So did Mrs. ML King... being a good politician and getting people motivated tends to in-hand with extra lady-lovin. The key point Hillary was making is that they were putting her husband on national TV describing sex acts, when he had a teen daughter at home. THAT was a new low in US politics.
Then we find out the great Ronald Regan basically complied with Ollie North to trade arms for hostages against the law but he was a weak old man so couldn't stand for his crimes and gobs of military "fell on their swords" to save him. Not to mention historical review is showing he had beginning signs of Alzheimer's while in office.
actually median wages in the Midwest are about $42k-$44k depending on state. So he's more like 4x the salary of his constituents. You're not technically out of "middle class" until you are over $250k so there are lots of "middle class" perks he gets that take the tax bite off. Figure any travel expenses and residence expenses are out of the Congresses money, but not all the meetings, dinners, etc, etc, you're expected to do.
Remember they're courted by MILLION dollar a year lobbyists!!! Really think about that. Most of the people these guys deal with daily make 5-10 TIMES what they make... the game being get the little newbies hooked on the expensive life and suddenly they're buying $1500 suits and eating at $200 restaurants because that's where their "peers" eat.
Exactly, Hitler was a master of Jack-Booted thugs, and getting people to mostly agree with his results. The classic case of beating enough people fast enough that by the time the German public and even military got up ballz there was too much "tattle on your neighbor" in place to disagree.
I like the idea of the old "work it out" thing... the problem in most youthful disagreements is as much lack of confidence in yourself as it is the other person being a bully. Most bullies are "average" just better at being mean. Most geeks are self-deprecating little wallflowers until their late 20's or so. Put boxing gloves on and the bully and the geek realize their more evenly matched... thus comes self respect on both sides.
Hopefully we teach kids that the federal government has no place telling local school principals how to police kids inside the kid's own home!!! That's the problem with Democrats in general.
Of course the problem with Republicans is that they want to tell ADULTS which sexual anatomical parts are allowed to touch in their ADULT bedrooms. And then send them to PITA prison where they can have more of the illegal experiences on the government's dime. The Republicans just dress it up with the "property rights" argument that your boss or somebody in "society" might have their "right to money" diminished.
But the cops are all over Facebook, MySpace, etc... the whole "no privacy, no anonymous" thing. Not to mention all that sits in a database "forever" so the cops (and defense) would have a pretty good amount of info to go by. Of course YOU can't access it, because if age 21 you read posts from age 16 you to age 16 girlfriend THAT would be kiddy porn too. Lately, all the "messaging" sites have moved to the same type of scheme so they effectively "never" delete your IMs either. People get through the cracks, but you'd have to be stupid.
My point is that the old IRC days where posts float around from server to server with no authentication and are auto deleted nearly everywhere in 30 days or less is coming to a screeching halt.... I'd seriously doubt more than 1% of under age girls would even know what "IRC" stands for and even fewer how to access it.
It wasn't that long ago the age to be married (with parent's permission) was as low as 14 in the "Bible Belt" states even. The irony of the court is that you wouldn't be an "adult" though, even though you're old enough to bear a child IN wedlock, so naked pics with your LEGAL HUSBAND would be "kiddy porn".
It's about as silly as charging a 17 year old caught with alcohol the day after they turn 18 so it goes on their ADULT record for Minor in Possession (under 18)... yet they can legally be responsible for taking cash for liquor at the Qwiky-Mart for crappy wages... and charged as an adult for selling to "minors" that are older than them.
more importantly, why wouldn't the cops have video recorded the screens or taken pictures or screenshots rather than showing a "replay" of the conversation. That does seem like a really fishy case to make that they didn't show the JURY EXACTLY what they sent the guy. I'd go so far as to declare it perjury because as sworn officers of the court they have INDIVIDUAL OATHS to the court to tell the WHOLE TRUTH... not just the pieces to win.
China loans the US government all the money we spent at Walmart to help with military actions. Then they get paid interest on it! Wooo. Considering they don't allow the PROFITS of Chinese companies to return to China it's twice as bad. They pay for delivery of raw materials in US dollars, from US customers so it doesn't crash their economy or let their middle class get too big. It also makes them look far poorer than they really are... they're still playing the "developing nation" card when it's time to pony up soldiers and resources... while happily loaning us our own money back!!!
Seriously though, China's consuming their entire economy with production. dams, rails, factories, chip fab... Their GDP is still low enough that their percent might be similar to the USA percent... until you realize the USA GDP is almost 10 times!! bigger. Consider they protect 1.2 billion people with $60 billion dollars. (go Wikipedia)
the USA spends almost $1 trillion! protecting 300 million. Things like the wars which are mostly out-of-budget as well as care for wounded troops, Alphabet agencies, etc, and the added INTEREST on all that.) We spend per citizen 40 TIMES (10x budget div 1/4 people) more REAL dollars what China does... that's crazy.
The Facebook angle is about the LEAST thing wrong with the case. Dad Ran off to play softball for months (the links left off where dad's stuff was), mom took kid to Michigan (probably for family support). She did the MORALLY RIGHT thing of returning the child to the father on time, then going back to Michigan to file Divorce not in front of the kid. That was a mistake because HE then had custody in KY and she had to get the kid back. I can't believe the court tipped the scale because she was VOLUNTARILY under treatment for Bi-Polar and did something slightly bad. There was no indication that CPS was involved or that the drinking was in front of the child. Purely that she was "interfering" with her meds.... Wow! Does this mean I can lose custody for haz Cheezburg if I take Cholesterol or blood pressure meds??? The basics of the ruling are the fucking stone ages! That's like 60 years backward!!!!
What is it with Kentucky and protecting crappy dads? A cousin of mine did traveling equipment repair, left is wife for weeks and spent his days off with somebody else.... SHE had to explain why SHE didn't have a job, and explain why SHE needed support... and he took a job with a pay cut, but still an hour drive away just before filing.... What's wrong with those people down there???? I'm all for Dad's rights... but he should have been ass-raped by the court for every single dime just on principal, he misses visits for dates, and doesn't do any extra to spend time with the kid.... SHE had to leave the house? WTF.
I never understood in these cases why the "marriage" partnership wasn't held up to the same legality as a business partnership. If I had a business partner with joint responsibilities and they didn't do their end, and hit money, misappropriated resources, etc... they'd go to jail for fault... why don't those same rules apply to husbands and wives... crap like this makes "gay" marriage the LEAST of our moral problems with marriage.
unless you bought your 3G phone in May of 2010.... you've just been cut off after 9 months. The problem being that the App Store will start to move ahead with 4.3 devices and ditch the 4.2 devices when the app needs to use the interactive features. (or need in app purchases of Smurfberries)
It is a valid complaint that the 3G is not supported. They were last for sale OFFICIALLY in June of 2010. I know it was the second year for the 3G, but it's only NINE MONTHS since the phone was for sale under TWO YEAR contract, that's it is unsupported now is bad form, even from Apple. If I had a phone and halfway through the contract it stopped being updated that would make me upset too.
I have the 3GS, bought in December on 2 year contract. Does this mean my phone stops updating in March of 2012 leaving me with no updates as the app store moves forward, no updated apps either, for 9 months? Apple sold a lot of 3G, but they've been selling 3GS like crazy for 21 months... this is going to turn the tide more and more against them, they're setting themselves up for massive user hate.
when somebody links the DNA database to Facebook and Google user names? They don't even need "personal" information (SSN, credit cards, real name, etc) at that point to start building. Look at what researchers did with the "cleaned" Netflix database... managed to connect that to the phone book and start making educated guesses about which real people matched the "numbers only" database files.
Remember, OLD medical records become property of Doctor or insurance company for research or whatever unless the family expressly asks for them to be destroyed. There's got to be somebody collecting copies of all those dead relatives (I'm sure DNA is collected at death) so all they really have to do is match your DNA profile to somebody they know died and have a full record of... remember, insurance and law enforcement don't care about cause or "intent" they care just about correlation. That's where they come up with things like drivers of red cars are worse than grey cars so you get a worse rate for buying the red car versus the grey car because you're "more risk". The numbers collected would be a close enough match to somebody on file, and they'd have thousands of samples... statistics get very accurate very fast with the amount of other data they already have.
That's how expensive SCSI controllers work. They have big read/write cashes of RAM to speed transactions and the RAM has it's own battery should power blink. That allows the captured transactions to be written to disk or recovered from journal on the next IPL. In today's world, that's a lot of hardware to throw at a simple problem though, definitely not for the "consumer" or even "prosumer".
that makes it simpler to implement as a device. Basically the consumer equivalent to 10Gb Ethernet/8GB Fiber Channel on servers that can speak Ethernet or Fiber Channel drive... (and virtualize anything else)
Consumers care about Video and Audio devices mostly, maybe a smattering of other things. This brings back the PCI enclosure again and should open up Macs to things like Robotics, test equipment, etc that requires dedicated hardware cards most Macs can't have.
that's the only way to feed the darn Thunderbolt bandwidth! Even to max Thunderbolt you'd need at least 3 of these in RAID of some fashion, meaning something to control them, like Drobo.
HDD tech is established... it's like complaining that 1.5 TB disks cost $100 when a backup tape the same size costs $50. You're paying for speed and essentially today's device helps pay the companies to make tomorrow's devices as well.
The thing I really want to see is better syncing of devices. Really I don't NEED more than 64GB or 128GB on a laptop, certainly not for my day job... and I'm one of the biggest users of HDD storage at my company. If there was a good, solid way to sync to a 1TB drive easily and painlessly. I'm not opposed to syncing my laptop like I do my iPhone... but the media selection needs to be seamless. Done correctly, I could even sync music from my drive at home over the internet... movies would be a little harder but not impossible.
The point of these is to feed devices like Drobo anyway. So three would get you 460GB with one failure. That would also nicely fill up a Thunderbolt connection to one or two computers with speeds and latency way faster than the built in drive.
but seriously, how does a NORMAL phone user know which apps are poisoned and which aren't... especially when most 8-16 year olds are considerably smarter at their parents... and causing trouble by not reading directions VERY carefully. I see smart people that would normally catch this stuff IRL load up their computers and phones with this stuff all the time... still living in the "napster (1)" days, they can't even conceive HOW the strings would be attached, let alone all the TOS terms until they see a bill and WTF.
Seriously, a phone bill advertised at $50 should never get past $150 without some kind of OPT-IN call made to the ACCOUNT HOLDER directly as to how they plan to pay for all the extra usage or limits to plan defaults like local calls and remaining texts already paid for. That ANY account can go more than say 3x over in this day is the real crime... just like loan sharking.
and children from 8-13 are different from "bots" how exactly? When they see it on a kids show or a kids website (at least sites that know they have large kid demographics) they basically are no different than bots... the kid fills the missing link to hit the button on the phone and "accept" the charge... they don't "know" what they're doing is going to rack up for months and months and the telco's rules are set up to make catching every little billing trick harder and harder.
In other news, the in-app purchases in iPhone apps are becoming the same thing... a "free" teaser but to keep up with friends you have to hit the "pay" bar over and over. At least Apple has better options for limiting the account, you could always set the account up with iTunes cards or a prepaid card... telco's really go out of their way to make "prepaid" or limited purchase phones really undesirable financially for normal users.
of course Microsoft has no problem breaking non-compete clauses from California companies all the time. That's what much of the Google/Microsoft hate is from. Google being in California can't enforce Non-Competes on it's employees... and when Google swipes folks from Washington to California the non-compete is unenforceable.... Like every other company, Microsoft likes it's benefits one way but not the other.
That's where Apple has the "Magical" built in!
but under "first to file" that actually doesn't matter. If you didn't FILE you'd have to prove the other party KNEW you invented the app... "failure to file" is not a defense to suddenly finding yourself in trouble for something you were already doing. So many patents are written as "black box" documents anyway. Now that the "working model" is done away with anybody can rationalize after they see something that looks like what they might have thought of.
fortunately most of the copiers had problems with the "embrace" part of fireplace design...
Social programs only account for about 1/3 the money the government spends. Almost 1/3 of the money this year is being spent on the wars, and on interest on last year's wars. I did some searching on the Wikipedia last time this came up. The USA spends 10x what China spends on guns and bombs and we have 1/4 the population. So in real terms we spend 40x more money per person than any other country in the world (remember Russia is much smaller too).
Forget the 2-3 Trillion bailout... What JOBS have been created in the USA with the 4-6 Trillion being spent on the wars the last 10 years? Where's the increase in taxes to support the war? Where's jobs for the little people making war goods? And when the Troops finally do come back from war, most of them are immediately "downsized" as their companies couldn't afford to keep them, if the companies they worked for are even still open. what money do they have to spend? Is all this war spending going to create another "boomer" age of productivity when all the soldiers come home to contribute to society again? It's not like the Army Corps of Engineers lost a whole US city because they lacked funding to maintain public civil works?
But yeah, healthcare and social security is the big bad problem... sure...
don't forget, his senior military staff all wrote books about how "weak" he was because Clinton didn't use his executive power to send in bombing strikes (without asking Congress) and other operations until they nearly beat him over the head. Don't forget how Clinton was "weak" because he was in a National Guard unit defending the home so he didn't have to go to war. (hint, the average reservist now, has spent more time in Iraq than draftees or even enlistees did in Vietnam) Don't forget that the DoJ beat Clinton up to go to trial for a PERSONAL, CIVIL lawsuit while in office... something that hadn't been done in close to 100 years. (while Bushed allowed his VP to claim crazy immunity from oversight as a member of Congress and as a member of the Executive... we had a VP in more secret meetings that the President some days)
Tell the truth, Hillary knew her man was a dirty dog... so did Jackie Kennedy. So did Mrs. ML King... being a good politician and getting people motivated tends to in-hand with extra lady-lovin. The key point Hillary was making is that they were putting her husband on national TV describing sex acts, when he had a teen daughter at home. THAT was a new low in US politics.
Then we find out the great Ronald Regan basically complied with Ollie North to trade arms for hostages against the law but he was a weak old man so couldn't stand for his crimes and gobs of military "fell on their swords" to save him. Not to mention historical review is showing he had beginning signs of Alzheimer's while in office.
actually median wages in the Midwest are about $42k-$44k depending on state. So he's more like 4x the salary of his constituents. You're not technically out of "middle class" until you are over $250k so there are lots of "middle class" perks he gets that take the tax bite off. Figure any travel expenses and residence expenses are out of the Congresses money, but not all the meetings, dinners, etc, etc, you're expected to do.
Remember they're courted by MILLION dollar a year lobbyists!!! Really think about that. Most of the people these guys deal with daily make 5-10 TIMES what they make... the game being get the little newbies hooked on the expensive life and suddenly they're buying $1500 suits and eating at $200 restaurants because that's where their "peers" eat.
Exactly, Hitler was a master of Jack-Booted thugs, and getting people to mostly agree with his results. The classic case of beating enough people fast enough that by the time the German public and even military got up ballz there was too much "tattle on your neighbor" in place to disagree.
I like the idea of the old "work it out" thing... the problem in most youthful disagreements is as much lack of confidence in yourself as it is the other person being a bully. Most bullies are "average" just better at being mean. Most geeks are self-deprecating little wallflowers until their late 20's or so. Put boxing gloves on and the bully and the geek realize their more evenly matched... thus comes self respect on both sides.
Hopefully we teach kids that the federal government has no place telling local school principals how to police kids inside the kid's own home!!! That's the problem with Democrats in general.
Of course the problem with Republicans is that they want to tell ADULTS which sexual anatomical parts are allowed to touch in their ADULT bedrooms. And then send them to PITA prison where they can have more of the illegal experiences on the government's dime. The Republicans just dress it up with the "property rights" argument that your boss or somebody in "society" might have their "right to money" diminished.
tin, guys tin...
Tin blocks the mind control... Aluminium amplifies!
But the cops are all over Facebook, MySpace, etc... the whole "no privacy, no anonymous" thing. Not to mention all that sits in a database "forever" so the cops (and defense) would have a pretty good amount of info to go by. Of course YOU can't access it, because if age 21 you read posts from age 16 you to age 16 girlfriend THAT would be kiddy porn too. Lately, all the "messaging" sites have moved to the same type of scheme so they effectively "never" delete your IMs either. People get through the cracks, but you'd have to be stupid.
My point is that the old IRC days where posts float around from server to server with no authentication and are auto deleted nearly everywhere in 30 days or less is coming to a screeching halt.... I'd seriously doubt more than 1% of under age girls would even know what "IRC" stands for and even fewer how to access it.
It wasn't that long ago the age to be married (with parent's permission) was as low as 14 in the "Bible Belt" states even. The irony of the court is that you wouldn't be an "adult" though, even though you're old enough to bear a child IN wedlock, so naked pics with your LEGAL HUSBAND would be "kiddy porn".
It's about as silly as charging a 17 year old caught with alcohol the day after they turn 18 so it goes on their ADULT record for Minor in Possession (under 18)... yet they can legally be responsible for taking cash for liquor at the Qwiky-Mart for crappy wages... and charged as an adult for selling to "minors" that are older than them.
more importantly, why wouldn't the cops have video recorded the screens or taken pictures or screenshots rather than showing a "replay" of the conversation. That does seem like a really fishy case to make that they didn't show the JURY EXACTLY what they sent the guy. I'd go so far as to declare it perjury because as sworn officers of the court they have INDIVIDUAL OATHS to the court to tell the WHOLE TRUTH... not just the pieces to win.
good point...
China loans the US government all the money we spent at Walmart to help with military actions. Then they get paid interest on it! Wooo. Considering they don't allow the PROFITS of Chinese companies to return to China it's twice as bad. They pay for delivery of raw materials in US dollars, from US customers so it doesn't crash their economy or let their middle class get too big. It also makes them look far poorer than they really are... they're still playing the "developing nation" card when it's time to pony up soldiers and resources... while happily loaning us our own money back!!!
Seriously though, China's consuming their entire economy with production.
dams, rails, factories, chip fab... Their GDP is still low enough that their percent might be similar to the USA percent... until you realize the USA GDP is almost 10 times!! bigger. Consider they protect 1.2 billion people with $60 billion dollars. (go Wikipedia)
the USA spends almost $1 trillion! protecting 300 million. Things like the wars which are mostly out-of-budget as well as care for wounded troops, Alphabet agencies, etc, and the added INTEREST on all that.) We spend per citizen 40 TIMES (10x budget div 1/4 people) more REAL dollars what China does... that's crazy.
this is seriously fucked up.
The Facebook angle is about the LEAST thing wrong with the case. Dad Ran off to play softball for months (the links left off where dad's stuff was), mom took kid to Michigan (probably for family support). She did the MORALLY RIGHT thing of returning the child to the father on time, then going back to Michigan to file Divorce not in front of the kid. That was a mistake because HE then had custody in KY and she had to get the kid back. I can't believe the court tipped the scale because she was VOLUNTARILY under treatment for Bi-Polar and did something slightly bad. There was no indication that CPS was involved or that the drinking was in front of the child. Purely that she was "interfering" with her meds.... Wow! Does this mean I can lose custody for haz Cheezburg if I take Cholesterol or blood pressure meds??? The basics of the ruling are the fucking stone ages! That's like 60 years backward!!!!
What is it with Kentucky and protecting crappy dads? A cousin of mine did traveling equipment repair, left is wife for weeks and spent his days off with somebody else.... SHE had to explain why SHE didn't have a job, and explain why SHE needed support... and he took a job with a pay cut, but still an hour drive away just before filing.... What's wrong with those people down there???? I'm all for Dad's rights... but he should have been ass-raped by the court for every single dime just on principal, he misses visits for dates, and doesn't do any extra to spend time with the kid.... SHE had to leave the house? WTF.
I never understood in these cases why the "marriage" partnership wasn't held up to the same legality as a business partnership. If I had a business partner with joint responsibilities and they didn't do their end, and hit money, misappropriated resources, etc... they'd go to jail for fault... why don't those same rules apply to husbands and wives... crap like this makes "gay" marriage the LEAST of our moral problems with marriage.
unless you bought your 3G phone in May of 2010.... you've just been cut off after 9 months. The problem being that the App Store will start to move ahead with 4.3 devices and ditch the 4.2 devices when the app needs to use the interactive features. (or need in app purchases of Smurfberries)
It is a valid complaint that the 3G is not supported. They were last for sale OFFICIALLY in June of 2010. I know it was the second year for the 3G, but it's only NINE MONTHS since the phone was for sale under TWO YEAR contract, that's it is unsupported now is bad form, even from Apple. If I had a phone and halfway through the contract it stopped being updated that would make me upset too.
I have the 3GS, bought in December on 2 year contract. Does this mean my phone stops updating in March of 2012 leaving me with no updates as the app store moves forward, no updated apps either, for 9 months? Apple sold a lot of 3G, but they've been selling 3GS like crazy for 21 months... this is going to turn the tide more and more against them, they're setting themselves up for massive user hate.
when somebody links the DNA database to Facebook and Google user names? They don't even need "personal" information (SSN, credit cards, real name, etc) at that point to start building. Look at what researchers did with the "cleaned" Netflix database... managed to connect that to the phone book and start making educated guesses about which real people matched the "numbers only" database files.
Remember, OLD medical records become property of Doctor or insurance company for research or whatever unless the family expressly asks for them to be destroyed. There's got to be somebody collecting copies of all those dead relatives (I'm sure DNA is collected at death) so all they really have to do is match your DNA profile to somebody they know died and have a full record of... remember, insurance and law enforcement don't care about cause or "intent" they care just about correlation. That's where they come up with things like drivers of red cars are worse than grey cars so you get a worse rate for buying the red car versus the grey car because you're "more risk". The numbers collected would be a close enough match to somebody on file, and they'd have thousands of samples... statistics get very accurate very fast with the amount of other data they already have.
That's how expensive SCSI controllers work. They have big read/write cashes of RAM to speed transactions and the RAM has it's own battery should power blink. That allows the captured transactions to be written to disk or recovered from journal on the next IPL. In today's world, that's a lot of hardware to throw at a simple problem though, definitely not for the "consumer" or even "prosumer".
that makes it simpler to implement as a device. Basically the consumer equivalent to 10Gb Ethernet/8GB Fiber Channel on servers that can speak Ethernet or Fiber Channel drive... (and virtualize anything else)
Consumers care about Video and Audio devices mostly, maybe a smattering of other things. This brings back the PCI enclosure again and should open up Macs to things like Robotics, test equipment, etc that requires dedicated hardware cards most Macs can't have.
that's the only way to feed the darn Thunderbolt bandwidth! Even to max Thunderbolt you'd need at least 3 of these in RAID of some fashion, meaning something to control them, like Drobo.
HDD tech is established... it's like complaining that 1.5 TB disks cost $100 when a backup tape the same size costs $50. You're paying for speed and essentially today's device helps pay the companies to make tomorrow's devices as well.
The thing I really want to see is better syncing of devices. Really I don't NEED more than 64GB or 128GB on a laptop, certainly not for my day job... and I'm one of the biggest users of HDD storage at my company. If there was a good, solid way to sync to a 1TB drive easily and painlessly. I'm not opposed to syncing my laptop like I do my iPhone... but the media selection needs to be seamless. Done correctly, I could even sync music from my drive at home over the internet... movies would be a little harder but not impossible.
that's not awful.
The point of these is to feed devices like Drobo anyway. So three would get you 460GB with one failure. That would also nicely fill up a Thunderbolt connection to one or two computers with speeds and latency way faster than the built in drive.
but seriously, how does a NORMAL phone user know which apps are poisoned and which aren't ... especially when most 8-16 year olds are considerably smarter at their parents... and causing trouble by not reading directions VERY carefully. I see smart people that would normally catch this stuff IRL load up their computers and phones with this stuff all the time... still living in the "napster (1)" days, they can't even conceive HOW the strings would be attached, let alone all the TOS terms until they see a bill and WTF.
Seriously, a phone bill advertised at $50 should never get past $150 without some kind of OPT-IN call made to the ACCOUNT HOLDER directly as to how they plan to pay for all the extra usage or limits to plan defaults like local calls and remaining texts already paid for. That ANY account can go more than say 3x over in this day is the real crime... just like loan sharking.
and children from 8-13 are different from "bots" how exactly? When they see it on a kids show or a kids website (at least sites that know they have large kid demographics) they basically are no different than bots... the kid fills the missing link to hit the button on the phone and "accept" the charge... they don't "know" what they're doing is going to rack up for months and months and the telco's rules are set up to make catching every little billing trick harder and harder.
In other news, the in-app purchases in iPhone apps are becoming the same thing... a "free" teaser but to keep up with friends you have to hit the "pay" bar over and over. At least Apple has better options for limiting the account, you could always set the account up with iTunes cards or a prepaid card... telco's really go out of their way to make "prepaid" or limited purchase phones really undesirable financially for normal users.