That European directive was just a suggestion of a law that may be brought into effect and it doesn't just apply to the iPhone - it would apply to all electronic devices with built in batteries.
It is also not a law yet - they didn't tell Apple to do anything with the iPhone regarding its manufacture.
There is no anti trust here - Apple is nowhere near a monopoly share of the phone market, or the carrier networks it uses for voice/sms.
People throw around the word "anti trust" without really understanding what it means, or what conditions are required to enable it.
While Apple have done this because of AT&T, and thus don't need to do it outside the US, even if it does happen here there's no illegality in it (even if it is a stupid move).
I couldn't get past the first level on Spore - you know the boss that emotes "you have 2 CDROM drives!" and then installs a rootkit. Any tips on how to defeat this boss and get to level 2?
Perhaps if they sold iTunes and made it iPod/iPhone exclusive it would be worse, but it is a free program. You may like using it, but you can't call someone who only uses iTunes and nothing else from Apple a customer of theirs - iTunes is there to support Apple products that they sell. It's not there to be a sync platform for a competing product. Especially not a competing product that is violating the USB standard and using Apple's vendor ID.
In this case, the totally free iTunes software provided free by Apple, free to use by you for free was just not designed for a Palm to spoof the USB ID of an iPhone to trick iTunes into believing it is an iPod, in violation of the USB standard.
[quote]Apple has not responded directly, but we check our mailbox every day for some sign from Steve that he's listening. We don't actually mind if he *never* answers us, just as long as he does the right thing and greens Apple.
Apple has made a few reactive comments in the media when questioned about the campaign. Often it refers to the environmental section of its website which our ranking already highlighted the lack of timelines and transparency in that section. Also it has made a pretty lame references to its ranking from the US EPEAT tool.
US Environmental Protection Agency's new electronic product environmental assessment tool (EPEAT):
But Apple is patting itself on the back with a kid glove. The EPEAT criteria are less stringent than the Greenpeace criteria. EPEAT does not require elimination of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) or Brominated Fire Retardants -- two types of toxic chemicals that other manufacturers have already agreed to phase out. [/quote]
Right, except for the fact that on those very website pages from Apple they have *already stopped using* BFR's and PVC, and have been phasing it out for years. Nothing like being deliberately obtuse eh, Greenpeace, and making it look like Apple are merely holding themselves up to a "weak" standard when in reality they're doing much more. But that doesn't make for good rampant technology bashing.
I am a green-loving, save the planet, renewable energy, recycling, reduction in pollution, kind of guy, but Greenpeace is only hurting the rest of us.
And Apple was "greening" itself very effectively all on its own - it's not any reactive move due to Greenpeace, as much as they'd like to infer.
You'd be surprised. Here in the UK there's a Morris Marina owner's club, and those heaps of junk would have been more appealing if they'd used the metal to craft giant metallic dog turds on wheels.
Removable batteries are an even greater fire risk. They can be shorted out, people try to recharge them incorrectly (even if not rechargeable), they throw them away improperly, and a large portion of your device needs an interconnect system with exposed terminals that adds size, weight, complexity and a perfect place for shorts and poor contacts.
No, the reason the iPod has no removable battery is to make it small - the fact that you have to buy a new one when the battery is fully dead is just gravy. (Incidentally you can return your iPod to apple for the cost of a "new battery" and they'll send you an identical iPod back to you - would this programme exist if their sole aim was to "force an upgrade cycle", maybe it would, but generally the product cycle penalises those who are too lazy to send their iPod out for a new battery rather than just buying a new one, in the same way that companies make money from rebates because people are too lazy to mail them off).
A removable battery is no more or less safe than an inbuilt one, it just makes your device larger and has the potential for abuse, by fitting an inferior 3rd party battery that very well might be dangerous (note that not all 3rd party batteries are dangerous - look at companies like PAG providing batteries for pro Sony hardware - you can buy those, or you can buy official Sony ones. Where it gets dicey is the unbranded ones that are 20% of the cost which might be great, but might be pretty deadly).
Yes, more schools than anything else fell down because they were built cheaply, quickly and with corners cut, so they pretty much all collapsed very badly. Other buildings were severely damaged, but there was an appalling loss of life in schools across the area due to the school buildings in particular being deathtraps.
[quote]But technically, the SRBs themselves didn't fail catastrophically[/quote]
I would argue that they did just that. The O-ring disintegrated when the SRB was lit, allowing the exhaust to escape from the seal and burn through the support. The fact that the gap was plugged by slag made up of solid rocket propellant was just "lucky" (until it was broken away by wind shear later).
If the slag hadn't plugged the hole the SRB itself would have failed pretty spectacularly on the pad.
Yes, the literal explosion of the vehicle was due to the main fuel tank being broken open, but it was caused by a catastrophic failure of the O-rings in the SRB, due to being lit when practically frozen solid (a condition that the manufacturer advised would be fatal, but were overruled my management).
At no point can you possibly claim that the starboard SRB functioned satisfactorily on that mission - it failed, catastrophically, even though it didn't explode.
It's harder for you to solo, unless you have a dual spec system that has finally been introduced to WoW, it takes longer for you to level, and then when you do get to your endgame, or even when you're just looking for lower level content as you level up you get everyone in a 50 mile radius whispering you to come and heal their woeful pug.
I've been a healer in WoW since it first came out, and it's a very rewarding experience if you can find a guild and then build up a small portfolio of decent tanks and dps outside the guild if you don't have guildies online, as long as you can deal with people named Leggolasss or Sephiroof whispering you when you're clearly doing other things saying "heal naxx 25?" or just "healer?" often misspelling the word. Most of them just do a/who priest and spam everyone in the box.
And as a view from the other side of that fence, as a die hard healer, I hated PuGs where the tanks really *wouldn't* push it. It usually manifested itself as ultra slowness, and a refusal to pull (or having to be prompted before each pack) if I didn't have full mana.
In TBC as a priest, with downranking and a brain you could heal forever with rank 2 GH and CoH and never have to worry about mana, unless things got really hairy, and yet still you'd have tanks that just wouldn't push the boat out. I can understand being sensitive to the needs of the guy keeping you alive, but after the 5th "heeler drink!" prompt in party chat while we all sit staring at a 2 pack of mobs, it starts to get tiresome.
In Wrath the heroics are so easy, that even with downranking gone, and mana regen outside the FSR severely down, it is still very easy to keep even a modestly geared tank up.
Indeed, but it is nowhere close to a monopoly for software that syncs mobile devices on the Mac, unless you are talking about the iPod and iPhone, which it was designed for.
IE is free and deliberately corrupts a published standard, and came in every copy of Windows, thus creating an entire web of broken code.
iTunes is free, and only syncs with iPod and iPhone since that is what it is for. It does not stop you syncing your Palm on Mac or Windows.
My point about it being free is that Apple has *nothing to gain* and *much to lose* if iTunes becomes a solid sync platform for Palm, since Apple release it for free. iTunes is there to sell iPods and iPhones, but unlike IE on Windows, no one is forcing you to use it, and there is no groundswell of broken code that keeps you tied to it. It's there for your iPhone/iPod.
But remember iTunes is totally free. They give it away.
I am not surprised they are cutting off Palm's attempts to make the device in direct competition with a product that they *do* sell work on software that Apple distributes for free.
You are not forced to use iTunes to use your Pre, and iTunes is given away for free as a piece of software used to manage your music library and sync up your iPod and iPhone. It was not written, or ever advertised, as software for syncing Palm phones. There is nothing stopping you from using something else to sync your Palm on Mac or Windows.
Maybe a dick move, but totally so outside the realms of being illegal.
Apple give it away for nothing, zero, nada, nil, zilch.
Forgive me if I don't find it surprising that a feature built into an app they give you for free that is designed to sell iPods and iPhones is disabled for your competitor's device, in direct competition with the cash cow that is keeping your shareholders happy.
You think it should seriously be illegal to make and sell a product that is incompatible with your competitor's product? At what stage of development? If you release to market and your widget has a square hole, and your competitor makes a foo that goes into that hole, is it now illegal for you to release a new version with a triangular hole?
iTunes is free, there's no need to "increase sales" of it. The sync portion of iTunes is purely to support the iPod/iPhone (which they do sell), not for Palm (which they don't sell).
There's no need for (or unlikely to be any) government intervention because Apple has turned around and said "you can't use our free app, that we give away for free, to sync your Palm that you didn't buy from us". Sure, it's nicer than the Palm syncing software and has all those neat things built into it, but it was ultimately created for Apple's own hardware.
It is a business decision, that the nice features of an app they give away for free to drive sales of iPods and iPhones are blocked from their competitor's device
Not to mention that you have to feed the people on board. The moon is not so great for crops, so you'd have to create regular supply missions back and forth to lunar orbit, and as far as I know, we don't really have anything that can do that at the moment, except for wheeling out the Saturn V blueprints.
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That European directive was just a suggestion of a law that may be brought into effect and it doesn't just apply to the iPhone - it would apply to all electronic devices with built in batteries.
It is also not a law yet - they didn't tell Apple to do anything with the iPhone regarding its manufacture.
There is no anti trust here - Apple is nowhere near a monopoly share of the phone market, or the carrier networks it uses for voice/sms.
People throw around the word "anti trust" without really understanding what it means, or what conditions are required to enable it.
While Apple have done this because of AT&T, and thus don't need to do it outside the US, even if it does happen here there's no illegality in it (even if it is a stupid move).
But it does now, as the business model changed. It was always free, though.
I couldn't get past the first level on Spore - you know the boss that emotes "you have 2 CDROM drives!" and then installs a rootkit. Any tips on how to defeat this boss and get to level 2?
Well, iTunes is free, and supplied by Apple.
Perhaps if they sold iTunes and made it iPod/iPhone exclusive it would be worse, but it is a free program. You may like using it, but you can't call someone who only uses iTunes and nothing else from Apple a customer of theirs - iTunes is there to support Apple products that they sell. It's not there to be a sync platform for a competing product. Especially not a competing product that is violating the USB standard and using Apple's vendor ID.
In this case, the totally free iTunes software provided free by Apple, free to use by you for free was just not designed for a Palm to spoof the USB ID of an iPhone to trick iTunes into believing it is an iPod, in violation of the USB standard.
What did you honestly expect them to do?
You didn't read up on nuclear fuel either, since your entire post appears to be bullshit. I guess that's why you posted AC. Good job eh?
Goddamn, bring back the old fucking slashdot edit boxes. lameness.
Quote from Greenpeace:
[quote]Apple has not responded directly, but we check our mailbox every day for some sign from Steve that he's listening. We don't actually mind if he *never* answers us, just as long as he does the right thing and greens Apple.
Apple has made a few reactive comments in the media when questioned about the campaign. Often it refers to the environmental section of its website which our ranking already highlighted the lack of timelines and transparency in that section. Also it has made a pretty lame references to its ranking from the US EPEAT tool.
US Environmental Protection Agency's new electronic product environmental assessment tool (EPEAT):
But Apple is patting itself on the back with a kid glove. The EPEAT criteria are less stringent than the Greenpeace criteria. EPEAT does not require elimination of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) or Brominated Fire Retardants -- two types of toxic chemicals that other manufacturers have already agreed to phase out. [/quote]
Right, except for the fact that on those very website pages from Apple they have *already stopped using* BFR's and PVC, and have been phasing it out for years. Nothing like being deliberately obtuse eh, Greenpeace, and making it look like Apple are merely holding themselves up to a "weak" standard when in reality they're doing much more. But that doesn't make for good rampant technology bashing.
I am a green-loving, save the planet, renewable energy, recycling, reduction in pollution, kind of guy, but Greenpeace is only hurting the rest of us.
And Apple was "greening" itself very effectively all on its own - it's not any reactive move due to Greenpeace, as much as they'd like to infer.
You'd be surprised. Here in the UK there's a Morris Marina owner's club, and those heaps of junk would have been more appealing if they'd used the metal to craft giant metallic dog turds on wheels.
One man's meat, and all that.
I was aiming for a +5 Sarcasm tag, but it appears to be absent from the moderation system.
Removable batteries are an even greater fire risk. They can be shorted out, people try to recharge them incorrectly (even if not rechargeable), they throw them away improperly, and a large portion of your device needs an interconnect system with exposed terminals that adds size, weight, complexity and a perfect place for shorts and poor contacts.
No, the reason the iPod has no removable battery is to make it small - the fact that you have to buy a new one when the battery is fully dead is just gravy. (Incidentally you can return your iPod to apple for the cost of a "new battery" and they'll send you an identical iPod back to you - would this programme exist if their sole aim was to "force an upgrade cycle", maybe it would, but generally the product cycle penalises those who are too lazy to send their iPod out for a new battery rather than just buying a new one, in the same way that companies make money from rebates because people are too lazy to mail them off).
A removable battery is no more or less safe than an inbuilt one, it just makes your device larger and has the potential for abuse, by fitting an inferior 3rd party battery that very well might be dangerous (note that not all 3rd party batteries are dangerous - look at companies like PAG providing batteries for pro Sony hardware - you can buy those, or you can buy official Sony ones. Where it gets dicey is the unbranded ones that are 20% of the cost which might be great, but might be pretty deadly).
And you "go away now, the *adults* are talking" attitude really endears people to your argument.
You really shouldn't need to be told how to be civil in a discussion, you patronising cunt.
Yes, more schools than anything else fell down because they were built cheaply, quickly and with corners cut, so they pretty much all collapsed very badly. Other buildings were severely damaged, but there was an appalling loss of life in schools across the area due to the school buildings in particular being deathtraps.
[quote]But technically, the SRBs themselves didn't fail catastrophically[/quote]
I would argue that they did just that. The O-ring disintegrated when the SRB was lit, allowing the exhaust to escape from the seal and burn through the support. The fact that the gap was plugged by slag made up of solid rocket propellant was just "lucky" (until it was broken away by wind shear later).
If the slag hadn't plugged the hole the SRB itself would have failed pretty spectacularly on the pad.
Yes, the literal explosion of the vehicle was due to the main fuel tank being broken open, but it was caused by a catastrophic failure of the O-rings in the SRB, due to being lit when practically frozen solid (a condition that the manufacturer advised would be fatal, but were overruled my management).
At no point can you possibly claim that the starboard SRB functioned satisfactorily on that mission - it failed, catastrophically, even though it didn't explode.
But then you have the problem of being a healer.
It's harder for you to solo, unless you have a dual spec system that has finally been introduced to WoW, it takes longer for you to level, and then when you do get to your endgame, or even when you're just looking for lower level content as you level up you get everyone in a 50 mile radius whispering you to come and heal their woeful pug.
I've been a healer in WoW since it first came out, and it's a very rewarding experience if you can find a guild and then build up a small portfolio of decent tanks and dps outside the guild if you don't have guildies online, as long as you can deal with people named Leggolasss or Sephiroof whispering you when you're clearly doing other things saying "heal naxx 25?" or just "healer?" often misspelling the word. Most of them just do a /who priest and spam everyone in the box.
And as a view from the other side of that fence, as a die hard healer, I hated PuGs where the tanks really *wouldn't* push it. It usually manifested itself as ultra slowness, and a refusal to pull (or having to be prompted before each pack) if I didn't have full mana.
In TBC as a priest, with downranking and a brain you could heal forever with rank 2 GH and CoH and never have to worry about mana, unless things got really hairy, and yet still you'd have tanks that just wouldn't push the boat out. I can understand being sensitive to the needs of the guy keeping you alive, but after the 5th "heeler drink!" prompt in party chat while we all sit staring at a 2 pack of mobs, it starts to get tiresome.
In Wrath the heroics are so easy, that even with downranking gone, and mana regen outside the FSR severely down, it is still very easy to keep even a modestly geared tank up.
Indeed, but it is nowhere close to a monopoly for software that syncs mobile devices on the Mac, unless you are talking about the iPod and iPhone, which it was designed for.
IE is free and deliberately corrupts a published standard, and came in every copy of Windows, thus creating an entire web of broken code.
iTunes is free, and only syncs with iPod and iPhone since that is what it is for. It does not stop you syncing your Palm on Mac or Windows.
My point about it being free is that Apple has *nothing to gain* and *much to lose* if iTunes becomes a solid sync platform for Palm, since Apple release it for free. iTunes is there to sell iPods and iPhones, but unlike IE on Windows, no one is forcing you to use it, and there is no groundswell of broken code that keeps you tied to it. It's there for your iPhone/iPod.
But remember iTunes is totally free. They give it away.
I am not surprised they are cutting off Palm's attempts to make the device in direct competition with a product that they *do* sell work on software that Apple distributes for free.
You are not forced to use iTunes to use your Pre, and iTunes is given away for free as a piece of software used to manage your music library and sync up your iPod and iPhone. It was not written, or ever advertised, as software for syncing Palm phones. There is nothing stopping you from using something else to sync your Palm on Mac or Windows.
Maybe a dick move, but totally so outside the realms of being illegal.
I'll just fire up any music player that can play AAC audio files. There are loads.
AAC is a standard, if non-free, format.
Apple do not sell DRM-laden music.
iTunes is free.
Apple give it away for nothing, zero, nada, nil, zilch.
Forgive me if I don't find it surprising that a feature built into an app they give you for free that is designed to sell iPods and iPhones is disabled for your competitor's device, in direct competition with the cash cow that is keeping your shareholders happy.
You think it should seriously be illegal to make and sell a product that is incompatible with your competitor's product? At what stage of development? If you release to market and your widget has a square hole, and your competitor makes a foo that goes into that hole, is it now illegal for you to release a new version with a triangular hole?
iTunes is free, there's no need to "increase sales" of it. The sync portion of iTunes is purely to support the iPod/iPhone (which they do sell), not for Palm (which they don't sell).
There's no need for (or unlikely to be any) government intervention because Apple has turned around and said "you can't use our free app, that we give away for free, to sync your Palm that you didn't buy from us". Sure, it's nicer than the Palm syncing software and has all those neat things built into it, but it was ultimately created for Apple's own hardware.
It is a business decision, that the nice features of an app they give away for free to drive sales of iPods and iPhones are blocked from their competitor's device
Not to mention that you have to feed the people on board. The moon is not so great for crops, so you'd have to create regular supply missions back and forth to lunar orbit, and as far as I know, we don't really have anything that can do that at the moment, except for wheeling out the Saturn V blueprints.