The advantage of a 3-piston engine is almost-equal power to 4-bangers, but less rotatin mass to achieve better gasoline/diesel efficiency.
Nope. Completely wrong.
3 cylinders = less moving parts = cheaper to build. More cylinders, for any given displacement, will typically have less rotational mass, at a cost of complexity. Of corse there are a lot of other factors involved, bore/stroke, materials (lighter/stronger parts cost more), Max RPM (more RPMs need stronger parts = heavier parts).
Besides, rotational mass doesn't have that big an effect on efficiency versus other factors, while arguably it requires more power to accelerate the engine to a higher RPM, this is fan in a hurricane compared to the power required to get the car moving from 0 to 5kmph.
The Honda insight (and other 3 cylinder cars) gets good economy because its overall light weight (2,000 lbs, very unusualy in 2000+ model year cars), not because of its cylinder count
Same reason Steve Jobs has ranted against DRM, yet Apple enjoys their lock-in due to DRM.
1) Apple's DRM has always allowed burning of unencumbered CD's. Thus, if something similar happened at iTunes, worst case is they would need to burn their music to CD to move it to a new computer w/o DRM.
2) Steve Job's position is that the Musci companies have forced DRM on him. He stuck to his guns early in the iPod days when it was an expensive player everybody was sure would bomb to ensure such consumer freindly features, such as the ability to burn effectively unlimited unencumbered CD's, were a part of the DRM. Jobs is enough of an ruthless visionairy that he may have forseen this outcome (iPod/iTunes lock in aiding market dominance) but more likely he saw it as a requirement for acceptance (vs spending 99 cents on a song that can ONLY play on the iPod)
3) Apple now sells non-DRM music through iTunes
Apple hater or not, seems you could at least recognize #1 is a huge difference between MS's service and iTunes.
In other words, most of our security problems aren't rooted in flawed cryptography, they are based on the flawed allocation of resources and general human fallibility.
I'm note sure about that. I think the biggest issue is the "monetitization" of "cracking". This stuff used to be done for fun and thrills, geek cred, etc. Now a huge Botnet is a cash cow, criminal organiztions pay money for comprimized ID's & CC #'s. Yes, human fallibility plays into this, but the premise that the resources being spent on security are wasted is nonsense
Perhaps you can fill that hole you think Bruce Schneier has left. Agreed. While crypto has its place, it's a very small piece of the security pie. Firewalls, Anti-malware, policy enforcement, anti-phishing, etc. The threats faced today are too numerous to list on a whim...
But is it presented before the sale? I don't have a box handy, but I bet the "requirements" list on the box says requires a Mac. If you buy it and open it w/o reading the requirements, I think that qualifies as a lack of due diligence on your part.
I've worked with Veritas's VM, IBM's VM, Linux's VM, and Linux's MD, I'm quite confident they are NOT the same. Perhaps they all provide redundancy, the the LVM's all slice and dice the disks in a similar manner (Multi-Disk is a fundamentally different product), but the Linux versions had a fair bit of catchup to do to get close to the commercial products in terms of both usability and functionality.
I've got 7 years experience managing SAN products from EMC & IBM, though I have to admit after playing w/ Equal Logic's web interface I'm in love. The Solaris/ZFS combo sounds amazingly powerful & stable, and several Slashdoters have pushed it as "why buy a solution", but the learning curve seems orders of magnitude steeper than Linux with far more serious repercussions for screwing it up, meaning its only really viable w/ a user freindly interface and simple install info. I'd really love for thsi to be a viable option, if nothing else so I can get I cheap iSCSI system up for development & test environments (I have the CPU power, but not the disk I/O I need)
What the parent was posting about was the potentially very powerful combination of ZFS and OpenSolaris, which would bring all sorts of well established, stable, volume management goodness. I'm aware of both these products, and have considered using them, but while they deliver similar end products, they are distinctly NOT the RAIDZ solution the grandparent was going on about.
That said, the next reply seemingly IS, except for the 1TB limitation of the "free" version.
But thanks for pointing those out, I've actually been eyeing them for a while as a way to address some storage challenges I'm facing. I remember being disapointed by some implementation details, but I no longer recall what they were. Do you have experience w/ either product?
Why wouldn't I just use boxes with a bunch of SATA drives and run OpenSolaris with RAIDZ and two hot spares?
Because of the overhead of designing such a system? I'm a pretty storage savy guy and I would'nt have a clue where to start home building the system you describe. Until there's a well designed "Live CD" type install that nets a simple to use appliance type interface, this is not a viable alternative for most shops.
That said, this this seems liek a nightmare. all the drives are sealed into "Drive Pacs" and can't be replaced individually? They are putting a lot of faith in their rebuild capability...
The software division of IBM accounts for 20% of their revenue, and 40% of their profit.
As a former customer, I can attest to that. A few years ago, we effectively got a "Free" server upgrade by updating our software maintenance contract; we saved enough by only buying 4 CPU licenses to purchase a 4x faster new Quad processor 2/ 2x more RAM to replace our old 6-way server. The old box then became a nice Test server, running much discounted Developer editions of all software.
Of course, I imagine 55% of the rest of the profit comes from services/consulting.
Could be something as simple as the upstream provider doesn't want to reclaim the IP block if thousands of mailservers are pelting it with connections all the time.
It works through DNS. Take down the NS servers only the root servers get hammered. My guess is they want to reclaim the domain, and/or reduce the load on the DNS infrastructure (which RBL's tend to hammer).
The guy was an accomplished Russian Mathmetician before he emmigrated from Russia 15 years ago.
Personally, I'm not surprised he's Russian, Mathemetics has seemed to be a strong point in that country, since their computers lagged behind us they had to make it up w/ mathmatical ingenuity.
Well, strictly speaking, incrementing the number would result in P3P, not P4P. Just as P2P means "Peer to Peer", P4P could be interpreted as "Peer for Peer", justifying the numeral.
Personally I'm waiting for the next binary progression, Peer Ate Peer, or P8P. I'm not sure what it will do, but I'll bring popcorn to watch...
Something like an iPod Touch has 16 Gigabytes of data...
An iPod touch doesn't need to survive high speed impacts, hours in a jet fuel blaze, operate in the thin air at 60k feet, in 40 below temperatures, and last for decades in continuous operation. These boxes record to metal wire because tapes melt, lose elastisicty wear out, etc. 50 year old guys think of these things because they have experience of seeing new technologies come and go, and can apprieciate what is applicable and what isn't. PMR Hard drives? Bad idea. PMR recording to a continuous wire loop? That could work...
What I don't understand is why he didn't offer the whole thing on bit torrent as opposed to 1/4 of it. The whole album is licensed under creative commons, so all the piratebay torrents are totally legal. Why isn't he running his own tracker with a few ads here and there to make a few extra bucks off the freeloaders instead of letting piratebay get the ad revenue?
Because he'd rather endorse the $5 version of it than the "free" version? How many ad impressions (for other artists, mortgage companies, or other things he doesn't believe in or wish to appear as endorsing) must be made to earn $5? Unbelievable that somebody provides everything you've been asking for and still you want more. Maybe Trent should pay you to try out his songs?
It's not that he needs the money,
He doesn't need the money because he doesn't pass up opportunities to make money. He doesn't need money because he charges admitance to his concerts, marks up his T-shirts, etc. There is a relationship between those teo things
Frankly, I think it's WAY too early to be replacing DVDs--presently, only about 15% of U.S. households even own an HDTV!
Yes, but the percentage of that 15% who will be interested in Blu-Ray is perhaps 30-40%, which gives you 5% of households today that are interested, a very good sized market. And the penetration of HDTV will continue to grow, with many sets already below $1,000 and several approaching $500, only kids/kitchen TV's will be 480i in the next few years, and given the size/weight/power advantages, I imagine 5 years from now we'll see even those turn.
Cue a hundred replies claiming that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance; and maybe it is - I wouldn't know, since I haven't read their holy book. All I know is that it certainly seems attract lots of bloodthirsty lunatics who use their religion as an excuse to live up to their murderous nature.
As has Christianity, where fairly wide swaths of believers have embraced those who bombed not only abortion clinic but those who would come to their aide. Web sites naming doctors who perform abortions and encourage their viewers to do "something". All in the name of a man who asked his followers to "Turn the other cheek".
And look at yourself? You've turned an online petition into a reason to rail against an entire religion! I bet you get upset when people use a few bad priests to condemn an entire religion, but you are so eager to condemn Islam based on the actions of a few extremists who are generally agreed to ignoring the basic tenets of their own religion to bring about their own political goals.
The internet has gotten bloated, more bandwidth is needed than ever before. The definition of broadband has to move as well.
The definition doesn't need to move, redefining terms is an invitation to confusion. At the very least you would need versioning, which is hard enough in specs, just look at the USB debacle. Just define a new word, which I would argue the marketing folks have already done; "High Speed" internet, which even then really means more like 1 Mbps+ (more than enough for YouTube, etc. btw) Maybe we need even newer words for 5+ Mbps, 10Mbps, 20+ Mbps, and 50+ mbps. Maybe even plan for the future, and define 100+ Mbps and 500+ Mbps (I vote "Plaid" for that one) But then you start ignoring the upload speed (my favorite bit of FIOS, 2Mbps up), and drive away incentive for incremental upgrades. Why go from 5Mbps to 8Mbps, we're still calling it "Ultra speed". But then, now they advertise "real" speeds (if theoretically real), and even now I can't understand why I would pay $10/month more for 15Mbps FIOS versus 5Mbps FIOS (both are faster than the aggregate speed of my ASP employers 3 T-1's
I think you must be used to small scale businesses and not the large multi-national companies I was really referring to. Typically when I've seen this happen it's going to be your boss and your bosses boss on the line as well, large companies don't mess about when they undertake this sort of activity, so anyone thats left isn't going to have a clue who you are anyway and all your contacts are going to be in the same boat helping you paddle.
Actually, I think this is exactly why you should. You are out on the market and need a reference, your old boss will be that much happier to recommend you if you cooperated and kept his boss off his back for those last x weeks/months. And if he lands a new job as a manager, he may need to staff up and he'll be looking towards his old team to cherry pick the best. Which of course assumes you are an otherwise desirable employee. If instead you are say, a Mike, technically competent but a disaster on execution, I've already vowed to never hire you again.
I've seen this happen 4 times now and no one's gonna catch me out again !
Refusing to cooperate won't change the fact, if your job is being migrated it will be migrated, being uncooperative just means they'll have to reverse engineer what you did and earn you a bad reputation. Cooperate and you might win a supervisory position, a recommendation for a new role, and/or a useful networking contact for your next job search.
In the meantime, it could very well be that you boss is wise enough that he wants more than 1 person capable of doing your job, in case you get sick, win the lottery, or find a new job...
You can still be promoted if no one knows how you do what you do because you'll still be around to handover and train your successor whereas the business is not going to have aas much success asking you to train your cheaper replacement.
If you find a new job and give the traditional 2 weeks notice, the odds of me finding a candidate in that 2 week window are slim, much less having him start (he's going to give his two weeks, too) and have time to train (I assume training would take at least a week assuming you aren't Fry Cook at the BK). Whereas when I want to replace you and you poor attitude, I can simply promote you and get you to train you replacement over time, then decide to eliminate your new position.
Don't be a fool and think your knowledge of a job you do for me gives you power, folks like you are a risk to my organization, if I can't convert you to my way of thinking I have little choice but to decide what the best time to take that hit is, you won't know its coming until you step away from your desk to replace a toner and your accounts are locked and security is showing you the door. Work with me and I'll work hard to take care of you, long after you have left my employ (I help ex-staff with their careers, advice, recommendations, and passing opportunities I hear of on). And I have a list of folks I will never work with again.
Passengers aren't problematic because they recognize road hazards
Funny, that didn't seem to help the woman who wrecked my 240Z while driving on the shoulder dealing with her two year old. Most cell phone tests have focused on reaction times, if they are reacting to what you are reacting to its not really helping. If they are acting as a second set of eyes while you are distracted though, that is a benefit. But thinking back to the classic dad flailing at the kids in the back seat while the car drifts accross the lanes...
Talk about profitting off the backs of other's work- he's using U2's name (and website) to push his agenda!
I'm curious what U2 has to say about this. I haven't had much reason to buy U2 music lately anyway, but until now I've been OK with their politics. Be a shame if I have to start bad mouthing them because he supports a completely assinine potition on net rights.
there was a study done recently which showed that the difference in attention payed to traffic between drivers that were using hands-free phones and hand-held phones negligible
I'd love to see a study that compared cell phone talking to having a conversation with a passenger and having your kids in the car. With luck we can get having multiple car occupants banned as a safety hazard. After that food, anything that can be read, the radio, etc... There's just no end to what we can ban!
This is business 101. Manufacturers do it because the store is their customer, not the end user. The end user is the customer of the store. The store buys the iPhone from Apple for cost $X. When the customer buys the iPhone from the store, Apple doesn't get that money, the store does. Only if the store has managed some sort of consignment arrangement (Walmart is reported to force these on weaker companies) does the manufacturer not get paid on delivery (actual terms very, but generally after being shipped, it counts as a sale and the rest is cash flow management). When it sits on the shelves and is sold at a deep discount, the stores is who loses money, not the Apple. Apple is motivated to help the store sell the product because they want to sell more to the store and they want the store to have confidence investing in Apple products for their shelves, hence all the advertising to you, the end user (aka "the final customer").
As for 700,000 in channel, well, imagine a typical ATT Wireless outlet wants 35 to sell in a month (one a day seems a reasonable average). That means we have 20,000 outlets. Spread that accross 50 states, that would give us 400 outlets per state. I'm note sure where you live, but my area is thick with ATT Wireless stores. Every mall, every other strip mall, I can see lots of states hitting that goal, with the rest made up for in online fullfullment warehouses.
Then figure Apple probably set the Apple store up as an independant company to simplify the book keeping, meaning those few hundred stores count too, and the numbers aren't unreasonable. It would be better to look at average sales for a year to figure what a month of sales stock looks like, but I don't care enough...
What happens with those contracts that are subject to change? Those are annoying.
I think some of the terms are subject to change, but changing material aspects of the contract, such as rates & services cannot be altered w/o some sort of compensation. So they can change the privacy policies, but they can't just start charging you $49.99 when you had been paying $39.99. This is the difference between contract agreements, like the cell phone agreements, and Month to Month services, like cable (who can raise your rates and change your service by just including a note in your bill (assuming various regulatory requiremenst are met). Contract law is generally on your side.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Completely wrong.
3 cylinders = less moving parts = cheaper to build. More cylinders, for any given displacement, will typically have less rotational mass, at a cost of complexity. Of corse there are a lot of other factors involved, bore/stroke, materials (lighter/stronger parts cost more), Max RPM (more RPMs need stronger parts = heavier parts).
Besides, rotational mass doesn't have that big an effect on efficiency versus other factors, while arguably it requires more power to accelerate the engine to a higher RPM, this is fan in a hurricane compared to the power required to get the car moving from 0 to 5kmph.
The Honda insight (and other 3 cylinder cars) gets good economy because its overall light weight (2,000 lbs, very unusualy in 2000+ model year cars), not because of its cylinder count
1) Apple's DRM has always allowed burning of unencumbered CD's. Thus, if something similar happened at iTunes, worst case is they would need to burn their music to CD to move it to a new computer w/o DRM.
2) Steve Job's position is that the Musci companies have forced DRM on him. He stuck to his guns early in the iPod days when it was an expensive player everybody was sure would bomb to ensure such consumer freindly features, such as the ability to burn effectively unlimited unencumbered CD's, were a part of the DRM. Jobs is enough of an ruthless visionairy that he may have forseen this outcome (iPod/iTunes lock in aiding market dominance) but more likely he saw it as a requirement for acceptance (vs spending 99 cents on a song that can ONLY play on the iPod)
3) Apple now sells non-DRM music through iTunes
Apple hater or not, seems you could at least recognize #1 is a huge difference between MS's service and iTunes.
I'm note sure about that. I think the biggest issue is the "monetitization" of "cracking". This stuff used to be done for fun and thrills, geek cred, etc. Now a huge Botnet is a cash cow, criminal organiztions pay money for comprimized ID's & CC #'s. Yes, human fallibility plays into this, but the premise that the resources being spent on security are wasted is nonsense
Perhaps you can fill that hole you think Bruce Schneier has left. Agreed. While crypto has its place, it's a very small piece of the security pie. Firewalls, Anti-malware, policy enforcement, anti-phishing, etc. The threats faced today are too numerous to list on a whim...I've worked with Veritas's VM, IBM's VM, Linux's VM, and Linux's MD, I'm quite confident they are NOT the same. Perhaps they all provide redundancy, the the LVM's all slice and dice the disks in a similar manner (Multi-Disk is a fundamentally different product), but the Linux versions had a fair bit of catchup to do to get close to the commercial products in terms of both usability and functionality.
I've got 7 years experience managing SAN products from EMC & IBM, though I have to admit after playing w/ Equal Logic's web interface I'm in love. The Solaris/ZFS combo sounds amazingly powerful & stable, and several Slashdoters have pushed it as "why buy a solution", but the learning curve seems orders of magnitude steeper than Linux with far more serious repercussions for screwing it up, meaning its only really viable w/ a user freindly interface and simple install info. I'd really love for thsi to be a viable option, if nothing else so I can get I cheap iSCSI system up for development & test environments (I have the CPU power, but not the disk I/O I need)
That said, the next reply seemingly IS, except for the 1TB limitation of the "free" version.
But thanks for pointing those out, I've actually been eyeing them for a while as a way to address some storage challenges I'm facing. I remember being disapointed by some implementation details, but I no longer recall what they were. Do you have experience w/ either product?
Because of the overhead of designing such a system? I'm a pretty storage savy guy and I would'nt have a clue where to start home building the system you describe. Until there's a well designed "Live CD" type install that nets a simple to use appliance type interface, this is not a viable alternative for most shops.
That said, this this seems liek a nightmare. all the drives are sealed into "Drive Pacs" and can't be replaced individually? They are putting a lot of faith in their rebuild capability...
I prefer to get my stats from "PODOMA"*
_____
*PODOMA - Pulled Directly Out of My Ass
Huh? My FIOS is 5Mbps down and only 2Mbps up. If I upgrade, I get 15Mbps down but still only 2Mbps up.
Or is this an undocumented feature in FIOS? (I never really bothered to test, even a 5Mbps bandwidth is almost never an issue for me).
As a former customer, I can attest to that. A few years ago, we effectively got a "Free" server upgrade by updating our software maintenance contract; we saved enough by only buying 4 CPU licenses to purchase a 4x faster new Quad processor 2/ 2x more RAM to replace our old 6-way server. The old box then became a nice Test server, running much discounted Developer editions of all software.
Of course, I imagine 55% of the rest of the profit comes from services/consulting.
It works through DNS. Take down the NS servers only the root servers get hammered. My guess is they want to reclaim the domain, and/or reduce the load on the DNS infrastructure (which RBL's tend to hammer).
Personally, I'm not surprised he's Russian, Mathemetics has seemed to be a strong point in that country, since their computers lagged behind us they had to make it up w/ mathmatical ingenuity.
Personally I'm waiting for the next binary progression, Peer Ate Peer, or P8P. I'm not sure what it will do, but I'll bring popcorn to watch...
An iPod touch doesn't need to survive high speed impacts, hours in a jet fuel blaze, operate in the thin air at 60k feet, in 40 below temperatures, and last for decades in continuous operation. These boxes record to metal wire because tapes melt, lose elastisicty wear out, etc. 50 year old guys think of these things because they have experience of seeing new technologies come and go, and can apprieciate what is applicable and what isn't. PMR Hard drives? Bad idea. PMR recording to a continuous wire loop? That could work...
Because he'd rather endorse the $5 version of it than the "free" version? How many ad impressions (for other artists, mortgage companies, or other things he doesn't believe in or wish to appear as endorsing) must be made to earn $5? Unbelievable that somebody provides everything you've been asking for and still you want more. Maybe Trent should pay you to try out his songs?
It's not that he needs the money,
He doesn't need the money because he doesn't pass up opportunities to make money. He doesn't need money because he charges admitance to his concerts, marks up his T-shirts, etc. There is a relationship between those teo things
Yes, but the percentage of that 15% who will be interested in Blu-Ray is perhaps 30-40%, which gives you 5% of households today that are interested, a very good sized market. And the penetration of HDTV will continue to grow, with many sets already below $1,000 and several approaching $500, only kids/kitchen TV's will be 480i in the next few years, and given the size/weight/power advantages, I imagine 5 years from now we'll see even those turn.
As has Christianity, where fairly wide swaths of believers have embraced those who bombed not only abortion clinic but those who would come to their aide. Web sites naming doctors who perform abortions and encourage their viewers to do "something". All in the name of a man who asked his followers to "Turn the other cheek".
And look at yourself? You've turned an online petition into a reason to rail against an entire religion! I bet you get upset when people use a few bad priests to condemn an entire religion, but you are so eager to condemn Islam based on the actions of a few extremists who are generally agreed to ignoring the basic tenets of their own religion to bring about their own political goals.
The definition doesn't need to move, redefining terms is an invitation to confusion. At the very least you would need versioning, which is hard enough in specs, just look at the USB debacle. Just define a new word, which I would argue the marketing folks have already done; "High Speed" internet, which even then really means more like 1 Mbps+ (more than enough for YouTube, etc. btw) Maybe we need even newer words for 5+ Mbps, 10Mbps, 20+ Mbps, and 50+ mbps. Maybe even plan for the future, and define 100+ Mbps and 500+ Mbps (I vote "Plaid" for that one) But then you start ignoring the upload speed (my favorite bit of FIOS, 2Mbps up), and drive away incentive for incremental upgrades. Why go from 5Mbps to 8Mbps, we're still calling it "Ultra speed". But then, now they advertise "real" speeds (if theoretically real), and even now I can't understand why I would pay $10/month more for 15Mbps FIOS versus 5Mbps FIOS (both are faster than the aggregate speed of my ASP employers 3 T-1's
Actually, I think this is exactly why you should. You are out on the market and need a reference, your old boss will be that much happier to recommend you if you cooperated and kept his boss off his back for those last x weeks/months. And if he lands a new job as a manager, he may need to staff up and he'll be looking towards his old team to cherry pick the best. Which of course assumes you are an otherwise desirable employee. If instead you are say, a Mike, technically competent but a disaster on execution, I've already vowed to never hire you again.
Refusing to cooperate won't change the fact, if your job is being migrated it will be migrated, being uncooperative just means they'll have to reverse engineer what you did and earn you a bad reputation. Cooperate and you might win a supervisory position, a recommendation for a new role, and/or a useful networking contact for your next job search.
In the meantime, it could very well be that you boss is wise enough that he wants more than 1 person capable of doing your job, in case you get sick, win the lottery, or find a new job...
You can still be promoted if no one knows how you do what you do because you'll still be around to handover and train your successor whereas the business is not going to have aas much success asking you to train your cheaper replacement.
If you find a new job and give the traditional 2 weeks notice, the odds of me finding a candidate in that 2 week window are slim, much less having him start (he's going to give his two weeks, too) and have time to train (I assume training would take at least a week assuming you aren't Fry Cook at the BK). Whereas when I want to replace you and you poor attitude, I can simply promote you and get you to train you replacement over time, then decide to eliminate your new position.
Don't be a fool and think your knowledge of a job you do for me gives you power, folks like you are a risk to my organization, if I can't convert you to my way of thinking I have little choice but to decide what the best time to take that hit is, you won't know its coming until you step away from your desk to replace a toner and your accounts are locked and security is showing you the door. Work with me and I'll work hard to take care of you, long after you have left my employ (I help ex-staff with their careers, advice, recommendations, and passing opportunities I hear of on). And I have a list of folks I will never work with again.
Funny, that didn't seem to help the woman who wrecked my 240Z while driving on the shoulder dealing with her two year old. Most cell phone tests have focused on reaction times, if they are reacting to what you are reacting to its not really helping. If they are acting as a second set of eyes while you are distracted though, that is a benefit. But thinking back to the classic dad flailing at the kids in the back seat while the car drifts accross the lanes...
I'm curious what U2 has to say about this. I haven't had much reason to buy U2 music lately anyway, but until now I've been OK with their politics. Be a shame if I have to start bad mouthing them because he supports a completely assinine potition on net rights.
I'd love to see a study that compared cell phone talking to having a conversation with a passenger and having your kids in the car. With luck we can get having multiple car occupants banned as a safety hazard. After that food, anything that can be read, the radio, etc... There's just no end to what we can ban!
This is business 101. Manufacturers do it because the store is their customer, not the end user. The end user is the customer of the store. The store buys the iPhone from Apple for cost $X. When the customer buys the iPhone from the store, Apple doesn't get that money, the store does. Only if the store has managed some sort of consignment arrangement (Walmart is reported to force these on weaker companies) does the manufacturer not get paid on delivery (actual terms very, but generally after being shipped, it counts as a sale and the rest is cash flow management). When it sits on the shelves and is sold at a deep discount, the stores is who loses money, not the Apple. Apple is motivated to help the store sell the product because they want to sell more to the store and they want the store to have confidence investing in Apple products for their shelves, hence all the advertising to you, the end user (aka "the final customer").
As for 700,000 in channel, well, imagine a typical ATT Wireless outlet wants 35 to sell in a month (one a day seems a reasonable average). That means we have 20,000 outlets. Spread that accross 50 states, that would give us 400 outlets per state. I'm note sure where you live, but my area is thick with ATT Wireless stores. Every mall, every other strip mall, I can see lots of states hitting that goal, with the rest made up for in online fullfullment warehouses.
Then figure Apple probably set the Apple store up as an independant company to simplify the book keeping, meaning those few hundred stores count too, and the numbers aren't unreasonable. It would be better to look at average sales for a year to figure what a month of sales stock looks like, but I don't care enough...
I think some of the terms are subject to change, but changing material aspects of the contract, such as rates & services cannot be altered w/o some sort of compensation. So they can change the privacy policies, but they can't just start charging you $49.99 when you had been paying $39.99. This is the difference between contract agreements, like the cell phone agreements, and Month to Month services, like cable (who can raise your rates and change your service by just including a note in your bill (assuming various regulatory requiremenst are met). Contract law is generally on your side.