But they don't see it as sueing customers - they see it as sueing thiefs.
Ah, but you are making the all-to-common error of forgetting that to date the RIAA is only sueing uploaders. The massive filesharers may very well have legally purchased a large portion of their collection. Remember, every mp3 on Kazaa came from a purchased CD in the first place.
It is ironic that the music "theives," those who only download music they don't own and don't share, are currently under no threat.
" Well... there's "knowing how to use" and "knowing how it works". Many computer tasks (especially as regards security) require some knowledge of how the damned thing works.
On the contrary, I feel that people should understand how things work, at least the basics. If you own a car, you should understand the basics of how a car works, at least so you don't get completely taken advantage of by auto mechanics. Also, you need to understand that there are basic maintenance tasks associated with car ownership (oil changes, tune ups, etc.). If you own a computer, you should know some basic things, i.e. the difference between a CPU, memory, and a hard disk for starters.
Computers are several times more complex than cars, trying to treat then as a simple device doesn't work. There are some basic maintenace tasks associated with owning a computer connected to the internet, i.e. for Windows check Windows Update, run a firewall and anti-virus program (free versions of which are available). Neglecting to perform these simple tasks is just asking for trouble.
We'd never make the analogous complaint that 'that fool crashed because his axle was made of bad steel', we'd blame the manufacturer, and rightly so.
But we would blame someone for crashing a car who didn't get their brakes checked regularly, they could even be liable for criminal penalties.
What about Plex86? Bochs is very slow because it is emulating every tiny bit of the hardware, including all I/O devices. This isn't neccessary if you are just running x86 on x86, Plex86 streamlines it quite a bit and virtualizes many things. The newest Plex86, just for running Linux on Linux, is supposed to be very lightweight.
Thanks for the info, however you seem to be confusing Plex86 with Bochs. They share a lot of code, however while Bochs emulates the entire hardware (and thus can be used on any platform) Plex86 virtualizes many things and so can only be run on x86 hardware, but is supposed to have much better performance because of this. Also, AFAIK Plex86 is only available for Linux (as the host OS). The original Plex86 should run any x86 OS. The new Plex86 fork simplifies the virtualization even more and only runs Linux, supposedly with an even greater performance increase, providing basically the same thing as UML but in a different manner.
What I was interested in was performance comparisons between the different Plex86 versions, UML, and Xen, as well as some info on how each goes about virtualizing the hardware (which is better and why). I was playing with Bochs just a few weeks ago (on a 600 MHz ibook, Linux as the host, Windows 98SE as the guest) and found it unusably slow. I haven't played with Plex86, UML or Xen yet, but I plan to as soon as I get the free time.;)
So it looks like this is the third (or fourth) free VM for Linux, the others being Plex86(and a different fork here) and User Mode Linux. Does anyone have a good comparison of these three? I know Zen compared UML on their site but not plex86. I'm not really sure of the differences between them, particularly the different versions of plex86 and UML (Zen explained their virtualization process pretty well on their site). Which is the best choice for different scenarios? It looks like Zen is the winner for running Linux as the guest OS, and the original Plex86 (first link) is the only one which offers a free choice in guest OS's.
OK, I am confused. This chart seems to indicate that there is a direct link from Unix to Xenix to Minix to Linux. Now, based on Linus Torvalds own writing, the original codebase had no Minix in it. The only relation to Unix was in its look and feel. He wrote Linux because he thought Minix sucked. I am trying to figure out how they rationalized this one out!
You're giving them way too much credit, they didn't rationalize anything out. All they did was draw brightly colored lines back from the UNIX beginnings to Linux. If you look at it you'll notice the colored line leading to Linux doesn't follow other lines the whole way, it does a magic jump in several places!
The difference here is that the RIAA's member companies authorized the songs' use for essentially any conceivable use by the RIAA, which is, by all definitions, a trade union (though, in this sense, it's more of a euphemism for "oligopoly," but I digress). Mind you, the copyrights belong entirely to the labels, and not to the artists themselves.
Did you RTFA (yes, I know this is slashdot)? This is not about the RIAA downloading copyrighted songs on Kazaa in order to trap file sharers. The lawsuit alleges that the RIAA used Kazaa Lite to acess the Kazaa network. Kazaa Lite is a cracked version of Kazaa which infringes on Kazaa's copyrights. A classic case of "do as we say, not as we do" or "pot vs. kettle."
So do the Telemarketers now have a list of phone numbers that they know are valid?
My phone company just sent me a thick book yesterday filled with pages and pages of valid residential phone numbers (and even addresses!). They're in league with the telemarketers! Revolt, revolt!
Seriously, getting valid telephone numbers has never been that hard. It's not the same thing as spammers trying to gather valid email addresses.
I've had similar problems with word myself, but that's because it's just not made to do this kind of stuff.
Word isn't made to do what kind of stuff? Open a document reliably from one day to the next? Use custom margins and line spacings? Why does Microsoft keep adding new features if you're not meant to use them? Microsoft certainly advertises that Word can handle this.
If you want ultimate control over text placement etc. you should use typesetting software like e.g. TeX.
I don't know how to use TeX, it isn't installed on my machine or anyone else's I know, and I don't make the purchasing or IT decisions for my company. Besides, I don't need absolute control over text placement, but I do need to trust Word not to fuck up the formatting from day to day.
Forget forward or backward compatibility, how about current compatibility? As in opening a file created in that version of Word and having it look the same! Just a few days ago I was working on several complex documents. They're about 100 pages each, and are an electronic revision of older hardcopy documents, so there is lots of formatting (manual page breaks, weird line spacings, custom margins and such) in order to closely match the hardcopy. I closed it down in the evening on one day, and when I opened it the next morning the formatting had changed! Text that used to fit over a single page was now spread over two pages, things like that. I had my coworker open the file and it looked correct on his computer, but was screwed up on mine. And according to Word we have THE EXACT SAME VERSION, down to the minor version numbers, and as far as I know nothing changed in my configuration overnight. Very irritating, I can tell you, but there was no other choice but to waste several hours going through page by page correcting margins, line spacing, etc. until it was once again correct. A program which can't even open its own files reliably is a total piece of crap, IMO.
It certainly appears that Pro-E runs on Linux. I believe Unigraphics does as well, but their site was much more difficult to navigate. At least something from them runs on Linux. CATIA doesn't appear to run on linux yet, but with IBM as the main US distributor hopefully that will change soon.
I bought a Roomba as soon as it came out and ended up returning it within a week. My experiences were thus:
1. It sucked at sucking. It would roll over the same piece of fuzz on the carpet several times and still not pick it up. It just plain didn't work too well. At best it could be a supplement to a regular vacuum, but I didn't think it was worth it.
2. It wasn't much quieter then a regular vacuum. You couldn't really do much while it was working, such as watch TV in the next room. You couldn't ignore it, it was just too loud. This might be okay for people who leave the house often and run it then, but if you're home and just don't like to vacuum this isn't gaining you much.
3. The heuristics didn't work to well. Maybe they worked great in the lab with a perfectly square room, but when it needs to work in the real world and go around furniture it seems to fail miserably. It would go over the same patch of floor 5 or 6 times, yet never go over the patch 5 feet away within the time allowed.
4. It couldn't transition from tile to carpet as advertised. It tried to go over at an angle, got stuck with one wheel on, one off, and proceeded to start rubbing a black rubber mark in my carpet (yes, the carpet/tile transition height was within advertised limits).
I know other people have these and love them, but these are my experiences (YMMV). I found that manually vacuuming and sweeping took much less time and did a much better job. Further, the Roomba can't replace manually sweeping and vacuuming, it can only supplement it, and IMHO the price is too high for that.
I certainly wish iRobot the best of luck with the Roomba, since success with this early model will lead to continuously improved products. I am certainly not against robotic appliances, I also have a Robomower and love it. It has many advantages over a manual mower and no drawbacks (except a bit higher price tag, but the benefits far outweigh this IMHO). It's very quit (I can run it at night), nearly maintenance free (it mulches while it cuts, no bag to empty, no engine to maintain), and completely replaces a standard mower. I long for the day when we have more products like this, but I just didn't think the first gen Roomba was it.
Choices made based on financial reasons aren't design decisions.
This is completely wrong. Cost is ALWAYS a primary consideration in design and is just as valid as any other requirement (size, strength, lifetime, etc.).
Care to point out the relevant section of Title 17 or another reference? AFAIK making copies for friends is NOT covered under fair use, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
No I wasn't. Nothing gives you the right to make copies of copyrighted works without the owner's permission, with the exception of fair use and other similar, more specific, statutes.
While this particular usage (temporary P2P downloading) isn't explicitly stated in the body of law, it could very well be supported by a judge anyway. There are other means by which you can do the same thing---the radio, the music store, the library---and as such, creating that copy does no more harm than walking to the music store, demoing the CD on one of their little machines, and leaving without buying it. In all cases, you have listened to it once, but have not kept a copy.
When you listen to the radio, the radio has paid to distribute the copyrighted work to you (you are allowed to copy songs of the radio, BTW). Listening to music at the music store or borrowing from the library has absolutely no bearing on this, since you are not making any copies, just borrowing a physical object. It doesn't matter if you feel that you haven't done any harm, or that it is the same thing, the execution of the act (copying a copyrighted song) is illegal, even if you delete it later. An analogy could be if you ask your neighbor to borrow his car vs. if you take it without his permission. Even if you bring it back, and you feel that "no harm was done," or "it's the same thing" it would be illegal to take his car and you could be prosecuted (not a perfect analogy, but hopefully you get my point).
Generally, in order to obtain damages, there must be harm. A copy made without harm, such as an archival backup copy, cannot be ruled as infringement. Temporary copies of computer programs for execution purposes are not infringement according to the DMCA. Section 512 provides similar protection to ISPs who cache temporary copies of material.
When did I say that backup copies weren't legal, they are expressly protected under Title 17. However, you are talking about apples and oranges here, since all of the rights you mention only apply if you have a legal copy of the copyrighted work. You do not have the right to make "backups" of software you don't own. As far as determining harm and damages, that is left up to a judge to decide that on a case by case basis. However, a judge may very well decide that making illegal copies of copyrighted works, regardless of the duration, IS harmful to the copyright owner, depending on the circumstances.
Care to explain how a computer doesn't qualify? Or, for that matter, how making a tape for your friend doesn't qualify (since that's the exact thing that this passage of law was meant to protect)? Are we not paying that $8 to the government so we can use that CD burner in that way? Are we not paying extra costs on the media to go back to the copyright holders?
After rereading this passage several times I believe what it is saying is that you may use your recording devices (including computers) in any manner that you want, providing you are not violating any other copyright sections of course. This means that while you may be able to make a backup CD for your personal use, I don't see anything in there that gives you a right to distribute copyrighted works, including giving copies to your friends. Of course, IANAL, and if you seriously intend to use this defense in a court of law I suggest you get the advice of a good IP lawyer.
Yes, I said this "Copyright infringement only becomes criminal when it occurs on a massive scale". Downloading $1000+ worth of music in a six month period seems a tad excessive to me. Of course, the FBI does not track file sharers, and gathering the evidence to prove you infringed that much in the necessary time period would be quite difficult. I know the RIAA is trying to use bogus calculations to exaggerate the level of infringement, but hopefully these efforts will be tossed out by the courts. AFAIK, to date all actions against individual file sharers have been civil in nature, not criminal.
Not only that, what if someone is using a file-sharing system to download the music, listen once, then delete the file? That is a legit use
Sorry, but no. Fair use does not give you the right to make copies of music you haven't paid for, even if you delete them later. Fair use is not a "try-before-you-buy" law, it lets you do certain things which copyrighted items you have legally purchased.
just like me handing a tape to my friend to listen to for a week is a legit "fair use" doctrine.
Fair use doesn't even enter into this. If you lend a friend a tape you are not making a copy, and so copyright law has absolutely no bearing. You are simply lending out a physical item, like a library. If you mean making a copy of a tape for a friend, then fair use certainly DOES NOT allow this. It is simply too minor a crime to be prosecutted for, however.
If you'd like to review the fair use doctrine for yourself try here or here. BTW, you are correct in that there is absolutely nothing illegal in using P2P services to share non-copyrighted items, or copyrighted items where you have the owner's permission to share.
it's ridiculous how riaa acts as a police(and court) on what you're allowed to do. it's not riaa's job, if they see something wrong going on shouldn't they report it to a 3rd party(mainly, the police) that is supposed to punish law breakers? or should i as a normal man be responsible for trying to catch pickpockets and have the power and ability to sentence them on the spot too?
What you're forgetting is that copyright infringement is not theft. Theft is a criminal crime, and so you can be arrested and thrown in jail. Copyright infringement is a civil crime, and so the cops cannot arrest you or put you in jail, but the copyright holder can sue you, which is exactly what the RIAA is attempting to do. Copyright infringement only becomes criminal when it occurs on a massive scale (then the FBI will get involved), or under our lovely DMCA, which attempts to criminalize it under certain conditions. So in all actuality the RIAA suing suspected offenders is the legally correct thing to do (however reprehensible), however issuing subpoenas without the review of a judge (as allowed by the DMCA) should not be allowed.
Ahh yes, modifier keys, one of the cornerstones of Apples "intuitive" interface.
What you seem to overlook in your copious amount of sarcasm is that not everyone is the same. Choice is a great thing, one of the reasons Apple is great is because it offers a differnt choice from PCs, and an excellent choice at that. However, mice is an area where Apple drops the ball, anyone who is not a zealot should recognize that. Some people don't mind modifier keys, other perfer two, three, or even more buttons, some like scroll wheels, some like trackpoints, others like pads. In the PC world, users can find a solution which fits their preferences. With Apple, it's a one size fits all solution.
Yeah right, use a USB mouse while your computer's sitting on your lap. My post was just refuting your claim that "you're not stuck with a single button mouse." Laptops are an ever increasing segment of the computer world, especially for Macs.
Let's follow the thread back shall we?
tempny said:
I don't know about the rest of you, but being stuck with a one button mouse seems like a little too much simplicity these days.
jo_ham said: You're not stuck with it though - you can always buy a mouse with two, three, four, five or more buttons and a scroll wheel and attach it to a Mac and it will work out of the box.
I said: Great! Can you tell me how to retrofit the mouse on my wife's iBook?
jo_ham said: Yes, you have the choice of three or so designs on a PC laptop and only one if you buy Apple hardware, but that's just the way it is.
So what was your argument again? You're not stuck with a single button mouse, unless you happen to be one of the millions with a laptop? Apple's better because they have less choice?
So why would she buy a powerbook if she hates the OS and embedded mouse?
Just buy a pc laptop for less with the features you want and install linux.
She has an iBook, not a Powerbook. We bought a Mac for several reasons, mostly because Apple makes beautiful products, we'd never had one (don't be afraid to try something different), and we'd heard absolutely GREAT things about OS X. Sadly, OS X was very disappointing, but the laptop IS gorgeous. She doesn't hate OS X, just doesn't like it and prefers Linux (and she's not a computer guru, BTW). Also, we didn't buy it new, we bought it used of EBay at a very good price, so it wasn't really more expensive then a comparable PC.
I never said she hated the single mouse button, my post was a reply to a parent who said that it doesn't matter that Mac mice only have one button since you can just replace the mouse. My post was to indicate that this is not the case for laptops, a very large segment of the Mac world. I find the single button somewhat irritating, but it's not my laptop.
Slashdot Mirror
From reading the FA it appears that this is for RPM based distros only. Any plans for alternate distos?
Ah, but you are making the all-to-common error of forgetting that to date the RIAA is only sueing uploaders. The massive filesharers may very well have legally purchased a large portion of their collection. Remember, every mp3 on Kazaa came from a purchased CD in the first place.
It is ironic that the music "theives," those who only download music they don't own and don't share, are currently under no threat.
On the contrary, I feel that people should understand how things work, at least the basics. If you own a car, you should understand the basics of how a car works, at least so you don't get completely taken advantage of by auto mechanics. Also, you need to understand that there are basic maintenance tasks associated with car ownership (oil changes, tune ups, etc.). If you own a computer, you should know some basic things, i.e. the difference between a CPU, memory, and a hard disk for starters.
Computers are several times more complex than cars, trying to treat then as a simple device doesn't work. There are some basic maintenace tasks associated with owning a computer connected to the internet, i.e. for Windows check Windows Update, run a firewall and anti-virus program (free versions of which are available). Neglecting to perform these simple tasks is just asking for trouble.
We'd never make the analogous complaint that 'that fool crashed because his axle was made of bad steel', we'd blame the manufacturer, and rightly so.
But we would blame someone for crashing a car who didn't get their brakes checked regularly, they could even be liable for criminal penalties.
Are you sure?
What about Plex86? Bochs is very slow because it is emulating every tiny bit of the hardware, including all I/O devices. This isn't neccessary if you are just running x86 on x86, Plex86 streamlines it quite a bit and virtualizes many things. The newest Plex86, just for running Linux on Linux, is supposed to be very lightweight.
What I was interested in was performance comparisons between the different Plex86 versions, UML, and Xen, as well as some info on how each goes about virtualizing the hardware (which is better and why). I was playing with Bochs just a few weeks ago (on a 600 MHz ibook, Linux as the host, Windows 98SE as the guest) and found it unusably slow. I haven't played with Plex86, UML or Xen yet, but I plan to as soon as I get the free time. ;)
So it looks like this is the third (or fourth) free VM for Linux, the others being Plex86 (and a different fork here) and User Mode Linux. Does anyone have a good comparison of these three? I know Zen compared UML on their site but not plex86. I'm not really sure of the differences between them, particularly the different versions of plex86 and UML (Zen explained their virtualization process pretty well on their site). Which is the best choice for different scenarios? It looks like Zen is the winner for running Linux as the guest OS, and the original Plex86 (first link) is the only one which offers a free choice in guest OS's.
You're giving them way too much credit, they didn't rationalize anything out. All they did was draw brightly colored lines back from the UNIX beginnings to Linux. If you look at it you'll notice the colored line leading to Linux doesn't follow other lines the whole way, it does a magic jump in several places!
Did you RTFA (yes, I know this is slashdot)? This is not about the RIAA downloading copyrighted songs on Kazaa in order to trap file sharers. The lawsuit alleges that the RIAA used Kazaa Lite to acess the Kazaa network. Kazaa Lite is a cracked version of Kazaa which infringes on Kazaa's copyrights. A classic case of "do as we say, not as we do" or "pot vs. kettle."
javelinco - "./ may not guarantee free speech, but that doesn't mean you should mod us down!"
It's /. (slashdot) not ./ (dotslash).
My phone company just sent me a thick book yesterday filled with pages and pages of valid residential phone numbers (and even addresses!). They're in league with the telemarketers! Revolt, revolt!
Seriously, getting valid telephone numbers has never been that hard. It's not the same thing as spammers trying to gather valid email addresses.
Word isn't made to do what kind of stuff? Open a document reliably from one day to the next? Use custom margins and line spacings? Why does Microsoft keep adding new features if you're not meant to use them? Microsoft certainly advertises that Word can handle this.
If you want ultimate control over text placement etc. you should use typesetting software like e.g. TeX.
I don't know how to use TeX, it isn't installed on my machine or anyone else's I know, and I don't make the purchasing or IT decisions for my company. Besides, I don't need absolute control over text placement, but I do need to trust Word not to fuck up the formatting from day to day.
Forget forward or backward compatibility, how about current compatibility? As in opening a file created in that version of Word and having it look the same! Just a few days ago I was working on several complex documents. They're about 100 pages each, and are an electronic revision of older hardcopy documents, so there is lots of formatting (manual page breaks, weird line spacings, custom margins and such) in order to closely match the hardcopy. I closed it down in the evening on one day, and when I opened it the next morning the formatting had changed! Text that used to fit over a single page was now spread over two pages, things like that. I had my coworker open the file and it looked correct on his computer, but was screwed up on mine. And according to Word we have THE EXACT SAME VERSION, down to the minor version numbers, and as far as I know nothing changed in my configuration overnight. Very irritating, I can tell you, but there was no other choice but to waste several hours going through page by page correcting margins, line spacing, etc. until it was once again correct. A program which can't even open its own files reliably is a total piece of crap, IMO.
Well, we certainly won't be asking you to design any Martian landers! ;)
It certainly appears that Pro-E runs on Linux. I believe Unigraphics does as well, but their site was much more difficult to navigate. At least something from them runs on Linux. CATIA doesn't appear to run on linux yet, but with IBM as the main US distributor hopefully that will change soon.
I certainly wish iRobot the best of luck with the Roomba, since success with this early model will lead to continuously improved products. I am certainly not against robotic appliances, I also have a Robomower and love it. It has many advantages over a manual mower and no drawbacks (except a bit higher price tag, but the benefits far outweigh this IMHO). It's very quit (I can run it at night), nearly maintenance free (it mulches while it cuts, no bag to empty, no engine to maintain), and completely replaces a standard mower. I long for the day when we have more products like this, but I just didn't think the first gen Roomba was it.
This is completely wrong. Cost is ALWAYS a primary consideration in design and is just as valid as any other requirement (size, strength, lifetime, etc.).
Care to point out the relevant section of Title 17 or another reference? AFAIK making copies for friends is NOT covered under fair use, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
No I wasn't. Nothing gives you the right to make copies of copyrighted works without the owner's permission, with the exception of fair use and other similar, more specific, statutes.
While this particular usage (temporary P2P downloading) isn't explicitly stated in the body of law, it could very well be supported by a judge anyway. There are other means by which you can do the same thing---the radio, the music store, the library---and as such, creating that copy does no more harm than walking to the music store, demoing the CD on one of their little machines, and leaving without buying it. In all cases, you have listened to it once, but have not kept a copy.
When you listen to the radio, the radio has paid to distribute the copyrighted work to you (you are allowed to copy songs of the radio, BTW). Listening to music at the music store or borrowing from the library has absolutely no bearing on this, since you are not making any copies, just borrowing a physical object. It doesn't matter if you feel that you haven't done any harm, or that it is the same thing, the execution of the act (copying a copyrighted song) is illegal, even if you delete it later. An analogy could be if you ask your neighbor to borrow his car vs. if you take it without his permission. Even if you bring it back, and you feel that "no harm was done," or "it's the same thing" it would be illegal to take his car and you could be prosecuted (not a perfect analogy, but hopefully you get my point).
Generally, in order to obtain damages, there must be harm. A copy made without harm, such as an archival backup copy, cannot be ruled as infringement. Temporary copies of computer programs for execution purposes are not infringement according to the DMCA. Section 512 provides similar protection to ISPs who cache temporary copies of material.
When did I say that backup copies weren't legal, they are expressly protected under Title 17. However, you are talking about apples and oranges here, since all of the rights you mention only apply if you have a legal copy of the copyrighted work. You do not have the right to make "backups" of software you don't own. As far as determining harm and damages, that is left up to a judge to decide that on a case by case basis. However, a judge may very well decide that making illegal copies of copyrighted works, regardless of the duration, IS harmful to the copyright owner, depending on the circumstances.
Care to explain how a computer doesn't qualify? Or, for that matter, how making a tape for your friend doesn't qualify (since that's the exact thing that this passage of law was meant to protect)? Are we not paying that $8 to the government so we can use that CD burner in that way? Are we not paying extra costs on the media to go back to the copyright holders?
After rereading this passage several times I believe what it is saying is that you may use your recording devices (including computers) in any manner that you want, providing you are not violating any other copyright sections of course. This means that while you may be able to make a backup CD for your personal use, I don't see anything in there that gives you a right to distribute copyrighted works, including giving copies to your friends. Of course, IANAL, and if you seriously intend to use this defense in a court of law I suggest you get the advice of a good IP lawyer.
Yes, I said this "Copyright infringement only becomes criminal when it occurs on a massive scale". Downloading $1000+ worth of music in a six month period seems a tad excessive to me. Of course, the FBI does not track file sharers, and gathering the evidence to prove you infringed that much in the necessary time period would be quite difficult. I know the RIAA is trying to use bogus calculations to exaggerate the level of infringement, but hopefully these efforts will be tossed out by the courts. AFAIK, to date all actions against individual file sharers have been civil in nature, not criminal.
Sorry, but no. Fair use does not give you the right to make copies of music you haven't paid for, even if you delete them later. Fair use is not a "try-before-you-buy" law, it lets you do certain things which copyrighted items you have legally purchased.
just like me handing a tape to my friend to listen to for a week is a legit "fair use" doctrine.
Fair use doesn't even enter into this. If you lend a friend a tape you are not making a copy, and so copyright law has absolutely no bearing. You are simply lending out a physical item, like a library. If you mean making a copy of a tape for a friend, then fair use certainly DOES NOT allow this. It is simply too minor a crime to be prosecutted for, however.
If you'd like to review the fair use doctrine for yourself try here or here. BTW, you are correct in that there is absolutely nothing illegal in using P2P services to share non-copyrighted items, or copyrighted items where you have the owner's permission to share.
What you seem to overlook in your copious amount of sarcasm is that not everyone is the same. Choice is a great thing, one of the reasons Apple is great is because it offers a differnt choice from PCs, and an excellent choice at that. However, mice is an area where Apple drops the ball, anyone who is not a zealot should recognize that. Some people don't mind modifier keys, other perfer two, three, or even more buttons, some like scroll wheels, some like trackpoints, others like pads. In the PC world, users can find a solution which fits their preferences. With Apple, it's a one size fits all solution.
Let's follow the thread back shall we?
So what was your argument again? You're not stuck with a single button mouse, unless you happen to be one of the millions with a laptop? Apple's better because they have less choice?She has an iBook, not a Powerbook. We bought a Mac for several reasons, mostly because Apple makes beautiful products, we'd never had one (don't be afraid to try something different), and we'd heard absolutely GREAT things about OS X. Sadly, OS X was very disappointing, but the laptop IS gorgeous. She doesn't hate OS X, just doesn't like it and prefers Linux (and she's not a computer guru, BTW). Also, we didn't buy it new, we bought it used of EBay at a very good price, so it wasn't really more expensive then a comparable PC.
I never said she hated the single mouse button, my post was a reply to a parent who said that it doesn't matter that Mac mice only have one button since you can just replace the mouse. My post was to indicate that this is not the case for laptops, a very large segment of the Mac world. I find the single button somewhat irritating, but it's not my laptop.