There are two things that make it newsworthy (well, newsworthy to the average tech geek).
Firstly, IBM used to make the Thinkpad, and the pro-Thinkpad loyalty that exists there is obviously disintegrating very quickly.
Secondly, and more interestingly to me, are the numbers. There were 24 people in the pilot program, 22 of which responded to the survey. Of those 22, a whopping 19 actually preferred to keep running OS X on their Macbook instead of Windows on their THinkpad! That's pretty damn huge. 86% of a group of NEW users to OS X, given a time enough to get used to it, actually prefer PS X and the Apple hardware, to the software environment they were previously accustomed to and on their company's own developed hardware system to boot.
The numbers, not included in the slashdot summary, are more interesting. 24 people took part in the pilot program, and these are new users to OS X. 22 responded to the survey, and 18 of the 22 actually prefer OS X over Windows (one felt they were equal, and 3 preferred Windows to OS X). Now when looking at these numbers, keep in mind they are new to OS X, and had to get over the learning curve.
More interestingly, the 19 of 22 requested to keep using OS X on their Macbook instead of going back to Windows on their Thinkpads. That I think speaks volumes to the overall Mac/OS X experience.
So your analogy should be more like asking a group of long-time Ford assembly-line workers to try out a new Mazda for their own personal use. And finding that 86% of them prefer the new company's product over that which their own company made.
Right on! Thank goodness everyone at Slashdot has their PhD in theoretical Physics.
Damn it, at first I was going to say "ah ha", since I just got my PhD (I defended less than two weeks ago) in Experimental Physics (condensed matter). But then I saw that you qualified it with theoretical physics, and alas, I cannot say "ah ha" anymore:-(
But yet your sarcasm proves my point exactly!
Having a PhD in condensed matter experimental physics, in no way whatsoever am I qualified to qualify the creation of 'strangelets' or microscopic black holes. I've taken my share of grad classes, such as graduate-level quantum mechanics (Sakurai) and E&M (Jackson) with other high-energy theorists, and I've even done a small bit of relativistic quantum field theory (Peskin/Schroeder).
Given all this, I barely even know enough of quantum electrodynamics, much less QCD or anything well beyond that, to make valid judgements of the effects of LHC. But I'm supposed to take the word of a guy on these same topics with far less physics experience than me?
Except for the reason that to understand the complicated QCD and quantized-relativistic interactions that would bring about the catastrophic events he is worried about truly requires a PhD in physics. And even way more than that.
It is not wrong to stop and ask these questions when the cost of failure is potentially a global concern.
Certainly not, and I addressed that in my comment.
It is certainly worthwhile running the calculations to verify such catastrophic events won't occur. Many physicists have already done this. But a non-expert suing the government without anything even remotely resembling evidence is pretty ridiculous.
It's like some of the first rockets. Some skeptics were worried that a sufficiently-strong rocket combustion could ignite all of earth's atmosphere. Sure that's a worry and it was worth running the calculations by full-time expert chemists and physicists to justify whether such an event could occur.
But any non-expert suing a project to cancel it based only on shaky claims? That's a different story.
A nuclear safety officer is hardly on the 'inside of' the LHC team.
The article didn't go into the scientific backgrounds of the guys involved, but the job requirements of being a nuclear safety officer is hardly any prerequisite to being able to in any way accurately understanding the quantum chromodynamics, or even quantized general relativity (which nobody can do yet), etc involved in the LHC.
This would be like an airport luggage screener making claims about the aerodynamical stability of a fighter aircraft, or an electrician who can wire up a new 110 AC outlet in your house making claims about transistor-level details of the latest Intel CPU.
While it's possible they might be experts in highly technical fields hugely beyond their job descriptions, it's fairly unlikely.
This doesn't mean that their concerns are necessarily invalid, but they shouldn't be given any more credibility than other non-members of the LHC team.
Graphene has been studied for a few years now, even longer if you count it as rolled into a nanotube.
What took awhile (and was solved with a fairly low-tech solution : scotch tape) was how to make a single layer of graphene to measure, whereas graphite usually rolled off into multi-layer pieces.
Graphene is interesting for a number of reasons. Primarily is it's Minkowski lightcone-like density of states. The Fermi level lies right at the cone vertex, which makes this material a "zero-bandgap insulator", which brings about a huge number of interesting properties in itself.
Anyway, graphene has been hugely popular in condensed matter physics for a few years now, and people have studied the phonon spectra, I remember going to a seminar about the modes of graphene in a carbon nanotube a few years ago.
However, don't get your hopes up for mass-produced graphene tech anytime soon. While people will probably demonstrate small-scale single-electron transistors or other interesting graphene devices (if they haven't already), the ability to deposit and pattern graphene is still very crude, and it's hard to do anything other than one-off devices at this point.
I agree. Even within college this became quite apparent.
Going along with your calculus example, I did well enough in the calculus courses I took, but I still didn't get the big picture. Until I got to more advanced physics courses (I was a physics major), where I had to actually apply calculus as a tool to do the physics. Then calculus suddenly made sense.
Same with linear algebra, the whole concept of an eigenvalue, or why diagonalization is useful, didn't make any sense to me, and just seemed to be arbitrary manipulation. Until I took quantum mechanics and learned about eigenstates. (And yes, for those physicists reading this,I should have realized this a year earlier when studying coupled oscillations of classical mechanics, but I didn't fully 'get it' back then).
Yikes, I don't know what bad karmic deities you pissed off to get that kind of treatment.:-) My exposure to Mac users is rather opposite.
I'm a physicist in grad school, so maybe my cross section of mac users is entirely from a different demographic. In the past few years I've seen several physicists go from Linux to Mac, just to "get stuff done" easier without having to waste time fiddling with the system (both professors and students, and myself included). A computational/simulational group in my department went from IBM-supplied UNIX boxes (not sure if AIX or Linux) to Mac. I know a few theorists that have gone from Linux to Mac too.
More interestingly, a huge astro research entity nearby (with ties to NASA) with several hundred employees is in the process of switching almost exclusively to OS X. They used to use predominantly Solaris boxes, which are relatively old by now and need upgrading. So OS X fits their needs nearly exactly, especially with regards to visualization toolkits and software. It's pretty cool for me because sometimes they call in Apple engineers to give technical talks about various features/software of interest for scientists.
In all these cases, though, I guess the mac users are fairly intelligent and computer savvy. Seems to be opposite to the Mac users you interface with.
The only potential explanation I can give you, and I hope I'm not accused of being a fanboy, is related to my experience where I've had significantly less problems on my Mac than on Windows (which I had to use in my lab). I'm not saying Macs are problem free, they're not, but IMHO they give much less hassle and I'm more efficient at them.
So anyway, it could be that when the shit hits the fan and you get a support call from a Mac user, they're far more irate than a Windows user that is relatively used to dealing with problems. Just a hand-wavy guess, but given the exposure you have to mac users versus mine in science, it's a possibility.
Hasn't the "Think Different" campaign been dead since around 2002?
I didn't become a Mac fan until around 2005 or so when my fiancee got a Mac Mini, and it's the same with most of my friends who also became Mac fans.
I don't know why the Mac hating crowd needs to resort to 6+ year old marketing slogans, if there's really that many valid reasons to flame us Mac fans:-)
the consumer lock down is much worse than I imagined it would be (and I was expecting bad.)
Care to explain why? I'm debating getting a Touch or iPhone sometime in the future, would like to hear your opinions on it. And I say this as a Mac fan (I have an iMac). Thanks.
but only a fanboy or the ignorant actually believe apple is MORE secure than windows.
Hmm, if you are going to make accusatory assertions like that, then prove it. Meanwhile every bit of evidence points to the exact opposite. Crackers have tried, they've tried really hard, to get Mac exploits in the wild. Remember that whole overhyped Mac month of bugs last year that turned out to be grasping at straws?
There is a huge amount of infamy for any cracker to release the first true Mac worm or virus. Why has it not come yet if Macs are not more secure than Windows? You think the only reason is that windows has about 20x the install base?
An exploit may come out at some point, I don't know any Mac user that thinks they're totally immune for any future attack. But when you look at the security situation between Mac (and Linux) vs Windows, it's the difference between night and day.
As of several years ago, it was the FreeBSD users that would blow Mac/Linux fanboys out of the water.
Maybe I've just selectively tuned that crowd out, but I haven't noticed that zealotry as much lately. Or maybe I just stopped reading anything related to FreeBSD.
Mac security isn't an issue not because it is superior (it could be, I don't know) but because it is a small target.
Well, they ARE more secure. It's just that going against Windows it's fairly difficult to actually make something less secure by comparison.
Now if you were to compare OS X to say OpenBSD, it's a different story.
And before I get flamed or accused of being a rabid Mac fanboy, I'm talking about default installations here, as it's possible to security harden any OS. I'm talking about Jane SoccerMom opening the box and using the computer. Of course in that case OpenBSD isn't really an option.
I'm a fan of OS X, and I used to DESPISE macs of OS 9 and earlier. I just didn't like how the old macs felt. I used Linux exclusively from 1998, until my fiancee got a mac mini around 2005, then I got an imac last year, which I've been using exclusively now.
So I don't know why the mac-hating crowd has to paint all of us Mac users with one big fanatic brush. But I can tell you flat out that OS X is what pulled me to the mac, it's UNIX with an awesome GUI, and no more fiddling to get stuff to work that I had to with Linux. If claiming that makes me a rabid fanboy, then so be it.
No, the original poster has a perfectly valid point which you just reinforced.
By the anti-evolution lobby making such a big deal about evolution and the need to include alternate theories, they've somehow made themselves a presence that otherwise would never have existed in the educational system. Everybody around the country now knows of the concept of Intelligent Design, but 10 years ago, nobody really thought about it at all.
They've made such a big deal out of it, including high-profile activism, that some people feel compelled to at least acknowledge them when referring to evolution. An acknowledgement that wouldn't have been there 10 years ago.
And this is the perfectly valid reason why some situations are ridiculous for providing an even-handedness where it is not justified. In this case, it's exactly due to your assertion that there is no science behind it.
The author of the article (yes I actually read it) went as far as comparing the pro/anti Apple crowd to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Yes, he seriously did. And not by briefly alluding to it, but over the course of several paragraphs.
I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.
Oh please, I cannot allow such distortion of history to stand unchallenged.;-)
First of all, it was Blueberries that errant employees of Willy Wonka turned into. Not Snozzberries. Snozzberries were an item on the lickable wallpaper, where Mr. Wonka announces that 'we' are the music makers, and 'we' are the dreamers of dreams.
But speak of a reality-distortion field. Who the hell has a freaky waterfall tunnel in the factory workplace that you need to travel through by paddle boat, showing pictures of chickens getting decapitated and worms on peoples' faces? What OSHA committee endorsed that?
And don't forget testing experimental pharmaceuticals and novel synthetic candies on live Oompa Loompas. I believe this is what you were referring to in your comment. Putting Oompa Loompa after Oompa Loompa to a first-hand experimental safety test of the dinner gum, even after they have consistently turned into blueberries.
How did Oompa Loompas ever stand to work for this guy? Oh yeah, that's right, the convenient displacing of thousands of Oompa Loompas from their native homeland, exploiting their addiction to cocao beans, playing upon their fear of the native fauna by promising them safety, and literally paying them beans for their extended labor in extremely unsafe work condictions.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious I saw that Gene Wilder movie a few dozen times too many as a kid (read the book a whole bunch too). BTW, IMHO, Gene Wilder was a way better Willy Wonka than the Michael Jackson-esque Johnny Depp in the remake. And I say this as a huge Depp fan.
I read the first of five pages of the article, and decided it's not worth further click-throughs.
The author tries to come up with ways that Apple is evil, but really winds up taking jabs primarily at Steve Jobs. As a newfound mac user, I don't give a crap about Jobs, I care about using a computer that matches my needs and does what I want. For me that's Mac. And for most of the other 6-7% of the Mac marketshare it's a pretty similar situation.
Actually, this is nothing more than the vague copyright that cartographers used for quite some time. They'd put obscure curves into the road, small enough they won't affect anyone trying to navigate, but large enough that they'd know if one of their mapmaking competitors merely copied their waypoint data.
If you're not breaking the law, no need to worry about these cameras, right?
Please explain how a username EMBEDDED into the AAC file itself is equivalent to a camera monitoring somebody?
Apple can't use the embedded username to monitor someone's computer. The only thing they can do is watch P2P sites and the like to see if any tunes on those sites were purchased from iTunes and they can identify the user.
Cue all the responses claiming "well someone could have broken into their arch-nemesis's computer to frame them" in 3..2..1..
Slashdot Mirror
Your analogy fails to mention that IBM used to make the Thinkpad! Ie, the laptop that the people in the study gave up for the Macbook.
Making the actual Thinkpad, is more of a draw than making the PowerPC chip that is used in Macs, as well as many other systems.
There are two things that make it newsworthy (well, newsworthy to the average tech geek).
Firstly, IBM used to make the Thinkpad, and the pro-Thinkpad loyalty that exists there is obviously disintegrating very quickly.
Secondly, and more interestingly to me, are the numbers. There were 24 people in the pilot program, 22 of which responded to the survey. Of those 22, a whopping 19 actually preferred to keep running OS X on their Macbook instead of Windows on their THinkpad! That's pretty damn huge. 86% of a group of NEW users to OS X, given a time enough to get used to it, actually prefer PS X and the Apple hardware, to the software environment they were previously accustomed to and on their company's own developed hardware system to boot.
The numbers, not included in the slashdot summary, are more interesting. 24 people took part in the pilot program, and these are new users to OS X. 22 responded to the survey, and 18 of the 22 actually prefer OS X over Windows (one felt they were equal, and 3 preferred Windows to OS X). Now when looking at these numbers, keep in mind they are new to OS X, and had to get over the learning curve.
More interestingly, the 19 of 22 requested to keep using OS X on their Macbook instead of going back to Windows on their Thinkpads. That I think speaks volumes to the overall Mac/OS X experience.
100% Wrong. IBM used to make the Thinkpad.
So your analogy should be more like asking a group of long-time Ford assembly-line workers to try out a new Mazda for their own personal use. And finding that 86% of them prefer the new company's product over that which their own company made.
Right on! Thank goodness everyone at Slashdot has their PhD in theoretical Physics.
:-(
Damn it, at first I was going to say "ah ha", since I just got my PhD (I defended less than two weeks ago) in Experimental Physics (condensed matter). But then I saw that you qualified it with theoretical physics, and alas, I cannot say "ah ha" anymore
But yet your sarcasm proves my point exactly!
Having a PhD in condensed matter experimental physics, in no way whatsoever am I qualified to qualify the creation of 'strangelets' or microscopic black holes. I've taken my share of grad classes, such as graduate-level quantum mechanics (Sakurai) and E&M (Jackson) with other high-energy theorists, and I've even done a small bit of relativistic quantum field theory (Peskin/Schroeder).
Given all this, I barely even know enough of quantum electrodynamics, much less QCD or anything well beyond that, to make valid judgements of the effects of LHC. But I'm supposed to take the word of a guy on these same topics with far less physics experience than me?
Except for the reason that to understand the complicated QCD and quantized-relativistic interactions that would bring about the catastrophic events he is worried about truly requires a PhD in physics. And even way more than that.
It is not wrong to stop and ask these questions when the cost of failure is potentially a global concern.
Certainly not, and I addressed that in my comment.
It is certainly worthwhile running the calculations to verify such catastrophic events won't occur. Many physicists have already done this. But a non-expert suing the government without anything even remotely resembling evidence is pretty ridiculous.
It's like some of the first rockets. Some skeptics were worried that a sufficiently-strong rocket combustion could ignite all of earth's atmosphere. Sure that's a worry and it was worth running the calculations by full-time expert chemists and physicists to justify whether such an event could occur.
But any non-expert suing a project to cancel it based only on shaky claims? That's a different story.
A nuclear safety officer is hardly on the 'inside of' the LHC team.
The article didn't go into the scientific backgrounds of the guys involved, but the job requirements of being a nuclear safety officer is hardly any prerequisite to being able to in any way accurately understanding the quantum chromodynamics, or even quantized general relativity (which nobody can do yet), etc involved in the LHC.
This would be like an airport luggage screener making claims about the aerodynamical stability of a fighter aircraft, or an electrician who can wire up a new 110 AC outlet in your house making claims about transistor-level details of the latest Intel CPU.
While it's possible they might be experts in highly technical fields hugely beyond their job descriptions, it's fairly unlikely.
This doesn't mean that their concerns are necessarily invalid, but they shouldn't be given any more credibility than other non-members of the LHC team.
So the internet will soon be a series of nanotubes?
No, by that time it will more closely resemble a large truck.
Graphene has been studied for a few years now, even longer if you count it as rolled into a nanotube.
What took awhile (and was solved with a fairly low-tech solution : scotch tape) was how to make a single layer of graphene to measure, whereas graphite usually rolled off into multi-layer pieces.
Graphene is interesting for a number of reasons. Primarily is it's Minkowski lightcone-like density of states. The Fermi level lies right at the cone vertex, which makes this material a "zero-bandgap insulator", which brings about a huge number of interesting properties in itself.
Anyway, graphene has been hugely popular in condensed matter physics for a few years now, and people have studied the phonon spectra, I remember going to a seminar about the modes of graphene in a carbon nanotube a few years ago.
However, don't get your hopes up for mass-produced graphene tech anytime soon. While people will probably demonstrate small-scale single-electron transistors or other interesting graphene devices (if they haven't already), the ability to deposit and pattern graphene is still very crude, and it's hard to do anything other than one-off devices at this point.
I agree. Even within college this became quite apparent.
Going along with your calculus example, I did well enough in the calculus courses I took, but I still didn't get the big picture. Until I got to more advanced physics courses (I was a physics major), where I had to actually apply calculus as a tool to do the physics. Then calculus suddenly made sense.
Same with linear algebra, the whole concept of an eigenvalue, or why diagonalization is useful, didn't make any sense to me, and just seemed to be arbitrary manipulation. Until I took quantum mechanics and learned about eigenstates. (And yes, for those physicists reading this,I should have realized this a year earlier when studying coupled oscillations of classical mechanics, but I didn't fully 'get it' back then).
Yikes, I don't know what bad karmic deities you pissed off to get that kind of treatment. :-) My exposure to Mac users is rather opposite.
I'm a physicist in grad school, so maybe my cross section of mac users is entirely from a different demographic. In the past few years I've seen several physicists go from Linux to Mac, just to "get stuff done" easier without having to waste time fiddling with the system (both professors and students, and myself included). A computational/simulational group in my department went from IBM-supplied UNIX boxes (not sure if AIX or Linux) to Mac. I know a few theorists that have gone from Linux to Mac too.
More interestingly, a huge astro research entity nearby (with ties to NASA) with several hundred employees is in the process of switching almost exclusively to OS X. They used to use predominantly Solaris boxes, which are relatively old by now and need upgrading. So OS X fits their needs nearly exactly, especially with regards to visualization toolkits and software. It's pretty cool for me because sometimes they call in Apple engineers to give technical talks about various features/software of interest for scientists.
In all these cases, though, I guess the mac users are fairly intelligent and computer savvy. Seems to be opposite to the Mac users you interface with.
The only potential explanation I can give you, and I hope I'm not accused of being a fanboy, is related to my experience where I've had significantly less problems on my Mac than on Windows (which I had to use in my lab). I'm not saying Macs are problem free, they're not, but IMHO they give much less hassle and I'm more efficient at them.
So anyway, it could be that when the shit hits the fan and you get a support call from a Mac user, they're far more irate than a Windows user that is relatively used to dealing with problems. Just a hand-wavy guess, but given the exposure you have to mac users versus mine in science, it's a possibility.
Hasn't the "Think Different" campaign been dead since around 2002?
:-)
I didn't become a Mac fan until around 2005 or so when my fiancee got a Mac Mini, and it's the same with most of my friends who also became Mac fans.
I don't know why the Mac hating crowd needs to resort to 6+ year old marketing slogans, if there's really that many valid reasons to flame us Mac fans
the consumer lock down is much worse than I imagined it would be (and I was expecting bad.)
Care to explain why? I'm debating getting a Touch or iPhone sometime in the future, would like to hear your opinions on it. And I say this as a Mac fan (I have an iMac). Thanks.
but only a fanboy or the ignorant actually believe apple is MORE secure than windows.
Hmm, if you are going to make accusatory assertions like that, then prove it. Meanwhile every bit of evidence points to the exact opposite. Crackers have tried, they've tried really hard, to get Mac exploits in the wild. Remember that whole overhyped Mac month of bugs last year that turned out to be grasping at straws?
There is a huge amount of infamy for any cracker to release the first true Mac worm or virus. Why has it not come yet if Macs are not more secure than Windows? You think the only reason is that windows has about 20x the install base?
An exploit may come out at some point, I don't know any Mac user that thinks they're totally immune for any future attack. But when you look at the security situation between Mac (and Linux) vs Windows, it's the difference between night and day.
As of several years ago, it was the FreeBSD users that would blow Mac/Linux fanboys out of the water.
Maybe I've just selectively tuned that crowd out, but I haven't noticed that zealotry as much lately. Or maybe I just stopped reading anything related to FreeBSD.
Well then you'll be all over (literally) whatever Apple has planned with their new patent filing regarding 3D display systems.
Mac security isn't an issue not because it is superior (it could be, I don't know) but because it is a small target.
Well, they ARE more secure. It's just that going against Windows it's fairly difficult to actually make something less secure by comparison.
Now if you were to compare OS X to say OpenBSD, it's a different story.
And before I get flamed or accused of being a rabid Mac fanboy, I'm talking about default installations here, as it's possible to security harden any OS. I'm talking about Jane SoccerMom opening the box and using the computer. Of course in that case OpenBSD isn't really an option.
I'm a fan of OS X, and I used to DESPISE macs of OS 9 and earlier. I just didn't like how the old macs felt. I used Linux exclusively from 1998, until my fiancee got a mac mini around 2005, then I got an imac last year, which I've been using exclusively now.
So I don't know why the mac-hating crowd has to paint all of us Mac users with one big fanatic brush. But I can tell you flat out that OS X is what pulled me to the mac, it's UNIX with an awesome GUI, and no more fiddling to get stuff to work that I had to with Linux. If claiming that makes me a rabid fanboy, then so be it.
Apparently it's not just Apple Fanboys that can't handle criticism!
No, the original poster has a perfectly valid point which you just reinforced.
By the anti-evolution lobby making such a big deal about evolution and the need to include alternate theories, they've somehow made themselves a presence that otherwise would never have existed in the educational system. Everybody around the country now knows of the concept of Intelligent Design, but 10 years ago, nobody really thought about it at all.
They've made such a big deal out of it, including high-profile activism, that some people feel compelled to at least acknowledge them when referring to evolution. An acknowledgement that wouldn't have been there 10 years ago.
And this is the perfectly valid reason why some situations are ridiculous for providing an even-handedness where it is not justified. In this case, it's exactly due to your assertion that there is no science behind it.
The author of the article (yes I actually read it) went as far as comparing the pro/anti Apple crowd to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Yes, he seriously did. And not by briefly alluding to it, but over the course of several paragraphs.
I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.
Oh please, I cannot allow such distortion of history to stand unchallenged. ;-)
First of all, it was Blueberries that errant employees of Willy Wonka turned into. Not Snozzberries. Snozzberries were an item on the lickable wallpaper, where Mr. Wonka announces that 'we' are the music makers, and 'we' are the dreamers of dreams.
But speak of a reality-distortion field. Who the hell has a freaky waterfall tunnel in the factory workplace that you need to travel through by paddle boat, showing pictures of chickens getting decapitated and worms on peoples' faces? What OSHA committee endorsed that?
And don't forget testing experimental pharmaceuticals and novel synthetic candies on live Oompa Loompas. I believe this is what you were referring to in your comment. Putting Oompa Loompa after Oompa Loompa to a first-hand experimental safety test of the dinner gum, even after they have consistently turned into blueberries.
How did Oompa Loompas ever stand to work for this guy? Oh yeah, that's right, the convenient displacing of thousands of Oompa Loompas from their native homeland, exploiting their addiction to cocao beans, playing upon their fear of the native fauna by promising them safety, and literally paying them beans for their extended labor in extremely unsafe work condictions.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious I saw that Gene Wilder movie a few dozen times too many as a kid (read the book a whole bunch too). BTW, IMHO, Gene Wilder was a way better Willy Wonka than the Michael Jackson-esque Johnny Depp in the remake. And I say this as a huge Depp fan.
I read the first of five pages of the article, and decided it's not worth further click-throughs.
The author tries to come up with ways that Apple is evil, but really winds up taking jabs primarily at Steve Jobs. As a newfound mac user, I don't give a crap about Jobs, I care about using a computer that matches my needs and does what I want. For me that's Mac. And for most of the other 6-7% of the Mac marketshare it's a pretty similar situation.
Actually, this is nothing more than the vague copyright that cartographers used for quite some time. They'd put obscure curves into the road, small enough they won't affect anyone trying to navigate, but large enough that they'd know if one of their mapmaking competitors merely copied their waypoint data.
If you're not breaking the law, no need to worry about these cameras, right?
Please explain how a username EMBEDDED into the AAC file itself is equivalent to a camera monitoring somebody?
Apple can't use the embedded username to monitor someone's computer. The only thing they can do is watch P2P sites and the like to see if any tunes on those sites were purchased from iTunes and they can identify the user.
Cue all the responses claiming "well someone could have broken into their arch-nemesis's computer to frame them" in 3..2..1..