*Or* we could prescribe cannabis for the myriad of illnesses it treats and symptoms it alleviates. And it's so non-toxic no one has ever died from it, not once, not ever.
That viewpoint leads to some more sensitive issues, though.
For example, Forward-Looking-Infrared (FLIR). Police can use it from a public place (like a street) to get an idea of what's going on in your home (heat-wise, anyway). IIRC the supreme court has ruled that police cannot use FLIR on your home without a warrant as it would constitute a search.
Much like the visible-spectrum light that Google captures for Street View, the IR light the police can process is "just light". But the gov't holds them to be different (a decision that I support).
Word. My whole family uses T-Mobile prepaid phones. We even looked at the "family plans" the big evil phone companies offered. It was still cheaper for us to just get individual prepaid phones and use those.
If you don't feel the need to yak yak yak all the time then prepaid is great. The cost/minute ratio is not as good as the plans where you buy an ungodly amount of minutes for a fixed monthly rate, but that's only if you actually USE all the minutes those people give you.
"With Pirate Bay shut down that means that uploaders will move on to better trackers - PRIAVTE trackers - which have higher quality control, fewer trojans, and ratio requirements."
Private trackers do have those assets, but on the whole I think they're inferior. Torrents work better as more users are on them. Requiring somebody to complete a membership just to download that season of Futurama will keep a lot of people out of the "gated community" that is a private tracker. That makes for lower bandwidth and all-around inferior service.
You can get around quality-control and trojan problems by ensuring that as many people are using the same.torrent as possible. This way, the same.torrent can get loads of comments on sites like isohunt and btjunkie. People on there do virus-scans and +rep a clean.torrent. Similarly, if a.torrent is infected, people will flood the comments section with negative comments.
As for the ratio requirements, those are unnecessary on popular.torrents (.torrents which would be more popular if people on private trackers would join...). Seriously, every time I download a.torrent of Top Gear I have the whole 700 MB.avi downloaded before I can upload so much as 2 MB. And I have 7mb downstream / 1mb upstream DSL. My upstream bandwidth is just not being used. Conclusion: there are ample seeds already, my upload bandwidth is not needed.
Your distrust of AMD chips is well-founded; some of the older chips didn't cope so well with a failed heatsink/fan:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hot-spot,365-6.html
Modern AMD chips are fine, though. And why the Sempron bashing? My first PC was a cheapo $500 box I built for games. It had a $90 Sempron 64 that beat the pants off of the netburst Celerons out there in games like Doom 3, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, that kind of thing.
However, I'm under the impression that when Apple gave out licenses for clone manufacturers, they were basically giving them carte blanche to throw whatever hardware they wanted into the same box as long as it ran the Mac OS. Like you said, they'd use faster hardware or hardware that wasn't up to snuff.
It could be possible for Apple to impose more restrictions on a future cloning license. There's a chance that the result of these court battles will be that clone makers obtain free license to make whatever Mac clones they wish, including models with low build quality or software problems. I know Apple likes to tightly integrate the hardware/software experience, and I think it's necessary that they continue to do this to maintain quality (avoiding driver hell has always been a big plus with a Mac). However, maintaining this quality does not mean that they have to be the sole provider of hardware.
Apple could make license agreements with clone manufacturers where only certain hardware is allowed from a list that Apple specifies, to be updated as new parts are released. This would prevent the nightmare scenario of clone manufacturers throwing together unpredictable combinations of CPUs, motherboards, and video adapters and using 3rd-party drivers to hold it all together. As we've learned from Windows Vista, 3rd-party drivers don't always work so well when there's a new OS release.
By creating sane licensing agreements with cloners, Apple could expand their market share while avoiding a decrease in quality. This may be a necessity for their financial survival if Psystar wins more court cases against them.
Pretty much everything in a modern Mac (I'm talking anything from the late 90s on up) is interchangeable. A list of some of the generic parts I've bought from 3rd parties and installed in various Macs:
- CPUs (PPC and Intel) - Memory - Hard Drives - CD/DVD Drives - Video Cards
The list of modifications you cannot make to a Macintosh (at least, not in an economically sensible way):
- Motherboard replacement/swap - Power supply replacement/swap - Case replacement/swap
This is much like how you can buy a (WARNING! CAR ANALOGY...) Ford Mustang and swap out the motor, transmission, rear diff, wheels, etc. You can make major alterations but you cannot redo the whole thing (I'm of the understanding that neither Ford nor a 3rd party who caters to Ford owners will sell you a bare Mustang chassis or body).
Quote (emphasis mine): "For those that say "hah i got you zomgn00btard, I don't buy, I just download it from my bit torrents"....great you are STEALING."
Have fun paying high prices for something you'll never truly own. I only know a few people who have such a backwards view on filesharing as yourself. They're all above the age of 40, so I'm hoping that you and any others who can't understand such a simple difference will all be dead and gone within my lifetime.
I think I'll go out to eat tonight with the money I saved from downloading a movie this week instead of buying it. Then I'll watch the movie. I guess you'll just have to eat your stupid $20 plastic disc instead of food. Be sure to do that after you watch the movie, though (being a good little MPAA tool, you wouldn't consider ripping the DVD).
You might want to share this math with the press. It's a pretty solid case that the music industry is a bunch of crooks, and it would be a good counter to recording-industry propaganda press releases.
I was born in 1989, and I had unsupervised internet access starting around 1997 (when my parents first got dial-up). The first few times I was online, I was with my parents (just because we were in a group looking at this cool internet thing). A porn banner came up at one point during the group experience. I'm grateful this didn't launch my parents into knee-jerk lockdown mode. On the contrary, they just sat me down in the living room and talked to me for about 10 minutes. The gist of what they told me about the internet:
- Don't reveal your name, address, share photos of yourself, or do anything that identifies you (I didn't care; I already had enough friends at school. I didn't want to talk to anyone new online). - If someone asks you for this info, don't tell them, and stop talking to them (Same as above). - Don't look at porn; it's unrealistic and gross (I looked at porn anyway. It gave me a boner but I didn't even know what to do with it. After a while I got bored and went back to playing Quake). - Don't do anything illegal. If you're not sure about something, ask us (I downloaded a ton of warez off of Hotline servers, but that's in a legal gray area).
Overall, it was pretty laissez-faire. Just some warnings about what to avoid. But that was it... no monitoring software, no cyber-sitter bullshit, no "you can't use the computer if we're not in the room" rules. I was happy about the rules they set up. I'd often be at a friend's and we'd want to play an online game or something. We could hardly ever do it because all of my friends' parents were scared shitless about the internet by shows like 20/20 and Dateline. They'd insist on being in the room if we were going to be online. Sometimes I'd argue with other parents, using defenses like "We're not idiots; we know not to tell people where we live or who we are. Give us a break". This didn't do much other than result in some angry calls to my own parents. My best friend's dad was pretty computer literate and went all CIA on his son's internet use... logs checked weekly, blacklisted sites, the works. This treatment lasted all the way through senior year at high school! Worse yet, when I offered to hook my friend up with a proxy or VPN, he balked and said he didn't want to go against his parents' wishes. I feel sorry for anyone who's conditioned to think that total surveillance like this is at all reasonable.
Parents who monitor your children's browsing: I realize you just want what's best for your child, but remember that you are not a demigod and that your children are human beings with a right to see the world for themselves. Seriously. "Shielding" them from pedophiles and naughty pictures is like never letting your kid out of the house for fear of ticks and rattlesnakes. If you're worried your kid will see goatse and be scarred for life, then open a web browser, look at it together, and talk about it. Your kid will probably see it either way (after he moves out, if it comes to that), so you might as well take the initiative and put it in perspective to minimize any danger. I'm living proof that seeing rotten.com, goatse, playing Quake, and looking at porn (all at an early age) does not fuck you up.
Should I ever have kids, they'll get about the same treatment I got - they'll know they can do anything and everything that doesn't risk measurable physical harm. They'll know right away that screwing up this simple rule means no more internet until they've learned their lesson. Considering my own childhood 'net experience, I don't expect any problems. I'll do my best to foster in my children an unquenchable curiosity about all parts (good and bad) of life on planet Earth... doing otherwise would serve only to chisel away a little bit of their lives.
Prior to looking at porn, I honestly had NO CLUE that anyone would partake in anal sex. It sure wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. Seeing things like that led me to develop an academic interest in everything that I had never encountered in daily life
I'm 19. I never met a person in my HS graduating class who didn't know who The Beatles were. Dunno about Sinatra, but EVERYONE around here had at least a few Beatles songs on their iPod/Zune/Whatever.
Oh, except me. I think they're okay but rock n' roll isn't my thing anyway.
I've never watched Star Trek, so I don't really know what the voice sounds like.
*cringes as Slashdot community pelts him with rubbish*... But if you were to attempt this splicing project, wouldn't!? the voice. have all the - wrong... inflections?
A digital signal makes a big difference, after that, not so much.
Totally agree with this. I've been using analog CRT TV sets my whole life, and I only just got a digital TV converter box a couple months ago. Plugged it in, turned on the TV, and WHOA. Every digital broadcast, from 480p to 1080i, looked just as good as any DVD I've watched on the same set. I'm usually a real bitch about audio/video quality, but if I get more than 4 feet away from my 30" TV set, I can't tell the difference between a 480p broadcast on that thing and a 1080i movie preview on my PC monitor. Personally, I'm not wishing I had a better set or higher resolution. 480p on an old-tech TV set is plenty fine.
Why move to Mars?
Gee.
Maybe because it's ANOTHER. FUCKING. PLANET.
I'm only 19 years old. By current health standards I'm maybe 1/4 of the way through my life. And I'd give the rest of my life up, right now, for a one-way ticket to Mars. I don't care if I wouldn't come back to Earth, I don't care if I'd only live for a week or two on Mars before my food ran out. It's MARS.
Issue me a cyanide pill and I'll clock myself out right before my life support fails. I'll be dead and you'll be alive. But I'll have done more in my one week on Mars than any other 6+ billion people will ever accomplish in their pathetic little lives on Earth.
Don't get me wrong - If this kid is really guilty, I'd want to see him in jail for a long time.
But trying minors as adults just gives them the shaft two ways. The common belief is that minors have fewer rights, but also fewer responsibilities.
Why should this child be treated as a child in terms of the rights he is afforded, but treated like an adult in the responsibilities he has?
Once a disgruntled populace is armed, it is a threat. Until it is armed, it has no ability to combat the gov't by force, and so long as the gov't still have the ability to use the military to bully The People, The People will have to use force to achieve freedom.
If gun ownership is legal, it is possible for a populace to legally become a threat to the gov't. Though the process between acquisition and shooting is illegal, it still relies on an armed populace. Legal acquisition of arms is vastly preferable to illegal acquisition, as it would prevent uncle sam from seizing any shipments, hassling any rebels, etc. for owning a gun.
Yeah, conspiracy is illegal. So what? I'm assuming the rebels in this hypothetical case are jailed for communicating far less inflammatory things than conspiracy; that's what always happens when a state's gov't goes to hell. Any disgruntled people not already in jail would know to communicate rebellious plans face-to-face or in some manner (a code?) that the gov't could not intercept or trace. On the other hand, it's easy for a gov't to conduct random physical searches, see a gun stashed in a corner, and jail the owner / seize the weapon.
I guess the reason I'm responding is to ask: Do you disagree with my point, or are you just nit-picking?
I see this point a lot in discussions of the 2nd amendment and armed rebellion. Being able to legally own and purchase firearms makes it much, much easier to arm a rebel force, because every step of the process is legal right up until the shooting begins. The rebels can just go to their gun store, buy what they need, and be ready for action. It's much more attractive than smuggling guns and ammo hundreds (thousands?) of miles to reach everyone. If guns were illegal, those gun-owners who were caught would be disarmed or jailed, neutering their rebellious efforts.
Needlessly break backwards compatibility? What?
The only incompatibility like that I can think of is that one can't run a program written for OS 9 within OS X. Even then, Apple includes the "Classic" environment as a shell for old programs, which you can use if you're running PPC OS X.
Still, the OS 9 / OS X incompatibilty is hardly needless; OS X is a completely new operating system, not some minor revision.
Jesus christ what is wrong with people want murder die kill rawr....
Downloading music from the iTunes Music Store is *NOT* the only way to put music on the iPod, and anyone commenting on this story should fucking know that. Holy shit. Got an mp3 on your computer? Putting it in iTunes, and from there your iPod, is a matter of drag-and-drop. E-Z. Fucking morons.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah.
*Or* we could prescribe cannabis for the myriad of illnesses it treats and symptoms it alleviates. And it's so non-toxic no one has ever died from it, not once, not ever.
Just sayin'.
That viewpoint leads to some more sensitive issues, though.
For example, Forward-Looking-Infrared (FLIR). Police can use it from a public place (like a street) to get an idea of what's going on in your home (heat-wise, anyway). IIRC the supreme court has ruled that police cannot use FLIR on your home without a warrant as it would constitute a search.
Much like the visible-spectrum light that Google captures for Street View, the IR light the police can process is "just light". But the gov't holds them to be different (a decision that I support).
Stop trying to protect children from reality.
Word. My whole family uses T-Mobile prepaid phones. We even looked at the "family plans" the big evil phone companies offered. It was still cheaper for us to just get individual prepaid phones and use those. If you don't feel the need to yak yak yak all the time then prepaid is great. The cost/minute ratio is not as good as the plans where you buy an ungodly amount of minutes for a fixed monthly rate, but that's only if you actually USE all the minutes those people give you.
"With Pirate Bay shut down that means that uploaders will move on to better trackers - PRIAVTE trackers - which have higher quality control, fewer trojans, and ratio requirements."
Private trackers do have those assets, but on the whole I think they're inferior. Torrents work better as more users are on them. Requiring somebody to complete a membership just to download that season of Futurama will keep a lot of people out of the "gated community" that is a private tracker. That makes for lower bandwidth and all-around inferior service.
You can get around quality-control and trojan problems by ensuring that as many people are using the same .torrent as possible. This way, the same .torrent can get loads of comments on sites like isohunt and btjunkie. People on there do virus-scans and +rep a clean .torrent. Similarly, if a .torrent is infected, people will flood the comments section with negative comments.
As for the ratio requirements, those are unnecessary on popular .torrents (.torrents which would be more popular if people on private trackers would join...). Seriously, every time I download a .torrent of Top Gear I have the whole 700 MB .avi downloaded before I can upload so much as 2 MB. And I have 7mb downstream / 1mb upstream DSL. My upstream bandwidth is just not being used. Conclusion: there are ample seeds already, my upload bandwidth is not needed.
Your distrust of AMD chips is well-founded; some of the older chips didn't cope so well with a failed heatsink/fan: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hot-spot,365-6.html Modern AMD chips are fine, though. And why the Sempron bashing? My first PC was a cheapo $500 box I built for games. It had a $90 Sempron 64 that beat the pants off of the netburst Celerons out there in games like Doom 3, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, that kind of thing.
I agree with your analysis.
However, I'm under the impression that when Apple gave out licenses for clone manufacturers, they were basically giving them carte blanche to throw whatever hardware they wanted into the same box as long as it ran the Mac OS. Like you said, they'd use faster hardware or hardware that wasn't up to snuff.
It could be possible for Apple to impose more restrictions on a future cloning license. There's a chance that the result of these court battles will be that clone makers obtain free license to make whatever Mac clones they wish, including models with low build quality or software problems. I know Apple likes to tightly integrate the hardware/software experience, and I think it's necessary that they continue to do this to maintain quality (avoiding driver hell has always been a big plus with a Mac). However, maintaining this quality does not mean that they have to be the sole provider of hardware.
Apple could make license agreements with clone manufacturers where only certain hardware is allowed from a list that Apple specifies, to be updated as new parts are released. This would prevent the nightmare scenario of clone manufacturers throwing together unpredictable combinations of CPUs, motherboards, and video adapters and using 3rd-party drivers to hold it all together. As we've learned from Windows Vista, 3rd-party drivers don't always work so well when there's a new OS release.
By creating sane licensing agreements with cloners, Apple could expand their market share while avoiding a decrease in quality. This may be a necessity for their financial survival if Psystar wins more court cases against them.
Pretty much everything in a modern Mac (I'm talking anything from the late 90s on up) is interchangeable. A list of some of the generic parts I've bought from 3rd parties and installed in various Macs:
- CPUs (PPC and Intel)
- Memory
- Hard Drives
- CD/DVD Drives
- Video Cards
The list of modifications you cannot make to a Macintosh (at least, not in an economically sensible way):
- Motherboard replacement/swap
- Power supply replacement/swap
- Case replacement/swap
This is much like how you can buy a (WARNING! CAR ANALOGY...) Ford Mustang and swap out the motor, transmission, rear diff, wheels, etc. You can make major alterations but you cannot redo the whole thing (I'm of the understanding that neither Ford nor a 3rd party who caters to Ford owners will sell you a bare Mustang chassis or body).
Quote (emphasis mine): "For those that say "hah i got you zomgn00btard, I don't buy, I just download it from my bit torrents"....great you are STEALING."
Nitwit.
http://www.questioncopyright.org/cm/images/piracy-is-not-theft.jpg
Have fun paying high prices for something you'll never truly own. I only know a few people who have such a backwards view on filesharing as yourself. They're all above the age of 40, so I'm hoping that you and any others who can't understand such a simple difference will all be dead and gone within my lifetime.
I think I'll go out to eat tonight with the money I saved from downloading a movie this week instead of buying it. Then I'll watch the movie. I guess you'll just have to eat your stupid $20 plastic disc instead of food. Be sure to do that after you watch the movie, though (being a good little MPAA tool, you wouldn't consider ripping the DVD).
Good day to you.
Interesting.
You might want to share this math with the press. It's a pretty solid case that the music industry is a bunch of crooks, and it would be a good counter to recording-industry propaganda press releases.
I was born in 1989, and I had unsupervised internet access starting around 1997 (when my parents first got dial-up). The first few times I was online, I was with my parents (just because we were in a group looking at this cool internet thing). A porn banner came up at one point during the group experience. I'm grateful this didn't launch my parents into knee-jerk lockdown mode. On the contrary, they just sat me down in the living room and talked to me for about 10 minutes. The gist of what they told me about the internet:
- Don't reveal your name, address, share photos of yourself, or do anything that identifies you (I didn't care; I already had enough friends at school. I didn't want to talk to anyone new online).
- If someone asks you for this info, don't tell them, and stop talking to them (Same as above).
- Don't look at porn; it's unrealistic and gross (I looked at porn anyway. It gave me a boner but I didn't even know what to do with it. After a while I got bored and went back to playing Quake).
- Don't do anything illegal. If you're not sure about something, ask us (I downloaded a ton of warez off of Hotline servers, but that's in a legal gray area).
Overall, it was pretty laissez-faire. Just some warnings about what to avoid. But that was it... no monitoring software, no cyber-sitter bullshit, no "you can't use the computer if we're not in the room" rules. I was happy about the rules they set up. I'd often be at a friend's and we'd want to play an online game or something. We could hardly ever do it because all of my friends' parents were scared shitless about the internet by shows like 20/20 and Dateline. They'd insist on being in the room if we were going to be online. Sometimes I'd argue with other parents, using defenses like "We're not idiots; we know not to tell people where we live or who we are. Give us a break". This didn't do much other than result in some angry calls to my own parents. My best friend's dad was pretty computer literate and went all CIA on his son's internet use... logs checked weekly, blacklisted sites, the works. This treatment lasted all the way through senior year at high school! Worse yet, when I offered to hook my friend up with a proxy or VPN, he balked and said he didn't want to go against his parents' wishes. I feel sorry for anyone who's conditioned to think that total surveillance like this is at all reasonable.
Parents who monitor your children's browsing: I realize you just want what's best for your child, but remember that you are not a demigod and that your children are human beings with a right to see the world for themselves. Seriously. "Shielding" them from pedophiles and naughty pictures is like never letting your kid out of the house for fear of ticks and rattlesnakes. If you're worried your kid will see goatse and be scarred for life, then open a web browser, look at it together, and talk about it. Your kid will probably see it either way (after he moves out, if it comes to that), so you might as well take the initiative and put it in perspective to minimize any danger. I'm living proof that seeing rotten.com, goatse, playing Quake, and looking at porn (all at an early age) does not fuck you up.
Should I ever have kids, they'll get about the same treatment I got - they'll know they can do anything and everything that doesn't risk measurable physical harm. They'll know right away that screwing up this simple rule means no more internet until they've learned their lesson. Considering my own childhood 'net experience, I don't expect any problems. I'll do my best to foster in my children an unquenchable curiosity about all parts (good and bad) of life on planet Earth... doing otherwise would serve only to chisel away a little bit of their lives.
Prior to looking at porn, I honestly had NO CLUE that anyone would partake in anal sex. It sure wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. Seeing things like that led me to develop an academic interest in everything that I had never encountered in daily life
I'm 19. I never met a person in my HS graduating class who didn't know who The Beatles were. Dunno about Sinatra, but EVERYONE around here had at least a few Beatles songs on their iPod/Zune/Whatever.
Oh, except me. I think they're okay but rock n' roll isn't my thing anyway.
I've never watched Star Trek, so I don't really know what the voice sounds like.
*cringes as Slashdot community pelts him with rubbish* ... But if you were to attempt this splicing project, wouldn't!? the voice. have all the - wrong... inflections?
Are you kidding? There would be killer light shows.
A digital signal makes a big difference, after that, not so much.
Totally agree with this. I've been using analog CRT TV sets my whole life, and I only just got a digital TV converter box a couple months ago. Plugged it in, turned on the TV, and WHOA. Every digital broadcast, from 480p to 1080i, looked just as good as any DVD I've watched on the same set. I'm usually a real bitch about audio/video quality, but if I get more than 4 feet away from my 30" TV set, I can't tell the difference between a 480p broadcast on that thing and a 1080i movie preview on my PC monitor. Personally, I'm not wishing I had a better set or higher resolution. 480p on an old-tech TV set is plenty fine.
Why move to Mars? Gee. Maybe because it's ANOTHER. FUCKING. PLANET. I'm only 19 years old. By current health standards I'm maybe 1/4 of the way through my life. And I'd give the rest of my life up, right now, for a one-way ticket to Mars. I don't care if I wouldn't come back to Earth, I don't care if I'd only live for a week or two on Mars before my food ran out. It's MARS. Issue me a cyanide pill and I'll clock myself out right before my life support fails. I'll be dead and you'll be alive. But I'll have done more in my one week on Mars than any other 6+ billion people will ever accomplish in their pathetic little lives on Earth.
Why shouldn't IMs be logged? It's very easy to do, and if it's an IM conversation about company business, it seems like it should be.
I'm from Iowa.
Please don't get our hopes up like that.
Don't get me wrong - If this kid is really guilty, I'd want to see him in jail for a long time. But trying minors as adults just gives them the shaft two ways. The common belief is that minors have fewer rights, but also fewer responsibilities. Why should this child be treated as a child in terms of the rights he is afforded, but treated like an adult in the responsibilities he has?
I agree; there's no reason not to try him as an adult.
Oh wait, he's 17, and not an adult.
Derp.
You're technically right, but my point remains.
Once a disgruntled populace is armed, it is a threat. Until it is armed, it has no ability to combat the gov't by force, and so long as the gov't still have the ability to use the military to bully The People, The People will have to use force to achieve freedom.
If gun ownership is legal, it is possible for a populace to legally become a threat to the gov't. Though the process between acquisition and shooting is illegal, it still relies on an armed populace. Legal acquisition of arms is vastly preferable to illegal acquisition, as it would prevent uncle sam from seizing any shipments, hassling any rebels, etc. for owning a gun.
Yeah, conspiracy is illegal. So what? I'm assuming the rebels in this hypothetical case are jailed for communicating far less inflammatory things than conspiracy; that's what always happens when a state's gov't goes to hell. Any disgruntled people not already in jail would know to communicate rebellious plans face-to-face or in some manner (a code?) that the gov't could not intercept or trace. On the other hand, it's easy for a gov't to conduct random physical searches, see a gun stashed in a corner, and jail the owner / seize the weapon.
I guess the reason I'm responding is to ask: Do you disagree with my point, or are you just nit-picking?
I see this point a lot in discussions of the 2nd amendment and armed rebellion. Being able to legally own and purchase firearms makes it much, much easier to arm a rebel force, because every step of the process is legal right up until the shooting begins. The rebels can just go to their gun store, buy what they need, and be ready for action. It's much more attractive than smuggling guns and ammo hundreds (thousands?) of miles to reach everyone. If guns were illegal, those gun-owners who were caught would be disarmed or jailed, neutering their rebellious efforts.
Needlessly break backwards compatibility? What? The only incompatibility like that I can think of is that one can't run a program written for OS 9 within OS X. Even then, Apple includes the "Classic" environment as a shell for old programs, which you can use if you're running PPC OS X. Still, the OS 9 / OS X incompatibilty is hardly needless; OS X is a completely new operating system, not some minor revision.
Jesus christ what is wrong with people want murder die kill rawr....
Downloading music from the iTunes Music Store is *NOT* the only way to put music on the iPod, and anyone commenting on this story should fucking know that. Holy shit. Got an mp3 on your computer? Putting it in iTunes, and from there your iPod, is a matter of drag-and-drop. E-Z. Fucking morons.
I'd much rather drive to work in this Pinto than any Datsun.