Slightly different context though eh! 3.0 Ghz G5's didn't exist then and it was down to IBM (not Apple) to produce them. IBM failed. 3G chips for mobiles exists today and are a well established technology (in Europe anyway). So Apple's technical challenge is integration, not invention.
but what are the chances that instead, they will first be used for nuke missiles?
Absolutely Zero. Even if Iran were able to develop an effective nuclear deterrent in the next 10 years (cos that's how long all the experts reckon) they will never use it against the USA. It will be the cold war all over again, which has been provento be effective. i.e. no one dares to make the first shot for fear of massive retaliation. Iran are struggling very hard to become a major economic power for fuck sake. Or don't you get any "inside Iran" TV coverage where you are? Nuclear suicide is so not on their agenda. What they want is economic prosperity and an independent nuclear is an essential part of that, just like it is for the rest of the developed world!
Be realistic, now
You're the one being unrealistic. Stop believing all the propaganda bullshit the US government is spewing out. They have a well documented (recent) history of making up stories and bending the truth.
What we have learned to date is that Microsoft will never have to pay anything like this kind of penalty. Even if they are guilty, they have already demonstrated their ability to heap appeal on top of appeal until many years from now, technology advancements will have moved the goal posts, effectively rendering the original claim irrelevant.
Their mastery of the legal system is so complete that were Eliot Ness alive today, Microsoft would be the principal nemesis in The Untouchables 2.
Amazing isn't it. As a UK citizen I used to think that America was this democratic utopia of free trade, where healthy competition between companies resulted in the best deal for customers anywhere. I mean, your prices are so much lower than ours, so it must work right?
I remember first becoming aware that things weren't quite right when (several years ago) I read about the dysfunctional state of the cell phone network across the USA, and the fact that I could send SMS messages to come people, but not to others because of interoperability's between network vendors. Then I learned about the draconian restrictions the cell phone networks place on their customers, like multi-year tie in clauses and crippled phone functionality.
But the scales really got knocked from my eyes when the California blackouts happened in 2000, caused by Enron's manipulative energy trading. People died because of that. What a mess!
Now I read about this. What went wrong guys? Capitalism was never supposed to be as f*cked up as this.
Ah ok. I can understand that. You'll just have to keep your fingers crossed for a change of government over here soon then. As with all government parties that stay in power too long (10 years now) eventually after a number of initial successes they loose perspective think they've got the Midas touch. Then they stop listening to the people who voted them in, the parties loonies take over the place and it all goes to rat shit.
They shouldn't have been voted in again last time ( anti-war sentiment and all ) except the main opposition parties were in complete disarray, so they kind of won by default. Next time will be different though. Labour have got a serious fight on their hands as the Conservatives are lean, mean and focused again with a shiny new leader. Shame about the Lib-Dem's though; they always sound sensible and offer a genuine 3rd way. But they've got an animated corpse running their party, so it's a two horse race next time.
It's not children in pubs and restaurants in the presence of their parents that need to be curtailed, it's the children who by hook or by crook get their hands on alcohol originating from high street outlets. As I said to another poster; pubs, clubs and restaurants are designed to cater for people who drink. The public streets are not.
We've lived with the current system of censorship by guessing someone's age for as long as I can remember, and it patently doesn't work and needs to change. I thought I was onto something with the ID cards, but I must admit I hadn't thought about the effect on tourists or other visiting non-nationals. Maybe the scheme could be expanded to include passports then. Or should the majority continue to suffer the status quo just so we can please the few passing through?
Unfortunately I don't see any evidence that the (UK) government today (present, or in waiting) have the length of vision, understanding or political will power to tackle that one. You're talking about a sea change in the way the government interacts with families and schools. And today, the billions they would need to spend to do this they would rather spend on war.
Maybe in a few generations people will have grown so sick of feeding wars that future politicians will see things differently. Don't think it'll happen in our life times though. In the mean time we do what we can with what we have available.
Which sound like something fairly easy to fake - once it's broken, teens will be lining up for fake IDs
We're assuming the card data is recorded in ROM so the data can't be modified right. So the only option is buy blanks and make your own. These cards aren't cheap to make or to buy. They're not dumb cards that can be churned out by the thousand with a half decent printer from PC World. Most kids aren't going to have access to the kind of equipment or software needed to interface with the cards, and you can bet that the government will be tracking sale of that kind of hardware for "security purposes". So I don't believe this is even a valid counter argument.
How does it make it easier? All the police will know is that some random adult was involved. Just walking down the street I get asked by random teens to buy them alcohol or cigarettes - so the kids may have no who bought them the drink, nor is it in their interest to give an accurate description
Yeah I've had that experience too. And I've just said no the same way most people do. My own experiences growing up is that kids usually ask people they know and that the shop managers over time get to know who's involved. I dated and lived with a girl for a time who ran a convenience store in London, and she used to tell me all this stuff.
She shouldn't have.....
I know, it pissed me off and other people she knew. But that's the law!
I don't think there's much benefit from cracking down on them either. The more you make them feel like criminals, the more they're going to tend to criminal behaviour.
Huh? how is not allowing underage kids access to alcohol the same as making them feel like criminals? Tying the ID scheme to this just re-inforces the message they're not old enough yet, plus makes it more difficult to get round. It's not criminalizing anyone.
Also, how do you explain why it's so destructive to go drinking on my 17th birthday, but not destructive (at least, not considered destructive enough to warrant being illegal) on my 18th or any birthday thereafter? I never found drinking to be destructive, either before I was 18, or after.
Because on your 18th birthday you can go into bars and clubs and other places specially designed for you to get trashed (with cameras, bouncers, etc). But before then you have to hang out on street corners which means you get to smash bottles in places where other kids play, people walk or drive their cars, throw stones at people's windows, smash the wing mirrors on their cars, scratch the paint, and get into street fights with other kids near by. Do you want me to go on, or are you saying there should be no legal age limit to drink? Because that's a completely different argument.
You yanks are all bleating on about how bad this is and how high these figures are. What makes you think your own government is being any less nosy about your affairs? Ignorance is bliss:)
If the cards aren't linked to a computer network, how do you know that the cards are valid?
The design states that the biometric information is first captured on a central database, but then transfered to a microchip on the card itself. The standalone authenticator has to marry the biometric data of the card holder with the card contents. If the check registers positive then the card is valid.
How do you stop an 18 year old buying alcohol for his underage mates?
In theory you can't stop an adult from giving alcohol to someone underage. But with a card protected sales ban the Police will know the kids had to have got it from an adult and that's where they can direct their enquiries, so it'll be easier to police than today. Any adult caught doing this can be prosecuted under existing laws. In addition, shops can already bar adults they suspect of doing this.
Also, what's the point of checking everybody's age? It's fairly obvious that most people are over 18 (I certainly don't look underage) or well under
No it's not and especially not with girls who are increasingly looking older and older for their years. I know a lady who lost her job at a convenience store last year because the DTI did a sting on the shop where she worked and sent in a 17 year old girl to buy some alcohol. My friend didn't have a clue, she was tired after a long shift, guessed wrong, lost her job and got taken to court for supplying alcohol to a minor. We know from studies that this happens a lot, and in many cases it's the shop owners who just don't give a dam and bother to check.
Think about the other side of the coin too. i.e. those people who look younger than 18 but aren't. Physical appearance is unreliable so why should they by penalised?
Underage drinking isn't the cause of problems with young people in the UK - it's a symptom of deeper problems
I agree it's not the cause of their problems, but it doesn't fix their problems either. There isn't a single positive benefit to letting underage kids drink. It's usually very destructive, both for them and the people around them.
..which I think would be an excellent idea. We have a big problem with underage drinking in the UK, both inside and outside the pubs. I think the government should be made illegal to be able to buy alcohol without a biometric ID card that proves your age.
Each alcohol outlet would be equipped with a cheap, inexpensive standalone card reader that does no more than authenticate the card and illuminate a red or green light. To protect your privacy it should not be connected to any kind of computer or network so that nothing about what you buy can be recorded.
If every licensed premises in the UK had one of these then it would significantly reduce the instances of underage drinking and related juvenile crime.
There is also the question of whether Oracle would be allowed legally to just compile their patched versions of Redhat's source RPMs and offer them up over the internet to external customers. I think they would have to strip out all mention of Redhat from the source to prevent copyright infringement the same way that CentOS does.
I wonder if there are any Oracle linux customers out there who could chip in on this conversation and tell us what Oracle are really up to.
Re-brand and sell Red Hat? Don't think so. Sell support for Redhat, yes. That's not the same as re-branding it.
The big problem with Oracle selling support for Redhat is this. If a customer discovers a bug in Redhat that requires a code fix and reports it to Oracle, who gets to fix it, Redhat or Oracle? "Oracle" I hear you say, because they have access to the source code.
That's all well and good, but what guarantees do you have as an Oracle customer that Oracle's fix is going to be included in Redhat's source tree? Answer: none! Redhat aren't beholden to you or Oracle, because you don't have a support contract with them.
So the next time you run up2date or upgrade to the next Redhat errata, what happens? Your application breaks again because your Oracle specific patches aren't in the Redhat code tree.
The only solution for Oracle is to run their own patch servers so that with every errata Redhat ships they can apply their own code fixes before allowing you (their customer) to update. What a headache for Oracle! Think of the overhead they have to swallow. The admin costs. The server environment costs. The developer costs. The QA costs - assuming they bother to QA the Redhat updates after they've changed them (cos Redhat won't).
And Oracle are supposed to do all this and run a profitable support service for less money than Redhat? Bollocks they can!
Enjoy your unified Oracle support while you can, because I don't see it lasting very long.
Oh we're humour impaired are we? Well considering no one moderated you funny, and the only two people to reply didn't get it, I guess your humour appeals to a minority of one!
Here's a little hint for the future. When cracking a (very) non-obvious joke, it's usually polite to give the reader a hint my using an emoticon.
It's going to be real interesting to watch this over the next year and see how it all pans out. Part of me hopes there's enough profit margin for them to maneuver on the price to find the sweet spot. Another part of me thinks that Apple are not stupid and must've done their market research and be convinced they can do it at this price. Yet another part of me thinks, dam, this is such a hot device I'll sell my aging parents for spare parts and buy it anyway;-)
Perhaps they're pricing it so high because they want to:
establish the iPhone as a luxury (desirable) item in the minds of consumers
artificially restrict demand until they can ramp up production volumes
Then sometime later they'll announce price drops and stoke up product demand.
Well anyway, thanks for the chat. It's been nice talking to you about this. Take care.
I will be very surprised if the iPhone-with-contract debuts in the UK for less than £350, and very, very surprised if it ever drops below £250
Yeah but there isn't a single contract phone price over here. It depends on the price plan of the contract you have. For example look at what Orange currently offer their existing customers. The most expensive phone they do for an upgrade contract is the Sony Ericsson W950i. You can look at shop.orange.co.uk and see for yourself. It has 4GB memory (they say up to 4,000 songs) and touch screen navigation so it's not that dissimilar to an iPhone and is one of the phones that Apple will be competing with. The upgrade price goes from £50-£250 depending on the contract you're on. I expect my contract puts me close to the £50 end of that.
Apple and the mobile telco's can only sell the iPhone at a price the market will bear. Expecting people with contracts like me who are used to paying £50 extra to get the best mobile phone Orange has to offer, to pay £250-£350 instead just doesn't cut it. Especially if that becomes an annual upgrade cost. It's going to have to be less than that, or alternatively the phone is going to have to last 2 years. If the UK version comes out with HSDPA support, then 2 years is a possibility.
Lastly, you also need to bear in mind that the UK mobile market is fiercely competitive. No single telco is going to get iPhone exclusivity over here, or the others would run screaming to the European Commission for breach of competition law. It's this competition between them that ensures UK customers get good deals. For example we've never had our phones bluetooth crippled, or been forced into 24 month contracts. And I think this will help to keep the iPhone price down too.
Thanks for your comments. What I should have said (meant to say) is that I don't expect to pay more than the price of the top Vid iPod because I expect my mobile phone provider to swallow the rest of the cost. Hopefully it will cost even less.
Here's how things stack up at the moment for the top end Vid iPod (converting everything into £'s):
UK Price.. £259 USA price.. £179
So the UK "gullable" Tax is £80 ($156) over the top of the USA price. Add this to the top end 8GB iPhone (cos that's what I would be looking at) $599+$156 = $755 = £387
Now factor this in. Just before Christmas I upgraded my phone from a K750i to a K800i with Orange and signed a new 12 month agreement. It cost me nothing because of the plan I'm on. A Pay-as-you-go K800i from Orange (no contract) costs £220 ($428) so we can assume that is the cost they are prepared to bear to secure my annual renewal.
£387-£220 = £108.. so I'm expecting to pay £108 minimum when I'm eligible to upgrade again next christmas. However, this doesn't factor in the true cost of the iPhone to the carriers. I believe the $599 price is already discounted by Cingular though by how much I don't know. So I might get charged a bit more than that. They could charge me up to the value of the equivalent Vid iPod (£259) except for one thing. I renew my contract and upgrade my phone with Orange every year. I will not renew it every year if I'm going to stung with a £259 "tax" for the privilege of getting the latest iPhone. What I'll do instead is look at the other service providers to see where I can get an iPhone on a new customer deal for less money. So the Mobile Telco's are going to have to be very careful how they play this one.
Apple won their market position by making a product liked by a lot of people because they marketed it very carefully around the "cool" factor
You claim to have been in the computing industry for 25 years, so you aught to know by know that a good marketing campaign is an essential part of any successful product launch. You can't expect any product to succeed on just its own technical merits without good marketing. It doesn't happen that way.
You should google some of the early reviews of the iPod. They loved its small footprint for the quantity of songs it held, but most of all they loved the scroll wheel. So it was a combination of good design + good marketing.
Well, you're partly right, I guess. I've used Windows over the years as a gaming platform and to provide compatibility with some stuff I do at work, I also do some general desktop work with it. But it's not my main OS.
Yeah right. That's pretty much what the majority of MS users do with Windows for the majority of the time. Or are you brave enough to share this mystery OS with us?
And that's more than I've ever done with any Apple products. I've seen them, played with them but never found a reason to actually want to go buy any of their products
Unless you've spent some time in an Apple Store, or have a friend who's has one and is prepared to show you, then passing one on a display in PC World or John Lewis is not going to give you any real insight at all.
Yes, hard to believe but Apple could disappear from this time/space continuum completely and it would have zero effect on anything that I do
So what. 10's of millions of people around the word disagree with you. For us, the work that Apple do makes our lifes easier and more enjoyable.
I accuse you of either jumping on the anti-Apple band wagon because you think it makes you look "cool", or being bitter and twisted because Apple users get an enjoyment out of their products that you will never get to share.
Listening to you it seems that not everyone needs brain cells either. Does the iTunes application slap DRM onto a WAV, MP3 or Ogg files ( (inc plugin) when you import them. Umm, let me see.... hell NO! So it behaves exactly the same way as Lsong's in that regard.
But by your definition, Apple have reached the minimum criteria for possible investigation for antitrust issues
And you conveniently forget that Apple came late to the digital music party, but won their market position by producing a better product than the competition; not by leveraging a dominant desktop (because they don't have one) or by using the kind of illegal tactics employed by Microsoft.
Apple deserve their iTunes/iPod position in the market place, because they've out engineered everyone else, and produced a product that 90 million customers actually want.
I think you'll find that if you remove those "Apple-tinted" spectacles for a moment, you'll clearly see that piece of Steve Jobs' faeces on the end of your nose...
Oh pull your head out of Bill G's ass and stop being such a sanctimonious prick!
Apple probably instead refuses to invest the programming hours to come up with a solution that flags whether encryption is required or not,
It's a given that encryption happens on the client side (using the users iTunes user account keys) so any optional do/don't DRM flag would have to be embedded in the file and transmitted (unencrypted) from Apple to your PC/Mac. DVD Jon would live this!
Just how long do you think it would take him (or someone just like him) to sniff out the flag and insert a filter to turn it off for all downloads by default. Answer: not long at all.
I'm sure that DVD Jon knows this fully well, so his "encouragement" to Apple is completely self serving. It has to be all or nothing, or hackers like DJ will rip the floor out from underneath them.
Slashdot Mirror
Slightly different context though eh! 3.0 Ghz G5's didn't exist then and it was down to IBM (not Apple) to produce them. IBM failed. 3G chips for mobiles exists today and are a well established technology (in Europe anyway). So Apple's technical challenge is integration, not invention.
What we have learned to date is that Microsoft will never have to pay anything like this kind of penalty. Even if they are guilty, they have already demonstrated their ability to heap appeal on top of appeal until many years from now, technology advancements will have moved the goal posts, effectively rendering the original claim irrelevant.
Their mastery of the legal system is so complete that were Eliot Ness alive today, Microsoft would be the principal nemesis in The Untouchables 2.
Amazing isn't it. As a UK citizen I used to think that America was this democratic utopia of free trade, where healthy competition between companies resulted in the best deal for customers anywhere. I mean, your prices are so much lower than ours, so it must work right?
I remember first becoming aware that things weren't quite right when (several years ago) I read about the dysfunctional state of the cell phone network across the USA, and the fact that I could send SMS messages to come people, but not to others because of interoperability's between network vendors. Then I learned about the draconian restrictions the cell phone networks place on their customers, like multi-year tie in clauses and crippled phone functionality.
But the scales really got knocked from my eyes when the California blackouts happened in 2000, caused by Enron's manipulative energy trading. People died because of that. What a mess!
Now I read about this. What went wrong guys? Capitalism was never supposed to be as f*cked up as this.
My (only) desktop these days is OS X, so that's a very interesting link for me. Thanks!
Ah ok. I can understand that. You'll just have to keep your fingers crossed for a change of government over here soon then. As with all government parties that stay in power too long (10 years now) eventually after a number of initial successes they loose perspective think they've got the Midas touch. Then they stop listening to the people who voted them in, the parties loonies take over the place and it all goes to rat shit.
They shouldn't have been voted in again last time ( anti-war sentiment and all ) except the main opposition parties were in complete disarray, so they kind of won by default. Next time will be different though. Labour have got a serious fight on their hands as the Conservatives are lean, mean and focused again with a shiny new leader. Shame about the Lib-Dem's though; they always sound sensible and offer a genuine 3rd way. But they've got an animated corpse running their party, so it's a two horse race next time.
It's not children in pubs and restaurants in the presence of their parents that need to be curtailed, it's the children who by hook or by crook get their hands on alcohol originating from high street outlets. As I said to another poster; pubs, clubs and restaurants are designed to cater for people who drink. The public streets are not.
We've lived with the current system of censorship by guessing someone's age for as long as I can remember, and it patently doesn't work and needs to change. I thought I was onto something with the ID cards, but I must admit I hadn't thought about the effect on tourists or other visiting non-nationals. Maybe the scheme could be expanded to include passports then. Or should the majority continue to suffer the status quo just so we can please the few passing through?
Maybe you can suggest an alternative?
Unfortunately I don't see any evidence that the (UK) government today (present, or in waiting) have the length of vision, understanding or political will power to tackle that one. You're talking about a sea change in the way the government interacts with families and schools. And today, the billions they would need to spend to do this they would rather spend on war.
Maybe in a few generations people will have grown so sick of feeding wars that future politicians will see things differently. Don't think it'll happen in our life times though. In the mean time we do what we can with what we have available.
You yanks are all bleating on about how bad this is and how high these figures are. What makes you think your own government is being any less nosy about your affairs? Ignorance is bliss
Think about the other side of the coin too. i.e. those people who look younger than 18 but aren't. Physical appearance is unreliable so why should they by penalised?I agree it's not the cause of their problems, but it doesn't fix their problems either. There isn't a single positive benefit to letting underage kids drink. It's usually very destructive, both for them and the people around them.
Each alcohol outlet would be equipped with a cheap, inexpensive standalone card reader that does no more than authenticate the card and illuminate a red or green light. To protect your privacy it should not be connected to any kind of computer or network so that nothing about what you buy can be recorded.
If every licensed premises in the UK had one of these then it would significantly reduce the instances of underage drinking and related juvenile crime.
There is also the question of whether Oracle would be allowed legally to just compile their patched versions of Redhat's source RPMs and offer them up over the internet to external customers. I think they would have to strip out all mention of Redhat from the source to prevent copyright infringement the same way that CentOS does.
I wonder if there are any Oracle linux customers out there who could chip in on this conversation and tell us what Oracle are really up to.
Re-brand and sell Red Hat? Don't think so. Sell support for Redhat, yes. That's not the same as re-branding it.
The big problem with Oracle selling support for Redhat is this. If a customer discovers a bug in Redhat that requires a code fix and reports it to Oracle, who gets to fix it, Redhat or Oracle? "Oracle" I hear you say, because they have access to the source code.
That's all well and good, but what guarantees do you have as an Oracle customer that Oracle's fix is going to be included in Redhat's source tree? Answer: none! Redhat aren't beholden to you or Oracle, because you don't have a support contract with them.
So the next time you run up2date or upgrade to the next Redhat errata, what happens? Your application breaks again because your Oracle specific patches aren't in the Redhat code tree.
The only solution for Oracle is to run their own patch servers so that with every errata Redhat ships they can apply their own code fixes before allowing you (their customer) to update. What a headache for Oracle! Think of the overhead they have to swallow. The admin costs. The server environment costs. The developer costs. The QA costs - assuming they bother to QA the Redhat updates after they've changed them (cos Redhat won't).
And Oracle are supposed to do all this and run a profitable support service for less money than Redhat? Bollocks they can!
Enjoy your unified Oracle support while you can, because I don't see it lasting very long.
Oh we're humour impaired are we? Well considering no one moderated you funny, and the only two people to reply didn't get it, I guess your humour appeals to a minority of one!
Here's a little hint for the future. When cracking a (very) non-obvious joke, it's usually polite to give the reader a hint my using an emoticon.
Haha, love the cartoon. You didn't read it properly though did you.
Unfortunately he was right and you just "corrected" him with the wrong spelling. You must feel pretty silly right about now.
struck down by his evil undead nemesis Rictus Stalemate, a Greater Power Lich with a hideous visage and devious mind.
It's going to be real interesting to watch this over the next year and see how it all pans out. Part of me hopes there's enough profit margin for them to maneuver on the price to find the sweet spot. Another part of me thinks that Apple are not stupid and must've done their market research and be convinced they can do it at this price. Yet another part of me thinks, dam, this is such a hot device I'll sell my aging parents for spare parts and buy it anyway
Perhaps they're pricing it so high because they want to:
- establish the iPhone as a luxury (desirable) item in the minds of consumers
- artificially restrict demand until they can ramp up production volumes
Then sometime later they'll announce price drops and stoke up product demand.Well anyway, thanks for the chat. It's been nice talking to you about this. Take care.
Apple and the mobile telco's can only sell the iPhone at a price the market will bear. Expecting people with contracts like me who are used to paying £50 extra to get the best mobile phone Orange has to offer, to pay £250-£350 instead just doesn't cut it. Especially if that becomes an annual upgrade cost. It's going to have to be less than that, or alternatively the phone is going to have to last 2 years. If the UK version comes out with HSDPA support, then 2 years is a possibility.
Lastly, you also need to bear in mind that the UK mobile market is fiercely competitive. No single telco is going to get iPhone exclusivity over here, or the others would run screaming to the European Commission for breach of competition law. It's this competition between them that ensures UK customers get good deals. For example we've never had our phones bluetooth crippled, or been forced into 24 month contracts. And I think this will help to keep the iPhone price down too.
NB: Today's exchange rate is 1 USD = 0.512995 GBP
.. £259 .. £179
.. so I'm expecting to pay £108 minimum when I'm eligible to upgrade again next christmas. However, this doesn't factor in the true cost of the iPhone to the carriers. I believe the $599 price is already discounted by Cingular though by how much I don't know. So I might get charged a bit more than that. They could charge me up to the value of the equivalent Vid iPod (£259) except for one thing. I renew my contract and upgrade my phone with Orange every year. I will not renew it every year if I'm going to stung with a £259 "tax" for the privilege of getting the latest iPhone. What I'll do instead is look at the other service providers to see where I can get an iPhone on a new customer deal for less money. So the Mobile Telco's are going to have to be very careful how they play this one.
;-)
Thanks for your comments. What I should have said (meant to say) is that I don't expect to pay more than the price of the top Vid iPod because I expect my mobile phone provider to swallow the rest of the cost. Hopefully it will cost even less.
Here's how things stack up at the moment for the top end Vid iPod (converting everything into £'s):
UK Price
USA price
So the UK "gullable" Tax is £80 ($156) over the top of the USA price. Add this to the top end 8GB iPhone (cos that's what I would be looking at) $599+$156 = $755 = £387
Now factor this in. Just before Christmas I upgraded my phone from a K750i to a K800i with Orange and signed a new 12 month agreement. It cost me nothing because of the plan I'm on. A Pay-as-you-go K800i from Orange (no contract) costs £220 ($428) so we can assume that is the cost they are prepared to bear to secure my annual renewal.
£387-£220 = £108
Hope you're not too confused after that
You should google some of the early reviews of the iPod. They loved its small footprint for the quantity of songs it held, but most of all they loved the scroll wheel. So it was a combination of good design + good marketing.Yeah right. That's pretty much what the majority of MS users do with Windows for the majority of the time. Or are you brave enough to share this mystery OS with us?Unless you've spent some time in an Apple Store, or have a friend who's has one and is prepared to show you, then passing one on a display in PC World or John Lewis is not going to give you any real insight at all.So what. 10's of millions of people around the word disagree with you. For us, the work that Apple do makes our lifes easier and more enjoyable.
I accuse you of either jumping on the anti-Apple band wagon because you think it makes you look "cool", or being bitter and twisted because Apple users get an enjoyment out of their products that you will never get to share.
Do your research, twit !
Apple deserve their iTunes/iPod position in the market place, because they've out engineered everyone else, and produced a product that 90 million customers actually want.Oh pull your head out of Bill G's ass and stop being such a sanctimonious prick!
Just how long do you think it would take him (or someone just like him) to sniff out the flag and insert a filter to turn it off for all downloads by default. Answer: not long at all.
I'm sure that DVD Jon knows this fully well, so his "encouragement" to Apple is completely self serving. It has to be all or nothing, or hackers like DJ will rip the floor out from underneath them.