It's functional enough, but it gets mind-numbingly confusing very quickly.
We have a fix for this problem - IPv6. Let's deploy it, instead of continuing to deploy workarounds and hacks. It may mean a bigger initial investment, but the long-term costs are going to be a lot lower. Less/simpler maintenance, and fewer problems when it really matters. Have you ever seen what happens when sales departments rely on those kinds of things? I have, and I'd seen deals die because the product simply couldn't be demoed (let alone actually having the sales process really start) due to network issues. That only needs to happen a couple of times before you're losing money.
Granted I'm oversimplifying things tremendously, but the switch will happen eventually so you might as well start now and iron out the bugs sooner rather than later. It's not like an either/or situation - you can support both at once.
Until you go insane trying to remember your port mappings when trying access services on a specific machine behind the firewall. Maybe you enjoy having to remember that IP:5900 maps to VNC on your main system,:5901 to the laptop,:5902 to the fileserver, etc. I tend to find it a bit annoying. Especially as almost all of my systems have VNC, SSH, FTP, HTTP, and a couple of other services running, so I need to remember which port maps to maps to a certain service on a certain machine. Short of setting up some sort of domain controller that would make subdomain-based conversions that achieve the same effect (beyond my current scope of knowledge, never mind the pointless hardware costs)... it's just a pain in the ass.
Of course this isn't a problem for the typical home user, but as remote access protocols and systems become increasingly common among normal users (think Back to my Mac, except functional) it'll become a problem very quickly. There may still be firewall issues, but at least you won't have to worry about port collisions when accessing things outside of the local network.
As to Firehed... If you buy a book and then lose that book or accidentally set it on fire then do you think you have a right to another copy? You paid for your copy, you ruined/lost/destroyed it, you then have to buy another one. The same thing goes with the CD. Your argument only strengthens my point that once you obtain your copy you are responsible for preserving it. I don't prescribe to their notion of licensing and fair use supports me.
I agree, when you're buying physical property. According to the music industry, we're not buying music but in fact are buying a license to listen to said music. Moreover, they've been claiming that we're buying a license to listen to music under specific conditions only. Either I'm getting a CD/tape/LP/8-track/download that contains music where protecting the product and its contents are my responsibility (which gives me legal authority to make as many backups as I deem necessary, so long as I'm not distributing those backups), or I'm buying a license to use the content.
I like supporting artists and content providers, but if I'm buying a license to play back that content rather than the content itself (mind you, me buying content doesn't give me redistribution rights, though I would have resale rights as I'd give up my own copy), then I will not buy unless I have unlimited rights to play back the content I've licensed whenever and however the hell I want. That means on my iPod, my phone, my desktop, my laptop, my TV, and any other device capable of audio or video playback.
If they're going to insist on selling a playback license bound to my possession of a piece of physical media (or series of bits) that I don't have permission to protect or otherwise back up, then they're not getting my money.
Short version: I'm never buying another product with DRM, period. I've been burned more than often enough to say "fuck it." If they won't offer me reasonable terms for the purchase, I'm taking my money somewhere else.
As soon as you start coding for a specific GPU you're going to be treating PCs like consoles. I don't care to have to buy multiple graphics cards to play various games.
And yet somehow, there's a tremendous amount of GPU-specific optimization code present in every game out there. It may not be a complete codebase rewrite, but it's not as simple as $quality = ($gpu == 'fast') ? 'high' : 'low'; regardless of brand, generation, speed, etc.
If you subscribe to their notion that you're purchasing a license to listen rather than a copy of the music, then yes, they should absolutely replace broken/damaged/lost media. I think there's a saying involving cake about their approach...
will lie to a questionnaire until they get power to do whatever they want, the Republican TrollMods come out of the woodwork to call it "troll", rather than actually try to prove I'm wrong. Because they can't.
Lying to gain power isn't just another Replibican dirty trick. Obama has already sold out on at least half dozen fairly significant issues - hell, he did it before even getting the nomination. This is bipartisan bullshit, and thinking otherwise is dangerously ignorant.
That sounds remarkably Fight Club-ish (yes, I know, rules 1 and 2 - I'm not a member, I can break them).
Where does that leave us? Osama is a schitzo with an obesession for Ikea furniture and a junkie girlfriend, and all we need to do is wait for him to kill his alter ego and this whole thing will work itself out?
Forget the lead-laced toys from China - watch out for the soap from the middle east.
Wait, you start by knocking conspiracy theorists and then go on to state that half of their reasoning (bullshit war, creating evidence/ignoring facts, etc) is accurate?
His "point" is about license validation, not security, and is pretty absurd when you consider that he'd rather have his OS creator not acknowledge bugs than require clients to provide license authentication before they receive updates (which, by the way, are included in the licence price). As for his dig at MS not including functionality for WPA2, this really is wrong: for a start, and as I have said before, when you buy a licence for Windows, this includes these updates
Who said anything about my preference on acknowledging bugs? It's a general trend in any company that has shareholders, including both Apple and Microsoft, that they don't admit to problems until they've been fixed. I think it's stupid from both companies, but they may actually be legally required to act that way due to certain laws that govern publicly traded corporations - you can't intentionally decrease shareholder value, and I'd suggest (though not necessarily agree) that publicly acknowledging a security issue would do just that.
Neither you nor the GP has discussed a Windows security hole.
Windows not supporting WPA2 at all out of the box (like 2.1 iPod Touches) isn't a security hole? Either it's a problem for both companies or it's a problem for neither. Microsoft had the problem a long time ago and consequently fixed it some time ago; Apple's had the problem since last Tuesday and will almost certainly address it in the next software update. I merely pointed out that in order to get the equivalent security patch on the Microsoft platform, you need to authenticate your software. They have every right to do that. I'm honestly surprised that they don't cut off updates entirely for non-validating systems - assuming that the software was validly flagged as non-paid, they have no entitlement whatsoever to any updates.
I'm NOT siding with Apple here. I'm a Mac user, but I give them shit equally to any other company or organization when they deserve it. This shouldn't have slipped through, but bugs happen. They'll fix it and that'll be the end of it.
And an opt-out option, FFS (if not making the tool opt-in). And I mean that across all browsers, not just MSIE8 and Chrome.
I hope it would be safe to assume that when you've got porn mode enabled (err, I mean private browsing) that this data transfer wouldn't happen regardless of whether you've opted-in/out.
What, does "freelancer" not mean anything to you? That's a pretty damn stupid way to look at things. Look for small gigs on craigslist and freelance job boards. There's no major time commitment, can be done anywhere that you bring a computer, and is reasonably lucrative if you write good code (or make attractive designs, whatever).
This is the magic of running a business as something than a sole proprietorship (which I assure you Valve is doing). Customers can sue the company for whatever reason, but the employees themselves and their assets (from the janitorial staff through the C-level execs) are completely protected*. If the company falls over dead one day, precisely what do you expect to receive as the result of winning a class-action? They have no assets for you to collect on. Maybe you could pick up a cardboard cutout of Gordon Freeman that was inadvertently left in a closet. They may not even have enough remaining infrastructure to release that patch that frees everything, never mind have any money left to pay out lawsuit winnings (oh the beauty of bankruptcy). With luck, one of their former coders could whip something together and throw it on TPB, but that could well be the extent of it.
I don't see this happening to Steam for quite some time, but it applies pretty much everywhere. Dealing with a dying company isn't likely to accomplish a whole lot.
*Protected from lawsuits relating to their employer, anyways. Obviously if they've personally wronged you, it's a different story.
That's great if you're fine with playing it in a few days, or maybe your torrent performance is always fantastic on all torrents. I grabbed the torrent of Spore, and after waiting for several hours while doing other stuff, it was still at 1% or so (I was averaging under 5kbps - yes, my settings are fine, other torrents can zip right along). I got fed up to the point where I just went out and bought the thing. Popped it in the drive, installed, done, playing before the torrent hit 5%, and played through most of the game before 10%. It finally finished up a couple of days ago.
Point being that when I want to play a game, I'm looking for something that I can play _now_, not wait hours or days for a download to complete to save some money. Buying it did get me that, even if it got me little else. I did have to go out and hunt down a copy at a physical store which I always hate doing (especially when you forget that most stores close at 6pm on Sunday; luckily (or not) Best Buy stays open till 7 here), but it DID still satisfy that urge for something to do that evening.
Now having said and done all that, I'd have rather waited as it certainly didn't live up to the hype. It was fun, but the interesting parts don't last nearly long enough and each stage keeps changing the gameplay style very awkwardly. I don't have an issue with having paid for it, but it was worth maybe $20-25 for the entertainment value it provided. It has reaffirmed my opposition to EA though, for reasons unrelated to the DRM (though that certainly doesn't help).
So pick up an RFID scanner, they're cheap enough these days if you want a short range one to play around with. If you need to rip your shoes apart to get at it, then the thing isn't good for a whole lot.
My point with using the existing accelerometer is that there's no additional hardware or development costs associated, and certainly no secondary device to power. Just some software tweaks.
Because open-source companies have never claimed that it's products just work? I'm not making accusations or defending either side here, but would like to point out that Mozilla continues to deny the existence of memory leaks in Firefox, which I'd argue are no more or less rocket science to fix than implementing WPA.
And FWIW, I don't think I've once seen Apple, Inc. make the claim that it's products "just work". The myriad fanboys and evangelists do, certainly. My experience has been since my switch several years back that they work a lot better than the competition, and tend to fail much more gracefully when failure occurs. I have certainly not experienced perfection in any sense of the word.
Forget the Zune, what about XP? At least as of SP2, the ability to even connect to a WPA2 network (and maybe WPA as well) is provided by a non-critical hotfix that requires WGA authentication to download. Apple may not publicly acknowledge bugs, but at least they're not forcing you ensure you've got a Genuine® iPodâ before being allowed to get to a patch that adds functionality that was left out entirely to begin with.
This may have been addressed in SP3; I have no idea - there are no XP SP3 systems on my wireless network (3 Macs, 1 Vista, and 1 XP SP2 system from the office that's had the aforementioned patch applied).
Bugs happen. It sucks. But all programmers know this. Apple's way of dealing with them certainly rubs the fur of Slashdot's FOSS crowd the wrong way, but nobody has forced any of us to buy their products. The 2.0.0 firmware was quite buggy, and the 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 updates addressed some of those bugs. Given some of the fairly major changes in 2.1 (mostly bugfixes almost as a service pack of sorts, but the iPod app got quite a few new features and interface tweaks if nothing else), you have to expect that 2.1.1 will address what's been introduced. There were a lot of network-related changes made in 2.1 to address dropped call issues in the iPhones, and as the software is mostly identical between the iPhone and iPod Touch, it's certainly likely that one of those changes introduced these bugs.
Yeah, but if you're living in the city center where there are 100+ households within range of the AP as the original poster is, chances are that at least one of them has a WiFi AP with lower security settings. Unless the hacker is specifically targeting YOU or YOUR data rather than wanting either to just play around or get online, it's more than enough. And if they're just playing around, having the extra security may make you MORE of a target since you'd be the biggest challenge.
If you bought the sensor, it's yours to use how you want. It doesn't have a EULA, usage terms, or a license agreement (I own one, and I do not use it with Nike shoes). I'll note that the website that you use to view the data probably does have a EULA, so they would be well within their legal rights to block sensor data determined to be from non-Nike shoes (but, like any DRM, it will cause problems for legit customers and backfire). They don't do that, but there's no reason they couldn't for new customers.
Of course not. The sensor doesn't even come with the shoes - they just have a little pocket thing built into the sole. But given that the sensor is basically a Nike+Apple-branded accelerometer and a button cell battery, it wouldn't be that difficult to determine if the thing tends to be sitting at an angle rather than flat against the bottom of the shoe, and do something else accordingly (disable, flash Nike ads on the iPod, have the announcer voice that gives times yell at you, whatever - be creative).
Of course the moment they do that, I'm returning mine as defective. I don't give a damn what it was designed to do, I care what it can do. If I was OK with them telling me how to use it, I'd have signed a contract first. A real contract. Paper, pen, and a notary - not a EULA (and there isn't one for the device itself; there probably is for the website that it pairs with).
I picked one up (though don't own Nike+ shoes, thank you very much). For $30, it's not a bad way at all to keep track of some reasonably accurate running data. Interestingly, I find myself much more inclined to move (and, indeed, move quickly) since buying one. I don't even look at the data, I just feel more inclined to exercise knowing it's being collected. One of those "it'll be good for something eventually" scenarios.
But if they think they're getting me to spend another $lots on Nike+ approved running shoes, fuck that. I don't care if Nike is subsidizing the cost of the device or if Apple has a contract or if Steve Jobs has a shoosh fetish. The day I give up my Adidas Sambas is the day I lose my feet.
I don't think Steve's insincerity with the whole "we hate DRM, but the producers make us!" thing was too subtle. He loves control, and the control over the hardware that legally runs OS X is actually helping them as a company. But the fact that they have DRM on most of their music (whether it's their choice or not) means that I buy 100% of my music from other sources, almost always Amazon. While the hardware control helps ensure quality, most of their software is based off of open standards (CalDAV calendar servers, IMAP email, UNIX/BSD running under the hood, etc) and almost all preference settings are stored in plist files, which are XML (rather strangely implemented XML, IMO, but XML nonetheless) and that has absolutely also helped strengthen OS X as a platform.
For all the control that Steve wants, most of it is against customer wishes these days. Early on people didn't even realize they were buying DRM-infected music from wherever, and they got burned when they bought that new iPod. Of course a lot of people have ended up with music encumbered by a different type of DRM as a result, but they're at least aware of it if not weary. Lots of geeks complain that they can't drag-and-drop music on to iPods without iTunes - it doesn't bother me, but they wouldn't have to lose the iTunes interface in order to add this as an option; nor would it harm them at all to enable more formats to play on the thing (especially open formats like Flac and ogg).
If they want to give me extra functionality when I buy a nike+ shoe, that's one thing. But if they want to break the thing if I'm not using one, fuck that. I just made the exact same rant a little while ago about DRM in games, and how the successful way to avoid piracy (if one could "pirate" a shoe) is to ADD value for people that DO purchase, not to attempt to remove value from those that don't as it almost always backfires.
The competition honesty isn't up to scratch yet. The vast majority people care about how well the device works and how the interact with it, not the business policies of the manufacturer and carrier (God knows that no carrier would be in business if that was the case). I'd absolutely love to see more genuine competition in this area, as the iPhone certainly has a number of shortcomings. But most of the companies are just trying to hop on the touchscreen bandwagon and completely miss the point. My iPhone experience has been for the most part very positive (AT&T much less so, but again, that's true of all carriers) - it's got some small things that bother me, but for the most part nothing major (that isn't specific to AT&T).
Now I've got the original model, and the 3G model seems to be having quite a number of other things causing problems so I've been relatively unaffected. I've experienced the slow backups and some unstable apps (some are better than others, to say the least, though on the whole the 1.x jailbreak apps were somewhat more solid for whatever technical reason) which has been mostly addressed by the most recent firmware. My two issues that remain are a lack of CalDAV calendar support directly on the device (the desktop iCal supports it, but you can only sync local calendars and one subscribed calendar via Exchange/MobileMe) and some weird WiFi issue that I think are more related to bad signal strength than something software-related.
Point being that on the whole, the device is fairly solid. Competition is a very good thing, no questions about it. But I've seen and played with the "competition". While some of those devices have things that some people bitch about (MMS and video recording to name two; I care about neither), they still tend to have clunky software interfaces and other arbitrary restrictions put in place by the carrier in order to charge you that much more. Hell, as far as I'm aware Verizon still disables Bluetooth data access on most phones so they can charge you $1.99/mo for their proprietary phonebook syncing (I didn't think to ask despite being in one of their stores today; my father was getting his second-time-broken Blackberry replaced by a lying and mostly incompetent albeit attractive sales rep). That kind of stupid nickel-and-diming BS is half the reason I left Verizon for AT&T in the first place. Of course, they're guilty too for the most part, but Apple negotiated some pretty reasonable deals for the first-gen phone, at least as far as the cell industry is concerned.
I'm NOT defending Apple here - I think blocking an app for this reason is absolutely despicable. I hope competition comes along and applies some real pressure. I hope that Android comes along and starts kicking ass. But that hasn't happened yet. There's no denying that Apple raised the bar on cell phones in quite a number of different areas and they've seen a lot of success as a result - but I certainly hope that information is used against them to create even better products. Like you imply, competition is absolutely a good thing. It's just not all there yet.
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It's functional enough, but it gets mind-numbingly confusing very quickly.
We have a fix for this problem - IPv6. Let's deploy it, instead of continuing to deploy workarounds and hacks. It may mean a bigger initial investment, but the long-term costs are going to be a lot lower. Less/simpler maintenance, and fewer problems when it really matters. Have you ever seen what happens when sales departments rely on those kinds of things? I have, and I'd seen deals die because the product simply couldn't be demoed (let alone actually having the sales process really start) due to network issues. That only needs to happen a couple of times before you're losing money.
Granted I'm oversimplifying things tremendously, but the switch will happen eventually so you might as well start now and iron out the bugs sooner rather than later. It's not like an either/or situation - you can support both at once.
Until you go insane trying to remember your port mappings when trying access services on a specific machine behind the firewall. Maybe you enjoy having to remember that IP:5900 maps to VNC on your main system, :5901 to the laptop, :5902 to the fileserver, etc. I tend to find it a bit annoying. Especially as almost all of my systems have VNC, SSH, FTP, HTTP, and a couple of other services running, so I need to remember which port maps to maps to a certain service on a certain machine. Short of setting up some sort of domain controller that would make subdomain-based conversions that achieve the same effect (beyond my current scope of knowledge, never mind the pointless hardware costs)... it's just a pain in the ass.
Of course this isn't a problem for the typical home user, but as remote access protocols and systems become increasingly common among normal users (think Back to my Mac, except functional) it'll become a problem very quickly. There may still be firewall issues, but at least you won't have to worry about port collisions when accessing things outside of the local network.
Mine got thrown out the window when it started giving me attitude instead of my damn toast.
I agree, when you're buying physical property. According to the music industry, we're not buying music but in fact are buying a license to listen to said music. Moreover, they've been claiming that we're buying a license to listen to music under specific conditions only. Either I'm getting a CD/tape/LP/8-track/download that contains music where protecting the product and its contents are my responsibility (which gives me legal authority to make as many backups as I deem necessary, so long as I'm not distributing those backups), or I'm buying a license to use the content.
I like supporting artists and content providers, but if I'm buying a license to play back that content rather than the content itself (mind you, me buying content doesn't give me redistribution rights, though I would have resale rights as I'd give up my own copy), then I will not buy unless I have unlimited rights to play back the content I've licensed whenever and however the hell I want. That means on my iPod, my phone, my desktop, my laptop, my TV, and any other device capable of audio or video playback.
If they're going to insist on selling a playback license bound to my possession of a piece of physical media (or series of bits) that I don't have permission to protect or otherwise back up, then they're not getting my money.
Short version: I'm never buying another product with DRM, period. I've been burned more than often enough to say "fuck it." If they won't offer me reasonable terms for the purchase, I'm taking my money somewhere else.
And yet somehow, there's a tremendous amount of GPU-specific optimization code present in every game out there. It may not be a complete codebase rewrite, but it's not as simple as $quality = ($gpu == 'fast') ? 'high' : 'low'; regardless of brand, generation, speed, etc.
If you subscribe to their notion that you're purchasing a license to listen rather than a copy of the music, then yes, they should absolutely replace broken/damaged/lost media. I think there's a saying involving cake about their approach...
Lying to gain power isn't just another Replibican dirty trick. Obama has already sold out on at least half dozen fairly significant issues - hell, he did it before even getting the nomination. This is bipartisan bullshit, and thinking otherwise is dangerously ignorant.
Never trust a politician.
To whom precisely are you referring? That statement could apply to quite a few people with power these days.
That sounds remarkably Fight Club-ish (yes, I know, rules 1 and 2 - I'm not a member, I can break them).
Where does that leave us? Osama is a schitzo with an obesession for Ikea furniture and a junkie girlfriend, and all we need to do is wait for him to kill his alter ego and this whole thing will work itself out?
Forget the lead-laced toys from China - watch out for the soap from the middle east.
Umm.... yeah.
Wait, you start by knocking conspiracy theorists and then go on to state that half of their reasoning (bullshit war, creating evidence/ignoring facts, etc) is accurate?
Something is wrong here.
Did you just call one of them a queen?
Who said anything about my preference on acknowledging bugs? It's a general trend in any company that has shareholders, including both Apple and Microsoft, that they don't admit to problems until they've been fixed. I think it's stupid from both companies, but they may actually be legally required to act that way due to certain laws that govern publicly traded corporations - you can't intentionally decrease shareholder value, and I'd suggest (though not necessarily agree) that publicly acknowledging a security issue would do just that.
Neither you nor the GP has discussed a Windows security hole.
Windows not supporting WPA2 at all out of the box (like 2.1 iPod Touches) isn't a security hole? Either it's a problem for both companies or it's a problem for neither. Microsoft had the problem a long time ago and consequently fixed it some time ago; Apple's had the problem since last Tuesday and will almost certainly address it in the next software update. I merely pointed out that in order to get the equivalent security patch on the Microsoft platform, you need to authenticate your software. They have every right to do that. I'm honestly surprised that they don't cut off updates entirely for non-validating systems - assuming that the software was validly flagged as non-paid, they have no entitlement whatsoever to any updates.
I'm NOT siding with Apple here. I'm a Mac user, but I give them shit equally to any other company or organization when they deserve it. This shouldn't have slipped through, but bugs happen. They'll fix it and that'll be the end of it.
And an opt-out option, FFS (if not making the tool opt-in). And I mean that across all browsers, not just MSIE8 and Chrome.
I hope it would be safe to assume that when you've got porn mode enabled (err, I mean private browsing) that this data transfer wouldn't happen regardless of whether you've opted-in/out.
What, does "freelancer" not mean anything to you? That's a pretty damn stupid way to look at things. Look for small gigs on craigslist and freelance job boards. There's no major time commitment, can be done anywhere that you bring a computer, and is reasonably lucrative if you write good code (or make attractive designs, whatever).
And it won't get you arrested.
I'll ask you not to state what's moral for me, thank you very much. That's my decision.
This is the magic of running a business as something than a sole proprietorship (which I assure you Valve is doing). Customers can sue the company for whatever reason, but the employees themselves and their assets (from the janitorial staff through the C-level execs) are completely protected*. If the company falls over dead one day, precisely what do you expect to receive as the result of winning a class-action? They have no assets for you to collect on. Maybe you could pick up a cardboard cutout of Gordon Freeman that was inadvertently left in a closet. They may not even have enough remaining infrastructure to release that patch that frees everything, never mind have any money left to pay out lawsuit winnings (oh the beauty of bankruptcy). With luck, one of their former coders could whip something together and throw it on TPB, but that could well be the extent of it.
I don't see this happening to Steam for quite some time, but it applies pretty much everywhere. Dealing with a dying company isn't likely to accomplish a whole lot.
*Protected from lawsuits relating to their employer, anyways. Obviously if they've personally wronged you, it's a different story.
That's great if you're fine with playing it in a few days, or maybe your torrent performance is always fantastic on all torrents. I grabbed the torrent of Spore, and after waiting for several hours while doing other stuff, it was still at 1% or so (I was averaging under 5kbps - yes, my settings are fine, other torrents can zip right along). I got fed up to the point where I just went out and bought the thing. Popped it in the drive, installed, done, playing before the torrent hit 5%, and played through most of the game before 10%. It finally finished up a couple of days ago.
Point being that when I want to play a game, I'm looking for something that I can play _now_, not wait hours or days for a download to complete to save some money. Buying it did get me that, even if it got me little else. I did have to go out and hunt down a copy at a physical store which I always hate doing (especially when you forget that most stores close at 6pm on Sunday; luckily (or not) Best Buy stays open till 7 here), but it DID still satisfy that urge for something to do that evening.
Now having said and done all that, I'd have rather waited as it certainly didn't live up to the hype. It was fun, but the interesting parts don't last nearly long enough and each stage keeps changing the gameplay style very awkwardly. I don't have an issue with having paid for it, but it was worth maybe $20-25 for the entertainment value it provided. It has reaffirmed my opposition to EA though, for reasons unrelated to the DRM (though that certainly doesn't help).
So pick up an RFID scanner, they're cheap enough these days if you want a short range one to play around with. If you need to rip your shoes apart to get at it, then the thing isn't good for a whole lot.
My point with using the existing accelerometer is that there's no additional hardware or development costs associated, and certainly no secondary device to power. Just some software tweaks.
Because open-source companies have never claimed that it's products just work? I'm not making accusations or defending either side here, but would like to point out that Mozilla continues to deny the existence of memory leaks in Firefox, which I'd argue are no more or less rocket science to fix than implementing WPA.
And FWIW, I don't think I've once seen Apple, Inc. make the claim that it's products "just work". The myriad fanboys and evangelists do, certainly. My experience has been since my switch several years back that they work a lot better than the competition, and tend to fail much more gracefully when failure occurs. I have certainly not experienced perfection in any sense of the word.
Forget the Zune, what about XP? At least as of SP2, the ability to even connect to a WPA2 network (and maybe WPA as well) is provided by a non-critical hotfix that requires WGA authentication to download. Apple may not publicly acknowledge bugs, but at least they're not forcing you ensure you've got a Genuine® iPodâ before being allowed to get to a patch that adds functionality that was left out entirely to begin with.
This may have been addressed in SP3; I have no idea - there are no XP SP3 systems on my wireless network (3 Macs, 1 Vista, and 1 XP SP2 system from the office that's had the aforementioned patch applied).
Bugs happen. It sucks. But all programmers know this. Apple's way of dealing with them certainly rubs the fur of Slashdot's FOSS crowd the wrong way, but nobody has forced any of us to buy their products. The 2.0.0 firmware was quite buggy, and the 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 updates addressed some of those bugs. Given some of the fairly major changes in 2.1 (mostly bugfixes almost as a service pack of sorts, but the iPod app got quite a few new features and interface tweaks if nothing else), you have to expect that 2.1.1 will address what's been introduced. There were a lot of network-related changes made in 2.1 to address dropped call issues in the iPhones, and as the software is mostly identical between the iPhone and iPod Touch, it's certainly likely that one of those changes introduced these bugs.
Yeah, but if you're living in the city center where there are 100+ households within range of the AP as the original poster is, chances are that at least one of them has a WiFi AP with lower security settings. Unless the hacker is specifically targeting YOU or YOUR data rather than wanting either to just play around or get online, it's more than enough. And if they're just playing around, having the extra security may make you MORE of a target since you'd be the biggest challenge.
And?
If you bought the sensor, it's yours to use how you want. It doesn't have a EULA, usage terms, or a license agreement (I own one, and I do not use it with Nike shoes). I'll note that the website that you use to view the data probably does have a EULA, so they would be well within their legal rights to block sensor data determined to be from non-Nike shoes (but, like any DRM, it will cause problems for legit customers and backfire). They don't do that, but there's no reason they couldn't for new customers.
Of course not. The sensor doesn't even come with the shoes - they just have a little pocket thing built into the sole. But given that the sensor is basically a Nike+Apple-branded accelerometer and a button cell battery, it wouldn't be that difficult to determine if the thing tends to be sitting at an angle rather than flat against the bottom of the shoe, and do something else accordingly (disable, flash Nike ads on the iPod, have the announcer voice that gives times yell at you, whatever - be creative).
Of course the moment they do that, I'm returning mine as defective. I don't give a damn what it was designed to do, I care what it can do. If I was OK with them telling me how to use it, I'd have signed a contract first. A real contract. Paper, pen, and a notary - not a EULA (and there isn't one for the device itself; there probably is for the website that it pairs with).
I picked one up (though don't own Nike+ shoes, thank you very much). For $30, it's not a bad way at all to keep track of some reasonably accurate running data. Interestingly, I find myself much more inclined to move (and, indeed, move quickly) since buying one. I don't even look at the data, I just feel more inclined to exercise knowing it's being collected. One of those "it'll be good for something eventually" scenarios.
But if they think they're getting me to spend another $lots on Nike+ approved running shoes, fuck that. I don't care if Nike is subsidizing the cost of the device or if Apple has a contract or if Steve Jobs has a shoosh fetish. The day I give up my Adidas Sambas is the day I lose my feet.
I don't think Steve's insincerity with the whole "we hate DRM, but the producers make us!" thing was too subtle. He loves control, and the control over the hardware that legally runs OS X is actually helping them as a company. But the fact that they have DRM on most of their music (whether it's their choice or not) means that I buy 100% of my music from other sources, almost always Amazon. While the hardware control helps ensure quality, most of their software is based off of open standards (CalDAV calendar servers, IMAP email, UNIX/BSD running under the hood, etc) and almost all preference settings are stored in plist files, which are XML (rather strangely implemented XML, IMO, but XML nonetheless) and that has absolutely also helped strengthen OS X as a platform.
For all the control that Steve wants, most of it is against customer wishes these days. Early on people didn't even realize they were buying DRM-infected music from wherever, and they got burned when they bought that new iPod. Of course a lot of people have ended up with music encumbered by a different type of DRM as a result, but they're at least aware of it if not weary. Lots of geeks complain that they can't drag-and-drop music on to iPods without iTunes - it doesn't bother me, but they wouldn't have to lose the iTunes interface in order to add this as an option; nor would it harm them at all to enable more formats to play on the thing (especially open formats like Flac and ogg).
If they want to give me extra functionality when I buy a nike+ shoe, that's one thing. But if they want to break the thing if I'm not using one, fuck that. I just made the exact same rant a little while ago about DRM in games, and how the successful way to avoid piracy (if one could "pirate" a shoe) is to ADD value for people that DO purchase, not to attempt to remove value from those that don't as it almost always backfires.
The competition honesty isn't up to scratch yet. The vast majority people care about how well the device works and how the interact with it, not the business policies of the manufacturer and carrier (God knows that no carrier would be in business if that was the case). I'd absolutely love to see more genuine competition in this area, as the iPhone certainly has a number of shortcomings. But most of the companies are just trying to hop on the touchscreen bandwagon and completely miss the point. My iPhone experience has been for the most part very positive (AT&T much less so, but again, that's true of all carriers) - it's got some small things that bother me, but for the most part nothing major (that isn't specific to AT&T).
Now I've got the original model, and the 3G model seems to be having quite a number of other things causing problems so I've been relatively unaffected. I've experienced the slow backups and some unstable apps (some are better than others, to say the least, though on the whole the 1.x jailbreak apps were somewhat more solid for whatever technical reason) which has been mostly addressed by the most recent firmware. My two issues that remain are a lack of CalDAV calendar support directly on the device (the desktop iCal supports it, but you can only sync local calendars and one subscribed calendar via Exchange/MobileMe) and some weird WiFi issue that I think are more related to bad signal strength than something software-related.
Point being that on the whole, the device is fairly solid. Competition is a very good thing, no questions about it. But I've seen and played with the "competition". While some of those devices have things that some people bitch about (MMS and video recording to name two; I care about neither), they still tend to have clunky software interfaces and other arbitrary restrictions put in place by the carrier in order to charge you that much more. Hell, as far as I'm aware Verizon still disables Bluetooth data access on most phones so they can charge you $1.99/mo for their proprietary phonebook syncing (I didn't think to ask despite being in one of their stores today; my father was getting his second-time-broken Blackberry replaced by a lying and mostly incompetent albeit attractive sales rep). That kind of stupid nickel-and-diming BS is half the reason I left Verizon for AT&T in the first place. Of course, they're guilty too for the most part, but Apple negotiated some pretty reasonable deals for the first-gen phone, at least as far as the cell industry is concerned.
I'm NOT defending Apple here - I think blocking an app for this reason is absolutely despicable. I hope competition comes along and applies some real pressure. I hope that Android comes along and starts kicking ass. But that hasn't happened yet. There's no denying that Apple raised the bar on cell phones in quite a number of different areas and they've seen a lot of success as a result - but I certainly hope that information is used against them to create even better products. Like you imply, competition is absolutely a good thing. It's just not all there yet.