Did you even read TFA? I quote:

So, it clearly does mention there will be a closed app store. As for the fact it says there isn't going to be an open app store, I personally think it's correct. Microsoft is marketing the product, saying things that people want to hear, but trying not to flat-out lie. If there was an app store on the cards, you can bet they'd do a song and dance about it.

How long have they been working on the marketplace for windows mobile? How much longer will they wait before they even consider porting it for the Zune? Will they actually do it? How much longer after they start the port (if ever) will M$ release an SDK so developers can actually start cooking? The timescale for decent third party apps being released is probably longer than the life-cycle of the device, and thus this Zune HD has missed the boat.

Erm... Calm the accusations of bias there. From all of the info I have scanned on the web concerning teh Zune HD, the OP's article is 100% correct in that no 3rd party app store has been announced. I noticed a link you posed above to engadget above, which does say that there will be apps, but if you read further you find-out that these apps are in-house developed (or contracted).

See, there are a lot of developers here on slashdot. There is a big difference between in-house apps and 3rd party apps. I could potentially decide to run the Appstore gauntlet, paying a meager developer's fee for the opportunity to develop apps in my spare time. To develop apps for the Zune HD, I'd practically have to get a job in-house at Microsoft.

Actually, what has apple done that's so terrible? It strikes me that every single story I hear about the iPhone/iPod is blown massively out of proportion. Both M$ and Apple pushed DRM, but apple gets the shit for it because iTunes is more popular. Apple sometimes bans apps in a seemingly arbitrary manner, but AFAIK M$ doesn't offer any ability to run 3rd party software yet. Which is worse? Well, Apple, because some people actually love Apple and it's funny to make them cry. Otherwise I'd say they were as bad as eachother.

That's coming from someone who uses a mix of Mac, Linux, Windows, and OpenSolaris.

the University of Edinburgh had primarily Windows in the public labs and Linux in the CS and AI labs back when I graduated (2004). They had a few macs too, but only in the larger labs.

Definately. It's notable that if Google manage to push this one through, Microsoft will make exactly the same deal with some other publishers so as not to be left out. If there's a market, they'll capitalize on it, even if they tried to stop the market from existing in the first place.

IE: If Linux becomes more popular, we'll see the full M$ Office suite for Linux.

I'd have to agree with the first half of your statement, some people can't learn. This could be due to mental disability or purely disinterest. In any case, if someone is unwilling to learn then they're probably doing well to get a job at the bottom rung of the ladder.

As for the second part, there will always be a supply/demand for people to do stuff. Even if half the people in the world sit unemployed and are just given money to exist, they're still humans and as such capable of fending for themselves. If there isn't enough money/aren't enough resources, people will starve and there will probably be conflict that brings the population back down to size.

Or the governments could just force the nations into meaningless conflict to reduce population size. I hear that's a popular strategy in dystopic futures, even those set 25 years ago.

It's like having root access to reality and running

emerge popularity
emerge girlfriend
emerge --update --deep secks

Hmm? Your suggested method to stop apple keyboards and mice working with other systems requires a custom firmware, which would either require flash memory on the keyboard or a hardware redesign. Would it really be more of an effort to put a little check in the keyboard firmware than it would to rewrite both firmware and drivers? I'm not saying this is something Apple are likely to do, but it strikes me your suggestion is less logical than mine.

I personally am of the opinion that it was just cheaper to bulk-buy general chips than to get some custom-made, but that doesn't mean the considered scenario hadn't crossed my mind. Can you really say it hadn't crossed ionix's mind either.

See, apple has this reputation for locking stuff so that apple only works with apple. They have software that only syncs with their hardware devices, proprietary disk image formats, and so on. I don't consider the suggestion that something else they're doing might be following the same path to be controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic.

Of course the exception to this is Mac Fanboys. For fanboys, linking apple to anything bad is inflammatory, even when it's completely true that apple have done it. In this case, I suspect whoever modded ionix's comment was an apple fanboy, and as such not of sound mind.

Heck, I'm even contemplating a mac laptop as my next computer purchase. Ridiculously blinkard fanboys who can't stand to see even the deserved tarnishes to the mac brand, however, make me want to distance myself from macs altogether.

How is this comment trolling? The prospect that they could make a keyboard that wouldn't work with a non-mac keyboard was something I considered when I saw this article. I mean, there was the story a few weeks ago where palm pre's firmware was emulating apple hardware and apple was getting its knickers in a twist. Having some provision in future hardware that makes apple hardware only work with apple hardware strikes me as a logical extension.

Absolutely, but most non slash-dotters just count from 2-9 between 1 and 10. Slash dotters have more options, however, Sometimes they'll not count at-all between 1 and 10, and sometimes they'll count from 2-F instead.

Reminds me of an old joke:
There are only 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

The whole idea of patents is to force people to not use your method.

I'd have said the whole point was to get them to pay you royalties for using your R&D. Sure, some may choose not to release patents. At that point, I'd have said the point switches to "Allowing you to sue someone's ass off".

In either case, patents are all about getting money back 'cos you spent money on something. It should be proportionate, but that last factor is something many lawyers (RIAA, etc) like to exaggerate.

If I had mod points, you'd get +1 Funny.

Personally, I'd have to agree that ZFS is probably the way forwards for storage at the moment. I've not tried FUSE yet, although I have looked into Solaris and Nexenta, installing them on virtual machines for testing (I want to ensure my backup is stable, and want to put it through its paces before I setup what will be my next server).

Once you realize that ZFS can run Raid-Z in a system on chronically faulty hardware, and it still loses no data, then you understand that any other storage methods (bar possibly online backup) are second-class in comparison.

Really? Oops. Checking facts...

Okay: It seems that I was wrong in a couple of ways. The second number (eg, 2.5) was the number that denoted unstable. See here (big page, so Cntrl-F 'unstable') and mvdwege is correct that presently every there's no 'unstable' branch (as 2.3 and 2.5 were) linky here.

It is stable, but it will take a little while for the packages to find their way into the network for your particular distribution.

Generally any release with an even number at the end will be a stable release. The kernel development cycle is basically: add functionality (odd releases), make stable (even releases).

As for whether 2.6.30 is really bleeding edge, I wouldn't have said so. It's not yet in wide use, as not that many new distros have been released since it came out. See: Distros are often built on top of a kernel, so changing the kernel just before it's about to be released can rock the boat a little even if the kernel itself is stable. I personally wouldn't bother upgrading unless there's a feature in the kernel that you needed. 2.6.31 could be considered bleeding edge, however, as that's an unstable release that they'll be shoving a lot of new functionality or completing stuff that wasn't ready for 2.6.30.

That said, there were features that I wanted to check-out in the 2.6.30.1 kernel and so I did download and compile it (but only put it on the machine that needed it).