I'm not convinced that bundling of third-party software leads to marketshare the same way that having IE as the default browser on Microsoft OSes does. In fact IE got its market share not with simple bundling, but by being the *only* browser on new installations of Windows, the same way Safari achieves marketshare on Macs.

I used to use Firefox/Mozilla exclusively on all of my computers. I'd even install it on my friends' and family's computers and convince them to use it, too. Back in the day, it was easy. On the Mac, it was the only viable option (Mozilla, Chimera, Firefox... all the same to me). IE was the default Mac browser, and it totally sucked, so I'd download Firefox immediately. On Windows, IE was a gaping security hole. Using IE was dangerous; switching to Firefox was an easy sell.

When Apple came out with Safari I held out for the first few versions, but lately Safari is good enough. After I upgraded to Leopard, it wasn't worth the effort to download Firefox and change my default browser on all of my computers. (Incidentally, my parents still use Firefox on their Macs because a long time ago I told them it was better, and that stuck with them. Inertia builds marketshare for Firefox, too).

If Windows included Opera and Firefox, but still had IE as the default browser, I don't think things would be much different. New users might fire up Opera and Firefox and think, "this is just like Internet Explorer. why bother?" I don't know that they'd necessarily delete it, but certainly it would just be more useless icons cluttering up the desktop. That could put Opera and Firefox at a disadvantage. When a new version is released, they'll think, "why should I upgrade this thing that's just cluttering my computer?"

If instead people learn about Firefox or hear about some feature that interest them, they'll invest (minimal) time and effort into downloading it and trying it out. Sure its still pretty much like Internet Explorer, but the effort involved is a much stronger tie than "oh, look. another icon on my desktop". And whatever feature caught their interest will make them more likely to stick with it. That leads to market share.

Bundling doesn't automatically lead to marketshare. (that would have been a much better quote ;).

Not gonna fisk, so match these up with your mind.

All we're trying to do here is silence the camera click. The rest of the phone functionality is somewhat irrelevant. If I need people to contact me, there's always vibrate, or I could use a different phone for talking.

Most (at least many) phones have provisions for firmware to be installed. It is usually used for carrier approved updates, but firmware is firmware. The phone doesn't know where it came from. iPhones have been jailbroken. HTC phones have had many unofficial firmware updates. Just because *you* can't personally do it, it doesn't mean it can't be done.

There are plenty of ways to extract a single frame from video. The phone is just the capture device. The video can be processed later on a computer.

There are add-on lenses for many phones that give wide-angle or telephoto capabilites. The lens attaches in front of the cameraphone lens. You can do the same thing by putting a telescope (or binoculars, or whatever you have handy) in front of your cameraphone. You have to play with the distance a little, but it works great. Though if you're far away using a telephoto lens, you are probably better off with a real camera with better optics than found in most cellphones.

Again this is all hypothetical, and an exercise in proving the law is idiotic. The point is, there are plenty of ways to silence a cell phone, even without a menu item.

Even without turning off the sound, I can silence the ringer on most cell phones by placing my thumb over the speaker holes. How do they really expect this to work?

A new Administration should give them some new material, instead of the same stale BS (really, how many times can you say "Bush is an idiot" before it isn't funny anymore?). Moving to quarterly publication should help concentrate the funny again. They'll be able to drop 2/3 of the chaff and pack 3-issues worth of the good stuff into one.

Imagine if Guns and Roses had only produced one CD for "Use Your Illusion" instead of diluting the album to make a box set. Sometimes less is more.

You won't be able to tear a page out of your laptop when you realize there's no toilet paper. Sometimes print media has an advantage. ;)

Isn't that sort of like extortion? Like when the gangsters get shop owners to pay them "protection" money, so they won't have to come back and wreck the place later.

I'm pretty sure I scratched "Call of Duty 4" when I tipped the console up to check the connections on the back. The audio/video wasn't coming up on the TV, and you can't really "debug" that with the console turned off.

Had I known about this problem, I suppose I would have removed the disc and done the check on the xbox dashboard.

I have yet to have a game disc get scratched inside my PS2 or my Wii. I've moved the Wii around while playing, and I know I've moved the slimline PS2 (I'm pretty sure I've even accidentally pulled it off the table without seriously damaging anything). I don't know how they fare in an earthquake, but as you said that's not my primary concern. However, it takes far less than an earthquake to get an Xbox360 to destroy a game disc.

When I got my xbox360 (before this problem was widely known), I had taken it to a friend's house and moved it somehow (I don't exactly recall.. .maybe reorienting, maybe just tipping it to doublecheck connections) and it scratch the disc to the point that it wouldn't play anymore. This was the first game I had, within days of getting the system, and it pretty much cut a circular groove into the CD. It wasn't a minor scratch; it was gouged. I could see and feel the scratch. And I was annoyed as hell that I couldn't play anymore until I went to the store and exchanged the "broken" game disc.

Toys R Us was very nice about exchanging the disc. If I had been out another $50 to replace a game I had only played once, I would be much less sympathetic to Microsoft's problem, and probably would have returned the console instead (and bought a PS3).

Now that I know about the problem, I'm super careful about it. The xbox360 is certainly more prone to scratching than any other device I've ever had. I've never seen a scratch in a disc like the one it made. If Microsoft knew about it (they certainly know now!), I would hope they've fixed it in the current builds, because its a serious design flaw.

Don't worry. Global warming is dramatically increasing the number of ice floes breaking off the poles. There's plenty of room for all of you. Or is it "us"?

Holy crap you're right! My parents have a Mighty Mouse on their iMac. I've been trying to right click with it for 2 weeks, with no luck, and its been driving me nuts. I just went upstairs and tried by lifting my index finger when I clicked, and voila: context menu! My reaction: "stupidest mouse ever."

This has to be the worst human interface design ever. This goes way beyond non-intuitive and is in face counter-intuitive. Why should I have to lift one finger to press with another? Point-and-click is now point-lift-and-click? Its going to take forever to explain this to my mom!

Seriously, who comes up with this crap? And how does it ever get past the testing stages? Does Apple deliberately retard their accessories in order to support a strong third party market?

I wish Apple would stop sacrificing function for obscure coolness. "Check it out, my Apple mouse can tell where my fingers are! Sure its a pain in the ass to use it, but IT CAN TELL WHERE MY FINGERS ARE!!!"

"Yeah? Well my Logitech mouse works right." Suck it, Steve.

If McDonalds doesn't ship anything, explain how the kangaroo meat gets to all of their restaurants? ;)

And, please. McDonalds has truckloads of reputation (not always good, but they have it).

Yeah, yeah. I got that wrong. They're flooding the patent office with BS paperwork, rather than a court. The sentiment is still the same; its sleazeball tactics designed to overwhelm an already overwhelmed system to delay the eventual unfavorable decision.

That's more or less the point. Amazon's lawyers are using sleazeball tactics to stall the verdict at this point. As long as they keep shoving new briefs at the court, the examination will never end. I don't understand why they keep fighting it.

Perhaps its so deeply rooted in the Amazon legal department that they just don't want to give up. I'm sure being a total pain-in-the-ass is a full time job for at least a couple of lawyers, so if they give up the fight, they are out of a job. The licensing fees Amazon receives on this (Apple licenses 1-click for their online store, and I assume there must be other suckers) must be more than its costing them to drag out the inevitable, or else this makes no business sense either.

As for Bezos, it makes him look like a fool. On the one hand he's fighting for patent reform, while in the other he holds one of the most absurd patents ever granted. If he'd give up on this one, perhaps people would take his call for reform a bit more seriously. Was this the first patent he ever received? Maybe he has a sentimental attachment to it, like a woobie. Grow up, stick a copy in a scrapbook and let it go, Jeff.

<sarcasm>
What's wrong with that comment? If you recall from history, SCO stole linux to make Unix, which they time travelled back and sold to AT&T and Berkeley. Then Apple fired Steve Jobs, who put Linux in a black box and called it "NeXT". Then Apple bought him, made their own Linux, then retroactively created 6 major versions of FreeBSD as a front.

Then Darwin created a kernel (evolution my ass!), which he published steganographically in that ridiculous "Origin of Species". Babbage was the first to discover the hidden message when he was reading the book to to figure out why his engine got such bad gas mileage (he later discovered the flaw was that the car hadn't been invented yet, and pouring gasoline into a stationary computing engine wasn't getting him anywhere. But I digress.

Its turtles all the way down.
</sarcasm>

I used to be amazed at how many self-proclaimed geeks didn't know the difference between FreeBSD and Linux. How can you expect regular mortals to know what brand of unix-like subsystem Apple has running under the hood?

I'm a little impressed when non-technical folks know that there's some sort of open source unix behind the pretty Apple curtains, even if they don't get it exactly right.

Just like Richard Stallman says: who cares what they call it, as long as they didn't have to pay for it ;)