A capitalist corporation locking down the hardware they sell in order to maximize profit for investors is communism?

Communsim would be if the state appropriated Apple's intellectual property and made it freely available to the public.

Apple's behavior is classic capitalism, and very, very far from communism.

Hey, good point. If we could verify that hypothesis, it would strongly suggest life could exist on Enceladus or Europa. Otherwise, it still doesn't exclude the possibility.

The iphone was revolutionary because it packed a lot of functionality into a device that i needed. I need a phone. the fact that i can have a phone that does other stuff and plays cool games makes it a killer platform. It successfully combines my phone and my DS into one unit that i will always have.

I also need a computer. the macbook does a wonderful job there. it's portable, it's powerful, i can make stuff on it.

The ipad is just this thing that sits there and you would only pick it up occasionally. i'm sure it's a nice e-reader, though i can't wait for kindle for osx. i don't have problems reading on my macbook. It would be neat if it had a comprehensive tv remote and my tv somehow worked over wi-fi. my iphone could do that too though.

To decide where these devices fit in my life, i imagine packing for a trip. I would take my phone. I need my phone, and hey, i can play some games on it and check emails, etc. I would probably take my macbook. i still like to putz around in blender and unity on vacation. the ipad obviously isn't going to work well for content creation. at this point, i have no reason to bring the ipad. the ipad seems to have a permanent spot sitting next to my couch. That seems like a stupid thing to spend $500 on.

On the other hand, i think in the future we will have tons of these devices. Your microwave door will be a transparent display that is all one big touch surface. it will display info about what's inside via little labels that appear to hover over your food. Your car's instrument panel will probably be the same. Something like the ipad will cost much less. You will take it for granted. You won't think twice about packing it because you can always get another if it breaks, etc. You won't feel like you wasted a bunch of money on a thing that just sits by your couch or bed because that's all you will expect of it.

I think those future devices had to start somewhere. technically, i think they started on phones, but this is another step towards that future. Magical and revolutionary? Probably not. Another step towards appliance computing? maybe.

I'm not running out to get one now. In 5 years why wouldn't i spend $50 on one?

I am not so confident of that. True china can hit a satellite going a few thousand mph in a consistent orbit that is not weaving or avoiding, similar for our rockets, they can break up stuff flying horizontally in low earth orbit. I am not so sure if the space shuttle, once in it's higher orbit, could be caught so easy. IE the shuttle has the energy of orbit to make small changes that would take it out of range of any detected launch of anything attempting to catch it in orbit altitude. If it went on a kamikaze straight down mode no fuel, I doubt anything currently known would be both maneuverable enough, and pack enough punch to destroy the shuttle and payload falling straight down from the sky, at say Mach 10+. Hit it, sure, but break everything into small pieces before landfall?

Insightful yes, it is a little muddier than this. Almost half of the debt is owed to other government accounts. They've been consistently borrowing from Social Security to pad their budgets. So, we have to worry about spooking the holders of the other ~$7 trillion. A big number, definitely, but everyone should be aware of the shell game going on in Washington. Go read this article on the Clinton surplus: http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16

Okay, so I was speculating a little much, but I don't think it is really that clear that working at Boeing meant he had no access to technical materials for other company's systems.

Just pair this program with this and you've got the perfect captive audience.

Since wage-slaves can't be paid enough to focus on monitors for hours on end, just recruit the populace. The upside is that if you're an especially good snitch they can let you pilot a drone as a reward. Then they can make a TV show about that, a weekly feature to show off the citizen response to the dangers of knife crime and truancy.

Who needs a community of people working for the common good when technology can step in and keep us apart?

Why would they count bittorrent views? Nielsen Ratings is information for advertisers. TV shows in bittorrent files almost always have advertisers removed. It makes no sense for Nielsen Ratings to carry those statistics.

Recording every inch of public space is (and should be) different from policing public space. At least that's how I see it. We want to keep down crime but we also want people to carry on their lives without everything being dissected and analyzed. Public privacy/anonymity may already be a myth but we don't need to help things along by supporting universal surveillance.

Somehow, I think we're talking past each other.

The slippery slope is your attitude that "if it's in the open, they can record it." Because for the last ten thousand years of human civilization THIS HAS NOT BEEN TRUE. So to say there is no effect from this radical change in human circumstances is either naive or disingenuous.

This came out the day after I 100% completed NSMBW, It was worth the money, totally.

And 99.44% of deaths in 2006 were not caused by drunk drivers.[1] [2]

[1] - Total number of reported deaths in 2006: 2,426,264
[2] - Total deaths in alcohol-related crashes in 2006: 13,491

Because I, as a real live natural person, have more rights than a company. At least I do where I live - not sure about you lot in the US any more, given recent SCOTUS decisions.

I like it that way, as do the vast majority of citizens where I live now, and where I have lived before. Which is why the law (here) favours my right to stay employed and leave when I want, over a company's right to fire me for no reason.

If companies were so concerned about "cheating" in games, why do they build cheat codes into games?

I realize a dozen people have beaten me to the punch on this but some comments are so stupid they just have to be responded to multiple times.

What the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck? When you're playing a single player game, the only limit to what is considered cheating is what you consider to be cheating, because you're only playing against yourself. It literally has zero effect on anyone else if you complete Doom with god mode on the entire game.

This is completely different than playing multiplayer games, where you have to have an agreed-upon set of rules beforehand, usually determined by a third party (the game designer) because you are playing against other people who may or may not agree with you as to what constitutes cheating or, for more complex games, what the "game" itself even is. When you cheat in multiplayer games, it directly affects the enjoyment of the game for other people. Almost universally in a negative fashion.

I'm REALLY hoping you were just trolling and aren't actually this fucking stupid.