Okaaaay...but, see, first of all, even by the time of the events in the lawsuit, pretty much everyone already knew, if you want to have total control over your device and manage every single configuration and file copy by hand...you don't buy an iPod.

Second of all, what the hell were you going to do with those songs once Apple fixed the bugs? Without the buggy code, the bootleg implementation of FairPlay just wouldn't work. The files wouldn't play, and the way they were put on the iPod would mean that there would be literally no other purpose to having them on there. I don't know if you know how syncing to iPods worked in the pre-iOS era, but while there was a "disk mode" that would allow you to mount the iPod's hard drive as a simple HFS+ filesystem (or, presumably, FAT on Windows? not sure of the details on that end) on your computer, it would not allow you to directly access the music on the iPod, either to add it, copy it off, or delete it.

So basically, once the bugs were fixed, these files were nothing more than junk data, in a section of the iPod that there was literally no other way for you to get rid of them unless you were using one of a few different pieces of third-party software—obviously not supported or assumed to be the case by Apple—so what should they have done? Just let those pieces of random garbage data take up space on the iPod for the rest of its life? Forced you to erase the whole thing just to get rid of them?

Based on your tone, I'm pretty sure your answer to all this would be along the lines of, "They should have just left it all up to me in the first place," but that ship had sailed long ago. And I think that really just brings us back full circle, to "yeah, but if you wanted that, you'd know perfectly well not to buy an Apple device."

There is—demonstrably—room in the market for devices with multiple competing philosophies. At the time, there were a number of devices made by various other companies that would have allowed you to manage your music by hand. Demanding that every single company adhere to your personal philosophy, provided they are not infringing any actual rights or breaking any laws, is not a reasonable position to take.

Dan Aris

They may not have put up giant posters proclaiming that the only DRMed music that you could play on an iPod was FairPlay, but it's not exactly like it was some kind of secret, either.

I'm not saying I don't feel bad for the people who honestly didn't know how these things worked who bought music from RealNetworks, then had their music stop working when Apple fixed the loophole. I can imagine how frustrating that would have been.

But that doesn't mean that Apple is at fault for fixing bugs in their code. I suppose you could blame them for having the bugs in the first place, but I think that's kind of a "let he who is without sin" situation to get into. And the decision not to license FairPlay, or implement any of the dizzying array of competing music DRM schemes that existed at the time, is one that can be legitimately questioned by reasonable people, but I don't think that makes it by any stretch of the imagination Obviously Wrong.

However, it seems to me that you've got an axe to grind against Apple specifically, and possibly against corporations in general, and aren't actually interested in reasoned discourse. (The first clue was leading with an insult, by the way. Ad hominem attacks are never a good sign.)

Either way, I don't see your objection as having any serious merit.

Dan Aris

First of all, what lead has Apple lost that it ever really had? They're set to cross the $1 trillion market cap barrier—for the first time of any company ever—in the not-too-distant future, selling iPhones and Macs faster than ever before, and iPads only very slightly slower than their peak.

Now, if you were paying any attention whatsoever, instead of just writing a knee-jerk Apple-hate comment, you'd know that this was in reference to acts that allegedly occurred many years ago, before the iPhone was even released. That's why it's talking about iPods, y'see?

Furthermore, what actually happened is that a) people had purchased music from stores other than the iTunes Music Store, which had DRM on them that Apple didn't support, and/or b) people had put songs from RealNetworks on their iPods, who had somehow managed to exploit some holes in the FairPlay DRM to trick the iPods into allowing them on there while still maintaining their DRM-ness...and Apple figured out what they had done, fixed the bugs in their code that allowed RealNetworks to get around the fact that they never licensed FairPlay, and removed the songs with bogus FairPlay from people's devices, because they would no longer work.

So...no. This is not Apple getting upset that it's not the top dog (in some way) and lashing out in immature ways. This is other people getting upset that Apple was the top dog (in some ways) and lashing out in immature ways.

Dan Aris

Umm...no, sorry, you lose. iTunes existed for years before the first iPod was ever sold.

Dan Aris

Irrelevant perhaps, but that doesn't mean it won't be popular, at least among certain demographics.

After all, if it comes to reflect their biases more the longer they use it, they'll be more and more likely to want to get their news from there.

So from that perspective, it sounds like a win for those selling the ads on it, and a depressing loss for the rest of humanity.

Dan Aris

Changing a political system, even one as inertia-ridden as we have in the US right now, is easier than changing human nature.

Dan Aris

There are no poor in America. There are only, in the words of John Steinbeck, "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

One of the most insidiously effective tactics of the American right wing has been convincing the poor that they should support policies that only benefit the rich so that they can benefit from them when they're rich. (Though I'm not sure whether they were able to create such a sentiment, or merely capitalized and expanded upon one that was already there.)

Unfortunately, it seems to completely escape the understanding of far too many such that those same policies are making it that much harder for them to ever become rich.

Dan Aris

However, as I think you know perfectly well, as long as we have single-selection first-past-the-post voting, it doesn't matter how many parties there are in the system—only the two major ones have more than a snowball's chance in Hell of actually winning more than 1 or 2 legislative seats in anything but the rarest circumstances.

No; once you've reached the polls, the chance to select better candidates is already long past. If you want a better choice of candidates, then the first answer is "do your best to become one yourself." Since that's not a viable option for many people, the second answer is "get involved at the local level, and start pushing for the things you believe in to be implemented there, and for them to trickle up the chain to state and national candidates."

In other words, if you want to have more than a choice between the establishment Republican candidate and the establishment Democrat candidate, or you want one or more of those candidates to actually represent your views more than they usually do, you need to sacrifice some of your time and/or money to make it happen. (Money is generally only relevant if you've got a LOT of it to sacrifice, though.) Simply showing up at the ballot box and expecting there to be a candidate that you can vote for, who has a reasonable chance of winning, who actually represents a significant majority of your views, is, in America today, naive at best and mind-numbingly ignorant at worst (depending largely on how well your views align with those of the people you tend to live among).

Dan Aris

I think you misunderstood his point—though your point is good too.

But what I read in Tom's post was that the reason we have a single President in the first place, rather than some sort of coequal ruling council, is because of our primitive desire for single, focused leadership.

Dan Aris

I'm sorry, but while I don't have numbers on it, I don't believe that's true. It is my understanding that there are at least as many programmers, system architects, and all other sorts of software developers working in-house for companies that do not sell software, writing programs that will never be seen or used outside of that company.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that, at present, there are a significant number of big-corp hiring managers who will ignore any resume that doesn't "list specific kinds of problems that you've solved." However, I'm not willing to believe that it's every single hiring manager in the country, nor even every Fortune 500 hiring manager. Nor am I willing to believe that, if there are indeed a large percentage doing it, that is anything more than Yet Another Hiring Fad. Because I've heard about dozens of different hiring fads on Slashdot over the past decade and a half.

Me, I'm lucky. I got hired in academia, in a job that fits my skillset and temperament very well, so it doesn't actually matter just at the second (knock on wood) what my resume looks like. But if I took the advice of every person who comes along, like you, and says, "OK, you must have X in your resume or you'll never get a job," my resume would be about 20 pages long. (Except that one of the Xs I've heard is, in fact, "your resume must be no more than 1 page." So, go figure.)

If I had a way to evaluate such advice, to know which pieces are good, which are snake oil, and which are just out of date, it would be fantastic. Unfortunately, I don't—and I don't think you do, either.

Dan Aris

Well, personally, I managed to snag a really nice job (for my own skills and temperament), and am not looking.

But it would shock me if there aren't places that "actually let HR do the hiring," but still have IT teams with good people on them that are worth working with. Sure, there are also places like that that you should run screaming from, but to say that "all businesses that do X are terrible places to work" is pretty commonly a false generalization, especially when X is a relatively common practice among large companies.

Dan Aris

Do you have any idea how many people will give different pieces of often totally mutually exclusive resume advice? Your "protip" sounds like a great way to never get looked at by a very large number of firms who actually let HR do all their hiring. And yes, those exist.

Your desires, requirements, and experience are not universal. They are yours. It is important to recognize that, and at least try not to penalize other people when their experience with the hiring process doesn't match what you expect or want.

Dan Aris

Another part of the Old Testament that doesn't get talked about much, but intrigues me greatly is the degree to which it seems to be telling the story of (the followers of) a God who is, at first, fighting for supremacy against various other Gods, but who eventually emerges triumphant. Again, I'm not enough of a theological scholar to be able to speak with any real authority about this, but stuff in the Exodus story (the Egyptian priests being able to perform what were clearly supernatural feats, despite the fact that Moses was able to defeat them), through to Kings (Elijah calls down fire from heaven, while the priests of Baal are unable to do anything similar), and various phrasings (like "you shall have no other God before me") all seem to suggest it.

Dan Aris

I think far too many people—not just atheists, but theists of whatever sort who are less familiar with the thinking of Catholics—miss this important point. It's not that God specifically decided to control evolution, and left other stuff alone—it's that He, through whatever means, guides everything, all the time, in accordance with His plan.

Though one thing I've always been somewhat fuzzy on is to what extent free will—both of humans and of Satan—really enters into the equation. Sometimes, it seems like Satan or humans acting badly can mess up God's plan, and other times it seems like everything they try to do just plays back into God's hands. And I'm not aware of any specific blanket pronouncements on the subject within standard doctrine, either clearly stating that humans do have free will or that we don't.

Just part of why I'm much more fond of the theology in the Curse of Chalion series by Lois McMaster Bujold. Not only do humans have explicit free will there, the Gods can't even interfere in the material world in more than tiny, subtle ways without humans deliberately surrendering their free will to one or more of the Gods...

Give me something clearly defined like that any day, over the mishmash that is Christian doctrine and theology. ^_^

Dan Aris