It won't change usability at all. KDE is already unusable.

Never mind AT&T's data network. Normal telephone calls drop in their garbage network. I guess it surprised them that people actually wanted to make phone calls too. Their network has been horrible forever. When I lived in L.A. and had AT&T service. I complained to their customer service about the constant call drops and was told .. "but hey! We have the best coverage of any carrier in Barstow!". Nice to know that both families that live in Barstow can call each other, because user's who live in America's biggest cities cannot.

I just loaded Maverick Meerkat on my Linux machine last week, and despite the fact that my Nvidea video card did not have proper support. (Ubuntu should have posted a "NOTICE: Nvidea Users Do Not Upgrade At This Time!!!"), but anyway; the machine is long since too old to run Windoze at all, so I cannot complain too loudly that my ancient hardware is starting to have issues. I was really quite surprised at how usable Ubuntu has become. I have switched back and forth between KDE and Gnome over the years as each became too annoying to put up with for one reason or another, and abandoned Red Hat in favor of [K]Ubuntu because Solaris 8 was more user friendly. RhythmBox is broken, but overall. There is now a tool to do just about everything without a console. I am normally a 'just edit the file' kind of guy, and I find myself USING the GUI tools because they work. Open Office reads docs better than ever before, and most of the tools are really quite good.

In the end, I think Linux has FINALLY arrived. At least for the Debian team and Ubuntu in particular. Red Hat is dreadful today.

Yes Windows 7 sucks less than all of the other Operating systems they have ever released, and slightly less annoying than Vista to use. There's an achievement! Of course Linus wrote Linux because DOS sucked, and passed them YEARS ago even with all their money and resources. It is the commercial software support that keeps them in front. From what I can see from the outside looking in, it is the jewel in the crown of mediocrity. Oh and Steve Ballmer is a moron. Bill was a crook, but I could respect his savvy. He got tired of it, and gave it to Steve because he was next in line and Steve can't even be a competent crook. If he didn't know Bill, he would be one of those guys on America's Dumbest Criminals.

The earliest one I know of was by the smartest man I ever knew (and the strangest). He was my mentor. In the IBM 360 days this guy used to write code .. COMPLEX code in binary on the roller bars on the front of the console because he was too lazy to logon. He made IBM's code more efficient by eliminating all modularization. It was more efficient to just have one big super efficient kernel, so he redesigned their system, and got something like 140% efficiency out of the hardware (40% greater than theoretical possibility) by IBM's own benchmarks, and found a security hole in their code in the process .. as he put it "bit enough to drive an 18 wheeler through", which he reported to them. They told him it was his hacking, he broke something ... NOT OUR CODE!!! IBM CODE CAN'T BE BROKEN!!! So he went to their 'demo center' and fed in a deck of punch cards.

On the IBM Selectric console in the IBM demo center, it printed.

"May I please have a cookie?"

The operator ignored it.

8 hours later during shift turnover It printed

"I never got my cookie"

The two operators looked at it, shrugged, and ignored it. The dayshift operator went home.

4 hours later the console printed.

"You're not a very nice operator either, I never did get my cookie"

The operator thought the guys upstairs were fooling around and ignored it.

2 hours later.

"WHERE IS MY COOKIE!"

hummm...

1 hour later.

"Dammit give me a cookie!"

30 minutes.

"I WANT A COOKIE!"

15 minutes ... 7.5 minutes ... eventually we get to 32 cookies this second .. 64 cookies this second ... 128 cookies this second.

An IBM Selectric typewriter which is the main console for a 360/65 cannot print even the word cookie in a second, much less a whole sentence, and certainly not 128 of them! There was ONE way to crash a 360/65 .. Fill up the console buffer. The system considered console messages to be important, and if the system couldn't print all of them, it halted.

Reboot ... excuse me... Mainframe terminology here... "IPL" the system. First console message:

"You know, I never DIID get my cookie!" .. and the process starts over.

Finally IBM called my mentor...

um... did you submit a job to the demo center?

Yes, but don't worry, it was just a simple 'unprivileged' process, and as you said, your security is flawless, so I am sure there is no danger. :-)

Sir, I think we are prepared to acknowledge that there MAY BE a security hole in our system somewhere. It seems that your job never finished and yet it does not seem to exist in the system anywhere. Our experts tell us we have to re-install the operating system to fix it. Do you have any alternative suggestions?

Just one... Go get the best operator you have and put him on the console and call me back.

Yes sir... .. an hour later

Sir, this is king super operator, they just called me back in to work to assist you in solving our issue.

OK ... now listen carefully. I am only going to say this once. Type carefully, and don't screw this up .. are you ready?

Yes sir.

Good type this ... "c" "o" "o" "k" "i" "e" ... now press "Enter"

Console prints . "Thank you that was good", and the job ends.

After that IBM never ever questioned it if my mentor reported a problem with IBM software ever again.

Sheesh! This thing is a cross between a phone and a PDA. Who cares? it isn't a 'Computer' .. sure it has a computer in it, but so does my BMW and the GPS on my boat, but I don't feel any inescapable urge to hack into my GPS unit. I write software on my PC, my Mac, my Solaris box, and my Kubuntu box all the time, but I have no desire to hack on my Smartphone.

Apple is trying to build a reliable consumer device, and keeping it pretty standard is the best way to do that, so teach your kid to program his computer and tell him not to mess with the ABS system in your Toyota.

Consumer reports has looked into this, and says Verizon has the most coverage. I am a Verizon guy, not because I like their technology, and certainly not because I like their phones. But I almost never ever don't have coverage. Others borrow my phone because I always have coverage with they don't. The 'there's a map for that' adds are true, I have had AT&T before, and their coverage is not dreadful, but certainly not trouble free.

Oh .. Another good idea! Let's replace what we can do with a single button with some program I can launch and find some menu option to do it. Indeed, lets get rid of the keyboard altogether, and we can select all of our letters from a keyboard program on the screen using a mouse.

sigh...

All of this is completely irrelevant. The parent post is correct. Whether one likes Apple or not, they are within their rights to sell whatever they want with whatever restrictions on it they choose. The hardware does not have to be unique, it just has to be sold as a single package. A refrigerator if you will It only becomes anti-competitive when they tell me I can only use it to access the Apple Website. Even that they could do as long as they made it clear that was all it did. Whether the consumer buys what they choose to sell is consumer choice. The difference with Microsoft, and the reason they got into trouble, was because they did not own the PC. The PC was designed to run whatever system you wanted, and they took steps to block that capability. Microsoft could just as well sell a standard PC with a Microsoft logo on it and forbid you to boot anything but Windows on it. The problem is they then have to compete in a commodity market. A problem Apple does not have.

Verizon sells 'Unlimited' data plans that cap out at 5 Gb. AT&T advertises the 'fastest 3g network' with 'more bars in more places' with the smallest 3g network of any carrier. And that's just the wireless carriers. There is so much blatant advertising fraud on American TV anymore, yet nobody seems to notice or care.
I can see how AT&T can argue their lies aren't .. They have 'the fastest 3g network' even if it's only available at the stop sign in on main street in Barstow California, and nowhere does it say that the more bars are 3g bars. As long as there is a signal, they are covered, and they don't say more bars than who? But I cannot imagine how Verizon can argue can argue that a 5Gb limit is 'Unlimited'. It's all fraudulent by intent, but since there is no morality in advertising, I guess it can exist, but 5Gb 'Unlimited' access I would think is actionable. Maybe Pamela Jones can explain it all to us.

The rules didn't change under Roddenberry. He actually documented everything he did and wrote every treaty referred to. When Roddenberry died, so did the science. Rick Berman did not make science fiction, he made money and that was all.

Here Here!

Gene Roddenberry made the mistake of calling Star Trek a 'Wagon Train' to the stars when trying to sell it to the idiots who made the decisions, and ended up stuck with a swashbuckling hero who was always improperly abandoning his ship to interfere with other life forms and screw their women. But it was still better than anything else at the time. When it took off in reruns, the suits wanted more, and Gene said not unless we do it my way. TNG was his way. The science was better, the interaction with other life forms was better, and the ship was managed better. When that went away, Rick Berman and the suits drove it all straight into the ground.

It may not help much, but each vote counts. If I find a store that I KNOW does this. I simply won't buy their goods. They are clearly a dishonest retailer.

The LaserJet printers are nice, but I don't care for the photo print quality. I have a pair of HP 7310s I have had for years, and they have never had a single problem. I use them for Scanning, Faxing, and Printing both Black&White and Color.. Even Photos. The only issue I have is with the price of the cartridges, and the generic ones screw up the print quality. I have them hooked to Linux, OSX and Windows and all functions work perfectly on each. I don't use Wireless, I have it networked connected over hardwired Gigabit LAN. I also have a Solaris 10 box, and it does not support the fancy stuff, but it prints OK.

The closest thing I have had to a problem is the one in my office is ancient, and the FAX feeder pulls in double pages occasionally because it is just so old. So I pretty much send multipage faxes out of the one upstairs because it never misfeeds. Otherwise, it just works.