I bought a brand new Pontiac G8 GT a couple years back. Not only did I leave the dealer lot without activating OnStar (much to the dismay of the salesman), I removed the module from the car as soon as I got home. Very easy to do, simply unplugged the antenna and electrical harnesses, and unclipped it from the rear deck. No tools needed, no side effects, and the only "feature" I lost was bluetooth integration (which I don't use) and obviously the OnStar "features" which I didn't want. When I traded the car in, I popped the module back in the car. No harm, no foul. I suspect not all GM vehicles make it this easy - especially from an accessibility standpoint. IMHO it would be welcomed, though. I have heard some vehicles pass the CAN bus THROUGH the module, rather than adding it as another module ON the bus. In this case, you'd have to jumper the harness, but still easy enough for any /.'er to accomplish I imagine.

I took that as "I'm trying to cover my butt, and my lawyers told me I can't win this one. Further, I understand it could be even more damaging to admit any guilt." Admittedly a bit of reading between the lines, but human nature isn't to come out and say "I goofed up, so I paid the guy." Look at how other entities handle cases that settle out of court. NOBODY ever offers an admission of guilt after the fact, and anything in print firmly states just that. A suit could probably offer a better explanation of the "why" on that one, perhaps it opens the door for future legal problems.

IANAL, but as others have mentioned, he's attempting to profit from a work he didn't create. That does not seem like it could ever fall under fair use. Just because one can make a 5 second tweak to an image in Photoshop, using the original work someone else created, doesn't make it a new piece of work. He should have contacted the photo copyright holder up front just like he did with the music copyright holders. There is a direct correlation between the modification of works, but for whatever reason he feels the images are free, but the music is not? Perhaps that is only because we have the MAFIAA/RIAA to "thank" by putting the punishments for such actions prominently in our minds with all their deplorable legal shotgun tactics.

Reading the article, he more or less lays out why he settled - he figured out he was indeed in the wrong. The Doors album cover recreated with Rubix cubes on a street is (to me) plainly a new work, while based on an existing work. Simply reducing the resolution of a work and using it for the same purpose (a commercial album cover), is (to me) obviously not a new work. The other examples given could be argued separately, and no info is given on whether rights or permission were sought in each case, etc.

Looking at my own life as a parent, I have yet to feel like I'm coping. Rather, I find myself looking forward to the next opportunity to spend with my family. Judging by their reactions when I walk through that door, they apparently suffer the same coping strategy as I do.

The "negative" moments are no more troubling than those elsewhere in life. Heck, a lot of those negatives are a great source of amusement for my wife and I, and they make for some absolutely adorable photos. Work issues have been much more of a chore than child rearing, and I feel my job is quite productive, in a nice laid back atmosphere. The net balance is FAR greater in the positive, than the negative for both work and family life. Maybe I'm coping... But damn if I don't have fun doing it.

The kids sleep fine, so I sleep as much as I want. I have plenty of free time, I just choose to spend it with friends AND family. Our children are active participants in our daily lives, not burdensome tethers. That may be the key for folks who think like you though, and again refers back to my original comment - if you're not ready, you're not ready. For those "adult" things you don't take your kids to (loud concerts, romantic evenings, etc) the kids LOVE spending the night/weekend with the grandparents.

Put simply, if you feel you screwed up your life and regret your choices, it doesn't mean everyone else did.

All I can say, is "they're doing it wrong." If a child doesn't increase your happiness, you either had the child at the wrong point in your life, you weren't prepared for the supposed negative aspects, you have spousal issues, etc. Sure, there's a lot of things that can drag a parent down that aren't the direct effect of the child him/herself. I've read the studies, they say parents THINK they're happier when in fact they're not? Sounds like the incoherent ramblings of someone with some pretty hefty baggage from their own youth.

Take one look at any proud parent beaming when their child marks another achievement. Take one look at any parent boasting about how their child is so smart because they accomplished some task at an early age. Take one look at any parent when they arrive home from work, and walk through the door to be greeting with tiny feet and open arms. Take a look at all the videos parents post on YouTube!

If anyone could think those parents aren't happy, I can't imagine what those folks think would improve a parent's happiness.

I certainly hope you're being facetious. Adding a toll system adds unnecessary infrastructure and maintenance costs, adds travel delay, burns more fuel for no good reason, and a ton of other problems. The public gets poorer, a ton of money gets burned up into thin air, and the few extra dollars off the top go everywhere but the original intent. See it all the time, down here we call it "the Harris County Toll Road Authority."

Our new house is built with all kinds of radio-blocking "stuff." The foil Tekshield in the roof decking, radiant barrier insulation on the exterior walls, Low-E3 windows, etc. all block various forms of electromagnetic energy. WiFi is definitely not affected much - I can connect with ease a couple houses away. Cell phone signals on the other hand, are pretty soundly attenuated. I've had to get an AT&T MicroCell to assure solid coverage. 3-4 bars outside translate to 1 bar inside in the more common parts of the house.

He gets plenty of time with the 'tech, we're not cruel. :) Oddly enough, I'm his favorite Xbox buddy. If I won't go up and play, he quickly loses interest. Strange, I know. His time isn't limited by strict minute boundaries in most cases - bedtime is firm on weeknights, and he plans accordingly. Otherwise it's a simple "hey you've been in here a while, why not head outside and see what the other kids are doing?" We don't get much protest, and shortly after he's bounding down the stairs and out the door.

I'm also a big proponent of "figure it out." This weekend he mentioned his laptop didn't work, to which I simply asked "what's wrong with it?" It took a few iterations of "I don't know," to him reading out error messages, me urging him to Google what they meant (on his phone!), and a few trips up and down the stairs, but he finally researched enough to figure out the drive had failed (DRDY error, bad block counts were skyrocketing). That earned him lots of praise and a new laptop to replace his old one.

I know, it really is easy to "forget" your kids are over-doing something when they're NOT driving you nuts. :) But I digress, as parents, we need to set limits on our kids. Our 12 year old is, like most, always wanting to either be on the 'net on his laptop, on his cell phone texting whoever, watching TV, or playing the Xbox. Guess what - we limit his time with each, and send his butt OUTSIDE! The worst thing we can do as parents is to let them grow up without exploring the world around them, and that includes nature.

I can't speak for all, but here's what my iPad is used for:

1. SSH/RDP/VNC into machines while I am away from my desk. You'd be surprised how well the on-screen keyboard and the touch mouse actually works. I, for years, tried to do this from whatever phone I carried, and often ended up walking all the way back to my desk. With a tablet, I don't have to and I honestly don't get frustrated - I can accomplish the task quickly and easily. Granted, you wouldn't want to log into your Windows terminal services box and start whipping up a new C# app from your iPad, but it's great for doing things like tweaking running services and such without having to lug around a laptop.
2. Web browsing. When I get home, I don't want to sit with a laptop or sit in my office on my desktop - but there's times I do like to kick back and waste time on the web while the wife watches some silly TV show. I love the "instant" nature - no extended awakening from sleep mode, no boot up, etc. Pick it up, surf, put it down.
3. Note taking. For many this wouldn't work, but for me it does. It depends on HOW you take notes, I suppose. My notes consist of short lines of text, no diagrams or anything like that, so tapping them into a tablet is just as easy as jotting them down in the 6"x9" spiral pad I used to carry.
4. Email. Email on an iPad is pretty darned smooth, especially for multiple accounts with OS4. I bounce between my phone and the iPad a lot, really just depends on which device is in my hand.
5. Pandora - sure, I could do the same thing on my desktop, but I tend to use the Pandora app on the iPad a lot more. Maybe I'm a little OCD about keeping stuff open on the desktop other than what I'm actively working with though.
6. Book reading. I'm not a reader, and the books I have (in the Kindle app) are all programming related and reference material. But it does get used for book reading a fair amount.
7. Quick on-the-run SQL queries. We use this one in meetings a lot. We'll be discussing something, and invariably a question will come up about something that can only be answered by looking at our data. The iPad gives me the instant ability to do so, again without having to be prepared with a ready-to-go laptop. Tap, slide, tap, pick the table, pick the filter criteria (where clause), and voila.

Then of course, there's the toddler aspect. As in, when I get home from work, my nearly 1-1/2 year old immediately begins asking for the iPad (by name, mind you). I've loaded up a handful of educational games, and it has helped us dramatically increase her skill set. Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, her hand eye coordination is impressive, her thinking skills (do this, then that, then that, to complete the task) have blown me away, in good part due to the interactiveness of the device. With a computer, using the mouse still hasn't quite clicked - but directly manipulating things with her finger immediately made sense to her. She wants, nay she demands, to spend her 30 minute windows of opportunity with the device. Her mother and I don't coach her with it either, we'll put the apps on and let her explore - and I'm constantly amazed with the problem solving skills of such a young mind. That alone was worth the cost to me. Between the conventional parent-child interactive learning, and the hands on figure-it-out learning on the iPad, something tells me she'll be well prepared for school in a few years.

Paranoid much, or is this anti-fanboyism of a higher caliber? Apple couldn't control the 'net any more than Microsoft or any other large could, which is to say ... they really can't. Sure, there can be bandwidth shaping terms and conditions thrown around, there can be prioritization of packets, and all the other things that have been happening on various network segments since the "good old days." I guess it's just more fun to demonize large corporations for taking part in doing business with whatever tools are available to them. Apple, Microsoft, etc. don't own the backbone. Nobody (singly) owns the backbone. Google is moving towards putting a LOT of fiber in the ground, so if you were to throw conspiracy theories around don't you think Mountain View would be more "dangerous" than Cupertino? That's not to say I believe Google is doing anything nefarious, because ultimately they're doing what is in their power to further their own brand, on their own dime. The 'net will operate with or without them - that's the beauty of it. Don't want to use Google's glass? Then don't establish a peering relationship with 'em. Simple.

I have a T-mobile G1, ordered it the first moment I was able. I've also put hands on nearly every other Android phone I could, including the Droid, Nexus One, etc.

While the latest iterations are indeed quite zippy, nobody can say the UI is as consistently smooth as even an iPhone 2G. It is like playing a video game on a GeForce 8400 GS vs. a GeForce 9800 GT - they both render the same stuff, and they both move around the same, but the frame rate is obviously faster on one of them. The latency between a command and its response is also faster on iPhone OS devices, and more consistently faster. Even if that is only a perception because of instantly performing an animation, it makes the device "feel" nicer. Scrolling in the browser is another example - its just smoother on the iPhone. There's plenty of video comparisons, but put 'em both in your hand and it really becomes obvious. It isn't something that makes the Nexus One or Droid or others "bad" phone, because they're VERY good phones, but there's perceptual things about the iPhone OS devices that strongly contribute to their popularity.

I haven't started developing for the iPad, although after being a user for the past 2 months I honestly think it's an outstanding platform to focus attention on.

The UI is buttery smooth. This is one thing EVERY other device I've put hands on doesn't even come close to getting right. Android is wonderful, and I love it - but the UI just isn't as fluid and responsive. This may not change how the device works but it certainly changes how you perceive the device is working. I see it every time someone uses an Android phone (myself included): click, click again because it didn't give you immediate feedback or response. Turn the device sideways, wait a couple seconds, flip it back and forth a couple times because the display didn't rotate. Things like that are minor in 'tech, but huge in usability.

The tougher process of getting an app INTO the iTunes app store I honestly think is helping weed out the lower grade fluff we find in the Android market. How many times have you gone looking through apps, found something that looked pretty good, installed it, and it was crap? How many reviews on the Android Market read something like this: Force closes, one star!. It's the same problem with all the various free Windows software that's everywhere on the net. You have more choice, but you have more choices of crap. If people are going to spend the time, money, and effort to get an app into Apple's store, they're more likely to make sure it's something that's worth being there. They want to get paid, after all.

Getting back to end-users, of which I've been exclusively since this thing launched -- it really is awesome. I carry it instead of a laptop nearly every time I would have taken my laptop. I carry it now when I wouldn't have carried anything before, simply because I can. Then again, if I had an iPhone I'd probably leave it home more often. Regardless, the beauty is being able to do real work on it (email, web-based enterprise apps, etc.) without having to take anything else with me. No power cord, no problem - I get a full day PLUS worth of power out of the battery. Battery life + 3G + usable screen size (1024x768 means my work webapps fit perfectly) + a very usable on-screen keyboard = happy camper.

Just set the network card to 10-base-T, half duplex. The problem aught to solve itself!

This is how we handle errors and such on our internal software -- the user is prevented from continuing if "something" must be done to solve the issue. These are rare, because in many cases we can programmatically figure out what's wrong and dynamically prompt for replacement values and such. But in those instances where continuing would leave data in a "dangerous" state, we halt the user's progress, and they either get the opportunity to fix or they're instructed to get someone who can. If they wish, they can back out and redo the whole transaction.

We've found this works quite well - in most of the cases the users may not know exactly what they did that generated the error, but they appreciate being able to self-manage the problem without having to run to our dep't. for resolution.