True

I don't think you're getting ripped off; I get why you make your purchase. No side is wrong or right and it's not wrong BECAUSE Apple are making money. I expect them to and I expect them to make as much as they can.

What I'm talking about the somewhat bizarre phenomenon that's (almost) unique to Apple fans where by Apple's profit margin is recorded as some kind of "win" for Apple against Android's market share "win" - but fans see this as a win for them - the Apple fan themselves, instead of for Apple. It's not. No matter how you present it, it's not. It's a win for Apple. It's one thing to expect a company to make a profit but it's a whole different thing to be proud of a company, that you don't work for or own shares in, making money out of you.

Now you can enjoy your phone all you like - there's lots to enjoy about it. And it's good your provider is profitable and stable; those are good indicators for the future of your product's support (but don't kid yourself that you're not being tracked - I promise you that you are. If you read slashdot and you don't think iCloud stores your IP address, then I'm a little shocked).

However, Apple's profit margins being high is not something for Apple's customers to be proud of, when they're funding them. Can you imagine people being ecstatic - and I really mean ecstatic, if you've ever read Daring Fireball or watched an iPhone keynote - that Walmart or MacDonalds had huge profit margins?? (Note: we don't have Walmart in my country, so I'm trying to pick a company that will resonate with most readers. Hopefully it's a good example). It's such an odd thing to be proud of!

Thanks for the info. Hopefully we'll see them here in Australia sometime before they're superseded but it seems Google and Microsoft are going out of their way to forget we exist, down here, lately.

See, I understand the mentality that drives someone to spend more for a product, so they don't look like a "poor person". I even understand that people are happy to pay more for status or premium, etc.

The point I'm trying to make is that Apple fans go one step (or more maybe?) further than simply justifying the higher price - they go to the point of claiming that Apple's higher profit margin = a win for them, the Apple consumer. It doesn't. It equals a win for Apple.

Unless they own Apple shares, Apple's profits are not a reason for Apple's consumers to be proud, yet somehow, at every iPhone launch, Tim Cook (or Steve Jobs) gets up and says "we made x billion profit this year" and the crowd goes berserk. The Daring Fireballs of the world cheer *Apple's* profits as somehow *their own personal* victory over other people's consumer choices. "Apple made more money than Samsung so I am correct for buying an iPhone and you are foolish for buying a Galaxy".

That aside, how is the Nexus 6? I have been seriously considering buying one, if Google ever remember to release them in Australia but I've heard they suffer from lag and poor battery, due to the quad-hd screen?

Oh I get it - I'm just saying it doesn't make sense. Despite what you say, I am not really young anymore, though I wish I was! I remember Apple being on the ropes and I've been around long enough to fully understand the Apple phenomenon. I've owned Apple computers (currently none because work has surprisingly lead me down a very Microsoft centric path in the last couple of years and I found all my Macs just bootcamped to Windows, so it was kind of a waste).

I even get the bit about paying more for what you love. That's all fine and good. Perfect reasons to spend more. I drive an overpriced car, I am sure.

What I don't get is people who are outright happy that Apple makes a larger profit margin per unit - and they are the people funding that unit. That makes _no sense_. I'm not talking about people who are happy to pay a premium for a "better product" - I am talking about people who are actually happy that some company is over charging them and have turned this into a "win" for themselves. So *Apple* charges more for a product that costs less to make - and the consumer who buys it is *proud* of this?? That is completely bonkers. Unless you own shares in Apple, this should piss you off, not make you feel like "the winner". The winner, here, is Apple, not the consumer.

The fact that their RDF or cult or marketing or whatever you want to call it has produced people who will even perform the necessary internal mental gymnastics required to not just justify the higher profit margin but actually internalise it as a "win" for themselves, speaks volumes about how good Apple has become at this.

I've never understood the true-Apple-fanboi approach to these figures, which is always joy and pride, like they've somehow "won"? The amount of times I've heard people proudly tell me how Apple has the highest profit margin on their phones - a phone which the person who is telling me this is holding - truly makes me shake my head. I can't think of many other scenarios where people are proud that they paid more for their device and the people who sold it to them paid less to make it.

When did "I win because I got ripped off the most!" become a sane argument?? By all means, be happy the company is stable and will stick around to make more devices for you or will money to invest in future devices but for goodness sakes, people, stop being proud that you're being ripped off!?

According to a referenced article on the link above, he got a lot of help from a Comp Sci friend, in setting up the site - but the guy doing it wasn't fully involved - just giving bits of code and advice. So it's conceivable he knew enough and had enough help to get the site running - but didn't think through all the elements of what he was doing, properly.

It seems he told his GF, who later broke up with him and told her friends... one of whom posted on his Facebook page: "I’m sure the authorities would be interested in your drug-running site". http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

Never fear - Samsung is still seriously considering buying BlackBerry: http://business.financialpost....

I don't see how throttling works in a UDP reflection attack, from the perspective of the intended target? Sure you can throttle the number of requests per minute you answer from your DNS server - but if someone is requesting DNS packets from you, you're not likely the target (so it works for you, the DNS server owner but doesn't help the attack victim, in short, unless every DNS server does it - and there's a hell of a lot of IPs in the open resolver project).

What's far more likely is that they'd be using one of the multitudes of locations that allows spoofed IP addresses, and then requesting a 50x amplified DNS dump from you back to a spoofed address - and that address it the real target. Plus they'd be hitting up 100 other DNS servers at the same time.

Collectively, that spoofed IP address can be made to cop a 100gbps attack with virtually no effort and then those poor bastards basically can't do a thing about it. They can throttle or firewall anything they like but unless their router and pipe can handle 100gbps - and chances are it can't - they're screwed.

People generally use UDP because it doesn't require a handshake and the amplification attacks are generally UDP (time server or DNS server amplification attacks can go as high as 200x - i.e. you can send 1mb outbound and get 200mb back; so with address spoofing, it's easy to overwhelm someone with such an attack).

What can you do about it to protect yourself? Stuff all, I am afraid. At the end of the day, if you cop a 100gbps attack on a 100mbps pipe, it's game over, no matter what you try to pull. All you can do is beg for help upstream, where someone can handle that traffic.

If you're talking about websites, I guess CloudFlare would help - and it's basically free (and no, I don't work for them or have any association with them) but that pretty much only works for websites, I think - not other services.

...we just write out the individual bits on a post it note, throw it out the window and let the wind blow it to the nearest exchange, where trained koalas use 1800's era telegraph equipment to re-encode the traffic onto the Internet, for us. Because that's faster than the best Internet most of us will ever see.

I think many consumer grade spinning platter disks would actually struggle to perform at 10gbps. SSD would be ok but the ol' 5400RPM disks wouldn't keep up.

I'm pretty sure many people's hard disks couldn't handle it, either....

Ok, true - so about 6 people will still be able to find their stuff. ;-)

^^ This.

The interface is terrible. It's a very clear console port. For the first time in a BioWare game, the interface with kb+mouse is completely different and pretty universally regarded as worse. I can live with it, though. The constant crashing, on the other hand...