Well, I'll be jiggered. I was not aware of that. How new are the Express Editions? While I stand corrected, my posture has not entirely improved: my original point remains about Apple's tools. Looks as though it was "redundant," though.

With Linux, of course, you don't have to pay anything, really, and the tools are free. But: To be fair, the developer tools on the Mac are free, unlike Microsoft's developer tools; the "native" language (Objective-C and the Cocoa frameworks) are usable by anybody who wants to learn (and even those who don't), provided that they're using a Mac (which still constitutes open, in the Mac ecosystem). The iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, by comparison, also of course from Apple, is an entirely closed ecosystem. Just trying point out perhaps how Valve's person might be seeing it.

Would giving people lice like this perhaps fall under the "bioterrorism" category? Just a thought...

Not trying to be a troll here, but... and maybe I'm not understanding the whole case correctly. I've followed the articles on Slashdot for a while. In my opinion: if the city hires you, you are subservient to the city. You do not give passwords to your inferiors. Ever. You do, however, give passwords to your superiors when asked. Always. They hired you, after all. They are your bosses. If I hire a security guard for my building, he'd damn well better give me the key if I decide to fire him, or if I get locked out, or both. You don't hide data from your superiors, plain and simple, however *technologically* less advanced they might be. Maybe the city is making a mountain out of a molehill; I'm really not qualified to comment on that, since I don't know as much about the case as some of the people on here will. Honestly, though, my original point: you get hired by someone, you do what they want to do, provided it isn't illegal. I highly doubt that giving someone the password or passwords to their own systems would have been the wrong thing to do.

What I'm guessing is that Apple are perhaps going to introduce a new version of Mac OS X (either full version or trimmed for iPhone/iPod Touch/"iTablet," or perhaps both) that includes advertising if you get it for free (or at a reduced price), and no advertising at full price. The advertising, in other words, will subsidize the cost of Apple's R&D for future operating systems (and/or hardware). Just a thought--it seems a logical money-making and "best-of-both-worlds" step to me.

There. Fixed that for you.