The US Supreme Court has ruled that the owner of a iPhone (or other smartphone) has the legal right to circumvent the trusted computing measures built into the device. Apple is not telling you that you can't run software that they do not approve of. They are selling a device which is configured by default to only accept software from trusted sources. They are also telling you that if you circumvent the trusted computing measures, their warranty agreement may no longer apply. No Apple employees (or US law enforcement acting on the behalf of Apple) will show up at your house and penalize you for jailbreaking an iPhone. Mind you, they are under no obligation to provide a simple or supported method of disabling the trusted software source model. It is their product and they sell it as-is.

Part of the concept of competition is that there can be multiple varieties of a similar product, produced by different companies. If an individual chooses an iPhone or other "locked down" device over another device lacking such restrictions, they are indicating that they value the features of the iPhone more than the features of the open device. This is of course assuming that said individual is aware of the software source restriction. The fact that there is a large base of users that do not jailbreak their iOS devices, despite the relative ease with which it can be accomplished for most models, indicates that not all people value software freedom equally. Ultimately it is the freedom of choice of the end user which device and philosophy they carry around with them.

It seems to me that third person shooters have come to occupy some of the space that was traditionally left to story-driven first person shooters (Mass Effect, Gears of War, etc). On the other hand, I have not played any Halo games past the 2nd one as I do not own an Xbox...

Funny, keyboards and mice are two things that I don't want wireless. What's the point of them when you're using a desktop? The bluetooth mouse is very nice for use with my laptop, but that's a totally different use case.

Actually of all the print drivers that I have installed on my Mac OS X systems, the HP ones have always been the smallest. Took a look under the hood one day and found that I had hundreds of separate printer definition files for various Epson models despite owning one cruddy Epson Inkjet. Meanwhile theres seemed to be one small generic driver package (postscript-based? do people still use that?) for my HP Laserjet.

AppleTV - $99 for a standalone streaming device (Netflix, Youtube, Vimeo in addition to Apple Store content)

Not once did I say I preferred the "realism" of one game over another. The reason I tend to prefer Battlefield-style games over Call of Duty-style games is the same reason I prefer say Team Fortress 2 over Half Life 2 Deathmatch. Some FPSes are designed with strategy or tactics in mind. The gameplay mechanics force the player to think (with varying degrees of frequency) about the actions they are taking. Relatively low character health and accurate weapons in Battlefield 3 means you can't charge up through a big empty field and expect to survive. You have to use tactics like cover, flanking, or even distraction. Similarly, in Team Fortress 2 it'd be a poor idea to play the Spy class and run straight at a Heavy with your revolver. On the flip side in most Quake style multiplayer games, if you stand still for more than 10 seconds you're dead. Some games emphasize reflexes and the ability to make split second decisions while others emphasize relatively long-term planning and sometimes a coordinated team effort.
Pro Quake 3
Pro MW2 - Obviously not at the same pace as Quake 3 but same concept
Battlefield 3 Support Class - Totally different beast

Hah! I literally just started playing through that incredible gem (the original Pathways, that is) on a 68k Mac emulator. I had wondered if there was a remake, thanks for the insight!

IMHO the best thing about Doom 3 was that it lead to Quake 4, which is definitely one of my favorite single player games. Hell, Q4 is also one of the few games that had both worthwhile single player and multiplayer.

In my playing experience, going from CoD4:MW to CoD:WaW and CoD:MW2 the games got a lot more twitchy. I haven't played Black Ops all that much (to be honest, it's by far my least favorite out of all of them) but now that I'm thinking about it, weapons did seem more powerful than in the previous three. I have not yet played MW3 at all. I'm having enough fun with Battlefield 3 that I doubt I'll ever play another Call of Duty game.

On another note, I have to say I was quite disappointed with the Battlefield 3 single player experience. Between the weak campaign and the poorly-implemented cooperative mode, it really feels like DICE was trying to imitate the successful single and cooperative player elements from the recent CoD games. Unfortunately not only did they fail to innovate, they failed to even create an acceptable facsimile.

Very informative, thanks for the heads up. This makes me wonder if the rather small maps and close quarters (relative to say the Battlefield games) are partially a limitation of the engine from it's Quake 3 roots. As "modern warfare"-ey as the CoD games may be, I've always felt they had a strong element of the traditional Quake DM style both in team dynamics (or lack thereof) and balance. Heh, if anything in the more recent games CoD series has reverted a great deal back toward the Quake style with more twitchiness, more shots to kill a player and removal of mechanics like lean. Can't say it's a bad thing, but personally I prefer the Battlefield and even the Counter-Strike style a great deal more.

Wish I could mod this but I already posted... +1 Funny :P

HP's lawsuit against Oracle was that Oracle had agreed under contract to support the Itanium architecture for a certain period of time. It's the breach of contract that is the problem.

For what it's worth (according to you - nothing), I replaced the form letter with a personal message. I do have a strong opinion about the Internet Blacklist bill and I made that clear.

Speaking of Apple, both the MacBook Airs and the latest Mac Minis are lacking optical drives. Mac OS X has a utility preinstalled that can mount the optical drive of any other Mac or a PC with a download from Apple. Mac OS X Lion as an upgrade is sold both as a software download and on a flash drive.

Indeed, the signup process is not only broken but monumentally stupid. The other day I wrote to my congressmen through an EFF-hosted web form. I did NOT have to sign up or register for anything, the system merely took my name, address, and email address. Registration-walling something like a petition is a sure way of getting all but fairly fervent individuals from changing their mind or forgetting about it.