Google Search is a much, much less dangerous monopoly than Windows is or ever was, because they don't really have a way of locking you in. The cost of switching search engines is close to zero, while the same can't be said for OSs, especially since they have exclusive and widely used applications like MS Office.

Google's dominance in the online advertisement market seems way more dangerous to me.

Apple OS X Lion shipped with new NVidia video drivers that are causing anyone with a mid 2010 Macbook Pro to get a kernel panic every 5-10 minutes.

Oh, yeah? I'm posting this on a mid-2010 17-inch MacBook Pro with an Nvidia card. I've been running Lion developer previews for months, and the only time I've ever have graphics problems is when I'm playing a game and the system gets too hot because my room isn't well-ventilated. In fact, Lion could be the most stable first release of any OS X operating system. I regularly play World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead 2, and Team Fortress 2 without issue.

Nvidia isn't saying that nothing will get fixed. Apple works with Nvidia on their drivers. What Nvidia is saying is simply that they can't provide technical support. Removing posts about goofy boycotts and petitions is just clearing out nonsense posts in what is supposed to be a support forum. Apple's support forums are some of the silliest, whiniest forums on the web, and you'll rarely find useful information from the users there.

I also question the claim that "Apple knew about the issue before shipping Lion," as if there's some big conspiracy that Apple knew it was going to cause your machine to black-screen but didn't care. Give me a break.

How a major hardware manufacturer can ship such a faulty product without getting much press about it is completely beyond me.

Because the issue only affects a tiny segment of customers. If, as you claim, every single person with a mid-2010 MBP was getting kernel panics every 5-10 minutes, that would be major news. Like most customers with technical problems, you're acting like it's a bigger deal than it is and that it's affecting more people than it is. Installing a new operating system is a major procedure that can uncover previously invisible problems lurking on a person's computer. That's why, every time there's a console firmware update, you'll see a bunch of posts from people claiming the updates ruined their machines.

The problem isn't so much the existence of the photo, more that it has become trivial to link a person's name to it.

Trying to find someone specific using the mentioned services is like searching for the needle in the haystack. It becomes a completely different matter if it's done for you by some search engine.

Who cares what some manager at the next Geocities has to say about it? Facebook is a fad, it too will pass.

-jcr

We had "32 bit machines with GUI, preemptive multitasking and hardware-accelerated 3D graphics" prior to August 1981? Any links/info?

Yes, stupid. Take a look at Sun, Apollo, and SGI.

All had bitmapped graphics (no window system, programs took over the screen), mice, and the SGI machines at least had hardware-accelerated 3D graphics (the hardware did matrix mulitplications and polygon fills).

This comment is not to be understated. I was very young, but my first-hand experience comparison of what Apple and Amiga had at the time to what a Windows+DOS system could do makes it clear that half-assed triumphed over quality. People didn't know how to evaluate a computer when making a purchase, so they just bought something cheap that looked like a computer, even if it was inferior in regards to hardware and or software.

We already had all of those things prior to the release of the PC. Expensive as all hell at the time, though.

Um, you have your order wrong there. Germany requested the data (saying they wanted to make sure it wasn't PII that was collected) AFTER Google admitted to collecting it and offered to destroy it with witnesses. In other words, Germany wanted access to the data for data mining, not to prevent the leakage of PII, or else destroying the data would have been sufficient as it was in many other countries.

They're probably people like me who own the 3gs (or older), still had time too much time on their plans (or who thought the 4 didn't quite justify an upgrade), and believe the next one is likely a good time to step up.

When google picked up wifi data, they tattled on themselves and insisted on wiping what they collected.

Let me guess...you didn't bother to read the garbage article and just read the attention grabbing bullshit headline and posted?

they did not break them actually. how about you get informed before you post aggressively then? FF 4 addons (plugins do not need update ever btw) have been marked compatible with FF 5 by Mozilla before FF 5 was released, so, no, they could not break.

Yep...once the virus is in the antivirus is useless. The virus will have no problem setting permissions, etc. so your antivirus can't touch it. And...given that most antivirus programs take a week or so to respond to new viruses, it makes them mostly useless.

If somebody's the sort of person who gets viruses an antivirus won't save them.