Dish towel and a large ziplock bag. You're welcome.

I won't bow down to Apple, but thanks for asking me to.

It's not their fault that the carrier business is what it is. It's not my fault that the only way to afford an iPhone is through a carrier subsidy on the cheapest possible plan.

It is Apple's fault that they are banning content. As a consequence of this, millions of people on contracts have no recourse aside from taking on onerous fees to extricate themselves. Given this reality, Apple should give up trying to regulate morality. They're not like a grocer, sorry. I'm not locked into a contract with my grocer. I can walk accross the street to another grocer and I didn't have to pay $800 for an unlocked shopping cart for the privilege. There's no friction in (most) normal retail that makes this kind of thing an issue (most of the time). In the handset/carrier arena it's a different matter.

The only option for locked in customers is to bitch each and every time Apple does this until the stink forces them to change their idiot policies. Yay. Success. Now onto the next ban scandal.

Sigh. Yes. When your 3 year contract is up.

Good point. And when my 3 year contract is up, I'll definitely factor whether Apple has changed their tune and choose a different platform if they haven't. In the meantime, the only response is pressure, heat, and mockery. Lying down and saying "Oh well, they have the right to do whatever they want" is idiotic.

Great. In the meantime, Apple customers are stuck in 3 year contracts with an Apple iPhone, feeding Apple and their carriers thousands of dollars.

They can spend the time contemplating the virtues of the Free Market System, while they are locked out of purchasing perfectly legal software, music, books and videos. Or, they can drop their $300 phone and pay a $600 penalty and switch to another platform. Mind you, there's no telling how capricious that vendor/carrier will be with their policies.

Sorry, but they need to get burned every time they pull one of these maneuvers. It's the only way to make Apple stop. They're control freaks. They need to be taught controlling hardware and OS software is one thing. Controlling content and morals is not their job.

Geez. It's like people are afraid of hurting Job's feelings or something.

Oi. Here's an easier solution: Complain loudly about their fool policies so that they change them. That way you don't have to throw away your $300 phone and pay a $600 penalty for switching carriers or void your warranty.

The mobile phone industry isn't like a physical store. You can't walk across the street to a competing store.

Sure. They have the right. And we have both the right and the duty to mock them when they do. If we don't, all publishers will turn into Disneylands. That would be a bad thing, BTW.

Just cause they're a corp and they have the right doesn't mean they should--and it sure as fuck doesn't mean we should shrug and let them get away with it. If they're gonna be moral gatekeepers for millions and millions of people they need to be accountable. Not to their idiot pandering gormless shareholders, but to their audience.

I recommend everyone start calling this thing the GooPh.

He's right! I RTFA'd once and God posted this on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrI7mHVHlEc

Sometimes I wish Slashdot had a "baseless speculation" flag.

Actually, the original source, TechCrunch, not the dumbed down linked article, discusses in much better detail what Alpha is about.

Ask Jeeves fails if you simply substitute one word:

How many bones are in the parrot's body

The reason? It doesn't actually know anything.

If you RTFA, you'll see that something entirely different is being discussed here. Alpha is supposed to actually answer the question because it knows a lot of facts, not because it's been programmed to look for certain phrases and respond with certain strings of text.

It's not a search engine, it's a calculator.