This isn't about linux. It never was. This is about getting what you paid for, and keeping it.

Let's say you bought a fairly expensive item - like a car. Let's also, for the sake of simplicity, say you paid for it in full. You are the owner of the car.

Included in the price you paid, there are a bunch of features - some you'll use, others you won't. Regardless of whether you use them, you paid for them. Moonroof, heated seats, air conditioning, etc...

Let's say one of those features is free maintenance every 6 months, at the manufacturer's dealership. You bring in the car, and they change the oil, fill the fluids, check the air in your tires, replace the windshield wipers, etc...

Now, a year after you bought the car, you bring it in for service. When you get it back, the heated seats have been replaced with physically-identical un-heated seats.

This may not upset you too much if you never actually used the heated seats. However, was it right for the manufacturer to remove them?

The next time you bring it in for maintenance, you ask what they plan to do. In addition to the usual stuff, they tell you they intend to remove your air conditioner - not because there's a problem with it, but because the manufacturer has decided they don't want to support air conditioners anymore. You protest - you paid for the air conditioner, and it's something you use. You don't want to lose it. The dealership says "OK, take the car and leave then. We're not working on it unless you let us remove the air conditioner. Oh, and you won't be able to play any new CDs in your CD player until you let us remove the AC."

This is what Sony's already done. This is what folks are complaining about - and what they have a right and duty to complain about.

What Sony's doing now is equivalent to the dealership saying: "We can come in the middle of the night and remove your AC if we so choose, without telling you or giving you the right to refuse".

Who owns that car again?

Who owns your PS3?

Is it wrong that I'm a little dismayed at this? IMHO these belong in the National Archives, or at the Smithsonian's Air & Space museum, not in the hands of the highest bidder. They're a part of our space program's history, and deserve to be preserved.

The iPhone isn't really a "phone", though. It's a small touchscreen computer (as many smartphones are) that happens to have a cell radio (or two) inside, and software to operate it.

Case in point, the iPod Touch is largely the same device without those radios.

The OS was made to run a small touchscreen computer. The iPad is just a little less small ;P

I'm in about the same boat, with about the same contract timing, just a bit south of you in MA. AT&T's coverage is half-decent, but their reliability for both voice and data has been *horrible* over the past three years (1 year on an unsubsidized 2G iPhone, 2 years on the 3G).

I don't hear the same complaints from the Verizon smartphone users I know. FWIW, I've never heard a single one complain about "not talking and surfing at the same time", as AT&Ts ads would have you believe. They complain about Verizon's prices and their shitty customer service, but never about the network, reliability, or general ability to do stuff.

This is why we need to force carriers to unlock phones upon request, once any subsidizing contract is terminated. We need to be able to take our phones to another carrier who's willing to treat us like customers, and not as the enemy.

There really should be enforcable consumer-protection laws against re-defining terms to mean their opposite. Unlimited should mean Unlimited, fine print or not. It should not, under any circumstances, mean "Limited".

Who the f*ck cares if they call it "unlimited"? The 5GB cap is well documented and well-known. Sure you have to read a little fine print (which isn't even all that hidden anymore), but if you're a remotely tech-savvy user, you're probably reading forums like this one and are acutely aware of the 5GB cap anyway. And for 99% of users, 5GB/month on a cell phone may as well be unlimited

Because, pure and simple, it's deceptive. It's a lie.

"Unlimited data" means "Data, without limit". If there's a 5GB limit, calling it "Unlimited" is lying.

Re-defining "Unlimited" to mean something else is deceptive.

Both of these things are wrong, and potentially illegal.

He does seem like a cross between Lost in Space's Dr. Smith and Baltar from the BSG remake, only for some reason less fun to watch.

Same here, although I do use all eight fingers (and two thumbs). If I catch myself not looking at the keyboard, suddenly something "breaks", and I can't do it without looking.

Well, you've got to figure that, at least at first, it'll be hard to create complex devices. "Computer - make me a 1/2 megaton warhead" would be a lot harder than "Computer - make me a 3/4" spanner".

That having been said, there will be folks using them to make *parts* for nefarious devices. And, if the tech makes it far along enough to be able to make complex machinery, I'm sure there will be folks that *do* try to make weapons.

And, I'm sure the folks who make these devices will think of this, and put in some kind of controls to prevent wholesale creation of, for example, machine guns. However, those controls will obviously be in software, and will be able to be circumvented with the right amount of effort. And of course there will be those willing to put in that effort.

Even better - what about a netbook-style "shell" for the iPhone.

Slot it in about where the trackpad is - heck, it could double as a trackpad itself. The shell could have a nice keyboard, display, drives, ports, etc...heck, maybe even some additional RAM if they did it right. The phone (which, as you said, is a computer) would just provide the CPU, radio for wireless/cellular connectivity, and a small amount of storage for the OS and apps.

External ports could allow it to act as a pseudo-desktop (external keyboard/mouse/monitor) - or a separate "shell" (perhaps built into a nice big monitor) could be developed for that.

How exactly was he dishonest? He announced that his doctors thought they'd found a hormonal imbalance causing him some problems. A *week* later, he announced that things seemed more serious than they thought (IE: it wasn't just a hormonal imbalance, as previously thought), and that he'd be taking medical leave to take care of it.

This wasn't an entire quarter between announcements - it was a week. Perhaps some test results came back during that week that contained new information. Maybe they started treatment, only to find the problem went deeper than they thought. Having family with medical issues, this kind of thing isn't out of the ordinary. Sending off for a test "just in case" is common - and occasionally those tests come back with unexpected results.

It looked to me like this is what happened. Rather than being "dishonest" it actually looks (uncharacteristically) like this may have been the complete opposite.

The "pick two" method then? Normally I apply that to Fast, Cheap, Right, but I can see it working for Friendly, Helpful, Responsive as well ;P

As an iPhone user, I've gotten enough free upgrades from Apple, just in terms of firmware alone, to justify giving them another couple hundred bucks.

Problem being, you're not giving that $200 to Apple, you're giving it to AT&T.

Regardless of how I feel about the upgrade price, I'm far less likely to feel inclined to give AT&T more money. Their service has been quite poor over the past year. 3G is spotty at best around here, with frequent outages. Combine that with their lack of support for features Apple has built into their new software, the delay on MMS being brought about by intentionally crippling MMS for 3.0 beta users, and most especially the proposed $70/month additional fee for tethering (once they bother to get around to it), and you might see why giving AT&T more money simply doesn't fly right with me.

As was said in an article at ZDNet, AT&T is the anchor weighing Apple down. Not that any of the other US carriers would treat customers better, mind you.

Suggesting one unblock ads is fine. Expecting it to make any difference isn't.

The web is designed fr *user* control, not the other way around. It's up to the user (and the browser) to decide which content to display, and how to display it. The page author can provide *suggestions* on how that content is to be displayed, but the browser is free to ignore it.

In some cases, the browser is simply incapable of showing the content - say, images in lynx running on a text-only terminal, or a browser designed to assist the blind. In others, it may be due to user intervention - blocking images to reduce bandwidth usage, for example, or applying a custom stylesheet to reformat content for a small screen.

Or, it may simply be a case of a user not wishing to expose themselves or their computer to ads. There's enough malicious code out there being propagated by ads that it's probably in the user's best interests to block them (particularly if you're running Windows). Most webmasters aren't serving their own ads - they use an ad network. These networks don't exactly have the best track record in preventing malicious code from making it out to users. They tend to only act reactively to such things - at which point the damage has already been done. This of course isn't the webmaster's fault, but it means a webmaster simply doesn't have the control over the ads necessary to be able to make the judgement that "the ads my site serves aren't annoying/intrusive/malicious". They just don't *know* that, because they aren't the ones serving the ads.

Not to mention the fact that if a tag like this becomes common, *all* webmasters will add it, regardless of content. This will make the "This author says their ads are good, view them?" statement meaningless.