If the program rootkits your system and prevents you from running certain software... well that sounds like DRM to me. I'd be happy to use a different term if you have something that's more accurate while conveying the same information.

Sounds about right to me.

I wish someone would pick up the Inifinity engine from Bioware and make new D&D games. I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate - Icewind Dale II. I go back and play them about every 2 years at this point.

I just finished buying all the original Lucasarts adventure games that were released on steam (Dig, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones) as well as the new Monkey Island game (+episodes). My fiancee had me pick up the Wallace and Gromit games.

What I'm saying is, I'm still an adventure game junkie, and, if I have anything to say about it, any kids I have will be too. We need more of them.

Hijacking someone else's software isn't competing. Preventing palm from using iTunes isn't anticompetitive in the sense you are suggesting. Anticompetitive behavior would be Apple software going out and uninstalling palm software, or going out onto a system and converting all the music files into a iTunes only DRM format (like Sony has tried to do over and over).

If palm wants to compete then it needs to do its own hard work and write its own software. Apple is under no obligation to support them in anyway and can do whatever it wants with it's own software.

Is it a dickhead move on Apple's part? yes. Do they have a monopoly on digital music? quite possibly. Does what they did violate the Sherman Antitrust Act? of course it doesn't, they're still playing in their own sandbox.

Two things:

1) People have fun in different ways. From your post it seems like you have fun by over coming the challenge of having to have sharp split second response times (mario, prince of persia). Some people don't enjoy that, and despise having to play the same 2 minutes of a level over and over until they can do it in their sleep. Some people just like being an active participant in the story and action. Some people like to have to come up with a winning strategy. Some people like to find-the-pixel. Different styles of play, and there is generally games out there to support all different kinds.

2) I think you'll find that most game companies (video and things like pen-and-paper) have come to learn that "losing" isn't fun. When you invest 30 hours in a game and then die permanently because of a die roll, it's just unsatisfying and frustrating. There is a crowd that can't enjoy a game unless there is a real chance of failure, but that crowd isn't nearly as big as the one that just wants to have fun playing. I see a lot of alternatives to death and losing these days, such as failure leads down a different path, often more difficult than the "success path". I don't expect this will change much, in general people respond better to penalty than outright failure. So yes, game companies will probably not re-adapt perma-death because it will cause them to sell fewer games.

No mod points, but this is the answer to your question.

Yes, I do the same thing for SMS messages. I add the person's phone number to their contact on my phone before sending them a text message.

Please site your source, I have to use the gateway and it works 100% of the time.

There are lots of things about the iPhone that are ridiculous, no argument. I have similar arguments about most devices on the market that can be purchased for under $700.

If your AARP-card-carrying mother can send your phone a photo she can send your email a photo with no loss in fun, I promise.

And if they MMS your email from their new carrier the reply-to will be correct.

Most people I know share carrier information regardless, due to "in-network" deals. Yay, anecdotes are fun.

You act like asking your friend who you're sending photos too is some kind of terrible burden on your part.

If it's really too much trouble to ask them what carrier they are on just have them MMS a photo to your email account, the reply-to will be accurate.

What if they change their phone number? What if they drop their MMS plan?

We can do this all day.

When you MMS someone you have the option of sending the MMS to an email instead of to a phone number. So when you select contact "mom" you have an extra email listing for 5556667777@mms.cellphone.com. it takes you no time to setup, you set it up once and you're done. Yes you can teach your mother that, and no, it didn't make it "not fun". It's better because then you don't have to save the image to your phone and then resend it to get a copy to your desktop.

Because its so hard to add 5556667777@mms.cellphone.com to a contact?

User friendly or not, it has always been incorrect to say that iPhone users cannot send pictures to MMS devices.

MMS was designed for use with camera phones with a bare bones OS. With email to MMS available, specific MMS support on smartphones is just keeping alive a technology that should die sooner rather than later.