The difference is "price fixing” (a specific legal term) only applies when multiple vendors collude to set a price and effectively stifle competition. In the case of a sole vendor there is no competition, so they can legally set whatever price they want; this isn’t “price fixing”.

You obviously have axes to grind...

Two suggestions: run the 10.6.8 combo update (that should overwrite the existing App Store installation), or do a clean install on an external hard drive, download the Mavericks installer from the App Store while booted from that, then copy the “Install OS X Mavericks” application from the Applications folder to your internal hard drive before it installs (I did this with a supported Mac to grab the installer to hack onto an unsupported MacPro 1,1). Of course, the latter option takes as long as reinstalling the OS and requires an external hard drive, so you might as well just spend the hour and a bit and reinstall the OS...it’s not difficult, and it leaves all your installed software intact (and if that doesn’t solve the problem you can be pretty sure it’s misconfigured third party software, such as Little Snitch).

While I’m not a fan of the App Store and would prefer the option of a direct download, it works well for the vast majority of users, and it does a better job of keeping them up to date than the previous Software Update mechanism. It’s a pest in corner cases, though.

More secure than texting BS...

The ABC is probably more at fault, they're supposed to have a dedicated science unit so it gets that kind of thing right.

Of course, one could take the view that it's obvious that not every single rock on Earth has been dated, therefore the only people who really need the word "known" in the headline are pedants or the immensely thick.

The art analogy is definitely wrong for Slashdot. I’d say a more apt analogy is replacing a rustic but functional outhouse with a shiny chrome shovel and a sign pointing towards a nearby forest.

Seconded!

It depends: you can turn off the Apple section in your user settings, unfortunately there isn’t a “Wild Speculation” section you can turn off.

Silicon, no "e". Silicone is the stuff in breast implants.. ..I’ll leave it to the reader to reinterpret the above quote in that context.

According to http://www.apple-history.com/8... the troll’s specs are correct, it could use up to 1GB of RAM (the last one I worked on had 256MB), and the 300MHz model was actually one of the last PPC604 computers to go into production, only months before the G3.

You’re being unreasonably kind to Celine Dion and Bryan Adams.