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.

Whoopsshould’ve added to the first paragraph that it isn’t unreasonable to expect a AU$2,500 computer (the cost of the 15” with 1GB VRAM) to last longer than three years. It’s a durable item, not disposable.

Here in Australia we have a provision in consumer law that states any item considered “durable” (meaning there’s a reasonable expectation of years of service) is covered for manufacturing or design defects regardless of how long the manufacturer’s warranty is; this is referred to as the doctrine of implied warranty. For example, there is a case where Samsung had to refund (not repair, it’s at the purchaser’s discretion) 70% of the purchase price of a TV set which failed after three years because there’s a reasonable expectation that an $8000 big screen TV should last for ten years.

Since these models are failing en masse this is clearly a manufacturing or design defect; in other words, the units had an underlying fault at the time of purchase, this isn’t just normal wear and tear. It’s illegal to sell faulty goods, so Apple remains liable despite the time elapsed before the symptoms appeared; the warranty period is actually irrelevant.

To be fair, the earliest MacPros are about to turn 8, and they're outclassed by an i7 laptop from three years ago. Any business thinking that's still a high end workstation (and hasn't written the depreciation off on tax) has bigger problems than software updates...

And BTW, my 2006 MacPro runs Mavericks just fine with a GeForce 8800GT using the drivers supplied with the OS, so your babble about 64 bit graphics drivers is nonsense (or maybe a distortion of the fact that Mavericks won't boot on a computer with 32bit UEFI, you need either a patched boot.efi file or the Chameleon bootloader). Mavericks won't work on graphics cards that don't support OpenGL 4 or OpenCL either...true, that does include most of the stock cards in the original MacPro, but in perspective that's no more surprising than a 1999 video card not supporting Windows Vista.

What can you do? Require that the owner is informed of a possible problem before any action is taken, and also require them to be present to witness and acknowledge in writing the destruction of any items. The first condition would vastly reduce mistakes, the second takes care of theft disguised as seizure. I know checked baggage doesn't always take the same route as the passenger, but if something is found in an en route search that doesn't pose an immediate threat to the aircraft the luggage item could be tagged (say, a big red sticker) and the matter dealt with at the final destination.

The problem isn't that customs inspection is pointless, I think it actually does serve a valid purpose, so shutting them down is the wrong solution. The problem is giving civil servants the power to summarily destroy property more or less at whim and without consultation; that's a bug which can be fixed without nuking the entire system.

You've never had hot dogs?