Nice of you to be able to speak for the adherents of other religions and to blindly through the "mentally ill" label around. I daresay that might earn you the label of orientalist.

Tell that to the price of oil (plunging, as we speak).

Out of curiosity, what programs do you use that break post-10.7?

The only program I've run into that works on 10.7 but not anything after is QuarkXPress 8 (and earlier) using a License Server (the license server networking code uses a deprecated system library).

Other than that, Yosemite has been grand.

Nothing in Ham radio requires encryption.

I would allow encryption on amateur satellite command uplinks and perhaps on repeater command functions, but not for general use.

A simple reason--I find more value in the content of Snowden's releases than in the others.

Selling military hardware plans is not ideological and it doesn't expose government abuses.

Two differences from standard criminal charge of entrapment. First, counter intelligence personnel (CIA, FBI, DOD--whatever) are allowed to set up operations like this when government issued security clearances are involved. Second, entrapment is specifically when the entrapper targets a person and convinces that person to do something he would not normally have done. If there were suspicions about this person, I'm guessing he had raised flags already, thus negating that aspect of entrapment.

I'm a big support of Snowden. Much less so of Manning. This guy deserves whatever he gets.

Counter intelligence folks do this all the time. Part of getting (and maintaining) a government security clearance. No chance of entrapment.

Hmmm... that is interesting. I have checked, but I image some mackintosh forums would be the place to know for sure. In either case, we're talking about a less than one year difference, so not huge either way.

Fully agreed--I wish Apple would have included the EFI compatibility shims. I think this--MacPro 1,1--is a perfect example of Apple doing something badly.

Perhaps "many" for small values of many. The majority of all Intel mac models support the latest operating system, even post–Mavericks. The only exceptions are:

1) single core processors
2) 32-bit only processors / EFI
3) a very few unsupported graphics cards

Barring a few major architectural shifts (68k-PowerPC, PowerPC-Intel, 32-bit–64-bit), Apple tends to support computers for a long time. If you're unlucky enough to be an early with low-end hardware, you might miss out. This is true, and a valid complaint. This should not be over-generalized, however!

I do not believe it's fair to say OS X has a "short shelf life" as stated by the GP (unless meaning that new versions are released frequently).

I would never say Apple is better than OSS in terms of support. The FreeBSD dev lists have been discussing some pty changes recently, and one of the mandates was maintaining jail support for FreeBSD 4 released in 2000. Other kernel options extend binary compatibility back probably to 20 years before that! You're not going to beat that. Apple certainly isn't going to even try.

FWIW, Yosemite runs faster on my 2007 macbook pro than Mavericks did (and I hated Mavericks).

I work at a publishing company that relies on some proprietary software that is rarely updated (and hugely expensive when it is). We had a few terminals running OS9 until around 2009. We still have a G4 1.25ghz powermac running OS X 10.4.11 and that same software today (PowerMac 3,6 circa 2003). We even ran some G3 desktops past 2002, and I kept a G4 PowerBook until well into the Intel era.

I'm really not sure by what standard your 1999 G3 was "obsolete" by 2002! As a company, we didn't even start upgrading to OS X at all until 10.3 (test beds) and then 10.4 "for real." My recollection is that G3s were supported by OS X just fine?

There have been 4 major shifts in modern Apple history (3 hardware, 1 software):

1) 68k to PowerPC (first PowerPC macs released in 1994, new OS 8 releases supported 68k for another 4 years)
2) OS9 to OS X (first beta release in 2000. Default OS in 2002. Many big name programs not updated until 2003/2004)
3) PowerPC to Intel (first Intel macs released in 2006, last version of OS X to support PowerPC-only apps was 10.5 in 2008).
4) Intel to 64-bit Intel (first OS to be 64-bit only was Mavericks in 2013, supporting most Intel Macs released since 2007/8).

Apple is not like Microsoft in terms of legacy support. No arguments there. During this major architectural shifts, they have given a minimum of several years of transition. I think you would have more room to criticize iOS, but I really don't see much to complain about with Mac pcs,

FUD is when people made false statements to try to prove their point. As an example of FUD, here's your statement:

I'm assuming you made an error and meant OS X Mavericks, not OS X March? Even if so, you're absolutely wrong. Mavericks and Yosemite can run on any MBP (Macbook Pro) from 2007 on. So, maybe you made a second typo and had really meant 2009 MacBooks (not Pros)? Alas, Mavericks/Yosemite (they have the same system requirements) will run on early-2009 Mac Books, as well. So, you're basically just entirely wrong. Here's the Apple support page if you don't believe me: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6412.

I do think it's worth noting that the Intel macs that are not supported are either 32-bit only or computers with 32-bit EFI. Mavericks and Yosemite are 64-bit only, so the 32-bit processors computers are out. Most of the Macs with 32-bit EFIs can easily run Yosemite, albeit not officially. I'm running Yosemite on my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1. It runs great and was very easy to install.

Nope. Apple has in no way "dropped support" for any laptops still under warranty or support contract. They merely do not support the older Macs with the latest version of the Operating system. The minimally supported systems are still at least 4-5 years old and 7+ years old in many cases (like my own). Works for me.

Apple dropped the Xserve entirely--they stopped selling Xserves and announced the end of the line, what, 4 years ago? Too bad, IMHO, but announced and expected.

Macbook Pro 3,1 (2007) running the latest Yosemite right here (with upgraded 6gb ram and SSD). Fully supported.

My work computer is a Mac Pro 1,1 (2006). Doesn't officially support Yosemite (due to a 32-bit EFI and Yosemite being 64-bit only) but was a piece of cake to install with an EFI override.

7-8 years of support doesn't seem too bad to me!

BS! OS X comes with bash, tcsh, and just about every commandline tool you can think of. I spend as much time in Terminal.app as I do any other program. The OS X installer even allows you to install X11.app!

What "pile of addons" are you possibly talking about? Anything else you need is just a few keyboard commands away using one of the package managers like brew or MacPorts.

Sorry, I wasn't clear - I meant they were leasing airtime, not towers. They're still beholden to the price that the 'big ones' place on leasing out their own infrastructure to what could be called competitors. When you lease airtime, you're implicitly leasing the towers, too.

To a point it exists, but there is still separate and competing infrastructure out there. Until every tower has generic transceivers for each allocated band on it and no cellular provider owns their own infrastructure, the big companies still have a huge 'leg up' over the virtual ones that have to lease from one of the biggies.

I never once mentioned the government running the infrastructure COMPANY. My local power company, Dominion, has two separate sides - a power generation side and a power distribution side. Both are heavily regulated by the Va State Corp Commission, and both have to apply for rate increases that are not always approved. The distribution company has strict performance requirements and fixed profit caps in exchange for being the only power distribution company that gets to run lines to your house. You can buy your power from any number of generation providers (including the generation side of Dominion) that all use the same distribution provider. Their rates are separate on my bill.

I could start "Dave's Power and Light" and provide my 'Green power from horse turds' over the same distribution network for not a whole lot of up-front cash. I propose the same structure for all utilities, including cellular.

I can think of lots of things that I'd like to socialize long before telco.

You realize that the same distribution company/provider company situation already exists in the landline telco industry, right? I can get my dialtone from anyone over my local telco's wires to my house.

I suggest we regulate it like most power/water/sewage companies are regulated - there's a single (very profit- and performance-regulated) company that is responsible for the infrastructure - towers, transceivers, and backhaul in this case. Carriers would then be able to lease access to spectrum from that company with little/no barrier to entry.

Just because you can't see most of the infrastructure it doesn't mean that you shouldn't manage it wisely like any other infrastructure, be it water/sewer pipes or power distribution lines.

I'd love to see this model applied to telephone/fiber/CATV and cellular towers - imagine being able to actually select an internet provider from a wide array of competing companies instead of being locked in to the one that your municipality made the best $$$ deal with.