What a lot of the articles pointing this out don't mention is that the rules governing advertisers and what information they can get from the user without their knowledge/permission also changed. Ars points out that this change may make it easier for large third-party advertisers (e.g. AdMob) to get data from their users. I'm not going to argue whether the other changes to the agreement are good or not (I'm a little worried that allowing interpreted code, particularly flash, will lower the overall quality of apps available in the store). But some of the changes to the ability of third-party advertisers to get information on their users could be a serious problem.

Does anyone else think it is a bad idea? I hear a lot of hedging about how good it will be in the long run, but no one seems to think it's a terrible idea.

It seems like this is just a description of a scaled back space program. Gutting NASA's manned spacecraft development and pushing future development into the future seems like it could be even more detrimental than simply canceling the shuttle programs.

As I understand it, backers of using private space companies argued that delegating the heavy cargo transport to a private company would leave NASA to focus on exploration and science. Isn't it to opposite of this to move NASA into developing a heavy lift vehicle, and having private corporations take up manned spaceflight?

As a side note, it's interesting to remember that one of the major reasons we were able to overtake the Russian space program during the 1960's was that we focused on technical and scientific advancements rather than pure heavy lifting, in which the Russians had an estimated decade advantage.

This seems to be disappointing to those of us that would like to become future astronauts.

It seems like this is just a description of a scaled back space program. Gutting NASA's manned spacecraft development and pushing future development into the future seems like it could be even more detrimental than simply canceling the shuttle programs.

As I understand it, backers of using private space companies argued that delegating the heavy cargo transport to a private company would leave NASA to focus on exploration and science. Isn't it to opposite of this to move NASA into developing a heavy lift vehicle, and having private corporations take up manned spaceflight?

As a side note, it's interesting to remember that one of the major reasons we were able to overtake the Russian space program during the 1960's was that we focused on technical and scientific advancements rather than pure heavy lifting, in which the Russians had an estimated decade advantage.

This seems to be disappointing to those of us that would like to become future astronauts.

I like you, developed deployment for a mac based network (600 or so macs) back when command line ASR and netrestore were the best options. However, we also upgraded our deployment methods as Apple incorporated some of the technologies we used (cloning and automatic install options) into their server software. Today that particular piece of software is very well polished and does the job extremely well. The last time we did an installation (a few years ago) we used custom netboot images with automatic install options for different types of computers (lab, classroom, etc.) based on mac address. At the time we used a third party unix package manager or OS X called Radmind, but it proved to be more trouble than it was worth. However, Apple Remote desktop's package management and monitoring work very well and lets your do most of the upgrade install tasks you need to. In the end, the only per-machine work was setting up the machine to boot from the network by default.

Also, if you have the bandwidth, you can centralize your OS installs as server based images that are never installed on the thin clients. If you get it to work, it makes upgrades and deployment very easy.

If you want to discuss some of the problems we faced and our solutions, please feel free to contact me.

Its a bit misleading to say that Pidgin now implements video and voice for XMPP networks. They have implemented video and voice for the protocols that Google Talk uses which are unique to Google Talk. Other services (such as iChat) use different video and voice protocols on XMPP (possible on the Google Talk network). Since there is no unified protocol for video and voice on XMPP each service uses their own "proprietary" protocols piggy backed on an XMPP network. I guess us snobby iChat users will just continue to talk to each other.