This is truly a major disappointment - right on the heels of the discontinued xServe.
I couldn't be more sad for the direction and the position Jobs & Co. has put Mac IT in. It's like a nightmare. Here we had the best stuff, server and Server OS-wise and they wreck it all within the span of a year.
I'm starting to get pissed off, and I'm a long time FANBOY. I fucking love the Macintosh. There's nowhere to run.
What the hell are they thinking?
They deserve whatever comes their way now, they've demoted us to what used to be vicious lies about what the Mac was.
This is a nightmare, God, wake me up.
Bloody-Hell.

dargaud said:
"Yeah, I don't know why a lot of people have Sony in high regards and consider them 'quality' products. Probably like Apple products, they mentally associate higher price with better build quality."

Except that Apple's quality isn't a false perception, some folks have had runs of bad luck with Apple (or, insert quality hardware company). Our company, which I do I.T. for, has had very little problems (software or hardware, Xserves to iPods) with them.
I've been doing this for quite a while, it's an experience thing.
YMMV.

But, back to Sony ...

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1975504&cid=35073810

We loved their Trinitron Monitors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitron

and found them hard to replace, but we've stuck to our guns. Sony, as your experience well illustrates has gone dark in the brains department.

Our Company, which uses many SONY-type products, banned them after the music rootkit incident, and we have never looked back. This confirms our decision was correct.

Why would you let any company in you domain that has *proven* hostile intent?
If it were Apple we would do the same, as much as we love them, we'd scale back to the least amount and then buy their products secondhand, as we are in the arts and it is a necessary thing to use some of their products.

We would love to do this with Adobe, even though they are not quite as malicious as they are pompous and lazy - but that's not really on the scale of what SONY willingly does.

We've partially banned Microsoft and are presently buying ONLY secondhand. They need to really shape up if they are to allowed back in our company.

It's called "voting with your wallet".

Open Source is what we're waiting for really and we support some projects with cash. We urge you all to do the same. It way past the time to put these companies "on notice".

Tim Cook has been groomed for years, Steve has a first class team now - Jobs remembers his last mistake at Apple and won't repeat it. One thing Jobs is not, is stupid.

Somewhat off topic, but relevant:
I, unfortunately went to IT school in Seattle, WA, around 2000, (originally it was to be Vancouver B.C, such is the price of love at first sight - 5 years married) I was required (forced) to take Win 2k Server as part of a UNIX System Administration track. Ultimately it became useful, but more in a "backwards and in high-heels" way. Our Windows teacher was such a zealot that he equated stock price to superiority of OS platform, Apple was in the midst of rolling out OS X at this point and their stock was something like $11.00 a share, Microsoft was $33.00.

I was so poor at the time it wasn't funny, I told everyone "BUY APPLE" up and until 2003 or so, many of my more wealthy friends did. Some put their children through college with that tip (yes, me = SuperGenius).
I never would ever equate stock price with OS performance, and I often think back on my poor MS teacher and know what a hard lesson he learned.

Me? Lovin' the UNIX and the Plan 9.

New tip: buy electrical utilities and general infrastructure - long term.

Over 17 Years - subversionhack:

http://subversionhack.livejournal.com/1093.html

http://subversionhack.livejournal.com/1745.html

Subversionhack Archive:
(expired certificate)

https://tagmeme.com/subhack/a/

Dig around here:

http://www.searchlores.org/indexo.htm

Subversionhack
From one of my previous posts:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1821502&cid=33910412

You have to realize, as myself and (my) a team of researchers have (finally) dug up, this is not new, nor unique.
follow the link, which leads to other links - you'll see that this has gone from "you're insane", to "wow, they really can do that". in about three years.
As the details trickle out it becomes more insidious as to "the ends to which means" we're dealing with.

I'm happy people have quit discounting this hardware option, which doesn't necessarily need to be "acquired", it can be created from existing hardware, repurposed by chip-crowding, firmware "updates" and firmware / BIOS replacement code, you get it.

This, previously mentioned fellow Researcher is on a hot trail - an update:

The paper was re-done in 2001.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA417629

Now, from a completely different team Researcher, same trail:

Another paper on that same line from the Navel Post Graduate School.
It makes reference to the Myers' thesis.

"A Demonstration of the Subversion Threat" by Emory A. Anderson

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.149.5898&rep=rep1&type=pdf

If you'd like to help, or know more (serious research only please):

hylas(a+)operamail(d0t)com

Me?
I got nothing.

(lately) ;-)

I'm still reading the paper.

As far as Chertoff, a Cold War means nothing when you're fighting Ghosts (and your own Computer).

No, really look at this:

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/history/myer80.pdf

I had a fellow Researcher send this to me this morning - it blows the lid off of what I've been speaking (LOUDLY) and writing about for years - here and other places, basically Subversionhack:

http://subversionhack.livejournal.com/

https://tagmeme.com/subhack/a/

^ 2nd site has Certificate Expiration problem ^

Chertoff article:

"Chertoff told ZDNet UK at the conference that cyberattacks on critical national infrastructure could put thousands of people at risk. "I can envision attacks with catastrophic consequences, with serious loss of life," said Chertoff. "If someone took down an air-traffic control system, we would have devastating loss of life."

"Cold War" is a bit extreme, Red Teams would be a better response.
When you have a hack within the truly elite league such as (the) Subversion(hack) you really need to envision the possibilities of a thousand little fires all within the confines of your neighborhood - honestly.

This NAVY paper of 1980 should get you up to speed.
If you have a Slashdot account, review my post on this and things will become a bit more clear.

The first of my links should give you a good over all.

Journal: On Slashdot Becoming Digg:

http://slashdot.org/journal/216371/On-Slashdot-Becoming-Digg

At some point it becomes all about wasted time.
That is all.

The Disclosure Project - 2006:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6552475158249898710#

The Disclosure Project - 2010:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqzoC3QPI_E&feature=player_embedded#

But, of course they're all liars (sarcasm).

@ 0123456

"... as anyone who's willing to shoot themselves can find numerous other reliable methods of killing themselves even if they don't have a gun."

http://games.adultswim.com/five-minutes-to-kill-yourself-adventure-online-game.html

Please, everyone, feel free to explore these options and test your theories.

(...) till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said ...

Funny, why DO Apple people keep their Macs?
I live with a Graphic Artist too, but I'm the one that stashes her old Macs.
Ever find a PC / WIN / Linux stasher? [there's a reason]

Didn't think so.

The haters are out this morning:

"... Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL,""

http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml :-)

RISC blows CISC away: [skip or walk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_instruction_set_computing#RISC_design_philosophy

- so much so, that they still bolt it on CISC [with some success]

[Don't bother with the subheading "Diminishing benefits", it's BS, look at IBM's POWER]

RISC vs. CISC:

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2000-01/risc/risccisc/

Our G5 x2 2.5 is soon to be a companion to our Xserve x2 1.33 [redundant DNS].
Just add:

Swift Data 200:

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2490

Inside your Power Mac G5:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1305

"catastrophic coolant leak":

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/G5_CoolantLeak_Repair/G5_CoolantLeak_Repair_p1.html