Doesn't even Ubuntu try to mimic this in some respects with its downloader?

I'd rather say that Apple is "mimicking" what Linux distributions have been doing for a decade.

However, Apple doesn't have to restrict the ability to install software from other sources; that is a typical Apple-restriction.

In 1984, Microsoft made their money from MS DOS, BASIC, Z80 cards, and mice.

Well maybe we should consider the possibility that punishment is not the answer.

 

Perhaps that's true, but I don't think that's the best metric for measuring ability or intelligence.

How many programmers do you know that could come up with a Turing Algorithm to recognize palindromes? It's definitely more difficult than writing a binary tree in C++, but clearly it's useless for anything we'd do in the professional world.

It's been maybe 15 years since I've designed a full adder. I could do the former because I just did it last week, but I doubt I could do the latter without pulling out a book or googling.

Being able to do the Turing Algorithm doesn't make me better than all of the Software Engineer's that can't do it, and similarly not being able to do the full adder doesn't make me incapable of coding other algorithms.

I don't understand your point. You can use iTunes for OSX or Windows and subscribe to the podcasts and than just synch them to your iPhone/iTouch. This seems to be the way to accomplish this with the least amount of problems.

What people will start doing is paying for two ISPs: one locally for raw data access, and one remotely as an unfiltered endpoint onto the internet.

If Comcast really wants, all they will see from customers is one encrypted, very high throughput connection

They can't exactly block VPN connections like this, as business users are required to use VPNs more and more often

Stereotypes are usually wrong. This would be one of the cases.

The lower-power Phenom II chips have the lowest TDP around; functional units and whole cores can be powered down when not in use. You're not likely to see the latter while using your machine, except that the Phenom II X3 processors make use of it so that the disabled core doesn't even cost you any power.

I said I had a 16GB player. I didn't pirate anything. I compress at 192 or 256 kbps sometimes VBR, sometimes CBR. So no, that's not less compression. It's a little more on average.
  At $.99/track, typical CDs cost $10-15, so I don't have to pick a theory -- they match. How much do you pay for CDs?

Well it was a pain in the ass 12 years ago. I know that lots of long-time Apple loyalists will claim that OS9 was terrific, but it was really buggy and finicky. The security was terrible, you had to manually fiddle with your virtual memory depending on which application you were using, and you had to delete your application preferences all the time because they were constantly getting corrupted.

When OSX first came out, it showed a lot of potential, but wasn't very usable. It wasn't until 10.2 (late 2002) that OSX started to show some maturity. It wasn't until they switched over to Intel processors (2006) that people really started to become happy with performance.

It looks like they want to deliberately omit this feature from desktop builds, so as to not "tempt" the users into installing "bad" codecs.

And in modern times, this is the model for Hezbollah, Sadr's militia in Iraq, and Hamas.

I can think of a great place that is virtually NIMBY proof; economically depressed areas. The blinders of affluence make the world a very different place.

Dignity is an essential human right. How dare we sacrifice it to terror?

I came across this qutoe from Susan Neiman a couple of weeks ago in the Economist, and it seems to fit here:

Human dignity requires the love of ideals for their own sake, but nothing requires that the love will be requited.

It can be argued that security agencies aren't in the business of ideals, or dignity, but it seems they're not allowing anyone else to be either.

Or a 99 cent hdmi cable and a netbook.