Even in the deepest, darkest days of the post 2000 internet bubble, one industry kept hiring the brightest and smartest DRM programmers they could find. And if you guessed/knew it was the porn industry, you are right. An acquaintance of mine went out to CA to enjoy the sunshine, the parties, etc.

The porn industry was years ahead of its allegedly less salacious competition (i.e. Hollywood studios) in terms of streaming content securely, etc. reflecting their profit motives perfectly - the internet remains the killer app for the purveyors of smut since it gives its users the false impression of pursuing their "hobby" in the privacy of their home. As a result, adult 'bookstores' are likely on the decline in all but the most rural areas thanks to high-speed internet becoming more and more ubiquitous.

But it seems that no DRM scheme has been unbreakable so far, so these sorts of draconian 'copyright' measures endorsed by smut kingpins and other content providers are simply another way to use the powers of the state to protect their economic interests. That the interests of the public may not be served by said legislation has been debated often, and usually in favor of reducing the length of copyrights to invigorate creative uses, discussion, etc. But, follow the money... and as long as content providers are sticking more cash into the popos of politicians than voters opposing such legislation, my guess is that politicians will parrot whatever soundbites they are told to repeat.

.... there are risks associated with any medical procedure, including vaccinations. But vaccinations are among the safest things one can do for oneself and the community. The benefits far outweigh the risks, the science is clear on that. Most of the folk that oppose vaccinations do so out of unfounded fears, i.e. gut reactions, not rational reflection of the facts. Instead, they are swayed by the likes of Ms. McCarthy or Mr. Wakefield that there is some sort of giant medical conspiracy. It is precisely this sort of ignorance why more diseases like polio have not gone the way of smallpox, i.e. been eradicated in the wild. In the case of polio, it's thanks to nutty preachers in the affected remaining hotspots making similarly dreary claims re: the polio vaccine.

I attribute the willingness of parents to take a chance with herd immunity to the fact that they haven't themselves seen the effects of polio, whooping cough, etc. in the community around them. There is a reason that in years past people gladly lined up for polio vaccinations - they'd seen the impact, could better trade off the miniscule risk (especially with the post-Cutter-incident monitoring) with the benefits of not having dead, disfigured, or severely disabled children. Indeed, one of the biggest impacts of vaccination programs is the serious reduction in schools for the deaf, dumb, and blind.

Ironically, having rejected comparatively perfectly safe vaccination options, parents seem to have no issues with then putting all the interventionist methods to use to save their children if they do fall sick. I.e. take them to the hospital, operate, perform lots of heroic work to save the child... all of which would not have been necessary if they hadn't blindly followed quacks advice re: vaccinations. And that's what amazes me, the quacks of the world who promote anti-vaccination messages have yet to prove any causal link between MMR and/or thimerosal with autism, yet they stick to this piece of faith, not unlike the folk who will follow cult religions. It's pity for the kids, they have no one looking out for their interests.

Last but not least, what bothers me most about refusing vaccinations is that there will always be some members of the community that have to rely on herd immunity because their own immune systems are not fully functional, they are undergoing immuno-suppressing therapy, or they are allergic to some of the proteins inherent in the current manufacturing processes for most vaccines. Additionally, no vaccine is 100% effective - so depending on the ability of the virus or bacteria to spread through the community, a very high immunization rate is required to protect everyone in the herd, immunized or not.

I hope that some day the likes of Ms. McCarthy or Mr. Wakefield will own up to their hubris, character assassination, innuendo, etc. and apologize to the world not only for disrupting one of the most successful medical programs of our times, but also for killing, disfiguring, and traumatizing gaggles of children needlessly with their panic-mongering. This is not unlike shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre - especially in the case of Mr. Wakefield where key aspects of his 'research' were later found to be faked, massive conflicts of interest were not disclosed, and interpretations were drawn without the benefit of facts.

For anyone interested in the subject, I highly recommend the books written by Dr. Offit on the matter, especially "Autisms False Prophets", and "Deadly Choices". He details the characters of the anti-vaccination movements quite nicely and shows in reference after reference what the real impacts of vaccine refusal are.

... and hey, it's nothing more than an online article, I say good riddance. Threatening folk repeatedly with bodily harm, impersonating them to credit card companies, etc. should be a fast-pass lane to being disbarred from operating a business and going to jail without passing go and without collecting $200.

What troubled me about Mr. Borkers story more than anything is how easily he circumvented the various red-flag tripwires that credit card companies allegedly employ. And the allegation that he successfully impersonated a customer withdrawing a claim against him shows not only chutzpah but a big security hole over at the credit card company.

Bottom line is that the internet has allowed all sorts of scams to go nationwide and unless one can interest the Feds (via publicity in this case), one is SOL. Thus, he may serve as a business blueprint for a lot more scammers going forward.

...runs on many cheap router platforms and allegedly is happy to do IPv6. The current Apple base stations also have two DNS entries set aside for IPv6 and another two DNS entries for IPv4 hosts. Another option is to repurpose an old laptop or mini to run any number of the open-source DNS servers out there and use that machine also to NAT, etc. Running your own DNS server has the additional benefit of speeding up lookups tremendously. But it is work and it consumes power... hence of marginal benefit unless you have a media server already running 24/7 and/or a craptastic provider like Comcast, whose DNS servers aren't all that reliable.

... but please allow me to respectfully disagree with some of your statements.

If my base station experience was so unique, why are there hundreds of e-mail messages in my mail file for Graphite Airport related issues alone? This month alone, over 450 visitors looked over the repair instructions for the graphite base station power supply. It's 2010, my friend and the graphite base station came out 10+ years ago.

I also qualified my statement re: Apple admitting issues with a getting a common manufacturing defect repaired to my experience alone... not the general customer experience. Since I have not owned an eMac/iMac/MacBook, I had no opportunity to experience the out-of-warranty repair programs you mentioned. Please do not generalize my statements out of context.

That Apple may have learned from prior issues is a good thing but I was not impressed with the Apple response at the time that the capacitor issue reared its head in the graphite ABS. IMO, the graphite airport base station was the tip of the spear of the capacitor plague problem. Based on the entries in the internet archive, Apple started publicizing out-of-warranty repair programs sometime around 2005, i.e. years after the graphite base station was released.

That you didn't hear one word about thermal issues is your experience. Perhaps it's because you wrote software and did not provide hardware support in the years after the product was released? Are there former colleagues that you might be able to ask who are in a better position to know what the in-field graphite base station hardware issues were over time?

I ask, because I heard about it hundreds of times. I had 3 out of 6 graphite ABS's I installed for friends and family break in a manner similar to mine. Not all of them in 13 months, like my first one... some took two years... I proactively upgraded / ventilated the remaining units but my guess is that they would have broken also. Why so many units in my part of the world failed and so little of yours will likely remain a mystery.

In a similar manner, I doubt that every iMac/eMac/etc. manufactured by Apple that you mentioned as covered by out of warranty repair programs has failed outright due to the capacitor problem. Likely, it's a question of usage, time, environmental conditions, and simple statistics. So while you may have repaired hundreds, even thousands of units, there may be some users out there today with functional eMacs that have not been affected by the problem.

Please also consider that the thermal issue was exacerbated by environmental conditions. A marginal design might work as long as the external air temperatures remain low. That is why I considered the lack of ventilation holes in the ABS case to be a design defect. If you look at at a Lucent unit from that era (i.e. when they got to wrap their own plastics around the same motherboard that Apple had sourced from them), it features lots of little slots for convective cooling.

Lastly, thanks for your help in bringing this amazing technology to the masses and cheers.

It's what happens when you buy a design instead of developing it yourself. My guess is that Apple lacked the internal expertise to design a WiFi router and card system in the time frame that they wanted to bring it to market. So, they looked around for companies willing to private-label their wares inside an Apple enclosure. IIRC, they had an exclusive on the manufacturing rights (i.e. Lucent couldn't sell or pimp it to others) for a year.

The early Apple PCMCIA Wifi cards for laptops and desktops also appear to have been Lucent based. The first generation of Apple Base Stations was interesting in that it consisted of a small motherboard with a modem daughterboard and a PCMCIA-slot into which the wireless transmitter card was inserted. Thus, some folk recycled these "silver" cards into their laptops after their base station died.

At the time, the Apple base station was by far and away the least expensive wireless base station on the market. Thus, I credit them with bringing Wifi to the masses and forcing other manufacturers to follow suit, price-wise. Subsequent generations of base stations switched to various flavors of RISC processors. See vonwentzel.net for a comprehensive list of Apple base station features, dissections, etc.

Awww, what's next? Your Mama jokes?

That the page you reference may not have existed in the Year 2000 time frame never crossed your mind, did it? The internet archive only has it in existence going back to 2006. The hundreds of folk who wrote to thank me for pointing them to the unpublished knowledge-base article must have been morons too? Along with all the folk at Apple who had initially declined service for broken out-of-warranty base stations? That's quite an army of morons...

But it explains why you posted as an AC. Better luck next time.

Dell may have been more customer-antagonistic than other manufacturers, but even alleged luminaries in the business were tainted by this issue.

My first Apple base station was based on a Lucent design that Apple put a graphite-colored plastic enclosure around. Naturally, the Job/Ivs-ian approach to mechanical design did not allow these base stations to have ventilation holes in them, even though they had a comparatively big internal linear power supply and were using a 486 chip. Combine that with all the remaining hardware and you had a nice hot little box, especially if you used the dial-up modem. A year later, and the marginal Lelon capacitors powering the the base station started bulging like Champagne corks or popping off altogether.

Naturally, Apple told its customers that the they were SOL if the unit was out of warranty after a year of ownership. Those who had AppleCare warranty could get refurbished units - usually in marginal cosmetic condition - and only if they mentioned that AppleCare covered attached peripherals. Apple never proactively contacted owners of graphite base stations to acknowledge the issue and to point owners towards repair options.

I got mad enough to investigate the issue, discovered the bad capacitors and created a web-page to teach others how to replace them or have service providers replace the capacitors for them. Not that hard to do. I also gave folk instructions on how to add ventilation holes to help these poor base stations cool better. The Lucent design covered much of the board with an EMI shield, which exacerbated the thermal problems - it's like encasing the electronics inside two heat shields.

As the issue affected more and more customers, Apple started a non-publicized warranty program that allowed customers outside the warranty period to get their unit replaced - but only if they knew what knowledge-base article to point the Apple drones to. Naturally, just as the program appeared one day, it also disappeared after a while - without a press release, notice to customers, etc.

All along, the typical answer from an Apple phone-drone was that they had never heard of the issue before. So, if you did a little digging at Apple, I would not be surprised if the SOP manuals for phone-drones include the 'suggestion' that every issue reported by an irate customer is 'unusual', 'never heard of before', etc. It's one way to mollify customers, especially those who don't know of the myriad of other customers affected by the same issue.

The only times I had Apple admit something outright was with the Santa Rosa graphics chipset problem, and probably only because by MacBookPro was covered under AppleCare. However, by then, a lot of of other folk had already been affected by this issue and NVIDIA was presumably paying for the PCB repairs. So I'm not sure if I can give Apple a pass on that one either. The first sets of customers were probably told that unless the unit was under warranty or AppleCare that they'd be buying a new motherboard and paying Apple for the privilege of getting it installed too.

Would the base stations have lasted longer if Apple had elected to use name-brand capacitors instead of Lelons? Perhaps, but any electronic appliance last longer with lower operating temperatures. Sadly, this is an issue that seems to continue to haunt Apple - a desire to design pretty enclosures whose thermal performance is at the borderlines of what the electronic hardware can tolerate.

Over the years, my wife and I have called in several cars on the highway driven by folk who were unable to keep a lane, swerving all over the place, etc. Could the root cause have been a cell phone? Sure.. or drugs, alcohol, tiredness, conjugal activities, etc. No matter what the root cause of the bad operation, it was kind of useful to be able to call in these operators... hopefully, before they could kill someone.

While I'm at conspiracy theories, how about the green-mail angle? That is, dangle something draconian in front of the telecommunications providers in the hope that they donate generously to make the problem go away?

I'd like to think that the courts would strike this one down on the premise that the common good done by cell phone in moving cars outweighs the dangers... otherwise, we might as well have mandatory breathalyzers, "awakeness-monitors", and other nanny-state paraphernalia embedded in our cars, bicycles, segways, etc. Oh, wait, I should stop before Mr. LaHood gets all lathered up...

The TSA has yet to catch a single terrorist before they attempted to commit a crime. Shoe-tosses, liquid bans, enhanced pat-downs, body scanners, and all the other reactive measures implemented by this agency ignore the simple fact that the FAA red teams still have no problems whatsoever to penetrate airport security zones at will. Why would a determined terrorist be any less able to do so?

Given that neither scanners nor pat downs can detect body-cavity contraband, the argument that terrorists cannot carry enough contraband into aircraft at this point to be dangerous is simply absurd. Plus, the TSA has not allocated any additional space to open up more parallel lines of entry into airports. So, all these scanners do is slow down the rate of passage to the point where massive security lines have become more inviting targets than aircraft themselves (Remember Rome/Vienna 1985?).

Lastly, please consider the very real situation in most airports where the so-called porno-scanners are regularly shut down during peak travel periods for the reasons given above. If it's that simple to bypass a scanner, then having the scanners there in the first place is completely pointless. Any terrorist worth his/her salt would simply observe the usual travel/security patterns and plan accordingly.

I always elect for a pat-down screening simply because I do not trust the statements made by the TSA re: the radiation levels being safe and some radiologists seem to agree. What I found particularly interesting in the context of one screening experience is the language used by the TSA - "opt-out". No, I didn't opt-out of security screening, I opted for an alternative screening procedure that is arguably safer since the gloves that the TSA folk wear are also tested for explosive residue. Language is important and the way the TSA is using it is contrary to what is actually going on.

Given the extremes that the TSA has gone to lie to the public (example: we don't save the pictures, except for the 35,000+ we sent to a private contractor), the arrogance that they treat the flying public with (the constant yelling at checkpoints), and the sheer ineffectiveness of the agency at meeting its objectives makes me conclude that the better approach is to scrap the agency, return its employees into the pools of privately-contracted companies that used to do airport security, and accept that 100% safety in flying is simply not possible.

The main point of the article should have been that the EU created a competitive landscape by restricting competitors to interoperability standards that do not exist in the USA - i.e. allowing customers to go from carrier to carrier without the need for a new phone. Here in the US, you are automatically subsidizing a new phone when you sign up for service with any major wireless company - and if you don't use the subsidy by buying a new phone every two years, then you're leaving money on the table. Yes, a waste, but that's what evolved over here vs. the general EU model of the customer providing the phone and the carrier supplying the SIM (though subsidized plans exist).

Me, I'd prefer the ability to switch carriers and not to have this hidden subsidy. If the phone works and you're happy with it, why quasi-require the owner to chuck it for a new model? Just more e-waste with no tangible benefit except for those that like to further line the pockets of wireless carriers through the use of additional (previously unreachable) services. I also like that the EU mandates that the caller to the cell pays for the call. Seriously cuts down spam calls - because calls to cell phones are 5x more expensive than landline calls. An additional benefit is the possibility of giving a phone to your kid and being able to call them at will - but they cannot make calls unless they refill the SIM bank account.

Anyhow, IIRC, the iPhone 4 has two external antennas that are nominally tuned to certain frequencies but which through some electronic happiness inside can actually cover a wider variety of frequencies than the one that they are 'naturally' resonant on. So your signal quality on a 700MHz band using a nominal 850MHz antenna may not be great, but it may still work. The current iPhone 4 is capable of handling signals ranging from 850MHz-2.4GHz... so the current design limitations may be just that, limits by design to lock folk into AT&T in the US market. Then again, I don't know enough about all the technologies, compatibility issues, etc. to say for sure that it can be done.

The ability to mill 3-dimensional objects has been around for a while. The advent of cheap table-top scanner systems is the real issue - once it becomes easy to make accurate 3-dimensional reproductions in CAD quickly, then the gates are opened to make all sorts of stuff at the same (or even higher) quality than OEM. The US Navy has been investing in this technology for years since they discovered that they didn't have the blueprints for all sorts of stuff anymore that was supposed to be scrapped by now.

To me, the issue is that the ability to accurately model 3-dimensional objects has come to the average desktop. No longer do forgers have to deal with making investment-cast reproductions, where each successive generation of castings degenerates due to loss of detail (like cassette tapes, I suppose). No, this is the digital generation where these sorts of models can be shared as easily via the internet as digital music is being shared today, and it scares copyright- and trademark-holders to bits since they will more and more easily lose control of their brands. But I don't think that 3D printing is at fault here - other enabling technologies are what make them so potent a tool.

And that's the rub, 3D printing has enormous potential to unleash a torrent of creativity as more and more folk are allowed to let their imagination run its course - delivering prototypes quickly, cheaply, and to a greater and greater proportion of the populace. Eventually, why shouldn't your local hobby shop or CVS not also deliver 3D prints in addition to the 2D stuff they deliver today? I hope that our trademark/copyright/etc. overlords are not allowed to squash this exciting technology in its infancy, especially considering that enforcing this sort of copyright control is not an issue in the developed world.

... under the previous administration, the TSA actually asked multiple high-volume airports to set aside certain gates for US-bound flights, reclassify those areas as sovereign US-soil (!!!), and allow the US to post armed US TSA officers there (!!!!!). That was rebuffed, ranging from the Germans refusing outright, Canadians politely offering an additional Mountie, to the Japanese asking for more time to 'study' the issue. The arrogance of the US authorities to make the request in the first place is only eclipsed by the current treatment of foreigners coming to the US (online $$$ VISA, photographs and fingerprints on arrival, etc.) - to what end? Thanks to this lovely attitude, multiple nations have started to retaliate against US citizens by charging them reciprocal rates and also treating foreigners like criminals. Well, great, it's the little people as usual getting the short end of the stick when the elephants start dancing.

I wish more folk in the transportation business - consumers as well as providers would start speaking up more about the very costs of security theater versus the benefits. AFAIK, the TSA has yet to nab a single potential terrorist prior to them doing something naughty on the plane. Similarly, FAA red teams continue to enjoy great success penetrating US airports at will while over 300 TSA employees have been fired for being caught stealing passenger items (makes you wonder how many weren't caught, but I digress). The TSA continues to throw technological solutions at a very complex problem in a completely reactionary manner instead of being honest and admitting that stopping all crime in the air is inherently impossible.

Bruce Schneier has written at length about this, noting that the best way to ensure that only the folk who are supposed to be on the plane is to check them for security, ID, and ticket validity at the gate, just before they get on the plane. Having big choke points at the entry to airports only ensures one thing: a big fat target for terrorists. Worse, the current push for backscatter and microwave machines significantly reduces throughput since the TSA has not allocated any additional floor space or parallel paths into the airport to accommodate the 5x slower scan rate of a backscatter machine vs. a magnetometer. And, should you be silly enough to opt out of a machine scan and ask for a manual pat-down, you can expect the TSA staff to retaliate. In my case, my carry-on luggage was subjected to a comprehensive search even though the pat-down did not uncover anything suspicious (TSA headquarters later stated that this should not have been done)

Bottom line is, some common-sense approaches like upgrading cockpit doors were good ideas. But until Congress and the president grow a backbone and stop the madness, the TSA will continue to grow and whatever privacy and convenience passengers used to enjoy simply will continue to evaporate. It's a pity considering how much fun travel can be. But who am I kidding? There is simply too much money in the business of providing 'security' these days, too many fiscal interests that would be hurt.

My guess it will be tough to have one OS that spans many device types simply due to the complexity and permutations of hardware/software that occur as devices get more complex. That is, I have a very different expectation of a home PC and it's capabilities vs. a workstation or a so-called smartphone. Writing an OS that spans that gamut of hardware/software reliably and with a user experience that can be described as acceptable should be difficult for the time being. I see Android slowly gobbling up market share at the 'low-end' of the device sophistication market - i.e. tablet PCs, smartphones, TVs, and the like and then spreading up. By comparison, MS tried the opposite, i.e. gain market share dominance on the PC side before simplifying the OS to run on lesser platforms reliably.

The price-point of the Android OS is right and hardware manufacturers are free to block portions of Android capabilities as they see fit. Thus, in many ways they are getting their cake and eating it too. Meanwhile, Apple has in some ways missed the bus (again) by clinging to the crown jewels instead of making them a industry standard that everyone embraces. This single-minded obsession with controlling what goes into the marketplace, the bad organization thereof, etc. is unmanageable in the long term. Bottom line is that Apple would do better to allow all sorts of software to run on their devices but to only endorse some, i.e. the ones that they sell on their specific marketplace, while allowing users to screw up their systems as they see fit with stuff purchased outside the walled garden.

For me, the bottom line is the user-experience. Here, Android may well be a significant step up from some of the craptastic UIs that some OEMs have developed over the years (Sony, Symbian, etc.). If Android continues to evolve as it has to become better, more secure, etc. then I am all for it because it will force other OS manufacturers to step up their game or get out of the way. What I fear is that eventually Android will head into the same cloud of crummy choices as Windows OS did, i.e. once it became the dominant OS there was too much focus on making the DRM-folk happy, marketing tie-ins, and other bloatware that do nothing for the user but which please some corporate entity. Here, the key will be to allow users to eject the portions of the codebase they object to, something that is not yet possible on most devices. But with any luck, users will regain some of their taken-away user rights...

In other words, a better OS than Android would be something even more open, like Linux. But competing with the almighty Google and its deep pockets, legions of programmers, marketing machine, existing tie-ins, etc. is not a challenge I would look on favorably. Plus, how to get the OS onto devices, run them reliably, etc. when the OEMs in questions may have put in blocks (legal or not) to prevent users from liberating their property...