Here's the real thing (read more on http://www.naturalnews.com/031...):

Why is some random naturalnews.com website I've never heard of and which is run by a single person more legitimate a source than Greenpeace?

More to the point, why haven't you read the sources I provided? Part of the point of the Greenpeace article I linked to is that Apple are making stronger pushes in this area and being more transparent. That article was published in 2014. Your article was published in 2011. So Greenpeace says that Apple are the leaders in the field and have strongly improved, and your article points out that they weren't always as good or open years ago. There's no contradiction there. All you are doing is showing that Apple have taken action and improved.

When somebody says 'the cloud', mentally replace it by 'somebody else's computer'.

Also, when somebody says "It's unclear how the images were obtained, but anonymous 4chan users said...", replace it with "It's unclear how the images were obtained."

Come on, since when are anonymous 4chan users a reliable source?

Supporting gay rights.

Almost everyone does that and it does not cost them a single cent.

They spent money commissioning a video celebrating gay pride.

They spent money on lawyers to petition the Californian government on Prop 8.

They donated $100K to the No to 8 campaign.

Their supplier responsibility reports have been auditing their suppliers for discrimination for years.

It is just public relations.

Again, like the other guy I responded to, you're setting up a no win situation. They don't support gay rights? They are unethical. They do support gay rights? It's just marketing.

Their CEO is widely believed to be gay and I'm sure a hell of a lot of their employees are gay as well. You're asking me to believe they aren't doing this out of principle at all? That's not the most plausible explanation here.

Enforcing worker rights in their contracts abroad.

Again, this is mainly a PR thing. People got upset (for the wrong reasons -- Apple's contract manufacturers may be bad employers by European or even American standards, but people in China appear to be happy to work for them) and Apple had to repair damage.

Nope, they actually started internal audits of their supply chain and generating public reports several years before all that happened. You can go and download them on their website and see for yourself.

Making their products environmentally friendly.

When will they be doing that?

They've been doing that for many years. Here's the info, specifically the products. Even Greenpeace are singing their praises, specifically, saying: Apple has put its money where its mouth is: Greenpeace's report, "Clicking Clean," found that the company's embrace of renewable energy is genuine, and is leading the technology sector.

Their entire product portfolio is based on planned obsolescence. They may be very proud of how much material they are saving by making critical parts as flimsy as possible, but in reality the reduced lifespan hurts the environment more than the minor savings help it.

This is just FUD. Apple hardware lasts a lot longer than the equivalent from their competitors. I've lost count of the number of laptops, PCs, and non-Apple smartphones I've seen people around me churn through while Apple users with the same needs just buy once or twice in the same time period.

Improving the privacy of their users

By storing all their personal data in a country that has effectively declared war on privacy? By secretly tracking their customers? Apple is doing the exact opposite of what you claim.

By forbidding abusive behaviour in the App Store. By removing application access to identifying information several times. By providing an alternative to third party analytics like Google Analytics that isn't driven by a market need to sell that data. By encrypting a whole bunch of things they aren't compelled to.

Apple has done many unethical things in recent years.

I won't argue with that. What I will argue with is somebody who says that their ethics are non-existent. They perform positive ethical acts on a regular basis. They clearly have ethics, even if they fail to live up to the standard you demand of them.

You're really setting up a no win situation here. If they don't perform positive ethical acts, then they are unethical. If they do, then it's just "brand management bullet points".

It's funny though, how we have two people here - one calling them unethical, and one pointing out ethical things that they have done - and you perceive this as "there's somebody here worshipping the brand". Not two people with different opinions. One person with a suspect opinion. That's an odd perception.

Also, if anybody is astroturfing, I'd lay my money on the anonymous coward and not the person with a Slashdot account that is several years old with excellent karma.

I hate apple (the corporation) because it seems their ethics are non-existent

Really? They seem to perform positive ethical acts quite regularly. Supporting gay rights. Enforcing worker rights in their contracts abroad. Making their products environmentally friendly. Improving the privacy of their users. Why do you think their ethics are non-existent?

Market share isn't the important factor though. iPhone sales have grown every year. Apple's profits have grown every year. They are the most profitable phone vendor by a long way. If that's failing, I'd love to fail as hard as Apple are.

Now on a mobile phone this would be a non-issue as the NFC could be configured to only respond under certain circumstances, e.g. entering a PIN number.

It's a safe bet that any new iPhones will have the fingerprint scanner built in that can be used for this purpose.

That's just 4chan rumours at the moment. No point in taking them seriously unless there's confirmation.

Given the nature of the mission and power source (multi-year if not multi-decade operation on another planet with no hope of human intervention if something should go wrong)

Curiosity was intended to last two years, it's been going for almost three. It wasn't intended to last this long, and it definitely wasn't intended to operate for decades.

Yes, thanks for the reminder!

iOS seems to have been last to join the flat look crowd.

It's not really accurate to say that iOS 7's design is flat. It actually has more depth than the earlier design, it's just that the individual items in each layer are flat.

So, for example, the Apple application's icons on the home screen are flat, but they are floating over a parallax background that gives the feeling of depth. The buttons in the control centre are flat, but the translucent background of the control centre gives the impression that it's sitting on top of the home screen.

They even spell it out explicitly on their website when they talk about iOS 7's design:

Distinct and functional layers help create depth and establish hierarchy and order. The use of translucency provides a sense of context and place.

Isn't there a short story about a songwriter who kills himself after losing a court case for plagiarism because there aren't any original melodies left?

And although many on Slashdot complain about the "Walled Garden", having an App store run by Apple itself provides some assurance to the customer that the App is legit and not some form of malware.

I don't think malware is particularly worrisome in the average user's mind. I think it's more about quality.

Speaking as an application developer, the vast majority of times I've had to say to clients "Apple won't allow that", it's been something that is self-serving and user-unfriendly if not downright abusive. Apple serve as a convenient foil for developers who care about users and stop developers who don't care from going too far.

As a developer, I know first hand how frustrating it is to have a great idea for something that Apple simply won't allow, but at the same time, I frequently see the benefit its policies bring to end users.

For instance, just the other day I saw a developer complain that a client wanted to force users to enter their personal information (e.g. age) before they could use the application, so that they could use it for marketing. Simple solution: Apple don't allow that. But Google does. How do you think policies like that are reflected in the average application quality?

Right now it's 8. It and 7 were wonderful improvements in CSS from IE 6

Not really. The only real difference between 6 and 7 from a CSS perspective was a few extra selectors and bug fixes. The real improvements came with version 8, which finally had full support for CSS 2.

Or which happens to be a valid image but has the same hash.

This is extremely unlikely. The whole point of hashes is that they collide as infrequently as possible.

So they got the warrant based on google reading his email?

He is a convicted child abuser who had a third party service provider independently notify the police that he was sending child pornography by email. Are you arguing that a judge shouldn't grant a search warrant under those circumstances?

Guess all the cops need for a warrant is for some throwaway email address to send a pic to your account.

Listen, if somebody tells you that you're saying dumb things because you didn't read the article, don't just say more dumb things without reading the article. The article clearly points out that Google detected it in an email he was sending, not receiving.