Thanks. I did some more research on it, and realized that I misunderstood the problem when I first read (skimmed?) the article. It seems they were using strongarm tactics to coerce the publishers into charging higher prices to their competition. I don't use iAnything, and really have no idea how big Apple's book store is, or how many e-books they sell. My library system has quite a selection of e-books for checkout, and I prefer to do that over buying them, anyway.

Sorry, I initially misunderstood the problem - I was cooking dinner and more or less skimmed the article. I was thinking they were colluding to enable them to fix their prices at a higher price point, then it dawned on me that they were colluding to raise the publisher's prices to other vendors so they could undercut them, and using strongarm tactics to do it... Thinking a little slow tonight - had a reading comprehension fail! :-)

Thanks. I don't use iTunes, or iAnything, but the reported prices in the article ($12.99 to $14.99) are equal to or less than typical prices on Amazon and B it's dawning on me now that if Apple's been strongarming the publishers to achieve this situation, then, yes, that could be antitrust behavior. I was initially thinking they were colluding to fix prices artificially high for themselves, when it seems it was to raise other vendor's prices. Actions like refusing to approve apps for the crap store if the pricing wasn't fixed is definitely against things like the Sherman act.

It's acceptable to grammar nazi myself, isn't it? :-)

Not defending Apple's pricing, in fact I think that they are in many ways douchebags, but why is this an antitrust situation? They are negotiating with vendors to reach the price point they desire. They are just reaching for a higher price point, instead of a lower one. They can't set their prices to what their customers will bear? I'm not about to click all of the links in the article, which isn't much of an article, but unless they were colluding with these publishers to charge higher prices everywhere, I don't see a problem. If Apple's customers are such zealots that they won't consider other sources for their media, let them pay the prices.

He is, after all, the guy who killed Hitler...

Maybe the service can be bad enough that it wasn't worth it, even though it was free!! :-)

Hopefully, I won't have to find out...

I bought a Macbook Air just after a refresh a while back. The vendor I usually buy computer/photo/audio equipment from had a closeout special on the previous model. I know, it goes totally against the Apple mindset, but I bought the old one anyway! The computer was brand new (not a refurb), was one option short of the highest build-to-order configuration, and was $600 off. They threw in AppleCare for free, too. (I wouldn't have bought it for $200.)

Now if something would just go wrong with it! I've been rather fortunate there.

My general opinion on extended warranties/protection plans is that they are really asking, "Would you like to pay $XX.XX more for that?"

And pass up the opportunity to have some fun with them? :-)

They seem pretty incompetent - it sounds from the OP like they are doing Christmas tree scans. Why not mess with them and waste their time?

Tar pit their IP addresses.

Each time they connect, disallow connections for x*2 seconds, where x is the amount of time their connections were disallowed the last time.

Apparently when NK was configuring their proxies and firewalls, they were so focused on keeping their citizens from getting out that they didn't pay enough attention to keeping people from getting in!

Just be careful with those cylinders, especially if you are nervous and on a TV show. Double if the cylinder is 'one of a kind.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnsizkVjGm8

Come to think of it, I should have put the word 'possibly' in there somewhere...

I haven't used XP in years, and only used OEM versions when I did - I don't really know how aggressive its WGA checking is. Of course, the final update patch could add any functionality...

I didn't know about that - but it's kinda funny! Thanks!

They put a cracked version of their own software on their website with a serial number. After all the extra work of putting in the phone-home activation system. Priceless!

It may be interesting next year, when XP goes EOL.

This is the first OS that MS can just kill-switch via WGA. It will be interesting to see if they are desperate enough to do something that stupid.

It came to mind for me a couple of weeks ago, when I was having trouble with my internet connection, and had no connection for several days. (It turned out to be the cable drop to my house.) MSE started squawking about being unable to verify Windows was genuine, told me to fuck off, and it just shut down. It didn't start up again until my connection was restored. What if they did this with Windows XP? That would force users to upgrade, or change to a different platform entirely.